{"id":119,"date":"2010-04-25T07:23:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-25T12:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=119"},"modified":"2010-04-25T07:23:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-25T12:23:46","slug":"fourth-sunday-in-easter-the-work-of-the-church-april-25-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2010\/04\/25\/fourth-sunday-in-easter-the-work-of-the-church-april-25-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Fourth Sunday in Easter: The Work of the Church April 25, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts:\u00a0 Acts 9:36-43; \u00a0Psalm 23; \u00a0John 10:22-30<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Our Scripture readings for today suggest that there are no fully rational ways of proving the Gospel\u2014which is not to say that there are not rational ways of talking about Christianity, or even about religion.\u00a0 Scripture always points us toward action rather than doctrine; and \u00a0to the witness of real lives\u2026not cognitive assertions, or doctrinal recitations.<\/p>\n

Luke, in his history of the new ecclesia, the new group of people of The Way, wants us to know that the explosive growth of the young church following the earthly ministry of Jesus was accompanied by the continuing power of God at work visibly through the way the people of the way cared for those in need around them.<\/p>\n

If a church ever wonders why it isn\u2019t growing, it might look to its \u201cworks.\u201d\u00a0 Charity and compassion are the first, and most crucial, mark of the identity of the church, because such works mean that the church is living out the life of Jesus in its own existence.<\/p>\n

Luke, the author of both the Gospel and this book of the Acts of the Apostles, wants us to see Peter, and later the redeemed persecutor of the church, Paul, and all the other disciples, as those who carried on the work that Jesus had begun.\u00a0 These stories parallel the deeds of Jesus in his earthly ministry.<\/p>\n

Here in Acts,\u00a0 Luke is\u00a0 reminding us of his reports in the Gospel of how Jesus raised a widow\u2019s son at Nain, and raised the daughter of Jairus.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 prophetic ministry, his healing and compassionate power to pull people from death and something less than life to the life that God intended for them, is shown as continuing.\u00a0\u00a0 For Luke, the power of the Easter faith is seen not only through Peter, but also through the small deeds of compassion and good works of a tradeswoman,\u00a0 Tabitha, whose Greek name was Dorcas. \u00a0Interestingly, the only time in the whole New Testament that the feminine form of the word “disciple” is used, it is applied to Dorcas, or Tabitha, as she was known by her Aramaic name.<\/p>\n

Outsiders can discern the Lord\u2019s presence, the risen Lord, more through acts of mercy than through all our catechisms or programs for children and youth, our rituals, or the elegance of our buildings and talent of our choirs and preachers.\u00a0 An Amish man was once asked by an enthusiastic young evangelist whether he had been saved, and whether he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior?\u00a0 The Amish man repied, \u201cWhy do you ask me<\/em> such a thing?\u00a0 I<\/em> could tell you anything.\u00a0 Here are the names of my banker, my grocer, and my farm hands.\u00a0 Ask them<\/em> if I\u2019ve been saved.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 What do you think your acquaintances and business colleagues might say about you?<\/p>\n

Although it would appear that the reading from Acts and the Gospel have little to connect them, in fact, it is this matter of the works that Christ does, or that are done in his name, which must finally suffice.\u00a0\u00a0 We can never prove who Jesus is beyond all doubt.<\/p>\n

People came to him to press the question:\u00a0 Are you the Messiah?\u00a0 the Christ?\u00a0\u00a0 Although John gives these questioners the name, \u201cthe Jews\u201d, it cannot be stressed too often nor too strongly that the author of the Fourth Gospel was writing at a time when the early church was in the process of a very contentious and unfortunate divorce from Judaism.\u00a0\u00a0 The 10th<\/sup> chapter of John, the chapter containing the \u201cI am the Good Shepherd\u201d declaration,\u00a0 has been, for too long, used as an argument that Christianity has superceded Judaism.<\/p>\n

In fact, one of the interesting sidelights to this text in John is the way in which John places the ministry of Jesus against a backdrop of Jewish festivals.\u00a0 In the reading for today, it is winter and the time of the Feast of Dedication, which we know as Chanukkah.\u00a0 John wants to affirm that Jesus is a Jew.\u00a0 It is also wise to remember, as John\u2019s original audience would have known, that Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the new temple, purified after its desecration by the armies of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes following the Macabbean revolt.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time his gospel is written, the temple has once again been destroyed, this time by Rome.\u00a0\u00a0 It is part of the author\u2019s project to reassign the locus of God\u2019s dwelling place from the temple in Jerusalem to Jesus\u2019 body.\u00a0 Just as Hanukkah is a festival of lights; so John, in the prologue (Chapter 1) describes Jesus as the light that has come into the world, and the darkness has not overcome it.\u00a0 This is a direct reference to the Hanukkah lights that did not run out of oil in the time of the Macabbean revolt.<\/p>\n

Jesus says in this strange passage in John that who he is, his identity,\u00a0 is NOT something to be rationally understood, to be asserted.\u00a0 Even the sentence, \u201cThe Father and I are one\u201d,\u00a0 correctly understood from a study of the Greek grammar, does not make a dogmatic assertion that Jesus and God are ONE PERSON, but rather that Jesus is unified with God in his words and deeds.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, faith is a matter of seeing and hearing in Jesus the one to whom we finally all belong, and to \u201cfollow him,\u201d to live as he lived.\u00a0 It is to trust him so totally that we try to live like him.<\/p>\n

You just can\u2019t sit in a pew on Sunday morning, and assume that it will rub off in what you do in the following week.\u00a0 The writer Alice Walker is reputed to have said:\u00a0 \u201cAnybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy takes the rest of the week.\u201d<\/p>\n

If then we are, as Paul argues especially in his Corinthian letters, the body of Christ\u2026it will not be a clear articulation of our religious beliefs that will demonstrate who we are, but what we do.\u00a0 Just as Peter went into the chamber of the moribund Tabitha, echoing Jesus\u2019 healing of the Synagogue leader\u2019s daughter who was thought to be dead as reported in Mark 5, so the church today\u2014moribund and passive\u2014is being asked to rise up, and to engage once more in those acts, those works, which will signify that we are people of the Way of Jesus.<\/p>\n

Here are some suggestions:\u00a0 you know that lovely idea that we ought regularly to practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty?\u00a0\u00a0 Why not put it to the test?\u00a0\u00a0 Suppose that this week, every day, you will look for some kindness that you can do for someone else\u2014either anonymously, or more directly.\u00a0\u00a0 Mark Twain once marvelously noted that \u201ckindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the interesting things that Luke does in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles is to note that after their experiences with the risen Lord, the Apostles would \u201csee\u201d the lame, the blind, those in need\u2026whereas others would walk on by without noticing.<\/p>\n

The spiritual discipline of looking for ways in which you can do a kindness, or add beauty to this world, changes us, as well.\u00a0\u00a0 It makes us more open to other people, and to our own needs for kindness and beauty, and will draw us closer to union with God.\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of the week, you should be able to list\u00a0 at least 7 acts of kindness that you undertook the previous week.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I encourage you to make a list, and bring it to church next Sunday, and without your name on the paper, put it in the offering tray.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll use your lists either that day, or on future Sundays to share how we have each found ways to do the work of the church.<\/p>\n

There is no final empirical proof about who Jesus is, or whether God exists.\u00a0\u00a0 Neither can we prove love exists between two people, or even a person and their dog.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no proof that the church, with so many flaws, is the continuing presence of Christ in the world.\u00a0 Too much evidence might paint a different picture.\u00a0 But here and there, Tabitha, Dorcas, Peter, Paul\u2026people on the way, clumsy old institutions, show by their actions of care and compassion, that God is our good Shepherd, who will care for us and bring us at last to that great banquet where all our cups will overflow with goodness and mercy.<\/p>\n

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Texts:\u00a0 Acts 9:36-43; \u00a0Psalm 23; \u00a0John 10:22-30 Our Scripture readings for today suggest that there are no fully rational ways of proving the Gospel\u2014which is not to say that there are not rational ways of talking about Christianity, or even<\/p>\n

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