When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.' All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' But others sneered and said, 'They are filled with new wine.'
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: 'Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 
"In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams. 
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
     and they shall prophesy. 
And I will show portents in the heaven above
   and signs on the earth below,
     blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 
The sun shall be turned to darkness
   and the moon to blood,
     before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

Acts 2:1-21

Pastor Marc's sermon on Pentecost (June 9, 2019) on Acts 2:1-21. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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On Thursday night, delegates and pastors from all 160+ congregations in the New Jersey Synod gathered at a Hyatt hotel in New Brunswick to begin our annual synod assembly. A synod assembly is very much like an annual congregational meeting. We gather together in one place to talk about the ministry that went well over the last year, the bits and pieces that didn’t, to vote on budget and finances, and to spend time figuring out what it means to follow Jesus Christ. But unlike our congregational meetings that go on for two or three hours, Synod assemblies last for days. There’s a lot of singing, a lot of prayer, a lot of questions about what is actually going on, and quite a bit of doodling done on coffee stained papers as we work through the assembly’s agenda. A synod assembly can be very boring, sometimes cheesy, and surprisingly exhausting even though we spend most of our time just sitting. But a synod assembly is also one of the few times when we meet, in the flesh, other Lutherans. From across the state, Lutherans of all shades, backgrounds, genders, and ages sit at tables in a hotel ballroom and we are the church, together. So on Thursday night, before we started discussing the business of the church, we acted as the church by worshipping together. And to make that night special, we did something we don’t do every day: we ordained a new pastor. 

Now in our tradition, the rite of ordination takes place during worship, after the sermon and the hymn of the day. The person being ordained is brought up front so that everyone can see them. The bishop then addresses them, asking the candidate to profess their faith and their trust in God’s call. They are asked to make promises - to affirm what they are called to teach, to preach, and what it means to live faithfully in God’s world. They stand in front of everyone affirming the baptismal call to be a faithful witness so that everyone may see and experience God’s love in all that they do. Once the promises are made, the ordination is completed through the laying on of hands. Every ordained person comes forward, surrounding the candidate in a sea of white albs and red stoles. And since a synod assembly is when a lot of pastors are gathered together, over one hundred clergy came forward on Thursday night to support the candidate with our presence. Since not everyone  could lay their hands on the candidate, we formed a kind of human chain with our hands resting on the shoulder of the person in front of us. We, together, created a physical sign, showing that the candidate for ordination was literally connected to a faith and a tradition bigger than themselves. Every ordination is a gift because every pastor and deacon in that room was reminded of the promises they made when they were first ordained. But that moment was for more than just clergy. Because all of us, by witnessing that act of ordination and confirmation, was reminded of what our life of faith is all about. We are who we are because of the gifts God has given us. And we were designed, created, and meant to be a kind of gift to everyone we meet. 

Our story from the books Acts begins on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost was, and is still, a Jewish religious festival. So in the year 33 or so, Jerusalem was filled with all kinds of people from all over the Meditterean and the Near East who were there celebrating their faith. Today’s text actually lists 15 different ethnicities,  nationalities, and languages that, I think, probably represented only a fraction of all the different kinds of people who were visiting or who lived in the city of Jerusalem. God’s Holy City was diverse and in the middle of that city full of people who first came from somewhere else, Jesus’ small group of followers gathered together. These first apostles and disciples, who had seen Jesus die and who witnessed the Resurrection and the Ascension, were trying to figure out what being the church was all about. They met up in a house and once they were together, that’s when the Holy Spirit showed up. Now at first, the Spirit rushed in, sounding like a wind coming from a tornado or hurricane. I’m sure that roaring sound peaked the interest of everyone else in the neighborhood so a crowd came out to see what was up. While the wind blew, tongues of fire - something like the flame of a candle but without the candle - appeared. These flames settled on the heads of the early disciples and they found themselves empowered to do a new thing. The disciples opened their doors and their windows and started talking to the crowd. The crowd, the community of people who had mostly first come from somewhere else, expected, I think, to hear these disciples speak in the language common to their city. They expected, to hear Aramaic, the language of Jesus, or maybe Latin, the language of Rome, or maybe even Greek, the language of trade used throughout the Near East. But instead they heard God’s story in the language of where they had first come from. The word about Jesus came to them in the same language their parents first spoke to them when they were just a few minutes old. It wasn’t long before the sound of the wind, the tongues of fire, and all those special effects were basically forgotten. The crowd didn’t stay gathered around that house because of the spectacle they saw. Rather, what surprised them was hearing God’s story in the personal languages that made each of them feel included, known, and loved. The reason why Pentecost matters to us isn’t because the disciples were given a kind of superpower that let them speak any kind of language. No, we care about Pentecost because it reminds us that the gift of the Holy Spirit isn’t something only for ourselves. God’s presence in our lives is also, in the words of Amy Oden, “about being empowered to connect with others...it’s a gift expressly for those outside the Jesus movement.” We are, through our baptism and our faith, connected to a community and a God that is so much bigger than ourselves. That connection, that relationship, is truly a gift. But we are also called, through that same faith, to be a gift to all - to connect, to include, to know, and to even love those who don’t follow Jesus like we do. 

Now in a few moments [at the next service], we are again going to be reminded of who we are. James, who is being confirmed today, is going to stand up in front of all of us. He is going to be asked questions, asked to profess his faith, and he’s going to be invited to live into the promises God has already made to him. That doesn’t mean that we are asking him/you to never ask questions, to never doubt, or to never wonder if Jesus is truly with him/you. Life is too hard, filled with too many fears and too many unknowns, for us to make certainty the point of faith. But we can, instead, invite each other to lean into God’s gifts: the gift of God’s presence; the gift of God’s Spirit; the gift of God’s community; the gift of a faith big enough for all our fears, all our joys, all our sorrows; and the fact that we are part of something so much bigger than ourselves. We can, together, figure out what it means to include, to know, and to love. And we can trust that the Spirit from Pentecost is the same Spirit here today - and with us through our entire lives. In those moments when we can’t remember or see the gifts God has given to us, we can still be exactly who God made us to be: a gift to each other, a gift to ourselves, and a gift to the entire world. 

Amen.

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Today's reading from the books of Acts 16:16-34 is a story filled with tension that would fit in something like Game of Thrones. If we let the words from this text fill our imagination, we can watch a vivid drama filled with special effects. A slave girl, possessed by a spirit, follows Paul and Silas for days. A dark dungeon is filled with the sound of hymns and the crashing of bricks as an earthquake shakes the entire city. A jailer considers suicide before a faith-filled intervention causes an entire household to be baptized. There is a lot going on in this text. So what part of the story jumps out to you?

For me, I find myself drawn to the slave girl. On one level, she embodies the theme of bondage found throughout this passage. Everyone is bound by something: either by a spirit, the violence of the Roman Empire, or the lure of wealth and money. She is, however, the only one who lives her life enslaved in a non-metaphorical way. She has no control over the violence done to her body and she remains nameless throughout this story. The spirit compels her to annoy Paul and Silas for several days by affirming what they already know. After a few days, Paul casts the spirit out of her. His annoyance at her actions frees her from her bondage to the spirit but the act also endangered her. She's still a slave and her physical condition did not change. We never learn what happens to her and she leaves the scene still in bondage.

This text can help us ask difficult questions about the legacy of slavery, faith and freedom. We tend to define freedom based on the choices we make as individuals. Yet the community around us matters as well. The jailer, wrapped up in a way of life that demanded his death when a supernatural event freed every prisoner, ends up being freed from that system because every prisoner stayed. By working together, the community around Paul and Silas broke down a sway of life that had no problem inflicting violence on others. The life we are called to live is a life wrapped up in the people God has surrounded us with. The prisoners, together, refused to let the rules of violence be what defined them. Instead, they lived into the life God had freely given them. And we can see, I think, that if the slave girl had been truly freed, Paul and Silas would have seen more clearly the kind of life God wants everyone to have.

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Today’s reading from the book of Acts 16:9-15 introduces us to a woman named Lydia. We meet her outside the city gates of Philippi, a Roman city in northern Greece. Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth, the most expensive kind of cloth one could buy in the ancient world. The color purple was only for the wealthy and those with immense political power. The process needed to create purple dye was expensive, time consuming and very smelly. Those who made the dye were sometimes pushed out of polite society because the work was so harsh and tainted. Lydia was the owner of her own business which invites us to think of her in a few different ways. We can imagine her as strong, independent and wealthy - someone with status and power. Or we can imagine her as someone pushed aside who was not considered part of the Philippi community. Lydia’s name is even a little bit odd because it seems to identify the place she was from (a region in modern Turkey). Lydia could have been a former slave, an immigrant or a migrant. The text does not let us limit Lydia to only one identity. Instead, I think the author of Acts wanted us to realize that we shouldn’t expect Lydia to be where she was. Paul shouldn’t be meeting Lydia. And we should think of her as having whatever identity makes us recognize just how odd this moment was.

Paul had a dream that God was calling him to bring the gospel to Europe. He saw a man asking him for the good news. But what he found instead was a group of women. These women, after experiencing the gift of faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit, then do something unexpected: they offered hospitality. When we talk about sharing our faith, we point out how we need to offer hospitality to others. At CLC, we model this hospitality by printing our entire worship service in a bulletin, saying hello to everyone visiting for the first time, inviting everyone to the Lord’s table, and making sure our faith isn’t lived out only within these eight walls. Part of our calling as followers of Jesus is to offer hospitality to everyone. But another aspect of that calling is that God wants us to accept hospitality too. When you accept hospitality, you create a moment when you can strengthen a relationship. And once that relationship is strengthened, you will find yourself doing what you never thought possible: you will share Jesus through words and deeds.

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What was the last thing God revealed to you that you struggled with?

In today’s reading from the book of Acts 11:1-18, Peter recalled a moment in his life when he did not understand what God was telling him. Peter, after he saw God at work in people who were not Jewish, began to include them in his ministry. He entered into their homes to teach, baptize, and eat with them. At the time, the early church was debating about what to do with non-Jews (or Jews who were also Greek) who believed in Jesus. These new converts to the faith did not share Jesus’ faith tradition or follow all of his cultural practices. They did not keep kosher (i.e. follow food laws) or participate in the every rite that defined the Jewish community as Jewish. As more and more Gentiles began to follow Jesus, the church wasn’t sure how to (or if they even should) include them. At first, they established new ministries (aka deacons) to oversee the faith life of Jewish people with a Greek ethnic background. But then came the moment when the Holy Spirit told the church to include all who follow the Jesus. While at a meeting with the church community in Jerusalem, Peter’s practice of eating with non-Jews was questioned. He responded by sharing with the other apostles what the Spirit had showed him.

What struck me about Peter’s vision how honest he was about how long it took him to understand what God was doing. The Spirit gave Peter a vision of a divine banquet where ritually uncleaned animals were being served. Peter, who kept kosher, knew be couldn’t eat these animals. But a voice kept inviting Peter to eat. Peter, at first, said no but the voice was persistent. After being prodded by the Spirit three times, Peter finally understood what God was telling him. God was already at work with those who were not keeping kosher and the Spirit was already making them followers of Christ. Peter’s job was to help the church become more inclusive by including those God had already made God’s own.

If we’re honest, we know it sometimes takes two, three, or a dozen messages from God before we finally understand what God is telling us. When we look back at our life, we find moments when God was at work and we did not know it. That does not mean we were failures. Rather we, like Peter, needed time to embrace what God was already doing. In Paul’s version of today’s story, even Peter occasionally reverted to not being as inclusive as God wanted him to be. One of our responsibilities as Christians is to admit when we do not understand what God is doing. We are called to share every part of our story. Because when finally we see what God is already up to, we can then meet Jesus where he already is.

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Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

Acts 9:36-43

Pastor Marc's sermon on the Fourth Sunday of Easter (May 12, 2019) on Acts 9:36-43. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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Can you imagine what would your life would be like if you only had one shirt?

It’s difficult, I think, to imagine life without all our clothes. Just a few days ago, our big Trash and Treasure rummage sale made sure that space outside the church office was filled with clothing racks packed tightly with every kind of clothing. You could have purchased shorts, jeans, dresses, jerseys, leggings, evening dresses, suits, motorcycle jackets, hats, bags, ties, scarves, winter coats, and so much more. Half the church contained all the items you would need to look professional while at work and to keep yourself comfortable while binge watching your favorite tv show. What held all of us back from buying everything we wanted had less to do with the amount of clothing available to us and more to do with our budget, sizes, and personal style. We live in a moment of history and in a cultural context when we can personally own a lot of clothing. But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, for most of human history, people didn’t own much clothing at all. Because until the invention of factories, all clothing was really expensive. Everything needed to make our favorite shirt or favorite hat had to be grown, harvested, and created by hand. There weren’t any online businesses where you could upload an image for your church vacation bible school and have it printed on a thousand shirts. Everything was made one at a time and most items were made at home. As a person, you were financially well off if you had more than a couple of shirts. And you were super fancy if your day look and your night look wasn’t always exactly the same. In the ancient world, there were laws that dealt severe punishments if you were caught stealing someone’s shirt or outfit. Because most people had only one of anything and you could tell a lot about where a person stood in society based on what they wore every day. In a world where every piece of clothing was expensive, the gift of clothing was priceless. And in our reading today from the book of Acts, we meet Tabitha who was known by clothes she freely gave.

We don’t know much about Tabitha. And in fact, this is the only place she appears in all of scripture. At some point in her life, she devoted herself to Jesus but we have no idea when that happened. She might have seen him when he started his ministry in Nazareth or when he spoke in the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s even possible that Tabitha first met Jesus through his friends as they shared their faith with her. We don’t know why Tabitha followed Jesus. All we know is that she did. And she was more than just someone who believed in what Jesus had to say. She, as we read in verse 36, was a disciple.

Now that word disciple might not jump out to you as much it should. Because, throughout scripture, everyone who followed Jesus was lumped into the group known as the disciples. A disciple was typically thought of as a student. They would, through prayer, worship, and scripture reading, study under their teacher Jesus. But a disciple was more than just someone who tried to get information out of Jesus. They were trying to live a life that took seriously everything that made him, Him. Jesus lived as if God’s kingdom was truly near and so disciples were invited to live that way too. A disciple, through the help of the Holy Spirit, walked where Jesus walked; prayed where Jesus prayed; and lived a life that believed God truly loves the world. A disciple takes seriously Jesus’ promise that eternal life starts now.

Tabitha, then, was a disciple and she devoted herself to love. When she died, the community gathered around her to make sure she was buried well. They washed her, laid her in a room upstairs, and surrounded her with their presence. In grief, they sent word to Peter. And when he arrived, he saw that Tabitha wasn’t alone. The community, especially widows, stood around her. Widows were more than women whose husband had died. They were people who, because of patriarchy and systems of oppression, had no usual way to earn money to keep themselves and their family fed. They were vulnerable to abuse, poverty, and homelessness. And they were there, mourning Tabitha. But they were also doing something a little different that we don’t usually hear in the Bible. These widows made sure Peter saw everything Tabitha had made. They showed him the tunics she sewed. They showed him their clothing. They made sure he saw every expensive gift she personally made for each of them. Peter stood there, bearing witness to the life of a disciple rooted in an abundant and consistent generosity. Tabitha, because of her faith, made sure that the vulnerable had the clothing they needed to thrive. She did the hard work to make sure those who society chose to ignore or push aside received the gift of dignity, care, and love that can come from a new piece of clothing. For Tabitha, the widows were not going to be defined by what they lacked. Instead, she gave them a taste of what God’s kingdom was all about. Tabitha didn’t horde, stockpile, or keep for herself the gifts and resources God gave her. Instead, she lived her life as a disciple - and she made sure that others might know that God loved them too.

Being a disciple is not only about being a student; instead, it’s a title and a way of life. And if we knew ancient Greek, the language the book of Acts was first written in, Tabitha’s status as a disciple would have truly jumped out at us. In Ancient greek, language is gendered which means some words are considered male, some female, and others can shift from a male or female form. The word disciple is, throughout the bible, typically always male because any group of people that had at least one male in it, would force that word to always be male. It didn’t matter if a group was 99 women and 1 guy; the word disciple would be, in that case, gendered male. Yet in verse 36, we find ourselves confronted by the only time the Bible uses the feminine version of the word to disciple to describe who Tabitha was. She wasn’t just someone who believed in Jesus; she was a disciple. Which means she was just like Peter; just like Mary Magdalene; she was just like Paul. She lived her life as if Jesus mattered and she knew that Jesus’ generosity of love, grace, and mercy, needed to be reflected in the generosity she gave too. She followed Jesus and that made her love others like Jesus did too. Tabitha wasn’t afraid to do the hard, expensive, and most generous thing possible because she trusted that, no matter what, she belonged to Jesus and Jesus belonged to her. She gives all of us, regardless of our gender, a model of what living the faith looks like. Because all of us, through our baptism and through our faith, were given the same title she shared. We are, right now, disciples of Jesus. So can we imagine how our lives would be different if we, like Tabitha, lived as if being disciple was the only thing we had?

Amen.

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Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.”

Acts 9:1-20

Pastor Marc's sermon on Third Sunday of Easter (May 5, 2019) on Acts 9:1-20. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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So I’m going to begin today with a bit of a pop quiz and I’d like you to shout out the answers to my questions. How many books are in what we call the New Testament? 27. How many of those books are considered to be epistles - i.e. letters? 21. Of those letters, how many were attributed to a guy named Paul? 13. And what was Paul’s original name? Saul. If you counted up all the words in the New Testament, roughly â…“ of them are attributed to a guy who began his career trying to stop people from following Jesus. In the book of Acts, we first meet Saul, aka Paul, briefly in chapter eight. He’s there, in the background, when a crowd killed Stephen, an early follower of Jesus who wouldn’t stop sharing his faith with those around him. Saul then became more active, trying to stop the people who followed the Way, who followed Jesus, from practicing their faith. In the words of Amy Oden, Saul saw Jesus’ followers “as [people] within his own faith [tradition that needed] rescue from their error.” Saul loved God and he wanted to stamp out anything that, in his view, dishonored God. Saul began going house to house, throwing into prison anyone he found practicing the Way. Jesus’ friends responded to this and other acts of violence by fleeing from their homes, becoming refugees searching for safety. Saul chose to follow them, leaving the land of ancient Israel behind as he headed towards Syria and Damascus. He carried with him letters giving him the authority to not only interrogate the religious beliefs of the people he met. But he could also arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem. As he neared the city, a bright light suddenly surrounded him. Saul fell to the ground, met Jesus, and found himself to be blind. For three days, he neither ate nor drank. He was a vulnerable visitor in a city that wasn’t his home and the letters of authority he held in his hands were ones he could no longer read. His mission was now in jeopardy. His status as a defender of the faith was almost gone. He was in the exact opposition position than where he was at the very start of today’s text. And it’s then when we meet Ananias, a follower of Jesus who Saul, just a few days before, would have arrested and taken to Jerusalem.

Which is why, I think, Ananias response to Jesus is a pretty good one. After falling asleep, Jesus sent Ananias a vision, telling him to visit Saul. Now, Saul’s reputation had preceded him. Ananias not only knew what Saul had done but he was also aware of Saul’s mission in the city of Damascus. Even though Saul couldn’t necessarily read the letters of authority he carried, the people around him could. It’s safe to assume that Judas, the owner of the house Saul was saying in, knew who Saul was and what kind of authority he had. If Ananias’ visited Saul, it would be as if he was walking into a trap. Any attempt to heal Saul through the laying on of hands would require Ananias to say the name of Jesus out loud. Saul, at that point, would only need to say a word to have Ananias arrested. Ananias knew the kind of trouble a visit to Saul would bring. So, in an act of deep faithfulness, he laid out all his concerns to the Lord. Ananias tried to negotiate with the Lord but Jesus wouldn’t back down. His command to Ananias remained the same. Ananias’ visit to Saul who be part of a mission to spread Jesus to the Gentiles, to the non-Jews. But Jesus also chose to not let Ananias’ anxiety get the best of him. Jesus kept talking. And as depending on which words we chose to emphasize in verse 16, we can change what Jesus’ call to Ananias actually means.

On one level, I think we are drawn to the second half of verse 16, where Jesus said that Saul must suffer because of  Jesus’ name. As we saw, the author of Acts wanted us to see how Saul caused so many others to suffer because they dared to utter the name of Jesus. If they had to suffer than it only seems fair that Saul, a person who caused suffering, should also suffer as well. When we put our emphasis on the second half of verse 16, we end up making God into some kind of balance act. If a follower of Jesus ends up suffering, than the one who caused that suffering should experience some kind of suffering too. This idea of balance, while not protecting us from being hurt, at least makes us feel a bit more comfortable because we know, in the end, that a cosmic balance of suffering will even out. We tend to not spend too much time thinking about this balancing act when we, ourselves, cause others to suffer. Rather, when we are hurt or are in pain or even when we just don’t get our way, we want, at a minimum, for our feelings and our experiences to be balanced out on those who hurt us. A Saul who caused suffering ends up becoming that Saul who suffers.

Yet, that’s not the only part of verse 16 that we can emphasize. We can, instead, go to that verse’s very first word: I. Jesus makes a very specific claim about what God will do in this moment. God will not ignore what Saul had done nor will God fail to listen to the concerns Ananias has. God will be faithful to everyone in this moment - including those who follow Jesus, those who don’t, and everyone else who’s in-between. God promises to be involved in the nitty gritty details of our everyday lives which means God knows our fears, our struggles, and our sufferings. God promises to be with us, no matter what, and that, in the end, will carry us through. It’s not our responsibility, when it comes to God, to decide who has and who hasn’t suffered enough. Our call isn’t to enhance or increase the suffering in the world but, instead, to heal it. So Ananias, after hearing what God promises, responded by doing the only thing he could do: he went and visited Saul. And after laying his hands on him, he stayed with him - feeding his body, his soul, and his faith while connecting him to a wider community so that Saul would know he wasn’t alone.

The call of the baptized, the call of those who have encountered Jesus, and the call of those who have even a tiny bit of faith is to always let God be God while, at the same time, inviting us to live into the promises God has made. Through the waters of baptism, we are claimed as God’s own not because we know how to perfectly emphasize every sentence in the Bible. No, we belong to God because the body of Christ, the church, and this community of faith couldn’t be what it’s supposed to be without you. Your past is not a summation of your future and your sufferings are not the limit to what God has in mind for you. You belong with Jesus, not because you are perfect or because you’ve never tried to negotiate with God. You belong because, through baptism and faith, God has made a promise to never give up on you.

Amen.

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For the next six weeks, we'll read selections from the Acts of the Apostles (aka Acts). Acts was, most likely, written by the same person who wrote Luke. The gospel according to Luke focused on Jesus' ministry while Acts told a story about the beginning of the church. At its center, Acts used the ministry of Peter and Paul as the pillars of their story. Through them, we discover who the church spread throughout the Roman world. Each faith community was very small but they popped up in the inner cities of what ae now Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, and Egypt. Acts shows us how the Holy Spirit made the people who followed Jesus into a united and loving body of believers designed for the benefit of the world.

Today's reading (Acts 5:27-32) begins in Jerusalem. Jesus' followers had continued to pray in the Temple and shared their faith with their family, friends, and neighbors. The religious authorities were not thrilled with this behavior and had a nasty habit of throwing them in prison. Yet the community kept preaching. Those in authority were not quite sure what to do about this new movement. But they were afraid of it. Jesus' followers proclaimed how the religious and political authorities had killed Jesus. And those with power assumed Jesus' disciples would seek vengeance for what had happened. They hoped that arresting Jesus' followers would protect themselves from whatever wrath might come. Those with power were afraid. And that fear drove them to react harshly to what Jesus' disciples were doing.

But wrath, revenge, and giving into fear were not what the good news of Jesus was all about. In the words of Rev. Brian Peterson, "The gracious surprise of this text is that the result of Jesus’ resurrection, even in the face of continuing posturing and self-protective threat, is not vengeance but mercy." Often, fear of the 'other' is used as an excuse to punish and harm them. We distort the message of the gospel when we use it to encourage violence against 'those people' because they threaten our authority, power, or sense of (false) security in some way. Yet today's text, "from beginning to end, is the unsurprisingly constant story of human fear and self- protection even if it costs others everything, and the surprisingly even more constant story of God’s mercy. What Peter is preaching to the council is not vengeance, but the gospel." And that gospel is centered on the gift of repentance, forgiveness, and love.

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When you picture the Holy Spirit, what do you think of? Unlike Jesus, the Holy Spirit has no physical form. The Holy Spirit is not something we can touch or objectively see. Even though the gospels describe the Spirit of God in the form of a dove, the dove is merely a metaphor. The metaphor describes what the Holy Spirit is like but the metaphor shouldn't limit what the Spirit can do. For centuries, the translation of Holy Spirit as Holy Ghost misidentified what the Spirit can do. We know ghosts. Ghosts go by the name of Casper. They are something we see in a horror film. They can walk through walls, vanish in an instant, and help us make pottery when we star in a Patrick Swayze film. But because ghosts are recognizable, they seem containable in some way. The Holy Spirit, as depicted in scripture, is the opposite. The Holy Spirit, as we see in our reading from Acts today, is not contained by anything. Like the cry of a dove across a large valley or a rush of wind blowing through a small room, the Holy Spirit moves, breaking the ways we keep to ourselves and forcing us out of our self-imposed containment. 

Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21) is sometimes described as the "birthday" of the church. That's a metaphor that's not quite right. The church is always the community of believers who proclaim Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead. This new kind of community began the moment Mary and other women told their friends that Jesus was raised from the tomb. Pentecost is really a celebration of the different kinds of people God is calling into this new kind of community. The city of Jerusalem is filled with Jews from all over the world. These pilgrims speak many different languages and have many different nationalities. The Holy Spirit gives the apostles the ability to make Christ's story heard in many different languages. The miracle of Pentecost is not the apostles' ability to speak different languages. The miracle of Pentecost is God calling many different kinds of people to be part of this new community because Jesus' message of hope, reconciliation, and love is for everyone.

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Paul, as he is portrayed in the book of Acts, is a disciple who loves a crowd. In today's reading (Acts 17:22-31), he's in the city of Athens. He's on a missionary journey around the Mediterranean and is spending time in Greece and Macedonia. After several violent episodes in Thessalonica and Beroea, Paul escaped to Athens. While in Athens, he continued to preach and teach. He caught the attention of some local Greek philosophers. They invite him to  speak at the Areopagus (which could be either the chief Roman court in Athens or a hill west of the Acropolis). Many in the crowd think Paul is just a babbler but others are curious about his message. Paul, knowing he is speaking to educated Greeks, filled his sermon with Greek philosophical references. He made Christ understandable to those listening to him. He challenged the Greeks to discover God by meeting Jesus Christ. At the end of his sermon, Paul's words on the Resurrection, shock some of the philosophers. Many discount his words but some believe. In the verses that follow, we learn their names. There is Dionysius, Damaris, and others. They become the new Jesus community in Athens. 

We don't know what happened to Dionysius and Damaris after Paul left Athens. But I think we're invited to imagine these new believers becoming like Paul. They prayed, worshipped, and shared their new faith with their family and friends. According to the book of Acts, Paul is a model for our own life. He is a person who regularly shared his faith with family, friends, and strangers. He supported himself by working in marketplaces as a leatherworker and he felt no shame when he shared his faith with his colleagues and customers. But he couldn't grow the church on his own. Instead, the Holy Spirit empowered the crowd, the "others," to share their faith too. We sometimes believe that sharing our faith is something only pastors or other people do. But communities grow when the "regular" people in the pews invite their friends, family, and neighbors to discover Jesus. The act of sharing does more than grow the number of people in church. The act of sharing opens our friends to a relationship with something bigger than themselves. And when we share Jesus, our own faith changes as well. Through all the conversations, sharing, and vulnerability needed to invite someone to meet Jesus, we learn more about our own faith and how Jesus makes a difference to us. Faith isn't something only for us. Faith is something others need to. So be like Dionysius and Damaris and the countless others in Acts that go unnamed. Share Jesus today, tomorrow, and forever. 
 

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Who is Stephen? Today's reading from Acts 7:55-60 is a short (too short) part of Stephen's story. Stephen is Jewish but is Hellenized (i.e. Greek). His name is Greek, he speaks Greek, and his culture is Greek as well. As the faith community in Jerusalem grew, people like Stephen joined the church. The apostles (Peter, James, and others) struggled to provide effective leadership over a culturally diverse community. The apostles asked the Greeks to appoint seven leaders who would lead worship and serve this growing community. These seven were called "deacons" and Stephen was one of them. Acts 6:8-10 tells us that Stephen became known as a Spirit-filled follower of Jesus. This did not make some people happy. People came to question Stephen's teachings about Jesus. These arguments grew fierce and dangerous. Stephen is accused of speaking against God and Moses. He's arrested and sent to trial. While at trial, Stephen defends himself and his words make others mad. He invites the people around him to see the presence of the Holy Spirit (and God) in Jesus' community. Instead, the people hear Stephen inviting them to worship an idol (false gods). The people grind their teeth together. Stephen then doubles down on his relationship with God. He is suddenly filled with the Holy Spirit and sees God and Jesus. He tells everyone what he sees. That's the final straw for the crowd. Stephen is dragged outside the city and stoned. 

Verse 56 in today's reading is the only time in the Luke-Acts (Luke and Acts was written by one author) where God physically appears (Margaret Aymer, Working Preacher Commentary on Acts). Stephen sees the glory of God which, to me, is a reference to all of who God is. In that moment, Stephen "gets" God. Stephen also sees Jesus, standing at the right hand of God. The book of Acts isn't trying to tell us where Jesus is physically. Instead, Stephen sees Jesus intimately connected with God. Jesus is connected to God in a unique way. Jesus is God. God is Jesus. And the Holy Spirit is how God reveals this to God's people. In Stephen's story, we see who God is. We know God because we know Jesus. And we know Jesus because Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, comes to us over and over again. Through regular worship, prayer, study, and the sharing of communion, we dwell with the God who is willing to be with us through all things. 

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