"Preachers, All!" May23 Acts 2 I '''' Someone has said the church is somewhat like a football huddle, the huddle that players go into at a football game. "You know that something important is being said there, but you can't understand a word of it, and all you can see is their rear-ends." But in fairness to the church, we must admit that it isn't easy to be understood by the world, after all, what we are talking about, in this huddle called church, is God. That's hard to talk about. I vividly remember as a pastor, sitting with a group oflay-people, all active leaders in our congretation. And I asked the group, how many of you have talked about your faith in God with someone in the past year? Only one person raised her hand. But it is hard to talk about God. When we speak of his mystery, words fail. How do we find the words to describe that being, that deep experience that is so often so indescribable? Furthermore, there are powerful forces against speaking about God. Years ago William Buckley said, "You may be able to bring up the subject of religion at a fancy dinner party once, but if you bring it up twice during the evening, you won't be invited back." There are powerful tendencies in our culture to keep religion private, personal. We don't want to be showy, wear our faith on our sleeve. We don't want to be accused of pushiness, so we find it very hard to speak about God. Luke, the writer of the Book of Acts, says that on the day ofpentecost, a day when Jews celebrated the gift of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, that is the words of God given to humanity through the Bible, Jews from every nation were gathered in one place. They must have had trouble understanding one another because, even though they all shared the same faith, they were separated by different languages. Well, the Spirit descends, people begin to talk, people begin to hear, people in that room said, "How is it possible that I am able to hear and to understand you, even though I speak a different language?" It was a miracle. By chance there was a crowd out in the street who heard all of this commotion going on there in the room at Pentecost. The crowd began mock, "They're drunk!" Earlier, in Luke's Gospel, Jesus had bee accused ofbeing a "glutton and a winebibber." Well, the crowd outside in the street says, "Those disciples of Jesus are doing the same thing they did when Jesus was with them, they're drunk!" So, Peter comes out and preaches to the crowd. Peter? Do you remember where we left Peter toward the end ofluke's Gospel? Peter had been the preeminent disciple, the one to so boldly speak up at the Last Supper, saying, "Even though everybody else deserts you and falls away, I will be there right behind you Jesus when the going gets rough." When the going got rough, Peter was behind Jesus, a long way behind him! Like the other disciples he ran away into the darkness. Later that night, when a maid questioned Peter, "Weren't you with the Galilean, weren't you one of his followers?" Peter denied Jesus, denied him three times.
Out there in the middle of the night, when questioned by a humble. servant girl, Peter could not find in himself the words to say, "Yes, I was with Jesus." Which makes all the more amazing where we find Peter in today's story. There he is, out in the street, speaking to the crowd. Peter, the one who never seemed to get the answer right when Jesus asked the question, Peter, the one who could only say, "I didn't even know the man," when questioned by the maid in the courtyard. Now Peter preaches. It is a miracle the church now calls Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit descended in Acts 2, people started to speak, Jews from every nation under the earth began telling of the "mighty works of God" in such a way that they were understood. And Peter came out into the street and preached. He must have preached one of the most effective sermons ever. The sermon only lasted about three minutes, and yet a few thousand people were convicted by the sermon and asked to be baptized. I suppose we preachers ought to learn something from that! The Holy Spirit descending at Pentecost, brings things to speech, makes ordinary people into preachers. Back at the beginning of Luke's Gospel, when Jesus began his ministry, do you remember what he said there in Nazareth? "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me." Why is the Spirit upon him? Jesus answers that as he continues to quote from the Prophet Isaiah. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the captives, deliverance to the oppressed, recovery of sight to the blind." The Spirit of the Lord is upon Jesus, so that he might preach. In Luke, and in Luke's second volume, the Book of Acts, people get the Holy Spirit in order to speak. I talk for a living, and even though after years of doing this, I am not nearly as nervous as when I first began, I am still nervous, still feel this rumbling in the pit of my stomach on Sunday morning. That's rather amazing, when you consider how many sermons I've preached and how long I have been at this business of speaking. I am therefore not too surprised to find out that, when people are asked what human activities they fear the most, right there at the top of the list is public speaking. It is frightening to speak before a crowd. And when the speaking is about God, then it is even more frightening. How many times have I as a pastor been amazed, say when we ask some professor, or some attorney, someone who is accustomed to speaking in public on a regular basis, to read the scripture on Sunday morning. And I sit here and I watch, and you can see the person's knees shaking, his hands are shaking, he is a nervous wreck! That seems odd because here is a person who ought to be thoroughly accustomed to speaking in public. But this is public speaking of a different kind. This is public speaking about God, and that is very different and frightening speech. I was talking to a state judge not long ago, and he was telling me some of the history of the clothing that judges wear. He tells me that, in the early days of our Republic, American judges. made a big deal of not wearing wigs or robes. People in places of legal authority had a bad name to some of the American revolutionaries, and they didn't want to identity with that. B as years went by, and we moved into the Nineteenth Century, judges starting putting on robes in order to preside at court and make their judgments. Why? "When you are going to stand in judgment on somebody' s life," explained the judge, "You need all the help you can get. That robe helps you to get words out of your mouth." 2
That certainly puts my clerical vestments into perspective. Here I stand, with this robe, and this stole, and all these other accruements. I am going to stand up here and speak for God, I need all the help I can get! But you are lay-people, what should you care about any of this? What is it to you? You pay me to preach the Gospel. You might have, on occasion, spoken at church or read the scripture, but I am the preacher and you are the congregation. Right? Wrong! It's like Martin Luther put it, "Everyone, by virtue of baptism, is called to preach. All baptized Christians are expected to speak the Gospel to their neighbors, to testify to the mighty works of God, to tell people about Jesus. The thing is, on Sunday morning, we can't all possibly speak at the same time and be understood, so some of the baptized are designated to be preachers. They are the ones who speak on Sunday morning so that the rest of us may speak about Jesus Monday through Saturday morning. The preacher preaches, so that the congregation may preach. Like it or not, if you are a Christian, you are called to bear witness, to testify to the hope that is within you, to tell people about Jesus. I admit that I have an easier task of being a preacher than you have of being a preacher. When I speak, I am protected by this robe, this stole, and this granite pulpit. Everybody here is together in order to praise God, to hear scripture, and hear the Word preached. I don't have to ask you for permission that is why we are here. But tomorrow, when you get into the classroom, or the board room, the office, or over the kitchen table, preaching can be more difficult. Nevertheless, by the grace of God, you are able to preach. As I said, that's got to be one of the main points of Acts 2. Jesus had been raised from the dead, shown to be Lord and Savior, but nobody knew how to talk about it, few possessed the courage to speak of such a thing. Then the Holy Spirit descended, and things were brought to speech. People began to talk to talk to one another, then to talk to people out in the streets. As Peter says in today's scripture, "All of this was predicted by the Prophet Joel. In former days, God's Word was spoken only by the Prophets, a few charismatic, or at least offensive individuals who are called to speak the truth, to speak up for God." But the Prophet Joel foretold a day when, "I will pour out my Spirit on all, upon the young and the old, upon women and men, maids, janitors, everybody. Everybody is going to get to tell of the mighty works of God." That promised outpouring of the Spirit, that turns otherwise quiet people who are not good on their feet into preachers, has now occurred. The Spirit is being poured out, and great is the company of the preachers who go forth into the world to speak. As a preacher, I have been privileged to hear you preach. One of you was telling me how a good friend of yours forsook her marriage vows, was unfaithful in her marriage, left her husband and family and moved in with another man. Most of us, if we said anything about this, would say something like, "Well, it's none of my business." Or, "I guess she is thinking that she is doing the right thing," or some other such dribble. But you sat down and wrote your friend a letter, because you loved her, because you love God's truth, even ifthat truth was unpleasant or painful. You told your friend that you were disappointed in her, that what she had done was wrong. She had broken her marriage vows, and broken her trust with those who had put their trust in her. That sort of thing takes guts. No, that sort of thing takes empowerment by the Holy Spirit. Go ahead and preach. The Spirit of the Lord is upon you to preach... " 3
You work next to him at the office. You said that he was rather quiet and you actually did not know him that well. But one day you found him over in the corner by the filing cabinet, crying. You asked him ifyou could help, if anything was wrong. Then he confided in you. He told you that he had, the weekend before, wrote his parents that he was gay, that he was coming "out of the closet." And his parents screamed at him, said that he had broken their hearts, and told him that he should not set foot at their house again as long as he had these feelings. And you reached out, put your arm around him and said, "I am sorry that happened to you. Your parents probably love you, but they just don't know how to love you in this moment. I am a Christian, and we certainly don't feel this way about you. God loves you as a treasured creation. Please know that, remember that and cling to that," you said. Now how would you, a rather conventional and ordinary human being, be able to say something that courageous and comforting? Well, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, to preach... " Your friend had been terribly depressed. And you could understand reasons for her depression. She had gotten back a set of dismal grades from her first semester at Law School. The relationship she had been in, had recently ended. Her depression seemed deep and frightening. You urged her to get some professional help, to inquire about the possibility of that occasion, but you also said, "I guess we have never talked about something like religion, or spirituality, but I want you to know that I believe that Jesus Christ is more than an idea. He is a presence. He loves you, loves you very much, and because he has helped me through so many crises in my own life, I believe he can help you through these crises. Would you like to pray together?" And she did. And she said that the prayer helped, and you helped. Isn't that amazing? You were sort of shy and unassuming. You couldn't recall when you had ever talked to somebody about your religious faith so freely. What was, that? "The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, to preach... " And so dear congregation, be open to the Spirit, be ready to give an account for the faith that is within you, when the time is right. Get out there and preach! The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, to preach deliverance to the captives, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord when God shall save God' s people. I vividly remember James T. Laney, former president ofemory University, telling about being on an airplane ride where he experienced Christian witness. He got on the plane and nodded to the man who sat in the seat next to him. He looked to be a businessman, perhaps returning home for the weekend after a long business trip. No sooner had the plane taken off than Laney noted that the man pulled out a large Bible and a pen and notebook. "Oh no," Laney thought to himself Here I've got a two-hour flight and I am seated next to this religious fanatic." And so Laney became absorbed in his work, turning his eyes away from the man, knowing that if he engaged in conversation, he could be trapped there for the rest of the flight with this religious fanatic trying to convert him or something. But the man was fully absorbed in his Bible study. Reading, taking notes. Laney looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He certainly appeared to be a normal person. He started wondering why the man was so intently reading the Bible. He glanced at him a couple of times, but the man never looked up. 4
Finally, Laney said, "I notice that you are studying the Bible." The man said, "Yes I am." Then that was all. Laney spoke again. "I'm a Methodist minister myself" "Really?" said the man not all that interested. "Yes, I notice you are reading the Bible." "Yes," the man replied tersely. "I was wondering why you are reading the Bible." said Laney. "You have a problem with that?" the man asked. ''No, no problem," said Laney. "I'm preparing my Sunday School lesson," said the man. "Really?" said Laney. "Like I said, I'm a Methodist minister." "Well, good talking with you. I've got a tough lesson to present tomorrow, we are studying the Book ofl Kings," said the man. Laney, in relating this story later, said, "That 's evangelism! If we could just go on about our business, being Christian in the best way we know how, we will make the world curious. The world will ask, and then we can tell. That's evangelism worthy of the name," said Laney. 5