The
Power to Love
Robert
J. Elder, Pastor
Acts
10:44-48
Have
you ever traveled to another country and discovered what it is like to be an
outsider, one who does not understand local customs, etiquette, expressions, let
alone the language? Sometimes the experience isn’t a result of a language
barrier, at least not an official one.
I vividly remember a lengthy visit to Australia
back in the 1970s with a team of six (then) young business and professional
people, sponsored by Rotary International and led by a Rotarian from Medford,
Oregon. As a matter of fact, our own Dick Kunkle was instrumental in my
selection to be on the team. On one of our first days there, our group leader
spoke to a large audience that had gathered to welcome us and host us at
dinner. Our leader used an expression, common in the U.S.A., just tossed it off
without thinking, the way any of us would with any of dozens of customary
expressions like “check you later,” or “gotta run.” After he said it, there was
a sort of gasp, then an eerie silence fell across the room. We looked around,
wondering what was the matter. Most people realized the mistake was due to some
idiomatic language differences between us, but some of our host folks appeared
to be at least mildly offended.
Of course, the essence of this story is that the
expression our leader used, while completely unremarkable in the US, has a
rather crude and offensive meaning in Australia and some other English-speaking
countries. And, no, I’m not going to tell you what the expression is unless you
will soon be making informal speeches in Australia or New Zealand some time
soon. I only tell the story to highlight the fact that the experience of being
an outsider is not always a result of formal barriers of language.
When we are outsiders, our thoughts are often
hampered by suspicion. That person on the street corner who is looking at me,
is he hostile? Is she making fun of us? Does he think I am dressed in an odd or
conspicuous way? I recall a time when the unofficial rules for wearing white
athletic socks changed – suddenly they were to be worn rumpled above the ankle,
not stretched out to their full length, and they were on some occasions OK to
be worn with dark pants – strictly taboo in my youth, and I have yet to get
this portion of the rule change completely mastered. I’m always last to get the
memo on these things. In fact, for all I know, it has changed again! By the
time I was informed of the new white socks standards by my daughters, I had had
many opportunities to embarrass them. But of course, that’s what parents are
for.
I also remember walking through Rome with a tour
group a few years ago, realizing that everyone on the streets – everyone – was wearing dark colors,
browns, grays, blacks – while I was wearing the one coat I brought: a neon
green windbreaker quite at home in the Pacific Northwest, but as out of place
in Italy as courteous driving.
To be an obvious outsider – it is a common human
experience.
By all accounts, the early church began its life as
a pretty exclusive group. All the first disciples were Jews, they followed the
dietary laws first given to Moses, they were keeping a pretty low profile in
Jerusalem after the execution of Stephen by stoning. Who wouldn’t? Then one
day, scripture says, Philip found himself preaching to Samaritans, who were
filled with the same Spirit that had come to the Jewish believers. Hardly a day
had passed before Philip found himself baptizing a complete foreigner, an
Ethiopian. Then, almost before you could say, “Give me a minute to think this
over,” Peter found himself in the house of a Gentile, an officer of the Roman
occupational forces, a sworn enemy of the Jewish people by ethnic origin,
career choice, and religious practice. So, when this person was received into
the church by baptism, there can be small wonder that some of the Jerusalem
folks demanded an explanation.
Peter’s explanation was simplicity itself: “Can
anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy
Spirit just as we have?” He later asked his critics in Jerusalem, “Who was I
that I could hinder God?”
And, of course, that is the point of almost the
entire of the book of Acts. The Spirit came upon the church, and from that
point on, it was like holding a tiger by the tail; no one knew what unexpected
place the Spirit would take them next. But always it moved them toward people
who had previously been excluded, outside the faith.
Thinking on this story, I recall the history of one
church in a presbytery where I have served which has an interesting history.
For the last couple of decades now, we have had resolution after resolution
from presbyteries and General Assemblies, making various pronouncements on the
need for church growth. Most are in favor, of course. “Presbyteries vote to
grow by a margin of 3 to 1” might go the headline following one of these
decisions. Problem is, Presbyterians for the most part, have not grown. All kinds resolutions passed
by councils and presbyteries and hours of organizational planning don’t seem to
be able to make it happen.
So along came a group of people in a small town who
found each other over coffee or whatever, one thing led to another, and a few
said, “Why don’t we get together for Bible study?” So they did. They discovered
that many of them had been Presbyterians at one time or another, so they
thought, “Why don’t we ask the Presbytery in our area to see if we can become
an official church?” So they did.
Silly people. Didn’t they know that their town was
too small to support a Presbyterian church? They had not done a feasibility
study, they had not purchased ground for their church, they did not live in a
town which would have an adequate population of potential Presbyterians who
are, in late history anyway, generally around 1% of the population. In this and
many other ways, the answer was, “No, your gathering cannot be a Presbyterian
church.” They would have to remain outsiders.
“OK,”
thought these folks, “but let’s keep meeting for Bible study and fellowship
anyway.” So they did. And so did quite a few others who wanted to join their
happy company. Soon, no one could accommodate the whole group in their home. So
they rented space. Finally they realized they needed to build space of their
own. A retired Presbyterian minister was willing to organize worship services
for them. So they did. Soon they were over a hundred people. They called the
Presbytery officials again, who, to their credit, remembered the old adage that
if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, chances are
it is a duck. They saw what was
happening in that town, and uttered their own organizational version of Peter’s
words to his questioners in Jerusalem: “Who was I that I could hinder God?” Like it or not, we might have
counted them out, but the Spirit counted them in!
J.B. Phillips is reported to have once said that
the work of the Holy Spirit is frustrating to the tidy-minded.[1]
This is never more in evidence than in the book of Acts, where the Spirit has
disciples, willing or not, tearing around baptizing the most unlikely new
believers anyone could imagine – in fact no one did imagine them as believers. No one, that is, except the Holy
Spirit, who alone brings into being the power to love which makes disciples and
builds churches.
A few years ago, I remember some conversation about
starting a Spanish language Bible study in a church I was serving. The Hispanic
community in town was growing rapidly. In a relatively short time, about 10
people were attending the study, led by one of our bilingual elders. Some
people began to ask each other, “Where is this headed? Will we have
Spanish-language services in the church some day? What will we do if the needs
of some folks reach beyond the need for Bible study?” Well, of course, no one
knew an answer to that question or others like it. But it was clear that fear
was driving some of the questions. The church leaders hadn’t gotten all that
far in their thinking. But they recognized early on that the plan and purpose
for this was not really ours, after all. Sometimes in the church we begin not
with strategies and organizational charts, but with simple surprise at who it
is that shows up on our doorstep. Sometimes, we begin with the Spirit. Later we
call in the constitutional experts to tell us what God has done and write a
theology about it. But if we are led by the Spirit, it is important to keep
things in their proper order.[2]
This doesn’t mean, of course, that the activities
of the Holy Spirit among us don't scare us to pieces. Think how terrified Peter
must have been when he set foot in the house of a Gentile army officer who
possessed the power of life and death over him. Fear is not all bad. It means
we recognize that we are risking something precious to us, whether it is our
lives or our possessions. But do pray that the Spirit will be active within you
and among us all here at 4300 Main Street. I urge you to pray for the Spirit’s
presence and activity here. If you do, God will not fail to keep faith with you
in the promises he gives you to make.
[1] “Yet to
the neat and tidy mind of the human planner few things could be more untidy
historically than the entry of God into the world nearly two thousand years
ago.” New Testament Christianity: 5
Ground for Hope. J.B. Phillips. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
