Turn to God Acts 3:12-19 Sunday, April 22, 2012 The Rev. Sharon Snapp-Kolas, preaching

Transcription

1 Turn to God Acts 3:12-19 Sunday, April 22, 2012 The Rev. Sharon Snapp-Kolas, preaching Scripture. Prayer. Opening. Peter, in today s scripture reading from Acts, is in a place of enthusiastic, Spiritempowered, belief. However, he was not always this way. We remember Peter denying Jesus prior to his execution. We remember Peter, along with the other disciples, wavering between hope and despair as he sees the empty tomb, and as resurrection appearances of Jesus begin to occur. Randolph T. Riggs tells this story, on the theme of being caught between belief and disbelief. He writes: It should not come as a surprise to us that the disciples struggled to believe in the Resurrection. We understand them, don t we? We want to believe, but we live somewhere in between belief and non-belief. In fact, we may feel more like the family of actress Helen Hayes. Her husband and her son wanted to encourage her desire to try her hand at cooking her first Thanksgiving Dinner. So in the days leading up to Thanksgiving Day, they gave her words of encouragement telling her that they were looking forward to the big event. She had never cooked a turkey before, and before serving it, she announced to her husband and her son that if the turkey wasn t any good she didn t want anyone to say a word. She said, We will just get up from the table, without comment, and go to a restaurant to eat. Mrs. Hayes returned to the kitchen, and when she entered the dining room bearing the turkey on a platter, she found her husband and her son seated at the table with their hats and coats already on. 1

2 Peter preaches a sermon to a disbelieving crowd in Jerusalem. After healing a man who had been lame from birth, Peter proclaims the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. He urges the people to have faith in the name of Jesus, to repent, and to turn to God. I. Have faith in the name of Jesus. To have faith in the name of Jesus is at once simple and near impossible. We cannot do it on our own. Peter even says this in his sermon, concerning the healing of the man who was lame. Peter asks the crowd, why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? It is only by the power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the ancestors of faith that we are healed. It is only by the power of this God that we are made whole, forgiven, raised up to new life in Christ. In his book, Loving Jesus, Mark Allen Powell offers a metaphor about the challenge of having faith in the name of Jesus. He writes: Somebody once asked me, What does it feel like to be a Christian? That seemed like an odd question, but I tried to answer. I said, It feels like being in love with someone who has gone away. They said, That can't be very pleasant. Well, no, I don't think it's supposed to be pleasant, but it is pretty powerful. I am in love with my wife, and when she is gone, I think about her constantly. I perk up at any news of her and I am energized by the slightest connection (a letter, a phone call). That's what being a Christian feels like. Of course, it is a confident sadness, but let's just admit this much: we love Jesus as a bride loves her groom, but our bridegroom has been taken away from us, and that makes us sad. The love can be real and powerful and overwhelming, but the absence is real too. And, sometimes, it's just hard. This is where we find Peter as he preaches to the crowd. He does his best to convey the 2

3 wonder and the power and the sadness and the overwhelming joy of loving Jesus, of believing in his name. Peter is preaching to folks who, only a day or two before, had screamed at Pontius Pilate, Crucify him! Crucify him! Peter offers forgiveness; you acted in ignorance, he says. At the same time, we could imagine that Peter still feels hurt and anger and guilt concerning the events that led to Jesus death on the cross. There is a poignancy to his preaching. He is filled with Holy Spirit power and the knowledge of his own experience of the risen Lord. He is also, being human, still struggling with the absence of Jesus in the flesh. He honors Jesus through the telling of the story. We can have faith in the name of Jesus by telling the story, wherever we may be from day to day in terms of our belief or disbelief. Our faith comes from the God of our ancestors, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We do not have to rely on ourselves, with our tendencies to doubt or to act in ignorance of the truths of God. II. Repent. Once Peter has established the need to have faith in the name of Jesus, he next urges his listeners to repent. He does not call them to repent for acts of immorality. He does not ask them to repent for drinking or carousing or cheating or lying or for breaking any other of the 10 commandments. He calls them to repent for rejecting the Holy and Righteous One. He calls them to repent for killing the Author of Life. He calls them to repent for choosing the safety and the comfort and the anonymity of the crowd rather than choosing Jesus. Discussions of sin and repentance often mistakenly focus on morality. Robert Capon writes about morality and grace, in his book, Between Noon and Three: Grace and morality, therefore, are two different kettles of fish. Morality deals with 3

4 virtue and vice, with what is strengthening or weakening for human nature considered as an operational possibility. Grace, however, deals with sin, with a condition in which human nature has ceased to be an operational possibility and has ended up a lost cause. Grace is, to say it once again, about raising the dead. In the Bible the opposite of sin is not virtue; it is faith faith in God who raises the dead. All this talk about morality, therefore, is misleading. When we get far enough into it we begin to convince ourselves that the preaching of the moral law will, if done energetically enough, lead people to lead good lives and so make them more like what they ought to be. But that's not biblical. St. Paul says that the purpose of the law was not to do that at all, but to bring us to the awareness of sin. We sit here talking as if proper moral instruction to fifteen-year-olds will somehow keep them clear of sin. But St. Paul says that Scripture has concluded locked up all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. This is what Peter preaches, as well. He does not preach morality how to be a good, upstanding citizen of the Roman empire, or a good, upstanding member of the Jewish community. Peter preaches that all have sinned, all have rejected Jesus. The whole of humanity, every person, has participated in his crucifixion. The only way out is repentance. The only way out is to die with Jesus, through baptism, and be raised again to new life through faith in his name. It s not about morality. It s not about being good and doing what s right and giving up our vices and our bad behaviors. It may be good for us to do all that, for our own health and happiness, but it s not the good news Peter is preaching. The good news of Jesus Christ is about the grace of God, offered freely to the whole world. We acknowledge our sin. We confess. We repent. God does the rest. 4

5 III. Turn to God. Now there may be folks here this morning who don t know Jesus. There may even be folks who ve been coming to this church for years and years who would be embarrassed to admit that they don t really know Jesus. They may want to know Jesus, or they may think they should know Jesus. But the fact is, they don t. All of us, even if we feel that we do know Jesus, could benefit from knowing him better. If you don t know Jesus, there is no time like the present. If you do know Jesus, now is as good a time as any to determine to know him better. As Peter proclaims, Repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out. Some of us may need a reminder. We know that we should turn to God for everything. But we forget. We become complacent. We try to take back the reins of our own lives, almost without thinking. We forget that God is in charge. We forget that we need God. We think we can do it on our own six and a half days out of the week, and show up on Sunday well, we may not even be sure why we show up on Sunday. Maybe a 9-year-old girl named Erica could remind us. Minerva Carcano writes that, [Erica] was so filled with joy when she came to know Jesus that she insisted that all her friends know him too. One day she took me to her neighborhood to invite the children to a vacation bible school our church was having. We went with colorful flyers in hand. I expected that we would tell the children and their parents about the dates and time and place of the vacation bible school, leave them a flyer as a reminder, and be on our way. Erica saw our job differently. When we got to the first home and the door was opened she stepped right up and said, We've got great news about Jesus and my pastor will tell you all about it. I stood there flabbergasted, but she was right. Our job was first and foremost to spread the Word, proclaim the Good News, 5

6 tell others about our Risen Lord. Erica and I worked hard that day because she did not want any child in her neighborhood to miss out in hearing about Jesus and the vacation bible school. Erica knew in her own way, Jesus' claim on our lives and the magnitude of that claim. We are Jesus' witnesses and those who need to receive our witness is the entire human family. Maybe we ve forgotten the kind of urgency Erica feels to tell her friends the great news about Jesus. Like Peter and the other disciples, like Erica, we are Jesus witnesses. Closing. Have you ever been to the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington, D. C.? It is a powerful experience, especially for those of us who lived through those times and saw friends and family sent to war in a jungle far, far away, or saw relationships broken over angry debates about the war. Cameron Causey, a young man of our church family, went on a school trip to D. C. recently; be sure to ask him about his experiences there. Randolph T. Riggs writes about a trip to D. C. that he took with his granddaughter. I am betting that Cameron can relate. Maybe you can, too. Riggs writes: During her spring break from her first year of school, I took Emma, my granddaughter, on her first trip to Washington, D.C. On our first night in Washington, we went to see the Lincoln Memorial and the Viet Nam War Memorial. I am always humbled by both of them. That evening, as we walked along the wall with all the names on it, Emma kept asking questions. Usually, as you walk down the path to the apex of the wall, there is a hush that falls. However, Emma wasn t into the hush. She needed answers to her questions. Dad-Dad (my grandfather name), why are all these names on this wall? Dad-Dad, why did they have to die? Dad-Dad, why is it so important to remember their death? 6

7 There was a Vietnam Vet visiting the memorial that night who overheard her questions. He called us over and gave us his answer. He said, Honey, I fought with these men in a war a long way away, and when I came home I found people wanted to forget what many of us had done. They built this wall as a reminder to all of us that there were men and women who gave their lives for their country. Then he turned to the wall and began to trace one name in particular, This man right here gave his life for me. He gave his life for me. It was hard for that man to get his heart and mind around the sacrifice of his friend, so he keeps telling the story over and over again, and each time he tells it, he understands a little more. That s what Peter does. That s what Erica does. That s what we do. We tell the story of Jesus over and over again, how he gave his life for us. And each time we tell it, we understand a little more. It s hard for us to get our hearts and minds around the sacrifice of our friend, so we tell his story again and again. And not only to gain more understanding for ourselves, but to make sure others know his story, too. The story of his amazing love for us. Peter calls us to have faith in the name of Jesus, to repent, and to turn to God. Whether we are longtime believers who need a reminder, or not-quite-yet believers searching for something we aren t even sure we can name -- turning to God is the answer. Be encouraged. The God who created the universe, the God who set a rainbow in the clouds after the Flood, the God who brought the Hebrew people out of Egypt, that same God has raised Jesus from the dead. The Author of Life died and rose again, for your sake and for mine. Have faith in the name of Jesus. Repent. Turn to God. Amen. 7