KNU International English Church
Josh Broward
May 17, 2009
I grew up in Texas, and Texans love Country Music. I grew up singing songs by Garth Brooks, songs like:
I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I'll be okay
I'm not big on social graces
Think I'll slip on down to the oasis
Oh, I've got friends in low places
One of Garth Brooks' less famous songs is, “Unanswered Prayers.” The song is in a story form. He meets an ex-girlfriend at a football game, and he remembers how he prayed – how he begged – God to give him this one girl. Then, he looks over at his wife and thanks God for NOT answering that prayer. “Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers,” he sings.
I've been thinking this week that some of our prayers are pretty dangerous.
God, make me patient. Be careful what you pray for, right?!
God, make me like Jesus. – Uh, dangerous? Hello! He died on a cross!
God, help me to trust you. Remember what happened when Peter trusted Jesus. He ended up walking on a stormy sea.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. - Everyone who sins against us? No matter what the sin?
God, lead us. Show us your will, and help us to follow. - Yeah, that will get you into trouble every time.
What about this one? We pray this one every week here. May God make us a loving community that changes our world. What if God really starts answering this prayer? What if God really starts fulfilling our vision? What if God pulls us together with all kinds of diverse people – people we are uncomfortable with, people who don't normally go to church, at least not our churches, people who might need our help? What if God really helps us to love like he loves? Would our hearts break more often? Would we have to change how we think, how we talk, how we work? What if God started changing the world by doing a radical change right here in us, right here in this church? What if God starts by radically changing you?
That is dangerous! Do you really want God to answer that prayer?
The book of Acts begins with a big vision: “In just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5). In a few days, you're going to get God!
But the disciples don't get it: “OK, Jesus, but when do we start forming an army to kick out those dirty Romans? Are we there yet? Is it time yet? Now? Now? Now?” (1:6)
Jesus responds by making the vision even bigger, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8).
And the disciples seem to kind of stand there and scratch their heads and say, “Huh, I wonder what that means.”
But they keep meeting together, and on the day of Pentecost, God fulfills his promise. He pours out the Holy Spirit in an amazing way, but God goes beyond their expectations. People from all over the world can understand everything the disciples as if the disciples are speaking the languages from all over the world. From day one, Jews from many different cultures and nations are included in the Churchs. (Acts 2) Dangerous!
Then Peter and John heal a crippled guy and get in trouble. And how does the church respond? They pray for boldness and courage and miracles. (Acts 3-4). Dangerous!
The very next scene is two people who try to cheat on their offerings. They stand there and lie to Peter's face, and then they fall over dead. Now, I honestly dont' know what that means, but I do know it's dangerous! People falling over dead in church – it doesn't get much more dangerous than that! (Acts 5)
The apostles keep preaching, and God keeps working. The religious leaders put the apostles in jail, and God busts them out. Dangerous! Then the apostles go straight back to the Temple and start preaching again. Hello! Dangerous! So the religious leaders order the apostles to be beaten with whips, and what do the apostles do? They thank God for letting them suffer like Jesus and go out and start preaching again! Dangerous! (Acts 5)
Next, the church has some problems with their widows feeding program. They decide to appoint seven guys to do the social work, so the apostles can do the teaching. But Stephen, one of the social work guys, starts healing people and doing miracles and teaching and debating and preaching about Jesus. That's not his job, remember. And, he gets arrested and killed. Dangerous! (Acts 6-7)
Then, the poop hits the fan. People start attacking Christians all over the place, and the Christians scatter. They run for their lives, but everywhere they go, they keep talking about Jesus. Dangerous! (8:1-4)
Philip goes to Samaria and tells people there about Jesus. Samaritans were half-Jews, religious rejects. Good Jews wouldn't even touch a Samaritan, but Philip tells them about Jesus. Dangerous! Then, Peter and John get in on the action and start praying for the Holy Spirit and preaching to other Samaritans. Dangerous stuff, here! (8:5-24)
Then, an angel sends Philip to convert that “genital-free African,”1 and he asks, “What should hinder me from being baptized?” (8:25-40). So Philip breaks new ground. He baptizes a non-Jew who doesn't even have his male-parts – a big problem for Jewish culture. Dangerous!
Meanwhile, Saul is going around busting up as many Christians as he can find. He goes all the way to Damascus, in Syria, looking for Jesus' followers. Then the Holy Spirit knocks him to the ground and blinds him. That sounds dangerous! God tells a Christian named Ananias to go and help Saul because Saul will take God's message to the gentiles. So Ananias brings this Christian-killer into his home and helps him become a Christian. That is definitely dangerous! (Acts 9)
The story really picks up in Acts 10 with this guy named Cornelius. Cornelius is a Roman army captain. An angel shows up and tells him to send for Peter. He doesn't say why. He just says, “Go get Peter.” Dangerous!
Now Peter is living with Simon the tanner, Simon the leather-worker, Simon the guy who kills animals and pulls the skin off their dead bodies and scrapes the flesh off and stretches it out on racks to dry. Simon's house stinks so much that he has to live by the beach so the wind will blow away the stink from the drying animal skins. Simon is a Jew, but he is an unclean Jew. The very fact that Peter is living with Simon shows that Peter has already started abandoning some of the traditional Jewish rules. Dangerous!
Peter is up on the roof praying, and he has a vision. He sees all kinds of animals – clean and unclean, kosher and forbidden. Remember, Jews have very strict rules for what kind of meat they can eat. Asking Peter to eat pork would be kind of like asking us to take a bite out of a rotting human eyeball. It's not only gross; it challenges our very identity as people. So Peter says, “Uh, Homie don't play that!” or in more technical language, “Not at all, Lord.” Did you catch that? Peter said “no” to God!! So God says, “Don't call something unclean if I have made it clean.” Dangerous!
This is not the first time God has challenged Peter's religious rules. Years earlier Jesus said, “Can't you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you?” (Mark 7:18). Peter didn't get it then, and he doesn't get it now. It's just too dangerous for a good Jewish boy.
So the Spirit whispers in Peter's ear, “Three guys have come looking for you. Go with them without any reservations.” That sounds pretty cool – a supernatural doorbell with a hidden camera – but also dangerous, no questions, just go. Peter tops off the danger by inviting these gentiles in for a meal.
The next day they all go to Cornelius's house – also dangerous, as Peter points out. Jews aren't supposed to be hanging with Gentiles. That's just not allowed. Peter tells them about Jesus. He tells them about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, and he says, “Everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name” (Acts 10:43).
That's where our passage picks up. Let's read Acts 10:44-48.
What is happening here?
God is breaking out of the church's religious expectations.
God is answering their prayers – far more than they expected.
God is welcoming outsiders. God is opening the doors of the church for all people everywhere.
God is teaching Peter the gospel just as much as God is teaching Cornelius the gospel.
God is converting/saving Peter just as much as he is converting/saving Cornelius.
The Holy Spirit is working in amazing ways. Peter and the other Jewish Christians have a choice.
They could hinder the Spirit, put shackles on the Spirit, deny what they see, keep their religious expectations, keep their limited vision of God being only for the Jews, in the Jewish ways, within the Jewish systems.
Instead, they choose to work with the Spirit – even following the Spirit into dangerous new territory. This is truly dangerous! They aren't Jewish. They haven't been circumcised. They aren't committed to eating Jewish style foods. The only thing they have got is God, and Peter says that's enough! Dangerous!
Last week, Megan preached on the Ethiopian eunuch, and she quoted Rob Bell's discussion that Philip's difficult choice. If he followed the clear movement of God in his life, he would have to break a religious rule. Bell says, “This is the tension throughout the early church. What do you do when your religion isn't big enough for God? What do you do when your rules and codes and laws simply aren't enough anymore? What do you do when your system falls apart because the new thing that God is doing is better, beyond, superior, more compelling?”2
I liked that so much, I borrowed the book from her. Bell says lots of good stuff:
“Everything's changing. … The gospel is leaving its former confines … and it's heading to the ends of the earth. And that means nothing looks like it used to.”3
“Jesus is inviting them to participate in a reality so liberating and compelling that Jerusalem can't contain it. The disciples can't fathom something that new and transcendent.”4
“Acts is a story of movement, motion, progress. It's people being caught up in something that simply must expand, and stretch, and go. Because no one city, no one religion, no one perspective, no one worldview can contain it.”5
What happens when God starts to do what he promised?
What happens when God actually starts to fulfill the vision he has given us?
What happens when gay people and hard drinkers and lots of migrant workers and liberals and fundamentalists and people who don't care much about religion and maybe don't even like church – what happens when they start coming here? What happens when they become members here and make their homes here?
What happens when God fulfills our vision beyond our expectations?
What happens if other churches get angry with us? What happens if people persecute us for our actions or style? What happens if people say a church like this doesn't belong in Korea or in the Church of the Nazarene?
What happens if the religious leaders call us into their offices and question us and argue with us and shout and condemn us because we lift high the cross of Christ and shout world-wide-welcome to all who come?
What happens if people leave because they don't want to be part of this kind of church?
What happens if all of this happens, but we can see undeniably that God is working? What happens if we can see the Holy Spirit working, filling people, saving people, transforming people – filling us, saving us, transforming us?
What will we do then? What will we do? What will you do?
I hope – I pray – that we will do just what Peter did, just what the early church did. We will remain faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ at all costs. We will simply tell what we see God doing and tell how we are trying to follow the Holy Spirit's leading. When we face a choice between our religious rules and the work of the Holy Spirit, I pray that we will choose God every single time, every single time.
I need to get better at this. We all need to get better at this. As God fulfills his promises among us, we will face these choices more and more.
Be ready. This is dangerous! Are you ready to get dangerous?
------------------
1Rob Bell and Don Golden, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, 93.
2Ibid, 101.
3Ibid, 107-8.
4Ibid, 110.
5Ibid, 112-113.
No comments:
Post a Comment