Community Church Sermons
April 30, 2006
Some of you may remember going off to college and being required to purchase a little book called, “Elements of Style” by William Strunk. This was the official .guide we students were to follow when writing papers. To follow Strunk was good. Not following Strunk was bad. And violating Strunk’s rules for proper vocabulary and grammar was to risk getting a poor grade on your paper - no matter how much brilliance your paper might contain.
“Elements of Style” taught us how to write English good…or should that be “good English”?…or maybe “English well”?…or…well, in any event, Strunk’s book taught us the importance of words.
My good friend Herb Freitag recently related to his congregation the old story about the archivist in the Vatican library who caused quite a stir one day when his painstaking research into ancient church documents revealed that the word translated “celibate” should really be “celeBRATE”! What a difference a single letter makes!
And so does pronunciation. Depending on how you pronounce the word P-O-L-I-S-H can make you either a relative of Dick Kolasheski, or a substance that shines up your furniture.
Words matter.
And punctuation. One of the
things many Christians do not appreciate is the fact that the original language
texts of the Bible do not contain any punctuation. And it makes a big
difference where you place something like a comma. For instance, those
Christians who believe that you go directly into God’s Paradise at the moment
of death often quote Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross, “Truly I tell you (COMMA), today you will be with me in Paradise.” But
many other Christians believe that at death, one falls asleep until the Day of
the Lord when all the dead will be raised for Judgment. And that notion may be
supported by the very same words of Jesus – “Truly
I tell you today (COMMA), you will
be with me in Paradise.” Where
would YOU put the comma? It makes a difference!
William Strunk was right. Proper use and understanding of grammar is
important!.
And that’s why we ought to pay special attention to the grammar of
Easter!
In our post-resurrection reading from Acts today, Peter and John have
just encountered a crippled beggar. Peter says, “Silver and gold have
I none, but such as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, rise up and walk!”
And it happened! The beggar was made well! And that caused quite a
stir. People ran to see what had happened. They were all amazed to see the
beggar man standing and walking and smiling!
Then Peter addresses the crowd. He explains to them that this wonderful
thing has taken place not by way of his and John’s own strength, but by the
power of God. And listen closely to the grammar Peter uses:
“By faith IN THE
NAME of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong.”
Did you catch the prepositional phrase there?
Now it’s not clear whether Peter is referring to his and John’s faith
IN THE NAME of Jesus, or the beggar’s faith IN THE NAME of Jesus. Probably both
are true. Peter and John, and the beggar man all had faith IN THE NAME of Jesus, and something
wonderful happened as a result!
I hear people talk a lot about having faith in Jesus. Usually what they
mean is that they believe Jesus is the Savior, the one God sent to take away
the sins of the world. As the Apostles’ Creed says:
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. On the third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead…”
For many people,
believing those things about Jesus is what it means to have faith IN Jesus.
But in truth, that all doesn’t mean diddilysquat to crippled beggars
laying by the side of the road. Hurting people, you see, aren’t looking for
creeds. They’re looking for help.
One of the great sins we Christians have committed against our own
Faith is the reducing of Jesus to nothing more than a doctrine or theological
principle. What we believe ABOUT Jesus has become virtually more important than
Jesus himself and the mission he came to fulfill.
It was not Peter and John’s faith in the only begotten-ness of Jesus
that brought life to the crippled beggar that day. It had nothing to do with
the state of Mary’s virginity, nor was it related to Jesus sitting at the right
hand of God from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
No, it was not faith in the things we think we know ABOUT Jesus that
produced the good that happened that day.
It was faith IN THE NAME of Jesus.
Do you remember the story in Matthew’s Gospel? Mary was pregnant.
Joseph was upset. An angel of God came and said to Joe, “Don’t be
afraid to marry Mary. This is all God’s plan. When she has the baby, name him
‘Jesus’…”
Now the Hebrew form of the name Jesus is “Joshua.” It means, “God
saves.”
The crippled beggar was helped that day because he and Peter and John
had faith that “God saves.”
There are a lot of religious people in our world who have no faith in
that name. They look out at the world and imagine that “God condemns” or “God
rejects” or “God judges” or “God punishes” or “God sends suffering” instead of
“God saves.” I like to ask my Sunday School students if they really believe God
will save the world. “Yes,”
they answer. “God will save the world, but not all the world will be
saved.” Hmmm. They point out that
there are bad people in the world who inflict all kinds of evil on others. And
that’s true! And there are unbelievers who reject the idea of God. That’s true,
too. And not only that, but there are even Christians out there who don’t take
the Bible literally, or who believe science has it right when it comes to
evolution, or who attend some other church besides Tellico Village Community
Church – the one true church! I know it’s hard to believe that people could be
so lost, but it’s true.
In fact, when I press the question and ask “how many” people will be
saved, the numbers shrink right down to almost nothing – about 6 Presbyterians,
and a Baptist or two. We can think of all sorts of religious sounding reasons
for disqualifying people from salvation.
But the real reason we do that is this: we do not truly have faith IN
THE NAME. We are not convinced that God’s only desire toward people is to save
them and make them well, no matter what their circumstance in life.
I think it must have been a wonderful moment in the life of that beggar
man when, in the face of a world that often says physical suffering is God’s
judgment against us, he suddenly realized that “God saves” – that God’s will
for his life, God’s intention for his life is to be whole and happy and well!
And what a great breakthrough in the lives of Peter and John when they saw this
man not in terms of his infirmity, but in terms of the salvation God wanted them to help bring to him.
They believed “God saves”, and so they helped the beggar man the best
they could!
They had faith IN THE NAME of Jesus!
Do you have
faith IN THE NAME?
It makes all the difference in the world, you know! If you have faith
that “God saves” – that God’s every effort is aimed at making life full and the
world beautiful, it affects the way you relate with those around us who are
hurting under life’s burdens. And it makes all the difference in your own life
when you face hard times!
One of my favorite people during my seminary days was a young woman
named Linda. I can’t remember how it happened, but Linda suffered a spinal cord
injury and became paraplegic. Learning that she would spend the rest of her
life in a wheelchair was pretty tough news for a 20-something year old to hear.
It was even more difficult to accept.
For a long time, Linda wondered why God had done this to her. And she
wondered why God just didn’t heal her and make her well. She was pretty upset
with life and it’s obvious unfairness.
But somewhere along the line, Linda made a discovery. Linda came to
believe “in the name!” She came to believe that the God who SAVES is not a God
who puts people in wheelchairs. But the God who SAVES devotes his every effort
at helping people in wheelchairs find life and hope and completeness.
And that kind of faith made all the difference to Linda. She overcame
her need to be a victim, and she took hold of the life she had. She got married
– to a quadriplegic man! They had a baby, a son! And then Linda went to Medical
School, and became a doctor!
God saves! God fashions beginnings out of our endings, wholeness out of
our brokenness, and even life out of death!
God saves!
When you place your faith IN THE NAME of Jesus, you open the door to
possibilities you cannot even imagine for yourself and for others!
What a great prepositional phrase, huh?
And, there’s yet more grammatical beauty in this story. Peter says, “By
faith IN THE NAME of Jesus this man you see and know was made strong. It is
Jesus’ name, and the FAITH THAT COMES THROUGH HIM that has given this complete
healing to him…”
The faith THAT COMES THROUGH Jesus. Another important preposition!
One of the reasons I believe the Church must center it’s life on Jesus
– not on the Bible, not on tradition, not on theology, not on doctrines or any
of the other things we obsess about in the Church – is because in the course of
learning about Jesus, FAITH COMES THROUGH HIM TO US.
I love my friends who come from churches that center their faith on
doctrines. I love them, but I think they’re wasting their time. Crippled
beggars by the side of the road don’t need doctrines. They need Jesus.
When you study and meditate about how Jesus related with people, you
soon discover that he saw EVERYONE in terms of God’s salvation! How can I make
this child well? How can I help this woman struggling with her relationships
with men? How can I befriend this leper no one else will come close to? How can
I set this person free from the sin that holds him captive?
To Jesus, the world was not full of sinners, but of PEOPLE needing to
be helped and made well. He did not see the demon-possessed man as a
demon-possessed man, but as a husband and father who God wants to make well. He
did not see the prodigal son as a delinquent, wayward kid who blew his chance
with his family, but as a boy who God wants to help find his way home.
Jesus did not look at people in terms of their sin, but in terms of the
SALVATION God wants to bring to their lives.
How do you look
at other people?
I know I have a hard time looking more deeply into others than just
what’s on the surface. It’s easy for me to make all sorts of judgments about
people on the basis of what they look like, what they live like, what they do
with their lives. It’s much harder for me to look at others in terms of what
God wants to bring into their lives – in terms of what they will look like when
they are well.
Reading an article the other day about Governor Bredeson’s plan to
provide health care to those who can’t afford it, I found myself thinking about
Jesus and all the sick people he encountered. In every single situation, Jesus
did what he had to do to help the person have care and become well. He never
denied anyone access to the healing powers God has placed in this world. Why?
Because God saves. Because God’s main interest in people is helping them become
whole and well which – by the way – is the meaning of the word “salvation.”
Words matter.
Faith IN Jesus. Faith THROUGH Jesus.
Now I wonder if you might just imagine for a moment how the world might
be different if all our churches had faith IN THE NAME, and devoted all their
efforts toward helping people into the wellness of God. How would it be for
people without health care? How would it be for misguided kids? How would it be
for those who struggle to make ends meet and feed their children? How would it
be for YOU in the circumstances of your life if we all stood together and lived
out a faith IN THE NAME that says, “God saves!”?
And how would the world be different if Christian people stopped living
like they often do, and instead began to live like Jesus? What would happen if
we simply stopped seeking a faith that comes through doctrinal purity, and
instead sought a faith like Jesus’ faith. What would happen if we were to
become less like Leviticus, and more like Jesus?
I have to believe that countless crippled beggars by the side of the
road – and along with them all kinds of hurting human beings – would get up and
jump for joy if you and I went out to live among them with faith IN THE NAME of
Jesus, a faith that comes THROUGH Jesus.
What do YOU believe?
So that ends our little lesson in the grammar of Easter.
Now, go and live those PREPOSITIONS of faith!