April 4, 2010

 

Scripture:         Acts 10:34-43

 

Sermon:           “I Love to Tell the Story”

 

            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 10 where we will read together verses 34 through 43.  You can find that easily on page 173 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.

            You remember Peter.  I’m sure you remember Peter.  Simon Peter.  The Rock.  He’s the disciple Jesus first called away from the boat where he’d been fishing up on the Sea of Galilee.  You remember Peter.  Great man.  A little bullheaded, but a great man.  Jesus said, “Simon Peter, upon this rock I am going to build my church.”

            I’ve always like Peter.  He has the ability to make me feel like my own imperfections can’t ultimately get in the way of whatever God might be trying to do.  You know?  Like, if this guy can be so effective, with all of his flaws and all of his shortcomings, maybe God’s got a chance with me, too.  I like Peter.

            Jesus did, too.

            It was probably hard for Jesus to tell him that night as they shared their last meal together that, “Peter, you say that you’d follow me anywhere.  But this very night you are going to deny that you even know me at all.  Three times you’ll deny me.”  And Peter couldn’t imagine that ever happening.  Much too headstrong for that.  Sure enough, though, when a rooster started to announce that morning was breaking, Peter had fearfully denied that he belonged to Jesus’ following.  They’d taken the Lord away to be killed.  Maybe he’d be next.  And he did just as Jesus told him he would.

            Maybe you like Peter for that reason, too.  I don’t know.  It’s easier than we like to admit to hide who we really are and what we really believe.  But, Peter had another problem.  And it’s familiar to me having grown up in the South where folks have strong feelings about other kinds of people.  Not good ones, either.  Peter was like that.  He didn’t see folks that looked different, spoke a different language, you know, had a different background, came from a different place—he didn’t see different people as worthy of his friendship.  And certainly not God’s love and salvation.  I’ve known folks like that.  But, after Jesus had left this earth, God gave Peter a dream that would change all of that.  And Peter was forever different.

            All of that is lurking in the background of the story we’re about to read.  Peter’s prejudices have just been broken down by God.  And, now, there’s a Roman soldier of all things who wants to see him and hear about this Jesus who had lived and died and been resurrected.  So, Peter went.  This is what happened…the word of the Lord…

 

            Then Peter began to speak to them:  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.  You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.  That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:  how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.  We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem.  They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.  All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

 

            What we just did was tell the basic story about Jesus in about one minute’s time.  That’s all it took to include his ministry to the people, his death, his resurrection, and his appearances to the first disciples.

            You say, “Preacher, if that’s all it takes, one minute, why are we still sitting here?  And can’t you get to your point just as quickly?”

            I know how it is.  Easter is the big Sunday where folks in pulpits everywhere try to hit a big home run and get a year’s worth of sermons into one shot for all of the folks who don’t come very often.  I’ve sat through a few of those myself.

            I’m not going to do that.

            In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that a preacher can only ruin Easter by trying to do too much.  What are you going to say to make the moment even more special or more memorable?  Jesus was crucified in a way that was so awful it sent most of his followers running to hide in fear.  All except some of the women, of course.  They didn’t run.  It looked for an agonized 36 hours that they’d been chasing after a dream all this time.  And they’d lost a friend who had changed their lives and given them purpose and meaning.

            What can a preacher really say to add anything to the story as it is?  In the face of all of this grief, word came from those women that not even death could contain Jesus.  He’d risen from the tomb!  All that they’d given their lives to was not in vain.  And that had not lost the most important person in their lives.  Weeping may have lingered through the dark night, but joy came in the morning.

            What else is there to say?

            No, we preacher types usually just end messing it up.  Sometimes we think we have to prove it to you somehow.  We have to prove that Jesus did rise from the grave.  And we torture you with all kinds of quotations from such and such and show you the words of the prophets, how they can be interpreted in such a way to foretell what happened on Easter.  We mess it up for you pretty good.

            Just look outside.  The fact that the earth itself is singing of its own rebirth from winter’s death is enough proof for any of us that resurrection is real.

            And look at what Peter did.  He summed it all up in one minute.  And those folks he was speaking to already believed in resurrection.  Something was happening in their own lives already.  They knew that resurrection was real.  They were living it.  They were awakening to an entirely new way of living in the world, Cornelius and his friends.

            And that all may be exactly the point.  What happened on Easter morning, when Jesus walked out of his own tomb, that’s not just his story.  It’s not something that has to be proven.  It’s something that you and I live out in our lives.  It’s our story.  And it is happening right now.

            Here’s a little secret:  it is going to keep happening to us.  Over and over again, this resurrection is going to keep happening to us.

            It happened again to Peter.  Bigoted, prejudiced ‘ole Peter.  You weren’t like him and you weren’t nothin’!  Didn’t come from his neighborhood, didn’t speak his language, didn’t eat his foods, you know, you didn’t count.  But, resurrection happened to him again.

            I remember when I was in seventh grade.  My English teacher assigned us to read another book.  Now, I’m not a good reader by any means.  And I was given to such things as looking for the Clift Notes so that I wouldn’t have to read the entire thing.  I’d watch a movie by the same title sometimes.  And when she handed us this book with the picture of a little girl on the front, I knew I wouldn’t waste my time with it.

            But, the good teacher that she was, she had us read together the first few pages to get a sense of how it was written.  And these words caught me like a net:  “Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.”  I could hear the drawl in the voice of the woman speaking as if it were my own grandmother sarcastically telling us the history of our own family.  And from there I took that book home and tore through its pages like I’d never read before in my life.

            The book?  To Kill a Mockingbird, of course.  The story of an Alabama lawyer by the name of Atticus Finch who bravely defended a black man accused of murder.

            When I had consumed this book, I was a different person.  I knew the characters in it.  They were my family.  They were the people who lived in my town.  And they had all the same prejudices driving all of the same madness leading to all the same misery.  I was different.  I saw the world through entirely different eyes.  I didn’t have to continue on the way that folks like had been carrying on for centuries on end.

            Stories have power.  Stories have power to change us.  Stories have power to open our minds to a different way of living than we have before.  Has that ever happened to you?

            Have you ever put down a book, maybe with tears in your eyes, and vowed to be different?  Ever walk out of a movie like that?  Same thing, really.

            Peter said to Cornelius, “This story has changed my life.  I wouldn’t even be standing here talking to the likes of you if you want the truth.  But, this story has changed my life.”  Here’s how he put it, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”  Do you know what he used to say?  He’d say, “It’s not lawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile.”  That’s what he used to say.  But, he was changed.

            He went on to tell the story of Jesus, of course.  He seemed to sum it up pretty quickly. Didn’t he?  “Jesus was baptized.  He was anointed with the Holy Spirit.  He did a lot of good things for people.”  There’s a lot of stuff that he glossed over.  He’s got the entire story of Jesus’ life boiled down to three short sentences.  It was like the grand version of the Clift Notes for the Gospel According to Luke.  You’d think that would appeal to me.

            Then, when Peter started to talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus, he gave a lot more detail.  Did you see that?  “They put him to death on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear to us.”  He didn’t skip over this part.  The resurrection was the important part of the story.  Peter even included the detail that Jesus ate and drank with the disciples after he rose from the dead.

            You’ve got folks healed of sickness.  Paralyzed people walking again.  Blind men receiving their sight.  Dead people living again.  All kinds of important teachings about how to live in the world.  And all Peter said was that “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.”

            Get to the resurrection, however.  There you get a detailed account of things.  I think that part of the story was most important to the one telling the story.  At that moment in Peter’s life, he was being resurrected, again.  The old Peter was dead and buried.  The new one was alive with possibilities.  The story was Peter, too.  Not just Jesus, the story was Peter, too.  Wasn’t it?

            The Easter story is about everyone who follows Jesus into the grave and walks out of it again.  The Easter story is about you and me.  For all of the ways in which we’ve left behind the old and put on the new, this story is about us and all the things God has worked within us.

            Now, just like Peter, it doesn’t happen only once.  And I think that is good news for all of us.  It’s a little frightening when we’ve got some things we’ve got to let go of.  Maybe like Peter your harboring some things inside towards other people that just done fit into the way God intends it to be.  It can be frightening.  But, it’s good news, too.  Good news.  For all of the brokenness we’re carrying around in us.  The heartbreak.  The bruised and battered bodies.  The bruised and battered spirits.  The betrayals against us.  The betrayals we’ve committed.  The addictions.  The division of the world sending us to war.  All of it.  Those graves can’t contain us who follow Jesus to the grave.

            As Paul said in Romans 6:  “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”  May the resurrection be your story again this year my friends.

 

 

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)