Sermon May 9, 2010: Bold Witness

Sermon May 9, 2010

Acts 2

Bold Witness

Eden Mills and Ebenezer United Churches

Rev. Daryl Webber

My son, Grayson, turned five in January. In a great scheme of mine, I prophetically announced to him that “five is fabulous” and something mysterious happens to a five year-old. They all of a sudden start using their words to express themselves, rather than merely crying about things. They learn to use their words better. Tears and whining are not as necessary when you have the power of words! Admitedly it was a parents desperate plea more than reality, and wishful thinking rather than prophecy. But I get so tired of the whining, it alone can wear me out (as someone eloquently put it)faster than Clark Kent can change his underwear! I was willing to prepare him for the possibility that five could be fabulous for me!

I appeal to the parents among us...and leaders too...wouldn't you try to make the whining stop if you could?

A few days before his birthday, Grayson initiated a serious conversation with me while I was brushing his teeth. “Dad, he said after spitting, “do you cry or did the place where you tears come from stop working after you grew up?”!

Good question! “I cry, but I don't fell like I need to very often. Not having a toy or getting something doesn't upset me as much as it did when I was a child. I am more okay now with little sadnesses. But sometimes when my heart has a big hurt, or hurts for someone else I will cry. Mostly though I can use my words instead of my tears to tell other people if there is sadness in my heart...and I find that is often enough.

A number of years ago while I was talking my marriage and family therapy course our director David lead the students in a conversation about “tears”. They are involuntary, their source is mystery and those tears, more often than not, speak of a shifting of consciousness or awareness of an new order coming about in the client's life. Name the tears, and listen for the self trying to be renewed. Tears are a sign and wonder of the Spirit's work inside of a person.

The context of the Books of Acts is set in the oppressive life beneath Roman rule. In the midst of that rule the young church believes that God through the Ministry of Jesus Christ has established a new order. No longer will the community be divided along the lines of gender, race, class, or social status. Its sense of community will not be structured on nationalism but upon a way of life Jesus and the apostles of Acts name as the way of forgiveness- a way of responsiveness to God's grace in their midst. Forgiveness allows people to interact with eachother in their society in a new way- it reorients them. This forgiveness is not just individual (as in Peter's authority to preach even when he denied Jesus as his friend three times while Jesus was standing trial). Forgiveness reorients Peter's life toward God through grace alone. Forgivess as Luke uses it in Acts also expresses the economic aspect- the forgiveness of debts. The early church shared all things in common, and all would participate and receive equally in spite of monetary debts. To be part of the community meant to be forgiven and to be healed in a holistic way. Our church heritage is boldly embedded in a courageous spirit to live out  what it means to live as brothers and sisters in the world God has created. The early church of Acts is about Jesus' communty of people re-orienting themselves to the clear call of unity through such practices as repentance and forgiveness- turning, reorienting themselves as the body of disciples in the midst of a Roman dominated system of nationalism and fickle elitism. From the tears of a community whose Christ had died and then resurrected only to ascend beyond them, emerged a strong sense that they were still very much being charged and blown by the Spirit of God to find a new way to be in the world.

What stands out for me in the midst of the early church is its sense of having risen above the victim mentality of having been Roman citizens for so long. They do not remain as victims in the role of powerless...always crying out of their hardships and never doing something about it. The early church is on fire, is feeling the wind of God blowing through them. They are filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and their act of courage looks more like resistance through civil disobedience than taking up of arms like their Roman counterparts.

Grayson asks me about the nature of tears, and I am reminded of my Marriage and Family therapy teacher's reflection. Tears are often shed not by victims, they can be sign and wonder of what new life  self is being re-oriented. This is true for the Acts community. In the midst of a harsh reality politically and financially they are not victims any longer of the world order, but rather are opened up, called to question the ways their world has been put together, and together in community expand their sense of life and their collective identities.

Years after Acts is written, a young preacher named Timothy is told by Paul in a second letter to him  letter, “we have not been given the spirit of Timidity but a Spirit of power, love and discipline.  

In our life of church, what is our inheritance passed onto us by Jesus and the first Pentecost? It is not a call to live out our lives together as victims. Never victims, the church gives us profoundly a heritage of  forgiveness, community, renewal of life.