Sermon Notes for April 30th
April 30, 2006
“Why do you stare at us?”
Acts 3:12-19
1. At the beginning of my constitutional law book in my college political science course was a little quote by the famous American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr which said:
Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
You’ve probably never heard that one.
However, Reinhold Niebuhr is perhaps best known for a famous prayer which goes like this…
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Is that familiar? It should be. It is the motto of alcoholics anonymous and other 12 step groups. Many many people say that prayer every day.
But what about insoluble Problems? In short, is life really an insoluble
Problem? Or, perhaps, another way of stating it is to substitute the word solvable. Soluble and solvable.
Now, for something to be soluble it means that it can be dissolved into its basic parts. And for something to be solved it means that it can be reduced to its basic elements. In other words, completely taken apart and understood in all its parts. Sort of like being reduced to a basic common denominator as we would say in Mathematics.
2. And what Niebuhr was saying is that life cannot really be dissolved, reduced, taken apart, or ultimately understood completely. Although, (and this is clear) – we are really trying to do just that in so many ways.
For instance the other night I saw on television a short piece on the new exhibit that is opening at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul called Body World. This new exhibition features almost 200 authentic human specimens, including entire bodies, individual organs and transparent body slices that have been preserved through the process of Plastination, a technique that replaces bodily fluids and fat. BODY WORLDS offers a once in a lifetime chance to see and understand our own physiologiy and health and to gain new appreciation and respect for what it means to be human.
Now these are not artificial bodies – these are the actual real bodies of dead human beings who instead of being embalmed or cremated … have been sort of shrink wrapped… and in most cases the skin is removed so you can actually see the bone and muscles as the actually are. Pretty astounding! Are you still interested in seeing this exhibit?
But, will this reduction of the human being to all its moving parts still get us closer to what it means to be a “human being?”
Or, will this exhibit still be another proximate solution to an insoluble problem? Can we really reduce human life to one common denominator?
3. Now, at one time we thought that sooner or later we would be able to actually solve all our problems. For over 300 years ago, western society emerged from the medieval world and we began to discover all manner of things and scientific advances which radically challenged everyone’s way of thinking. Just think of such discoveries as electricity and antibiotics, for instance. At first, it was the age of scientific discover which was followed by the age of applied science or technology.
The enlightenment, as it is now called, believed that all things could be eventually explained rationally and objectively and this same process was and still is being applied to religion and the Bible as well as all other aspects of life.
But it still doesn’t work very well. For it seems that religious faith is not entirely reducible … in other words it is in certain ways insoluble.
Which is another way of saying that life itself is still in many ways a mystery.
And, most likely, this is because God is also not soluble or reducible and is also a mystery and so, as St. Paul said, “We see through a glass darkly…”
4. And a big part of the problem has to do with the fact that try as we will we are not nearly as objective as we think we are…
Let me give you an example in relation to history. One of America’s most prominent historians is Harvard Professor Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger won a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his book on Andrew Jackson which showed parallels between the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and similar problems in earlier American history.
Now, 60 years later, in a recent article Schlesinger admits that he was strongly influenced in writing this book by the events of that time – namely the Great Depression and the efforts of the Democratic president Roosevelt to solve these problems over and against the opposition of business leaders, bankers, and Republicans in general.
What Schlesinger now regrets is that he omitted any mention of slavery, women’s rights, and other current issues that are important today. Why? Because they weren’t as important in the 1940’s – or so people thought. In other words, whenever and whoever writes history is always likely to be influenced not only by what happened back then but also by what is happening right now.
On a little side note, Schlesinger also was a leading opponent of multiculturalism in the 1980s; The Disuniting of America (1991). I heard him speak on this subject at Macalester College some years ago. It turned out that at the time he was not real popular with minority students who were rather vocal about it. Unfortunately, it was after work and I was rather tired and I eventually fell asleep during his lecture! So much for Dr. Schlesinger – I guess.
But, to bring this question of historical analysis a little closer to home … consider for a moment how your opinions of your own parents have changed over the years. Think of how you thought of them as a teenager… and then in your twenties … and then as you became a parent … and now, as some of you are retired, notice how your evaluation and understanding change when your perspective changes. But, which viewpoint is the correct one? Is it more correct to say that wisdom belongs to old age … or is it the idealism and the passion of youth more correct? You be the judge.
5. And then, again, we must ask how good is your memory? Experiments have been shown that simply repeating a false statement over and over leads people to believe it is true --which is one of the basic ideas behind modern advertising and political propaganda. That is why ads on television are played over and over again. Just think of political ads – as an example.
This reminds of me of the visiting minister who found the regular
Minister’s sermon notes in the pulpit. On one of the pages, there was a note in the margin: “Weak point … yell loud!!” And we certainly hear a lot of people this days talking very loudly as if to convince people to agree with them on the basis of pure emotion.
Well now, our memory is tricky. In fact, studies were done on 106 students at Emory University who were asked to fill out a questionnaire on what they remembered of the challenger disaster in l986 – 24 hours after it happened. Then, 2 ½ years later 40 of them were questioned again. And there was a surprising high incidence of substantial error. Many students actually remembered being in different places with different people while doing different things when the event occurred - which makes you wonder, sometimes, about witnesses in a trial. Which makes you wonder how objective the defendants and witnesses really are in the Enron Trial!
6. Well, my point in all of this is to consider now, for a moment how we go about understanding the Bible. Particularly, the New Testament. How accurate are the Gospels? What should we be willing to believe and just how much are we apt to read back into these writings what we want to believe because of what is going on right now.
In other words, can we be objective about how we interpret the Scriptures. Can anyone say “my interpretation of Jesus life and teachings” is the absolutely correct one? And what about all these new writings that people are finding which purport to show very different ideas about Jesus (like the so-called Gospel of Judas which reveals, supposedly, that Judas was Jesus’ closest friends and was in on the betrayal from the start). Who do we believe?
Well, first of all, we have to examine our basic understanding of what the Scriptures are … Are they written by God? Or were they merely written by men? Or, were they written by men who were inspired by God? There are arguments for all three positions, of course. For now, however, I will take the middle route (as I usually do): Namely, that they were written by human beings who were, at the same time, converts to a new religious understanding based on the revelation of Jesus who they believed was not merely just a normal human being but who was also God’s word in human flesh. This is true, is it not? Is this not what we believe based on the testimony of other’s who are also believers like ourselves. In fact, when you think about it, who else would right the New Testament other than someone who believed - certainly not someone who was opposed to Jesus?
7. Yet, at first, we must understand that these early disciples were very mistaken about Jesus. In fact, they betrayed him or at least abandoned him and being fearful of their lives ran away rather than suffer the same fate of crucifixion that killed Jesus.
And then, something totally unusual happened. The person of Jesus somehow reappeared to them in various ways for a short time and then disappeared. At the same time, they also felt a miraculous new spiritual power at work in their lives. Being transformed by this experience, so to speak, many of them went out telling others about it, endured much controversy from those who did not believe it, and ultimately quite a few were put to death just as Jesus was. This all happened in quite a short time … maybe 10 to 20 years. And, then, since Jesus did not return (and there was much confusion about this because the Jews even before Jesus had been expecting a Messianic Day of Judgment), it became necessary to write down the teachings and life of Jesus so that the next generations would have something on which to base their faith. And that is the basic message of the New Testament.
8. So, now tet us ask the age old and yet important question:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Or, which came first the “church” or the Scriptures?
Well, in the case of the New Testament, we can pretty much say that
the church came first. By the church, I mean the early followers of Jesus who were the ones who eventually wrote the Gospels.
And, yet, for most Protestants today, it is not the church but the Scriptures which come first. Mainly, because we were not there and therefore were not eyewitnesses to what happened. So, we must rely on the memory of other human beings who collected the sayings of Jesus and creatively put together the New Testament.
9. And therefore, because we were not there to see for ourselves … and because we must rely on the testimony of others … the Bible becomes a bit problematical. After all, as I have pointed out … people’s memory and objectivity is not all that good … no matter how inspired you may be or think you are. And then, of course, there is also the problem, as we are now finding out, that there are a whole lot of other Gospels lying around which were never included in the New Testament.
Whose idea was this? Well, it was other men. Namely - the Bishops and church leaders who met in the 4th century and decided which books were most likely to be accurate and which were heresy … or definitely wrong. And while they were at it … they also set up the Apostle’s Creed (which we all know) which was a way of determining that if certain scriptures were not consistent with the Apostles creed – then they were thrown out (like the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary and many others – like several dozens). That, my friends, was one of the main purposes of the Creeds.
So, are you getting confused by all this? Well, so are a lot of people .
And now, books like the DaVinci Code and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels have opened up a whole can of worms which the church thought it settled once and for all in 325 AD. No wonder people are confused.
10. What people want, of course, is the one ultimate defining answer that will settle it. Like I said, we want to reduce, to solve, to dissolve, it all into one simple absolute formula which explains everything (kind of like the Creeds). But, creeds alone or any other single thing just won’t do it. For, despite our efforts, God remains a mystery we can’t solve.
Although, of course we still try and always will, I guess. And I do too.
For instance, Catholics believe that the defining answer is of course that the church and the Pope are the final answer. Which means, of course – that the Apostles Creed and all the other teachings of the church which interpret scripture are absolute corrrect. Unfortunately, nowadays lots of people don’t believe the church can be correct on every issue. In short, the church is fallible –and not infallible.
For us Protestants, on the other hand, it has long belived that the Bible is the final answer. But, now, as I have pointed out, the Scriptures nowadays are also seen by many to be fallible or at least imperfect.
In fact, a recent poll showed that a majority of people in America today do not believe the Bible is infallible. When, fifty years ago, the reverse was true. So, what do we do now?
Well, until recently, for many people science or rationality is the answer. But, this no longer satisfies everyone either. For even though modern science and psychology can analyze and thereby reduce everything human to the sum of our parts – this, too, leaves us cold. And we want to rebel against a logical and seemingly Godless universe.
And then lastly, many Christians gravitate toward the idea of a religious bottom line experience – which is namely the “born again” phenomenon – which means that the final authority is the Holy Spirit which defines one as a Christian and “save.”
Unfortunately, many Pentecostals in their rush to give credence to the work of the Spirit give pretty short shrift to the Scriptures and therefore often lack the insights which sound biblical understanding and theological training provide. And this, we must remember is the work of the church.
Well, what now? We definitely seem to be in quandary – don’t we?
So, what do we do now? – you ask.
11. Hah! In spite of what I have said so far I do have an answer after all! Or, at least John Wesley did. Because he said that it is really all four things which work together to form our understanding of God’s will for our lives: What are they:
a. The traditions and teaching of the Church
b. The Holy Scriptures
c. The use of reason and common sense
d. The experience of God’s grace.
What this means is that while no one single idea is absolute – yet at the same time they all work together to provide a balanced and sound understand of religious faith. As a result, we may say that Methodism is not a religion of absolutes. Only God, we say, is absolute and although our understanding of God is fallible (including the Scriptures) we believe that God is at work in all these various ways to reveal Himself to us and therefore we are given many different and complementary ways to shape and form our idea of who our Creator is and what Jesus was all about. Does this make sense?
12. Well, with this in mind let us now consider briefly what happened in Acts – Chapter 3. And I read to you from the Gene Peterson version beginning not with verse 12 but with verse 1.
1One day at three o'clock in the afternoon, Peter and John were on their way into the Temple for prayer meeting. 2At the same time there was a man crippled from birth being carried up. Every day he was set down at the Temple gate, to beg from those going into the Temple. 3When he saw Peter and John he asked for a handout.
4Peter, with John at his side, looked him straight in the eye and said, " Look here." 5He looked up, expecting to get something from them.
6Peter said, "I don't have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!" 7He grabbed him by the right hand and pulled him up. In an instant his feet and ankles became firm. 8He jumped to his feet and walked.
The man went into the Temple with them, walking back and forth, dancing and praising God. 9Everybody there saw him walking around and praising God. 10They recognized him as the one who sat begging at the Temple's Gate Beautiful and rubbed their eyes, astonished, scarcely believing what they were seeing.
11The man threw his arms around Peter and John, ecstatic. All the people ran up to where they were at Solomon's Porch to see it for themselves.
12When Peter saw he had a congregation, he addressed the people:
"Oh, Israelites, why does this take you by such complete surprise, and why stare at us as if our power or piety made him walk? 13The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his Son Jesus. The very One that Pilate called innocent, you repudiated. 14You repudiated the Holy One, the Just One, and asked for a murderer in his place. 15You no sooner killed the Author of Life than God raised him from the dead--and we're the witnesses. 16Faith in Jesus' name put this man, whose condition you know so well, on his feet--yes, faith and nothing but faith put this man healed and whole right before your eyes.
17"And now, friends, I know you had no idea what you were doing when you killed Jesus, and neither did your leaders. 18But God, who through the preaching of all the prophets had said all along that his Messiah would be killed, knew exactly what you were doing and used it to fulfill his plans.
And Peter ends by saying….
19"Now it's time to change your ways! Turn to face God so he can wipe away your sins,
13. No, first of all, by using our human reason we might ask somewhat skeptically: Did this really happen? How did Luke (who wrote Acts) remember this story after 50 some years when Acts was actually written (around 80 or 90 AD)? Did he actually remember exactly what these men actually said? Was he even there? Or did he make some of it up because it fit the story? Maybe … maybe not. We just don’t know for sure and probably never will…
On this same subject, the noted Biblical scholar, Robert Grant points out that while Luke was actually writing a history he did not have the same conception of history that we do today … and he no doubt felt free to alter things as he saw fit to make his point. In those days everybody did it. And even now, as I pointed out with Dr. Schlesinger, we still do it today (intentionally or otherwise). Isn’t that right? In other words, the book of Acts is really a recording and yet a reinterpretation of actual events which were originally told by word of mouth. And the person writing it was a devout Christian who very much believed that God was present in Jesus Christ. Would we expect anything less? Yet, it is still possible to understand that this is not literally true as some believe. God did not write it. Luke did. And Luke was nevertheless a fallible human being just as we are.
In the end, it is finally not a matter of objectivity so much as a matter of faith and we actually are led to believe in these accounts of Jesus and the Apostles in part because of our own personal experience of God through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives today.
So, regarding this passage, the next concern we have is with the early church and its tradition which was just developing. We see this clearly in the conflict between Peter and John and their friends – the Israelites. Quite clearly at that time the people truly believed that an exorcism or a miracle healing had occurred.
This was not unusual (even though we find it strange today). But, instead of dwelling on this event, Luke has Peter wisely point out that it was not the men themselves who did it – but rather God who did it through the work of the Spirit. And then Luke goes on to have Peter give a sermon right then and there about how the power which was present in Jesus Christ is the same power present in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, the God of Jesus is the God of the Jews who they have rejected because they had trouble believing in Jesus. So, we must understand that it must really have been very frustrating for these early followers of Jesus to find that not everyone was open to accepting who Jesus was.
Is it any different today where we struggle with the fact that some of our own friends and relatives cannot or do not wish to believe in Jesus, either?
14. And so we begin to see the conflict which developed between he early Christians and their Jewish friends over the meaning of Christ – a conflict that would eventually lead to a split between these two views of God. But, we must understand that this had not fully happened yet in the Book of Acts, because as you can see, the disciples were still going to the Temple for worship along with the other Jews.
In other words, whether this event happened exactly like this, it clearly shows the situation in the early days after Jesus crucifixion and reveals the dilemma of the disciples as to how they would remain Jewish and still worship Jesus.
So, this is a pretty clear cut story about how the power of Jesus Christ who was present in the Holy Spirit inspired Luke and the early disciples and even allowed them at times to even perform miracles of healing.
15. Now, what does this mean today? Well, the danger is and has been that the common understand of this text and many others naturally seems to pit the Jews against the Christians. This viewpoint serves to nicely get us off the hook because it appears to look as though we can manage to look good just because we know we are saved and the Jews are not. And, as we know, this has led to centuries of persecution and killing of our Jewish brothers & sisters because they interpret God slightly differently than we do. And I must say that this is wrong. After all, if I believed as some do about the Jews I would never have brought our young people down to Temple Israel last week so that they would learn to appreciate the fact that while we have major differences … we are in many ways very much alike.
For the truth is that anti-semitism is a very real human evil for which we must atone, and even the Pope has apologized for the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.
In fact, if you think about it, it really seems incredible that any Christians who believe that God so loved the world that he sent his Son Jesus to save it would on the other hand want Christians to kill Jews as some kind of revenge for Jesus’ crucifixion at the hand of the Romans. For it is clear that those who allowed him to be killed were not the common people who accepted him – but the religious leaders for whom Jesus was a threat to their prestige, wealth and social position.
Instead, for today, let us interpret this story to be a challenge to ourselves to claim the power of Jesus Christ in our own lives – lest we be blind to God’s Spirit at work here and now.
No, we don’t need to look to the Jews … but instead we need to put ourselves in place of the beggar and ask ourselves what is it in my life that needs healing. That’s what we really need to do.
Or, perhaps, we might place ourselves in the place of the Israelites who failed to believe in miracles and simply stood and stared at Peter and John.
In the end, the Gospel message to each of us today is that God is present and among us and the big question we should ask is: “So, what are YOU staring at?”
“Why do you stare at us?”
Acts 3:12-19
1. At the beginning of my constitutional law book in my college political science course was a little quote by the famous American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr which said:
Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
You’ve probably never heard that one.
However, Reinhold Niebuhr is perhaps best known for a famous prayer which goes like this…
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Is that familiar? It should be. It is the motto of alcoholics anonymous and other 12 step groups. Many many people say that prayer every day.
But what about insoluble Problems? In short, is life really an insoluble
Problem? Or, perhaps, another way of stating it is to substitute the word solvable. Soluble and solvable.
Now, for something to be soluble it means that it can be dissolved into its basic parts. And for something to be solved it means that it can be reduced to its basic elements. In other words, completely taken apart and understood in all its parts. Sort of like being reduced to a basic common denominator as we would say in Mathematics.
2. And what Niebuhr was saying is that life cannot really be dissolved, reduced, taken apart, or ultimately understood completely. Although, (and this is clear) – we are really trying to do just that in so many ways.
For instance the other night I saw on television a short piece on the new exhibit that is opening at the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul called Body World. This new exhibition features almost 200 authentic human specimens, including entire bodies, individual organs and transparent body slices that have been preserved through the process of Plastination, a technique that replaces bodily fluids and fat. BODY WORLDS offers a once in a lifetime chance to see and understand our own physiologiy and health and to gain new appreciation and respect for what it means to be human.
Now these are not artificial bodies – these are the actual real bodies of dead human beings who instead of being embalmed or cremated … have been sort of shrink wrapped… and in most cases the skin is removed so you can actually see the bone and muscles as the actually are. Pretty astounding! Are you still interested in seeing this exhibit?
But, will this reduction of the human being to all its moving parts still get us closer to what it means to be a “human being?”
Or, will this exhibit still be another proximate solution to an insoluble problem? Can we really reduce human life to one common denominator?
3. Now, at one time we thought that sooner or later we would be able to actually solve all our problems. For over 300 years ago, western society emerged from the medieval world and we began to discover all manner of things and scientific advances which radically challenged everyone’s way of thinking. Just think of such discoveries as electricity and antibiotics, for instance. At first, it was the age of scientific discover which was followed by the age of applied science or technology.
The enlightenment, as it is now called, believed that all things could be eventually explained rationally and objectively and this same process was and still is being applied to religion and the Bible as well as all other aspects of life.
But it still doesn’t work very well. For it seems that religious faith is not entirely reducible … in other words it is in certain ways insoluble.
Which is another way of saying that life itself is still in many ways a mystery.
And, most likely, this is because God is also not soluble or reducible and is also a mystery and so, as St. Paul said, “We see through a glass darkly…”
4. And a big part of the problem has to do with the fact that try as we will we are not nearly as objective as we think we are…
Let me give you an example in relation to history. One of America’s most prominent historians is Harvard Professor Arthur Schlesinger. Schlesinger won a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his book on Andrew Jackson which showed parallels between the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt and similar problems in earlier American history.
Now, 60 years later, in a recent article Schlesinger admits that he was strongly influenced in writing this book by the events of that time – namely the Great Depression and the efforts of the Democratic president Roosevelt to solve these problems over and against the opposition of business leaders, bankers, and Republicans in general.
What Schlesinger now regrets is that he omitted any mention of slavery, women’s rights, and other current issues that are important today. Why? Because they weren’t as important in the 1940’s – or so people thought. In other words, whenever and whoever writes history is always likely to be influenced not only by what happened back then but also by what is happening right now.
On a little side note, Schlesinger also was a leading opponent of multiculturalism in the 1980s; The Disuniting of America (1991). I heard him speak on this subject at Macalester College some years ago. It turned out that at the time he was not real popular with minority students who were rather vocal about it. Unfortunately, it was after work and I was rather tired and I eventually fell asleep during his lecture! So much for Dr. Schlesinger – I guess.
But, to bring this question of historical analysis a little closer to home … consider for a moment how your opinions of your own parents have changed over the years. Think of how you thought of them as a teenager… and then in your twenties … and then as you became a parent … and now, as some of you are retired, notice how your evaluation and understanding change when your perspective changes. But, which viewpoint is the correct one? Is it more correct to say that wisdom belongs to old age … or is it the idealism and the passion of youth more correct? You be the judge.
5. And then, again, we must ask how good is your memory? Experiments have been shown that simply repeating a false statement over and over leads people to believe it is true --which is one of the basic ideas behind modern advertising and political propaganda. That is why ads on television are played over and over again. Just think of political ads – as an example.
This reminds of me of the visiting minister who found the regular
Minister’s sermon notes in the pulpit. On one of the pages, there was a note in the margin: “Weak point … yell loud!!” And we certainly hear a lot of people this days talking very loudly as if to convince people to agree with them on the basis of pure emotion.
Well now, our memory is tricky. In fact, studies were done on 106 students at Emory University who were asked to fill out a questionnaire on what they remembered of the challenger disaster in l986 – 24 hours after it happened. Then, 2 ½ years later 40 of them were questioned again. And there was a surprising high incidence of substantial error. Many students actually remembered being in different places with different people while doing different things when the event occurred - which makes you wonder, sometimes, about witnesses in a trial. Which makes you wonder how objective the defendants and witnesses really are in the Enron Trial!
6. Well, my point in all of this is to consider now, for a moment how we go about understanding the Bible. Particularly, the New Testament. How accurate are the Gospels? What should we be willing to believe and just how much are we apt to read back into these writings what we want to believe because of what is going on right now.
In other words, can we be objective about how we interpret the Scriptures. Can anyone say “my interpretation of Jesus life and teachings” is the absolutely correct one? And what about all these new writings that people are finding which purport to show very different ideas about Jesus (like the so-called Gospel of Judas which reveals, supposedly, that Judas was Jesus’ closest friends and was in on the betrayal from the start). Who do we believe?
Well, first of all, we have to examine our basic understanding of what the Scriptures are … Are they written by God? Or were they merely written by men? Or, were they written by men who were inspired by God? There are arguments for all three positions, of course. For now, however, I will take the middle route (as I usually do): Namely, that they were written by human beings who were, at the same time, converts to a new religious understanding based on the revelation of Jesus who they believed was not merely just a normal human being but who was also God’s word in human flesh. This is true, is it not? Is this not what we believe based on the testimony of other’s who are also believers like ourselves. In fact, when you think about it, who else would right the New Testament other than someone who believed - certainly not someone who was opposed to Jesus?
7. Yet, at first, we must understand that these early disciples were very mistaken about Jesus. In fact, they betrayed him or at least abandoned him and being fearful of their lives ran away rather than suffer the same fate of crucifixion that killed Jesus.
And then, something totally unusual happened. The person of Jesus somehow reappeared to them in various ways for a short time and then disappeared. At the same time, they also felt a miraculous new spiritual power at work in their lives. Being transformed by this experience, so to speak, many of them went out telling others about it, endured much controversy from those who did not believe it, and ultimately quite a few were put to death just as Jesus was. This all happened in quite a short time … maybe 10 to 20 years. And, then, since Jesus did not return (and there was much confusion about this because the Jews even before Jesus had been expecting a Messianic Day of Judgment), it became necessary to write down the teachings and life of Jesus so that the next generations would have something on which to base their faith. And that is the basic message of the New Testament.
8. So, now tet us ask the age old and yet important question:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Or, which came first the “church” or the Scriptures?
Well, in the case of the New Testament, we can pretty much say that
the church came first. By the church, I mean the early followers of Jesus who were the ones who eventually wrote the Gospels.
And, yet, for most Protestants today, it is not the church but the Scriptures which come first. Mainly, because we were not there and therefore were not eyewitnesses to what happened. So, we must rely on the memory of other human beings who collected the sayings of Jesus and creatively put together the New Testament.
9. And therefore, because we were not there to see for ourselves … and because we must rely on the testimony of others … the Bible becomes a bit problematical. After all, as I have pointed out … people’s memory and objectivity is not all that good … no matter how inspired you may be or think you are. And then, of course, there is also the problem, as we are now finding out, that there are a whole lot of other Gospels lying around which were never included in the New Testament.
Whose idea was this? Well, it was other men. Namely - the Bishops and church leaders who met in the 4th century and decided which books were most likely to be accurate and which were heresy … or definitely wrong. And while they were at it … they also set up the Apostle’s Creed (which we all know) which was a way of determining that if certain scriptures were not consistent with the Apostles creed – then they were thrown out (like the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Mary and many others – like several dozens). That, my friends, was one of the main purposes of the Creeds.
So, are you getting confused by all this? Well, so are a lot of people .
And now, books like the DaVinci Code and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels have opened up a whole can of worms which the church thought it settled once and for all in 325 AD. No wonder people are confused.
10. What people want, of course, is the one ultimate defining answer that will settle it. Like I said, we want to reduce, to solve, to dissolve, it all into one simple absolute formula which explains everything (kind of like the Creeds). But, creeds alone or any other single thing just won’t do it. For, despite our efforts, God remains a mystery we can’t solve.
Although, of course we still try and always will, I guess. And I do too.
For instance, Catholics believe that the defining answer is of course that the church and the Pope are the final answer. Which means, of course – that the Apostles Creed and all the other teachings of the church which interpret scripture are absolute corrrect. Unfortunately, nowadays lots of people don’t believe the church can be correct on every issue. In short, the church is fallible –and not infallible.
For us Protestants, on the other hand, it has long belived that the Bible is the final answer. But, now, as I have pointed out, the Scriptures nowadays are also seen by many to be fallible or at least imperfect.
In fact, a recent poll showed that a majority of people in America today do not believe the Bible is infallible. When, fifty years ago, the reverse was true. So, what do we do now?
Well, until recently, for many people science or rationality is the answer. But, this no longer satisfies everyone either. For even though modern science and psychology can analyze and thereby reduce everything human to the sum of our parts – this, too, leaves us cold. And we want to rebel against a logical and seemingly Godless universe.
And then lastly, many Christians gravitate toward the idea of a religious bottom line experience – which is namely the “born again” phenomenon – which means that the final authority is the Holy Spirit which defines one as a Christian and “save.”
Unfortunately, many Pentecostals in their rush to give credence to the work of the Spirit give pretty short shrift to the Scriptures and therefore often lack the insights which sound biblical understanding and theological training provide. And this, we must remember is the work of the church.
Well, what now? We definitely seem to be in quandary – don’t we?
So, what do we do now? – you ask.
11. Hah! In spite of what I have said so far I do have an answer after all! Or, at least John Wesley did. Because he said that it is really all four things which work together to form our understanding of God’s will for our lives: What are they:
a. The traditions and teaching of the Church
b. The Holy Scriptures
c. The use of reason and common sense
d. The experience of God’s grace.
What this means is that while no one single idea is absolute – yet at the same time they all work together to provide a balanced and sound understand of religious faith. As a result, we may say that Methodism is not a religion of absolutes. Only God, we say, is absolute and although our understanding of God is fallible (including the Scriptures) we believe that God is at work in all these various ways to reveal Himself to us and therefore we are given many different and complementary ways to shape and form our idea of who our Creator is and what Jesus was all about. Does this make sense?
12. Well, with this in mind let us now consider briefly what happened in Acts – Chapter 3. And I read to you from the Gene Peterson version beginning not with verse 12 but with verse 1.
1One day at three o'clock in the afternoon, Peter and John were on their way into the Temple for prayer meeting. 2At the same time there was a man crippled from birth being carried up. Every day he was set down at the Temple gate, to beg from those going into the Temple. 3When he saw Peter and John he asked for a handout.
4Peter, with John at his side, looked him straight in the eye and said, " Look here." 5He looked up, expecting to get something from them.
6Peter said, "I don't have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!" 7He grabbed him by the right hand and pulled him up. In an instant his feet and ankles became firm. 8He jumped to his feet and walked.
The man went into the Temple with them, walking back and forth, dancing and praising God. 9Everybody there saw him walking around and praising God. 10They recognized him as the one who sat begging at the Temple's Gate Beautiful and rubbed their eyes, astonished, scarcely believing what they were seeing.
11The man threw his arms around Peter and John, ecstatic. All the people ran up to where they were at Solomon's Porch to see it for themselves.
12When Peter saw he had a congregation, he addressed the people:
"Oh, Israelites, why does this take you by such complete surprise, and why stare at us as if our power or piety made him walk? 13The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his Son Jesus. The very One that Pilate called innocent, you repudiated. 14You repudiated the Holy One, the Just One, and asked for a murderer in his place. 15You no sooner killed the Author of Life than God raised him from the dead--and we're the witnesses. 16Faith in Jesus' name put this man, whose condition you know so well, on his feet--yes, faith and nothing but faith put this man healed and whole right before your eyes.
17"And now, friends, I know you had no idea what you were doing when you killed Jesus, and neither did your leaders. 18But God, who through the preaching of all the prophets had said all along that his Messiah would be killed, knew exactly what you were doing and used it to fulfill his plans.
And Peter ends by saying….
19"Now it's time to change your ways! Turn to face God so he can wipe away your sins,
13. No, first of all, by using our human reason we might ask somewhat skeptically: Did this really happen? How did Luke (who wrote Acts) remember this story after 50 some years when Acts was actually written (around 80 or 90 AD)? Did he actually remember exactly what these men actually said? Was he even there? Or did he make some of it up because it fit the story? Maybe … maybe not. We just don’t know for sure and probably never will…
On this same subject, the noted Biblical scholar, Robert Grant points out that while Luke was actually writing a history he did not have the same conception of history that we do today … and he no doubt felt free to alter things as he saw fit to make his point. In those days everybody did it. And even now, as I pointed out with Dr. Schlesinger, we still do it today (intentionally or otherwise). Isn’t that right? In other words, the book of Acts is really a recording and yet a reinterpretation of actual events which were originally told by word of mouth. And the person writing it was a devout Christian who very much believed that God was present in Jesus Christ. Would we expect anything less? Yet, it is still possible to understand that this is not literally true as some believe. God did not write it. Luke did. And Luke was nevertheless a fallible human being just as we are.
In the end, it is finally not a matter of objectivity so much as a matter of faith and we actually are led to believe in these accounts of Jesus and the Apostles in part because of our own personal experience of God through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives today.
So, regarding this passage, the next concern we have is with the early church and its tradition which was just developing. We see this clearly in the conflict between Peter and John and their friends – the Israelites. Quite clearly at that time the people truly believed that an exorcism or a miracle healing had occurred.
This was not unusual (even though we find it strange today). But, instead of dwelling on this event, Luke has Peter wisely point out that it was not the men themselves who did it – but rather God who did it through the work of the Spirit. And then Luke goes on to have Peter give a sermon right then and there about how the power which was present in Jesus Christ is the same power present in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, the God of Jesus is the God of the Jews who they have rejected because they had trouble believing in Jesus. So, we must understand that it must really have been very frustrating for these early followers of Jesus to find that not everyone was open to accepting who Jesus was.
Is it any different today where we struggle with the fact that some of our own friends and relatives cannot or do not wish to believe in Jesus, either?
14. And so we begin to see the conflict which developed between he early Christians and their Jewish friends over the meaning of Christ – a conflict that would eventually lead to a split between these two views of God. But, we must understand that this had not fully happened yet in the Book of Acts, because as you can see, the disciples were still going to the Temple for worship along with the other Jews.
In other words, whether this event happened exactly like this, it clearly shows the situation in the early days after Jesus crucifixion and reveals the dilemma of the disciples as to how they would remain Jewish and still worship Jesus.
So, this is a pretty clear cut story about how the power of Jesus Christ who was present in the Holy Spirit inspired Luke and the early disciples and even allowed them at times to even perform miracles of healing.
15. Now, what does this mean today? Well, the danger is and has been that the common understand of this text and many others naturally seems to pit the Jews against the Christians. This viewpoint serves to nicely get us off the hook because it appears to look as though we can manage to look good just because we know we are saved and the Jews are not. And, as we know, this has led to centuries of persecution and killing of our Jewish brothers & sisters because they interpret God slightly differently than we do. And I must say that this is wrong. After all, if I believed as some do about the Jews I would never have brought our young people down to Temple Israel last week so that they would learn to appreciate the fact that while we have major differences … we are in many ways very much alike.
For the truth is that anti-semitism is a very real human evil for which we must atone, and even the Pope has apologized for the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.
In fact, if you think about it, it really seems incredible that any Christians who believe that God so loved the world that he sent his Son Jesus to save it would on the other hand want Christians to kill Jews as some kind of revenge for Jesus’ crucifixion at the hand of the Romans. For it is clear that those who allowed him to be killed were not the common people who accepted him – but the religious leaders for whom Jesus was a threat to their prestige, wealth and social position.
Instead, for today, let us interpret this story to be a challenge to ourselves to claim the power of Jesus Christ in our own lives – lest we be blind to God’s Spirit at work here and now.
No, we don’t need to look to the Jews … but instead we need to put ourselves in place of the beggar and ask ourselves what is it in my life that needs healing. That’s what we really need to do.
Or, perhaps, we might place ourselves in the place of the Israelites who failed to believe in miracles and simply stood and stared at Peter and John.
In the end, the Gospel message to each of us today is that God is present and among us and the big question we should ask is: “So, what are YOU staring at?”
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