The Church Needs a Reset

John 20: 30 - 31

Acts 5: 12 – 42

September 22, 2024

Okay, let’s just say it. That was a ridiculously long second reading, wasn’t it? I mean, c’mon. Give us a few verses, tell us a funny story, a few religious thoughts, then let’s pray and get on with the day, right?

When I was in a previous church, I had a friend – a good friend – who would sit in the center section, about 6 or 7 rows back and, when any one particular element in the service got too long, he would make a great show of sitting up, crossing his arms and then very conspicuously use his finger to tap his watch. Message sent. Message received. Time to end this. I can just see Curt right now, sitting back, arms crossed and fingers tapping his watch to let me know that this scripture reading has gone on long enough.

But there is a method, or at least a reason for my madness. We need to get the big picture if the particular acts are going to have any transformative power for us.

Our lesson opens up just a few months after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The great high, holy day of Pentecost, a time of one of the three great pilgrimage feasts where all faithful Jews were expected to find their way to Jerusalem, has come and gone and with its passage so have the crowds. Jerusalem is back to its usual population of 50 to 100,000.

Life has returned to normal. Rome still occupies the Holy Land. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea has probably returned to Caesaria Maritima, the seaside location of his governing fortress. The inhabitants are still overtaxed, unsettled, and longing for a Messiah that would overthrow Rome and reconstitute the promised land of Israel.

Goods still flow north, south, and east to lands beyond. Ships leave Israeli ports carrying all sorts of good to the west. With this kind of traffic, all sorts of thoughts, religions, and peoples flow the major trade routes connecting Israel to points beyond. In some ways, the lands of Israel are the passageways for a very cosmopolitan people. People of the world. People of thoughts and ideas, all carefully watched and monitored by the occupying power.

Yes, life is back to normal. But is it really?

In Jerusalem, a relatively small group of believers are gathering around a Messiah that Rome had thought they had killed. In Jerusalem, a group of people - for the most part uneducated, the middle class, and poor – have experienced the coming of the promised one: the Comforter, the Illuminator, the Spirit of Power, the Holy Spirit.

Filled with a power beyond their imagination, they have burst out from behind the doors that had been locked when they were fearing that they would be the next ones to be killed. Filled with passion by the presence of Jesus, called to a ministry filled with Holy Spirit power these believers – men and women – have come out of their hiding places and are telling a story of brokenness made whole, lives redeemed and repurposed, of a loving God who became flesh, redeemed them on the Cross, and then defeated death on Easter morning.

Look at them. Look again at our story! Signs and wonders are being done by those of no earthy power or esteem. Great numbers, the text tells us, are becoming believers because they see the sick being healed. Such is the confidence in a broken-down, no-account fisherman from Galilee that the sick are being carried out into the streets so that the shadow – just the shadow of Peter – might fall on them and they would become healed.

The professionally religious, the aristocratic Sadducees – guarantors and protectors of the status quo are in a tizzy. People are being transformed, lives renewed, and what do these fine men do? Do they join in? Do they celebrate the cleansing power of God? Do they offer sacrifices of thanksgiving for the powerful new way that God is operating in their midst?

No, of course not. They arrest them – these spiritual troublemakers. They arrest the apostles, throw them in jail hoping to silence these stories about the One they thought they had vanquished, this Jesus. But God has another idea. An angel of the Lord makes possible a great jail break in the middle of the night.

Content, thinking they had quieted the Apostles, the religious authorities come to the Temple at daybreak for their morning prayers only to find that the apostles have beaten them to the place. These ones who had been silenced; these ones who had been locked up. There they are – talking that crazy Jesus talk and people are listening.

Can you imagine how mad they would have been? Can you imagine how mad you would be if you were one of these religious leaders? They had been arrested and specifically ordered to

quit teaching about Jesus – in the Temple! It would be like some cultic group setting up a tent on our church lawn and teaching about their leader.

The council receives some practical moderate advice. They get reminded of past nut jobs who had made all kinds of claims in the past and those claims died out when they died. Once again, they order the apostles to stop teaching ABOUT Jesus – especially in the Temple. They have them flogged and then sent on their way.

And what happens? Our lesson ends with, “And every day in the temple and at home they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah.”

Fast forward 2,000 years. We are only a few months past Pentecost ourselves – just a hair past 3 months since we celebrated the arrival of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church. No this isn’t first century Jerusalem, but Laguna Niguel is a town of roughly 60,000 and if you include neighboring towns, we are comparable to Jerusalem in population if not size.

We live in cosmopolitan Southern California. Commerce travels north and south on 5, goods travel east by road and rail. As Pastor Sara reminded us so well last week, we no longer live in a country that functions with Christianity as the prevailing religion of culture. No, we live in the midst of a rich combination of thoughts, philosophies, world views and religions.

2,000 years of development. 2,000 years of technology. 2,000 years of progress and culture. Certainly, the world and our place in it has changed in ways that those original folks of Jerusalem could never have imagined. And yet….. and yet, the more that things have changed the more people have remained the same.

Still, we wake up, as they did, and hope that the work that is in front of us will prove meaningful and capable of supporting our desired lifestyle. Still, we wake up, as they did, and hope that our families will be blessed in this new day; that our children will be fed, nurtured, and be cherished; that our siblings are at peace and that our extended families are as well. I can’t help but believe that they woke up, like we did, wondering if their crazy political world was ever going to resolve; if peace would ever be realized, if true freedom would ever become the norm across the land. Oh sure, the toys, the accoutrements of life have changed, but the basic human condition has not.

Longing. Brokenness. Questions. Curiosity and wonder.

Perhaps it is time that we quit lamenting the demise of our Christian culture and start celebrating the opportunities that arise in a free flow of thought and possibilities. If we really believe that we have truth with a capital “T” then why should we feel threatened by voices clamoring for equal time?

Perhaps it is time that we quit envisioning the church as a guardian of the status quo and instead embrace Holy Spirit possibilities that call for change and transformation.

Perhaps it is time to repurpose the energy that we waste in longing for a church of a different century and instead channel that energy into a new level of excitement, of belief, into a conviction that Jesus does in fact help the broken, lift up the hopeless, and transform the lost. Maybe it is time that we quit apologizing for being believers and instead start going up into the public square proclaiming that not only has Jesus made a difference in our lives, but that this same Jesus can make a difference in their lives as well.

Friends, you may be sitting there with your arms figuratively crossed, fingers tapping your watches and be saying to yourself, “Ok Jim, time to move on.” And to that I would say, “You are right!” It is time to reset, to retool, to reembrace our central purpose of the church. Proclaiming, discipling, serving, loving. Calling the lost, transforming the ready, connecting to God and one another, and serving all God’s people.

It is time to reset. It is time to get going. For God’s sake, the church, and for God’s people. Amen.