The new church

Good morning, Friends! It’s so good to see you all today!

One of the things which is hard for us to realize and remember, is how difficult it was for people in those first weeks and months after the resurrection.

They were just a very small group to start with. Only a dozen people in the inner circle. And even they were confused about what was going on. We think of them as saints, but really, they were confused people just like us.

They didn’t know what to do next. They had gone from being completely confident while Jesus was still around, to feeling totally lost on Good Friday when he was killed, to being inspired but totally confused in the days that followed the discovery that Jesus was still alive.

We are probably not much different. We don’t know how to re-shape our lives in the light of Easter, either. We know that the resurrection is supposed to mean something really important, but when it gets down to our level, what is it we’re supposed to do?

That confusion is reflected for us in the very way the gospels were written. The gospels tell us the story of Jesus’ life, and they all take us up through the fact of his resurrection.

But after that, they all head off in different directions. It’s as if all four of the gospel writers agreed about what happened on Easter morning, but after Easter there are different opinions.

Matthew simply says Jesus told us to “go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that Jesus told us”, finishing up with that famous line: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world…”

Mark doesn’t talk about what happens after the resurrection at all. He simply says that the women went to the tomb and saw that it was empty. They ran away and said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

John is the most compassionate and tender of the gospel writers. John ends with Jesus telling Peter, “Feed my sheep… Feed my lambs…“

John also says that “there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the whole world itself could not contain the books that would have to be written…”

I think that John’s got the right idea, myself. We couldn’t possibly write all the things that Jesus has done.

Luke, out of the four gospel writers, takes a different approach. Luke takes us up to the resurrection, but then he goes on to write another book, the book of Acts.

It’s as if Luke is saying, “OK, Book One is the gospel; if you want to find out what happened after Easter, keep reading. Here’s Book Two.”

So today, let’s open the book of Acts, and see what happened when they started inventing a new church.

Dear Lover of God:

In my first book, I dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was lifted up. Before he was lifted up, he gave his chosen messengers instructions through the Holy Spirit.

For after Jesus suffered, he repeatedly showed himself alive in many convincing ways. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, talking with them about the kingdom of God.

At one point, while Jesus was eating with them, Jesus emphasized that they were not to leave Jerusalem, but they were to wait for the Father’s promise. “You have already heard me speak about this,” he said. “John used to baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

So when they met together, they asked, “Lord, is this the time when you will become king of Israel?”

Jesus answered, “You cannot know the times and dates which have been appointed. The Father has authority over these things. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes to you. You will be witnesses for me — not only in Jerusalem, not only in Judea and Samaria, but to the very ends of the earth.”

When Jesus had said these words, he was lifted up, until a cloud hid him from their sight.

And while they were still gazing up into the sky as he went, suddenly two figures dressed in white stood beside them and said, “People of Galilee, why are you standing there looking up into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven will come back in just the same way as you have seen him go.”

And they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is near the city, only half a mile away.

When they entered Jerusalem, they went straight to the upper room where they had been staying.

There were Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. There were also the women who had followed Jesus, Mary his mother, and Jesus’ brothers.

And all of them, with one heart, devoted themselves to prayer.

Acts 1:1-14

It’s funny. We always think of the apostles as a bunch of wise and holy people, saints who guided the church and did everything right. But in the opening of the book of Acts, it sure doesn’t seem that way. They seem to have had just as much trouble understanding things after Easter as they did before it.

You’d think that after Easter, surely they would have it all figured out. You’d think they would have known what to do and how to spend the rest of their lives. But the Apostles in the book of Acts aren’t wise or perfect. They were same kind of people as they were before Easter. They still didn’t understand.

Even after all they had seen, they were still asking the same dumb questions. “OK, Lord, are you going to be king now?”

Less than a week before, Jesus had told Pilate, “My kingship is not of this world; it if were, my servants would fight on my behalf; but my kingship is not of this world…”

They still didn’t have it in their heads what kind of a king Jesus is, or what his kingdom was all about. They still didn’t have any idea of what God is trying to do in the world. They were thinking about a kingdom of force, while Jesus had talked to them for years about a kingdom based on the Holy Spirit and the love of God.

They still didn’t understand that Christ came as a servant, and that anyone who wants to follow Jesus has to be a servant, not a ruler.

It was as if — and here I’m borrowing a line from a writer called J.B. Phillips — it was as if their God was too small.

They thought they knew all about God; but the God they had in their minds wasn’t big enough. They still had a lot to learn about how great God is, and about just how great-hearted and great-souled followers of Christ have to be.

The lessons that they had to learn were mostly un-learning what they thought they knew already. They not only had to learn who or what God is, but even more, they had to learn who or what God is not.

Yes, Jesus is a king; but he’s a king unlike any other ruler this world has ever seen, before or since. That was a tough one for them to unlearn, since they were living under a form of government that was only one step away from slavery.

Yes, he’s the savior; but Jesus offered them a kind of salvation that they hadn’t even dreamed about, something bigger and richer than they ever imagined. Their God was too small.

Our situation today is different from theirs, but human nature is pretty much the same. We’re still tempted to try to put God back into the same little boxes. Our God is still too small. And we’ve got a lot of lessons we need to unlearn, before we can even begin to understand.

One of the first lessons we’ve got to un-learn is the one about fear. A lot of people are afraid of God. They think God is going to zap them if they make one wrong step, if they think one bad thought or make one little mistake. They think that’s the way God is.

And, of course, when people find out that they don’t get zapped, they conclude that they can get away with anything, or they decide that God doesn’t care after all, or maybe that God just plain isn’t there.

But the fear of God isn’t supposed to be like that. It’s not so much the fear of being punished — that’s what we’ve got to un-learn.

Have you ever been in the presence of something really enormous? I mean, like a mountain range, or the ocean, or some huge piece of machinery with a purpose all its own that’s functioning without any reference to you? Or, my favorite example, have you ever spent a whole hour face to face with a sky full of stars?

There’s a fear involved with that — but it isn’t the kind of fear we usually think about, the fear of being zapped. It’s more like a sense of awe, of wonder, in the face of the tremendous.

The fear of God has to do with our being faced with just how great God really is, and just how much God is trying to do in the world. It’s not even fear of the unknown, because Jesus told us precisely what God is up to, and who God is. God is love, and God sent his Son into the world to show us what love is all about, and God calls us all to be lovers, too.

There’s a different kind of fear in that realization. Our understanding of God has been too small all along, and we realize that we’ve got so much to learn if we’re going to follow.

Or consider another lesson we have to learn, about how little we can do on our own. We all go through mood swings. We go through ups and downs. One minute we think we can handle anything that comes down the track, and the next minute we can’t even tie our own shoes.

Actually, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Most people can do a lot more than they think they can, and a lot less than they wish they could.

Jesus didn’t say we were totally helpless or worthless. We’re stronger than we think. What we have to learn is how to walk with Jesus. Not just try to do things on our own — with the help of God, we can dare anything.

On their own, the apostles were, indeed, the kind of foolish people who failed to understand what Jesus said. But with the help of God, they became the kind of people we call saints.

Left to our own resources, we can’t do very much. And when we look at the world around us, and see what people today are trying to do without the help of God, it’s pretty clear that people are achieving even less than we say we’re doing.

But we’re not left to our own resources. That’s what the Holy Spirit means.

God has all the resources any of us could ever ask for. Do you need strength? It’s there for the asking. Do you need help trying to love? Just ask. Do you need forgiveness, or do you need help to forgive someone else? God wrote the book on forgiving.

If we don’t understand that God has the resources to handle anything that this world can ever throw against us, then our understanding of God is too small.

Or if we look at Jesus and say, “I don’t know how anybody could love the world that much,” well, the answer is, “You’re right. We don’t understand.” Maybe admitting our ignorance is the first step towards understanding.

People tell me that they can’t figure out how God can care about each and every individual human being in this whole wide world, and I say, “Understanding isn’t my problem. How God does it is God’s problem.” If I try to limit what God can and can’t do, then whatever limit I set, I’ve made God too small.

If Jesus is alive, then we need to un-learn all the limitations we’ve placed on God. God’s never going to accept those limitations, anyway.

But we need to un-learn those limiting ideas, and unlearn our limiting habits, and set ourselves to learn more about who and what God really is. And the only way I know to do that is by practice.

The book of Acts is the story of people who were trying out their new faith, and seeing what God could really do. They didn’t have the benefit of all of those years of history to look back on. They had to learn to trust in the love of God one step at a time, one day at a time.

I guess that’s what we need to do, too. It’s like the book of Acts is still being written.

I believe that we are only just starting to learn about who God is and what God can do in our lives.

I believe that we have only just started to learn about the height, and depth, and breadth of the love of God. It’s an exciting place to be. It’s almost like starting school all over again, with a whole world in front of us, waiting to be learned.

I believe that our God has been too small for a long time. And I believe that when we really learn about who God really is, that our lives will be changed, and there will be so many new things for us to be doing, and our task each day will be to tell other people about the Lord.

And I believe that when the whole world knows who God really is, that the world will be changed, and the kingdom of God will truly be here. Let’s work for that.