Sermon-of-the-Month for June, 2006
BY WHAT POWER?
Text: Acts 4:5-12
5 The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, 6 with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7 When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" 8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. 11 This Jesus is
'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;
it has become the cornerstone.'
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."
13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus. 14 When they saw the man who had been cured standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.
The 4th Sunday of Easter is one that might well be called "Sheep and Shepherd Sunday." The Psalm is always the familiar 23rd - "the Lord is my shepherd," the Gospel is always from John 10 - Jesus the Good Shepherd. And I made an interesting discovery this week: while the 23rd Psalm is undoubtedly one of greatest treasures of the scriptures, I have most often in all my years here avoided preaching on John 10 or Psalm 23 on this particular Sunday of the church year. I have most often chosen to preach on the text either from Acts, as today, or the passage from the Epistle of 1st John 3 ... or handed off the fourth Sunday of Easter to an associate or seminary student!
I wonder why? I pondered. And soon concluded that while I affirm the truth and importance of this shepherding imagery in the Bible, at the same time, I have never had a very high regard for sheep and somewhere in my psyche rather resent being identified as akin to one of these unimpressive creatures, an undifferentiated member of an undistinguished flock. On taking our daughter to the petting zoo many years ago, we discovered that sheep are not all that inspiring: not really that cute, not all that clean, and, as I think my daughter said, "Daddy they smell bad!" And of course we know about their proclivity to be docile followers, even to the point of following blindly the one in front of them over the cliff to oblivion. "Like sheep to the slaughter" is our familiar expression of passive submission to destruction. In New Zealand last year, on a sheep farm we were visiting, we saw sheep cowering and shaking in panicked fear at just the fierce stern stare of a sheepdog - didn't even have to bark, let alone nip. Of course...little wonder I've chosen to avoid these sheep and shepherd passages...to beg off or hand off as much as possible.
Can you imagine a sheep "speaking truth to power" as our prophetic witness requires of us? I'm sure that I'm wary of these texts because all-too-often the church has been more characterized by sheepish docility to the powers that be rather than boldly proclaiming the power of Jesus Christ unto salvation. The image may be all-too-accurate but hardly bestirring. Christians have too often been told to be compliant to the ruling powers - no matter what, to not "rock the boat" even when the boat is dead in the water, to march off to war without question in the name of patriotism, to let the corporation calibrate your ethical compass in the name of what's good for business; women have been told to be submissive to husbands, even when abused, and to defer to unequal wage scales. I'm too familiar with the church as God's unresisting, easily-manipulated flock - and need forgiveness to the extent I've been part of it. Thank heaven - literally - for people like John Wesley, Martin Luther King, and the late William Sloane Coffin, who acted more like rambunctious goats than acquiescent sheep. And thanks especially today for Peter and John, who show us the uncompromising power of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of intimidating power. Nothing sheepish here!
They have been arrested for one of their orthopedic miracles - restoring mobility to a man lame from birth - and for proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. A night in the pokey hasn't dampened their spirits at all. Why would the ruling powers get so uptight and upset about this healing and this proclamation as to march out the rulers, elders, and scribes, along with the High Priest Caiaphas and his powerful family - the whole ruling oligarchy . For these two who are described in verse 13 as "uneducated and ordinary men"? The ruling elite must have sensed that in this message their power might no longer reign supreme and be unquestioned. They must have sensed that this "spiritual" message about the cross and resurrection was not a message to placate the people for the advantage of the powerful but could undermine their authority, giving the people a deeper loyalty. They smelled danger...and rightly so. They knew that paralyzed people - in any variety of paralysis physical or spiritual - are easier to manage. And the gospel team was giving those people legs!
And so they demanded, "By what power or by what name do you do this?" as Peter and John stood before them in their chains. This would be the time for the sheep to recant... to plea bargain...or maybe to say to their captors, "Look, we are really harmless to your authority...our message is totally spiritual." But they didn't fold under the fierce, stern gaze of the sheepdogs who surrounded them. They were among the first of many followers of Jesus Christ to "proclaim truth to power" and thereby unseat the false authority for the only true authority: Jesus the risen Christ.
"Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead." (Acts 4:8-10)
I came of age in the time of the civil rights movement in our nation, from the mid 1950's to the mid 1960's, my high school and college years. And I remember the church in which I grew up as a warm and affirming place for a teenager, but also a rather sheepish place in relation to the changes that were happening in society. I remember being taught that the gospel message is to change hearts, not society, that faith is a personal and private matter, not something that might transform society...or if it did, only as every individual heart was first changed by love. I still believe that the gospel changes hearts and that faith is a personal relationship with Christ... but not a private matter. I have great memories of my mind being opened to God's transforming love in the form of justice for all people, and my stretching to participate in that new vision.
One of the great confessions of our Presbyterian Church is the Barmen Declaration of 1934, written in a time when the church in Nazi Germany and the faith it proclaimed, for the most part, was so utterly spiritualized and privatized, that there was sheepish submission to cruel tyranny; they knuckled under - except for a minority of confessing Christians who dared speak truth to power and risked their lives in writing a declaration that proclaimed "Christ alone is Lord" - there can be no higher power or loyalty for a disciple. The Barmen Declaration didn't get knotted up in political strategies in opposition to Der Fuhrer Hitler - it simply proclaimed Christ alone as Lord and in doing so undermined the National Socialist authority. This time of courageous witness to the powers that be is captured in our collective Reformed memory...in our Book of Confessions.
Memories...personal and corporate. Peter and John in Jerusalem...Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany...and for me growing up in Baltimore, a man named Clarence Mitchell, who stood for God's truth and freedom against resistant powers in getting civil rights and voting rights enacted. But as Thomas Friedman writes in his book, "The World Is Flat," as important as memories are, on balance you need to have more dreams than memories. So what are our dreams of the gospel of Jesus Christ setting people free from bondage...spiritual bondage... disabling bondage...addictive bondage...economic bondage...political bondage...the bondage nourished by prejudice and privilege? We are only a few weeks away from Pentecost, when the prophecy of Joel came true: "your young will see visions and your old will dream dreams." When I first knew of that passage, I was in seminary and definitely in the category of the young and their visions; now I'm delighted to be in the category of the older with their dreams. So whatever our season of life, God is calling us to imagine a future built on the stone that the builders rejected as unworthy but which is the true cornerstone of all of life in every dimension and every arena: Jesus Christ. Here is salvation, which is not only reconciliation with God, but freedom to boldly proclaim Christ to every authority and every power that would try to claim our ultimate allegiance.
"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus." (Acts 4:13)
May we be honored to be recognized as companions of Jesus. Amen.
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