Community Church Sermons
Year B
January 4, 2009
The
Second Sunday After Christmas
Acts 2:14-21
Sandy and I were sitting in a pew last week at Greendale Peoples Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. It’s always nice to visit with former parishioners, and to get caught up on all the good and wonderful things God is doing in the church. It’s also nice to listen to other preachers preach. I’m so blessed to have colleagues here who are very fine preachers and who inspire me, and last Sunday I got to hear another. My friend Ron Wilson is the interim pastor at Greendale. Ron is the one who connected me with these beautiful stoles woven by his young Guatemalan friend, Diego. He is also a great preacher, and last Sunday, Ron surprised me with the preaching text he used, and provoked me with a thought that I just had to bring home and build a sermon around. So, thanks to Ron Wilson for his contribution to today’s message.
The text was the one we just heard read from the 2nd chapter of Acts. Why in the world, I wondered, would a preacher use - on the first Sunday after Christmas - a text usually reserved for the Day of Pentecost? Pentecost takes place 50-days after Easter! It is about the birth of the church. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. It just seemed to me that Ron was putting the liturgical cart before the horse! Give me a sermon about angels and shepherds and magi and the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger! This is CHRISTMAS! Don’t give me a message that begins more than 30-years later with the crowd thinking the disciples are all drunk at 9 o’clock in the morning. You remember the scene. Peter then gets up and explains that the followers of Jesus are not drunk, but all fired up and making a Pentecostal kind of commotion because the Holy Spirit has come upon them. Peter says this is what Jesus had promised, and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that – when the Spirit is poured out – the people will dream dreams and see visions and become empowered to serve God in the world.
Ron, my friend, why are you messing up Christmas with Pentecost?
But then Ron addressed this very question. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it went something like this: Christmas doesn’t have any real meaning until it’s connected to Christian service in the world. Christmas is only a dead and distant memory of something that happened long ago if it does not fill you with dreams and visions of what you can do NOW – what role you can play - in God’s mission of salvation that was born on Christmas Day and given power at Pentecost.
Do you see the connection between the two?
Later, as I reflected upon that sermon, I found myself thinking that, if it is true that Jesus was born to save the world, then the real proof that Jesus has come to you and lives in you is when you burn with dreams about how you can go out into that world and extend that mission.
When I was a sophomore in college and had what I used to describe as “my conversion experience”, I was so full of God’s Spirit I couldn’t contain myself! Every waking moment overflowed with thoughts about how I could get my best boyhood friend Dennis Astrella saved from the fires of hell, or bring the Gospel to the pygmies, or write the book or preach the sermon that would lead the whole world to Christ! I sort of felt like, if Jesus was the quarterback, I was the tailback to whom he had handed off the football of faith and now it was up to me to score the winning touchdown – all praise be to God, Hallelujah, Amen!!
Oh, I was dreaming dreams and seeing visions of all that I could do for God.
And that was good! Dreaming dreams about serving the Lord is always a good thing! I just kept coming up with really stupid ideas of how to do it! I needed time and experience to wise up, and to grow, and become a lot smarter about how best to make those dreams come true. New Christians are usually as full of baloney as they are full of zeal.
But I can tell you firsthand that whenever I have experienced an encounter with God, it has always resulted in the birth of dreams and visions of how I can better serve God’s purposes.
Its true not only for individuals, but for churches, too. The story of Pentecost tells us that the sign of a healthy church that is alive with the Spirit is that it is always dreaming dreams about what more can be done to share the Christ of Christmas with others.
Not all churches are alive, you know. Some are deader than a doornail even though they may appear to be quite successful. How do you know that a church is dead? When it doesn’t dream anymore. When it has lost its vision for what its going to do next.
There is nothing more dead than a church that thinks it has “arrived.”
And there is nothing sadder than a Christian person who has either achieved sainthood on the one hand, or “run out of gas” on the other, and has no more goals to reach for.
What kind of church are we? Have we arrived? Have we completed the mission God sent us out to do? Have we exhausted all the possibilities of sharing Christ with others? Have we reached all the people we can reach? Have we done all the good we can do? Have we fed all the hungry we can feed, sheltered all the homeless we can shelter, protected all the children we can protect, loved all the neighbors we can love, and told all the people we can tell about the love of Jesus Christ?
As the New Year unfolds, let’s ask ourselves what old dreams can we recapture, and what new dreams can we imagine as a church that seeks to live the message and meaning of Christmas?
What kind of church are we? That’s a good question. But a better one is, “What kind of church do we want to become?”
And what kind of Christian do you want to become?
What dreams has God planted in your heart?
Sandy and I spent an evening with our son and daughter-in-law watching “The Bucket List”. That’s the movie where the characters played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are both terminally ill, and as a friendship grows between them, they come up with a list of the ten things they most want to do before they “kick the bucket.” On the list are some typical things, like to go skydiving and to visit exotic places. But there are also some deeper things, like to do something nice for a complete stranger.
I found myself thinking that maybe you and I can come up with a list of our own, although in a community like ours, I don’t think we would want to call it the “kick the bucket list.” Besides, this list would be about ways we can serve God and not just ourselves. So maybe – instead of the “bucket list” we could give it a religious name - like the “Puckett list.”
What would be the two or three things you could do this year in your relationship with God, and for extending God’s kingdom?
I know that one of the items on my Puckett list will be finishing up a book I’m reading called “Wasted Vigil.” It’s a work of fiction by a Pakistani author set in the context of war-ravaged Afghanistan. Through beautifully developed characters, Nadeem Aslam paints a vivid picture of the history of the region, the resistance to the Soviet invasion, the development of terrorist training camps, the competing religious ideas, and the rich culture of that nation and its people. This book got on my Puckett list because I need to learn more about Islam and the people of that region because God has been putting it on my heart that it is crucial for Christians to know and understand their neighbors – especially those neighbors - if we are going to be able to love them, and if we are going to be able to one day find our way to peace.
Your Puckett list may have other dreams and visions. Perhaps God has given you an idea about reaching out to a neighbor who needs a Christian friend right now – or maybe God keeps bringing to you the image of a family member you need to be reconciled with. Possibly, you have a thought that it is time to learn prayer, or how to share your faith with others. Maybe you’re like Gene and Roberta Burwell who came to me one day with a dream about starting a re-sale store that would help people in need. And the amazing “Good Neighbors Shoppe” was born.
Faith is all about vision. Every good thing in God’s universe begins with a dream.
What dreams are you dreaming these days?
“I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, says the Lord.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your young people will see visions,
And your senior citizens will dream dreams.”
That’s what Christmas promises.
So let me put out the questions one more time.
What kind of church do we want to become? What kind of Christian do you want to become?
What more can we do for God and God’s kingdom as the New Year unfolds?
I’m starting a Puckett list. Why don’t you start one too?!