To tell the truth

Good morning, Friends! Thank you all for coming today.

It’s sure been a hot week! I’m sure you’ve all heard the old saying about it being so hot you can fry an egg on the dashboard.

• This week it’s been so hot that you can drive your car with just one finger from each hand on the steering wheel.
  
• Over at our house it’s been so hot you get warm water coming out of both faucets.
  
• This week it was so hot the birds were using oven mitts to pull the worms out of the ground.
  
• It was so hot that when I bought a loaf of bread at the store, by the time I got home it was toast.
  
• Down at the lake, I hear that it’s so hot that the catfish are already fried when you catch them.
  
• And if the Bible were written this week, it was so hot that Adam and Eve would have traded their fig leaves for ice cubes.

Well, enough fooling around! We come to church every week to see our friends, to sing some hymns, to pray a little, to laugh and smile, and to support the church.

We also come here every week to learn more from the Bible. We come to learn, about Jesus, about people who tried to be faithful in their day, about all the ups and downs, the scary situations and the moments where love and courage come shining through. Today’s story is one of them.

If you were here last week, we read a story about how Peter and John were filled with the Spirit, and a man who had never walked was healed.

One thing I didn’t mention last week, was that this happened, right in the gateway to the Temple, in the very place where Jesus had caused a big scene.

Jesus knocked over the tables of all the people who were using the Temple as a place to make money. The priests had a monopoly on selling all the birds and animals for making sacrifices. And they charged double or triple what these things would have cost back at home.

The noise of all the trade going on, the noise of the birds and sheep and cattle, the noise of the money being weighed on the scales, the pushing and shoving, it took away the whole atmosphere of prayer. Jesus said, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of thieves!” (Mark 11:17)

The scene that Jesus made was probably the real reason he was arrested and put on trial. And the place in the Temple where it happened was right where Peter and John came and healed the man in last week’s story.

And that same location is right where today’s story begins.

The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

They seized Peter and John. Because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. But many who heard the message believed; so the number of people who believed grew to about five thousand.

The next day the rulers, the elders and the teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and others of the high priest’s family.

They had Peter and John brought before them and they began to question them: “By what power or what name did you do this?”

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a man who was lame and are being asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

Jesus is “‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say.

So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and then conferred together. “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everyone living in Jerusalem knows they have performed a notable sign. We can’t deny it! But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn them to speak no longer to anyone in this name.”

Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

Acts 4:1-20

You’ve heard me say before that the people in these stories didn’t have a plan. They were winging it, from one day to the next. They were hoping and praying that the Holy Spirit would tell them what to do. Tell them what to say.

These stories are so early that there wasn’t a church. They called themselves the Believers. They called their new life the Way.

The leaders were called apostles, a word which means messengers. They had a message to share, a message from God, and they proclaimed it wherever they went.

Don’t you wish that we could somehow get back to that period? Don’t you wish we could just drop all the stuff that’s piled up since then – all the competing churches, the arguments and fights between different kinds of Christians?

Don’t you wish we could all be one, and that Christians would just listen to Jesus, and listen to the Holy Spirit, and live our faith?

Let’s get back to the story.

Peter and John had gone into the Temple. And the man who had been healed came right along with them. He wasn’t go to let those guys out of his sight!

And Peter and John stood up, and started preaching. Now, the Temple wasn’t anything like a church today, where everybody sits down in neat rows. The Temple was more like a series of huge courtyards, with covered walkways or colonnades all around the sides. So, Peter and John just stood up on one side of the courtyard, and started talking about Jesus.

They said that Jesus was the Messiah, the promised Savior, but that the leaders had rejected Jesus. They said that Jesus been arrested right there, in that same spot, and handed over to the Romans, but that the Roman governor didn’t find him guilty of anything.

They said that the religious leaders were so angry, that they got the Romans to release a murderer from prison, and execute Jesus, but that Jesus had risen back to life again.

And they said that they had prayed in Jesus’ name, and that this other man, this beggar who everybody knew, who had been begging at the Temple gate every day for 40 years, had been healed. This beggar, who had never walked a day in his life, was standing upright beside them.

The priests and the Temple police were fit to be tied. They thought they had exterminated the Jesus movement, and here were these followers of Jesus, right back in the very same place, preaching in public about him. It was like having cockroaches.

So they arrested Peter and John. They put them in jail overnight. The next day, they hauled them out in front of the same assembly that had condemned Jesus. And they asked, “What do you think you’re doing?” They were obviously trying to intimidate John and Peter.

And Peter, who up till this point has not been one of the bravest gospel warriors on the block, takes a deep breath. And lucky for him, that breath was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Peter said, “Let me get this straight. You arrested us, for doing something good? This guy was handicapped! He’d never been able to walk in his whole life, and God healed him. You want to know why we did it? Let me talk to you about Jesus.”

It was a pretty good comeback. And what really ticked the authorities off, was that they couldn’t come up with a good answer. Peter and John were there. The guy they healed was there. Everybody knew him. The before-and-after was really obvious.

And waiting right outside the council chamber, were about five thousand witnesses, who saw the whole thing. What were they going to do?

Well, they tried. They wrote out a judicial gag order for Peter and John. They said, “By order of the Council, shut up.” (They could be subtle.) “Don’t speak, don’t preach, don’t teach, don’t even say the name of Jesus. Got it?”

And Peter and John said, and this is where the rubber really meets the road: “Whether it’s right, in God’s sight, to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we can’t keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

That is the heart of the story. “We can’t keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. . .”

So much of the Christian life is simply telling the truth. We don’t have to argue. We don’t have to be obnoxious. We simply need to tell the truth about what we have seen and heard.

Did God create one group of people to be slaves forever, because of the color of their skin? We don’t think so. There are so many places in the Bible where God sets people free from slavery. That’s the truth, and we need to share it.

Can the church prevent women from being teachers and ministers? If you read the news, a very large branch of the Christian church said that women can never be ministers, just last week.

I wanted to go and tell them that Quakers have had women as ministers for close to 400 years now. It doesn’t seem to have hurt us. We’ve been blessed, by women of conscience, by women with great minds and great hearts, by women who were filled with the Holy Spirit, right here in our own congregation. We had a woman as our pastor here for 22 years. Clara Cox was one of the greatest leaders that Springfield has ever had. That’s the truth, and we can’t deny it.

We may not have to take a stand on every issue of the day. But when it comes down to things we have seen for ourselves and heard for ourselves, we need to speak up.

Quakers have a long history, a living tradition, of speaking up, of speaking truth to power as we sometimes call it. It’s gotten us into hot water, many, many times. We’re not mean about it. But when we see something, we point it out.

Anyway, back to today’s story. The priests and the religious leaders had to let the apostles go, because they couldn’t deny that the man had been healed, in front of hundreds of people.

If you read on, it says that after they were released, they went home and met the other disciples, and they thanked God who gave them the courage to stand up to the threats of the priests and leaders.

They thanked God for healing the man, and for all the other wonderful things God was doing. And while they were praying, it says, “the place where they gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” (Acts 4:31)

That’s the thing about telling the truth. It shakes things up. If one person tells the truth, it gives other people the courage to do the same thing. If one or two people stand up to threats and bullying, it gives an example to other people, too.

Two of the worst things in the world are bullying and censorship. When leaders want to hold onto power, they threaten people, and they try to make them shut up. But when Christians speak up, and tell the truth, we not only set ourselves free. We also help other people to be free, too.

God didn’t create the world so we could destroy it.

God created both women AND men in God’s own image.

Jesus didn’t tell us to get rich, or try to run the world. He told us to reach out to the poor, to the lost and forgotten, to people who are hungry and thirsty, to people who are imprisoned or chained. Jesus told us to bring good news, to bring healing and light, to bring peace and justice.

Jesus told us to tell the truth – about him, about his Father, about the Holy Spirit. He said that the truth would set people free.

I remember, one of my favorite Quaker stories, about a traveling minister named Samuel Bownas, who lived in the 1700’s. Samuel Bownas was a simple man, a blacksmith and shoemaker.

When he was a teenager, his boss made him come to church every week, and he says that he didn’t think about religion, and most of the time in meeting he slept, and didn’t pay any attention to the preaching. He said, “at least it kept me out of bad company”!

But then one Sunday, a traveling Quaker minister – a woman! – came to his church. And during the sermon, she pointed her finger at him and said, “You’re only a Quaker by tradition! You come to meeting the same as the last time, and when you go home, you’re no better for coming here! What’s going to become of you?” (Samuel Bownas, Life and Travels, p. 3)

Well, he turned his life around, and he became a traveling preacher himself. Traveled all up and down the length and breadth of England and Scotland. Even came to America.

One time, he felt called to preach on a street corner in Scotland. And just as he stood up, an officer came along with a big bunch of keys, grabbed him by the arm, and said the mayor had ordered him to arrest him.

“What are you arresting me for?” Samuel Bownas asked.

“For preaching on the street corner,” the officer said.

“But I haven’t said anything,” Samuel Bownas replied. “I don’t even know yet whether I’m going to preach or not. Don’t you think you ought to wait until I do preach, before making me a prisoner?”

“Aye,” the Scottish official said, “I ken very well that you’ll preach, by your looks!” (Life and Travels, p. 36)

And it’s a matter of record, that after Samuel Bownas was released, he went right back to the same street corner, and preached again.

Pretty cool story.

I’m not telling you to go and pick fights. There will always be people we disagree with. Peter and John didn’t go to the Temple to pick a fight. They went there to pray, and to teach, and tell their story.

But when the moment came, they listened to the Spirit, and not to their fears. That’s what I want to say.

Tell the truth. Tell the story. Go everywhere. Don’t be afraid.