Acts 19:1-7 19 While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus, where he found some disciples. 2 He said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? They replied, No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. 3 Then he said, Into what then were you baptized? They answered, Into John s baptism. 4 Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus. 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied 7 altogether there were about twelve of them. 1
01.11.2015 Truth and Daring It s a simple truth of getting older that the memories of things long ago stay with you while the events of last week, or even of yesterday, quickly fade from memory. I would be hard pressed to tell you what I had for dinner two nights ago, but I can remember almost word-for-word TV commercials from my childhood. One commercial I remember was for Reese s Peanut Butter Cups. If you re not familiar with Reese s Peanut Butter Cups, they are a chocolate-coated peanut butter candy that come in little cups, two to a pack. When I was a child they were one of my favorite candies. I even liked the packaging [SLIDE]. Each cup came in its own paper wrap. I have since lost my taste for Reese s Peanut Butter Cups, but I can still recall their advertising campaign from the 1970s and 80s. The tagline was Two great tastes that taste great together. Every commercial featured two people one eating a plain chocolate bar and the other eating from a jar of peanut butter. In truth, no one walks around eating from a jar of peanut butter, but suspend your disbelief, if you will. Somehow they would bump into each other, with the peanut butter and chocolate combining. The one person would say, Hey, you got peanut butter in my chocolate! The other would reply, Hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter! And then they would each sample the combined taste of chocolate and peanut butter and discover, much to their surprise, what a magnificent combination they made. Through the wonder of YouTube, I found one of these commercials [VIDEO]. My current distaste for Reese s Peanut Butter Cups aside, chocolate and peanut butter do make an excellent combination. While each is perfectly fine by itself, when combined they enhance one another. The same can be said for many other foods and drinks whose flavors balance one another: bread and butter, wine and cheese, a hot dog with mustard, kimchi and rice, or pizza and sweet potatoes. I m just kidding on that last one. The popularity of sweet potatoes on pizza here is something that I just 2
don t understand, and as a one-time New Yorker who knows what pizza should taste like, I find it downright offensive. Get the sweet potatoes and the sweet potato puree off my pizza! It may not seem explicit, but this principle of complementary things working together to make a more complete whole informs today s Scripture passage. The two things are not foods, of course, but ideas. I am speaking of spirit and truth. Spirit, as in the Holy Spirit, is mentioned three times in the passage, so its importance is clear. Truth is another matter. Although the word truth does not appear, the principle of truth, i.e., what is true, is what concerns Paul and why he becomes alarmed when he learns that the disciples he has encountered have not received the full truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, as we seek to get to the truth of this passage, let s get our bearings [SLIDE]. The passage begins, While Apollos was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior regions and came to Ephesus. First of all, who was Apollos and why is he mentioned? Apollos was a Jewish convert to Christianity. Although he was from Alexandria, in Egypt, he had recently passed through Ephesus, the same place where Paul currently finds himself in Acts 19. Chapter 18 contains the first mention of Apollos in the Book of Acts. He is described as eloquent and well versed in the Scriptures (Acts 18:24). Despite his intelligence and familiarity with the Hebrew Bible, his Christian education is still lacking. The next verse explains why: 25 He had been instructed in the Way of the Lord; and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. To say that he knew only the baptism of John (i.e., John the Baptist) means that he knew only repentance, for that was the focus of John s ministry [SLIDE]. In the 3
Gospel of Luke John is described as proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Lk. 3:3). A few verses later John says of his own ministry, I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Lk. 3:16). The author of Acts is Luke, who also wrote the Gospel that bears his name. The Book of Acts is like a sequel to the Gospel [SLIDE]. Together they form a two-part story. Part one, the Gospel, focuses on the ministry of Jesus and leads to Jerusalem. Part two, the Book of Acts, focuses on the ministry of the Church and leads out from Jerusalem to the larger world. The thread that binds the two together is the Holy Spirit. The words Spirit or Holy Spirit occur more often in Luke than in any of the other gospels 16 times. The Spirit is mentioned seven times in chapter one alone, including, as we read a few weeks ago, how the angel told Mary that the child she bears was conceived by the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit is with Jesus from the very beginning. It is the same with the Church. In the first verses of Acts 1, Luke makes clear that it is the power of the Spirit that will gather the disciples and form them into the Church [SLIDE]: 1 In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning 2 until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. 3 After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. 4 While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. This, he said, is what you have heard from me; 5 for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. 4
I think we now have a good picture of the importance of the Spirit to the ministry of Jesus and to that of the Church. But what about the idea of truth? Paul is alarmed when he learns that the disciples whom he finds in Ephesus are not aware of the existence of the Holy Spirit. They know only John s baptism of repentance. In other words, they have not received the full truth of the Gospel. This does not mean that there was anything wrong with how or why John baptized. Paul is not criticizing John. John s ministry was a necessary forerunner to the coming of Christ. John himself proclaimed that he was merely a messenger pointing to the one who was to come. John would prepare the way, and he would do so by calling on people to repent that they might thus be prepared to receive the Good News. But John himself was not the Good News. John was a messenger. Christ was the message. This is such a common mistake of the Church. Mistake is perhaps too kind. It is a common sin of the Church to make something other than Christ, or something in addition to Christ, the message. The Corinthian church obsessed over spiritual gifts, making them the focus rather than Christ. In America we often blend Christ with country, as if they were of equal importance. Acts 19 shows that this confusion was present in the early church as well. These disciples whom Paul meets in Ephesus are confused about the main message of their faith. The message is Jesus Christ. That includes Jesus the man, who was born in Bethlehem, ministered in and around Nazareth, and was crucified in Jerusalem, but it also includes the Spirit of Christ, which is to say the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life. For it is the Holy Spirit that gives life. Paul writes in Romans [SLIDE], If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you (Rom. 8:11). The promise of the Holy Spirit, the promise that we receive at baptism, is one of new life. That s because through baptism we participate in Christ s death, and not only 5
his death, but his resurrection as well. Let s hear once again from Paul [SLIDE]: Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). This seems like heavy theology, but it s really simple [SLIDE] baptism points us to Christ. That is why Paul baptizes the disciples in the name of the Lord Jesus. It is a reminder of the central message of the Christian faith, that message being Christ himself. Therefore, baptism points us back to Christ, who died for us and who was raised for us. At the same time baptism also points us forward to Christ, who will fulfill God s purpose through us and for us, both now and in God s promised future. One way in which God does that is by equipping the Church with all that it will need to carry out God s mission. That includes spiritual gifts, like speaking in tongues and prophesying, which those disciples experienced. But it includes many other things things that we don t necessarily think of as spiritual gifts because they aren t mentioned as such in the Bible. Nonetheless, they are gifts of the Spirit, for they give life to the Church. I m speaking of things like vision, creativity, and daring [SLIDE]. This might sound obvious, but the Church needs a vision of who it is and what it is to do. Without a vision the Church can too easily become a club a pleasant social gathering where we see familiar faces, listen to nice music, and hear maybe a few words about God, but not enough to disturb the comfortable atmosphere. Rather than a club, the Church needs to be a place where disciples of Christ are fed and then are sent out to feed a world starving for the Good News. Without creativity not only does the Church become drab and lifeless, it also means that the Church has ceased trying to reach those who have not heard the Gospel or who have rejected it. Because fewer people come to church now than a generation or 6
two ago, the Church needs to be creative in how we reach people. We can t do as we ve done in the past and just wait for people to walk through the door. And finally, we need a sense of daring, for without it the Church is not the church of Jesus Christ, who dared to eat with those considered outcasts and sinners, who dared to show mercy rather than exact judgment, who dared to forgive even those who did him harm. In this sense, in the sense of following Jesus Christ, we need to be risk takers. We need to be willing to make fools of ourselves. We need to be willing to fail. We need to trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead and who breathed life into a lifeless band of disciples when they were huddled together behind closed doors after Christ s death will similarly inspire us to burst open the doors of the church and get out into the world. There is a game that American teenagers play called Truth or Dare. It s quite simple. People sit in a circle and take turns challenging one another to reveal a truth about themselves or to accept a dare in which they must do whatever they are told, which usually involves something embarrassing. It is each person s choice whether to tell a truth or accept a dare. In a sense, they are opposites, hence the name of the game: Truth or Dare. As regards the Christian faith, however, the relationship between truth and dare is different; they are not opposites but intimately connected [SLIDE]. The truth of the Gospel inspires us to be daring. Receiving the Gospel s truth means that we can t sit still because the Spirit is compelling us to get up, to move, to go, to do. Faith is about more than just believing in Jesus Christ; it is believing that leads to doing. Allow me to state the obvious and say that we are a Presbyterian church. The Presbyterian church has a long history of valuing knowledge, both sacred and secular. Our ancestor, the sixteenth century theologian John Calvin [SLIDE] was a brilliant, albeit complicated man, who wrote his systematic theology when he was in his mid twenties. Presbyterian seminarians go through rigorous academic training to 7
become pastors: they must attain a master s degree, which means studying for at least three years; they must demonstrate proficiency in ancient Greek and Hebrew; and they must pass ordination exams in biblical interpretation, theology, worship and sacraments, and church governance. And those are just the academic requirements! There are other requirements that must be met. But all the knowledge in the world and I m speaking now not just for pastors but for all Christians all the knowledge in the world knowing the Bible inside and out, being filled with the conviction that we have the right doctrine will be utterly meaningless if it doesn t lead to action, and by action I mean us being Christ s ministers of reconciliation in a suffering, hurting world [SLIDE]. Until the disciples from Ephesus encountered Paul, they had knowledge, but that was all they had. For all their knowledge, for all they had learned from John about repentance for sin, they were still ignorant of the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Their knowledge was incomplete. They didn t know what they were supposed to do. Through Paul they were exposed to the Spirit, which came upon them with power. The gifts they received speaking in tongues and prophesying were a manifestation of the Spirit s power. The Spirit showed in an unmistakable way that there is more to faith than mere knowledge. The Spirit emboldened these disciples not only to know the truth, but to speak it. And although Scripture does not reveal what happened next with these disciples, I feel comfortable saying that the Spirit then emboldened them to do even more than speak the truth of the Gospel, but to live it, for that is in keeping with the nature of Jesus Christ. Let s end with a game. It s called Truth or Dare. I will tell you a truth and then I will challenge you with a dare. I ll go first. The Gospel of Jesus Christ the good news that God loves us too much to leave us in our sin and therefore comes to us, not in power but in humility, in human form, to live and die as one of us, and to be raised from the dead, opening the way to God for us, is true. It s all true. It s true for me, a pastor, but even more so a sinner. It s also true for all of you. 8
Now your turn. A dare. Hmmm. Let me think. Alright given that you know the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I dare you to live that truth with your life to live your life as Christ lived his, feeding the hungry, comforting the sick, welcoming the stranger, eating with outcasts, extending forgiveness, showing mercy, healing divisions, sowing peace, and serving the poor. Ready go! 9