Sermons

---

The Church Equipped
September 17, 2000
Second in a sermon series on the Church
Pastor Dan Baumgartner     
Acts 2:42-3:10

Last week we started a series of sermons on this strange and wonderful organism we call the church. We talked then about “The Church Called,” about how it is Jesus Christ who called the church into existence, and continues to do so. We looked at the Matthew 16 passage where Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, and Jesus said, “Yes! And on this rock I will build my church.” If you want to put your finger into Acts 2:42, we’ll go there in a minute. Let’s pray.

When I was doing marketing for an auto parts company, I ended up doing a number of seminars training people on how to run retail business. Some of these were on the idea of “related selling.” Do you know what that is? It’s the additional purchases that a counterperson can encourage the customer to make. For example, if Lynne walked into an auto parts store to buy a new water pump, she would also need a gasket and some sealer, at the very least. So this is what my partner and I were coaching people on. And we hit on an ingenious way of making the point. We split our large group into small groups of three or four, and gave each group a blank white puzzle, about 20 pieces, in an envelope. Then we said, “The first group to put their puzzle together gets $100.” You should have seen their eyes light up! “Ready, set, go!” Every group sprang into action, working feverishly to put their puzzle together. Now, what we hadn’t told them was that we had taken one piece out of each envelope…so no group could finish their puzzle! It was the perfect way of teaching them how frustrating it was to be a customer who gets home, but wasn’t sold all of the things needed to finish the job. What we hadn’t planned on…was how mad they all were! Sooo unhappy. And I wonder…if Peter didn’t have a few of these same feelings.

Think about how Peter’s story goes. In every gospel, it’s very similar:

• Matthew: Jesus gives the Great Commission, to go and make disciples and baptize all the world. Then Jesus leaves.
• Mark: Jesus says to go into all the world and preach good news to all creation. Then he disappears.
• Luke: Jesus tells his followers to preach the gospel to all nations…then he’s taken up.
• John: Jesus says, “Follow me.” Then he leaves.

In every case, a magnificent and overwhelming task is given…and then Jesus leaves.

In other words, this young church, perhaps 120 strong with 11 disciples, has the huge task of heading out to change the world, to help introduce the kingdom of God…with absolutely no resources, no leader, only an invisible God. No tools whatsoever to do the job. Surely God could do better? If it were today, God would have undoubtedly put together some focus groups, built a 501 C-3 organization, created a website and hired a marketing firm. Or at the very least, God would have looked around for the smartest, best, wisest leaders He could possibly find. But no. In fact, those chosen were quite plain and simple. They had no discernible tools…except one: the promise that they would receive the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, “Stay put, I’m sending the Spirit, everything will be okay.” And so this Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, Peter preaches his first sermon, and things start to happen. 

Acts 2:42-47

Now, these things that follow the arrival of the Holy Spirit seem pretty ordinary, actually. Community life begins to develop. There’s nothing too wild going on. But the Holy Spirit begins to infiltrate everyday life. The scripture says they met together everyday for teaching and worship -- no Sunday Christians, or Christmas and Easter Christians, but every day. They broke bread together, probably shared communion. They shared meals, and got to know one another in each other’s homes. Now that was a huge thing! It’s an intimate and personal thing to invite someone into your home, isn’t it? You can see someone at church every Sunday for years, and not know one another like you will after you spend an evening together. We learned that in Minnesota. Literally, the people at our church had, by and large, never been in each other’s homes. It made a huge difference. 

And there was one other thing…something that seems so ordinary. These people, now numbering around 3,120…began to hold everything in common. As people had need, they shared and distributed things. Whenever I read this, I can’t help but think about our culture. About my own house and neighborhood. Every person on our block owns a lawnmower that they use once a week. Every person owns a wheelbarrow that they use once every few months. Every person owns an edger that they use once a month…and on and on. Yet here is a group sharing, and caring for those of lesser means.

Why? Because the Holy Spirit was there, infiltrating everyday life. Just ordinary life business.

Now, incidentally, I’m sure that “ordinary” in this case means just what it would today. “Ordinary” means that at some point, someone thought they got a raw deal. Someone got into an argument, someone accused someone else of not pulling their share of the load, someone else had to go and ask forgiveness for an attitude or behavior. In other words, life in the ordinary is messy. And into that messiness, somehow the Holy Spirit brought the fruits of the Spirit, as we read in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. It’s interesting that these fruits are all group things, all community-based. Love does not happen in an individual, but between people. You don’t practice peace by yourself, it’s in relationships. You don’t work on kindness in front of a mirror…it’s with others. 

When I think of this “ordinary,” I can’t help but think of the Wednesday Night community dinners here. On the one hand, they’re absolutely remarkable. On the other hand, what’s so amazing? People bring food, prepare it. Others serve, people come and share a meal, engage in conversation…maybe get a haircut, or go to a Bible study, a cleanup crew comes. It’s so ordinary…and yet, when the Holy Spirit infiltrates the ordinary messiness of life, remarkable things happen.

Now the next story is not ordinary at all. It is extra-ordinary. 

Acts 3:1-10

This is mind-blowing, is what it is. Are you kidding?! Two guys walking to worship in a big city. A big city like ours. And just like here, they are approached for money. And I suspect they probably felt what you and I feel sometimes when we’re downtown, or just on Queen Anne Avenue.  That tension of “I want to help, but should I? What’s the best way, I don’t want to enable, what am I supposed to do?” 

Now this guy is in a good place, a high traffic area. And I want to remind you of what this temple is like. A huge building, surrounded by courtyards in concentric circles. The outer circle is the Courtyard of the Gentiles, the only area where non-Jewish people were allowed. Then came the Courtyard of the Women, where only Jews could go. Then the Court of Israel, where only Jewish men were allowed…and so on, closer and closer to the temple. 

Now this gate, the one called Beautiful, we think was outside the Courtyard of the Women. This is where the beggar had been put down to ask for money. He is, literally and figuratively a man on the outside looking in. Outside of the gate. Outside of his society economically, as a beggar. Outside of the society because of his physical deformity. Unable to get himself in to worship, or to take his turn as a Jewish male in service at the temple because he was blemished. And he thought this day was no different than 12,000 other days…but he was wrong. It was different because two people whose lives had been changed by God’s Holy Spirit, Peter and John, came along. Thinking “this is payday,” the man made eye contact and asked for money. And Peter says, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”

What? Walk? Are you nuts? Not in 40 years had he walked, in fact NEVER. But as he ponders it, Peter helps him to his feet and he is soon leaping and shouting.

The Holy Spirit of God is doing something extraordinary here, turning a man who was an outsider into an insider, building the community. This is a pure miracle…healing, one of the gifts of the Spirit. We read about those in I Corinthians, in Ephesians, in Romans. Some of these gifts are quite understandable to us, like the gifts of administration or hospitality. Others are more extraordinary…the gift of speaking in tongues, of providing an interpretation for tongues, the gift of healing, the word of prophecy. Many of these are most visible in the worship of the community. And for some of us, these are hard to understand. It feels a little out of control. 

Here at Bethany, it is not unusual for there to be a tongue and interpretation in worship. Not unusual for there to be a word from the Lord during prayer. And if you are not used to this, you might feel skeptical…or scared. It’s out of the ordinary. Exactly!! As good Presbyterians, we’re afraid of things getting out of control. In fact, we could probably use a little more of it! Most churches are so under control, things are in no danger whatsoever of getting out of hand. In one very traditional church we were at, we began to print at the top of the worship bulletin: “Subject to change by the Holy Spirit.” But it was laughable! It was the last place in the world anyone would have ever done something not printed in the bulletin! When we come together in Bethany, we try to have times in the services…where there is room for God to speak. He might just speak through you. The Holy Spirit might nudge you, give you a word or a scripture or a song. And I want to encourage you to speak it out…for the building up of our whole community. Inevitably, if you do this…it will feel risky. But inevitably, when you respond to the Spirit’s prompting it blesses somebody else in a way you never could have known. 

I want to just point out for you a few similarities between these two apparently dissimilar stories, the ordinary and the extraordinary:

1. The action of the Holy Spirit is unpredictable. Whether the sharing of the community, or the healing by Peter and John…the Holy Spirit is not controllable by us. It’s not a formula. I talked with someone this week who had been in a wonderful group conversation, one where it really seemed as though the presence of God was right there. And as they told me about this, it struck me that even if you put the exact same people in the exact same place, with the exact same topics…you couldn’t duplicate what that original talk had been. When the Holy Spirit acts, we need to be alert and watchful. It’s why Annie Dillard warns us that ushers shouldn’t be handing out bulletins in worship, but life preservers and crash helmets. There are some of you right here this morning who, if I asked, would have to say, “One year ago…I would NEVER have imagined being here. I would NEVER have dreamed of being in church, or becoming a Christian, or being where I am today. And yet the Holy Spirit touches, and things change.

2. The Holy Spirit acts, and reminds us that God is present NOW. The Holy Spirit is the presence of the LIVING God. Not the God that acted once and decisively through Christ on the cross and resurrection…though of course, that is true as well. But the God of the here and now, who does indeed act. I hear stories from you every week about God’s presence. I don’t doubt them. In fact, for me the hardest questions of faith are not “Why doesn’t God act” because He does. The hardest questions are “Why doesn’t God act MORE? Or Here? Or Here?” But I don’t deny that he is working…and waiting for faithful people to see it.

3. When the Holy Spirit acts…Jesus Christ is lifted up. The Holy Spirit points to the person of Jesus. The community met to worship God revealed in Christ. Peter and John said, “We don’t have gold…but be healed in the name of Jesus!” And when people came running toward them, they said, “Why come to us, as though WE did something? It was God, the God who acts in the name of Jesus!”

4. When the Holy Spirit acts…the Kingdom of God gets bigger. People are drawn in, outsiders become insiders. A beggar becomes a believer. Three thousand were added in one day.

I’ve told you about the canoe trips I went on when we were in Minnesota. There was one particular guy I asked to go on the first trip. His wife was very involved at our church, but Dan (maybe the name is why we hit it off) wasn’t. He pretty much laughed when I told him about the trip. And when I asked again, he had a look like “Why would I want to go with a bunch of those guys on a trip?” And when the first pre-trip meeting came along, you can guess who wasn’t there. 

But over the next couple months, an amazing thing happened. And guess who went on that trip? And guess who had a great time? And guess who ended up in a canoe with me, looking around at all that untouched beauty and saying, “This is like God’s backyard…and we get to play in it for awhile.” Are we open to God’s Spirit blowing, changing, moving things beyond our control? Or are we quenching the Spirit, content to think that with our best planning and effort, we can take care of things down here very well, thank you.?

God did not, God does not leave the Church unequipped for the tasks He calls it to. No, instead He sends His Holy Spirit. J.I. Packer observes that Christians are always running around asking, “Do I have the Holy Spirit?” Am I doing it right? Packer says that’s the wrong question. The real question is not “Do I have the Holy Spirit?” but “Does the Holy Spirit have us?” 

When it does…amazing things will happen…in the ordinary, and the extraordinary, places of life.