Author: Steve

Thanks to Steven Larson on our Covenant Ministerium Facebook group, I was able to locate this hilarious send-up of church leaders discussing a new name for their congregation. It’s only slightly more absurd than reality as the people of Jesus Christ today buy wholeheartedly into business notions of brand management and offer up a plethora of hip new church names. Gone are the days that gave us Fourth Presbyterian, Main St. Baptist and the like. Everyone is into branding and re-branding.

As I thought about what to preach from our Community Bible Experience reading of Acts this week, I came across that wonderful passage which describes the reception of the Gospel in Antioch and the great growth of the Christian community there, Acts 11:19-30. Verse 26 contains the intriguing information that, “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians.'”

It’s very likely that this “brand” we “followers of Jesus”–as some of the more hip among us like to call us now–have worn for two millennia was at first a slightly derogative appellation offered by outsiders to the movement. Like other parties of the day, the little suffix “-ian” was affixed to a name to create a label for a movement. Supporters of Herod were “Herodians,” etc.

As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, some of us apparently feel the brand is by now worn out and alternatives like “Jesus follower” are to be put in its place. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t seem like the term “Christian” is going to go away and its association with those who follow Jesus is going to be with us for good or ill in spite of all our re-branding efforts.

I’d prefer to look at this passage about what happened in Antioch, i.e., a great welcoming of diverse people, plus a missionary spirit, plus compassion for those in need, and think that if we as Christians were more often like they were there in Antioch when we were first branded that way, then the brand would recover some of its ancient power and significance.

 

Raising children in the 90s meant for us that the cartoon “Arthur” got watched at our house. However, my wife always rightly objected to the theme song played at the beginning of each show. After starting out pretty well, advising children to pay attention to “everybody that you meet” and to “learn to work and play and get along with each other,” the song moved on to some lines that begin with “You got to listen to your heart,” and ending in “Believe in yourself [echoed], well that’s the place to start.” But it’s not.

Maybe it’s the result of a generation being raised on Arthur, but my wife and I can now watch a movie or television show and sense with frightening certainty the moment when one character advising another in difficult straights is about to say, “Believe in yourself,” or “listen to your heart,” or “just look inside.” It’s “in our DNA”–to use another not quite accurate catchphrase of our time–this notion that the solutions to our problems and the resources for good living are within us.

I once preached this week’s sermon text for a series entitled “Things Jesus Didn’t Say (But People Think He Did).” It’s Luke 17:20-21 and the problematic phrase is that last part of  verse 21, which has often been translated, “the kingdom of God is within you.” As more recent translations show, that’s not right. What Jesus actually said is more like, “the kingdom of God is among you,” or as the new NIV version we are reading together at Valley Covenant this fall puts it, “the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

What difference does it make? It’s absolutely crucial. Jesus did not teach what popular culture teaches, that we are going to find peace, wholeness, strength or salvation by looking within. And we are not going to find the kingdom of God there.

The notion that Jesus taught that God’s reign is internal to our own selves fits not only pop psychology, but popular politics about the place of religion in our lives. It’s regularly understood that American freedom of religion depends on spiritual questions being wholly and completely a matter of private and internal opinion and disposition. Believe what you want in your heart, but don’t bring those convictions out into the public square where they affect anyone else.

Jesus had so such thought of a private, internal faith when He told the disciples “the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Yes, verse 20 says, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ But the “invisibility” of the kingdom is like that of air or of other essential forces like love. Such things are not simply visible or locatable because they are ubiquitous, everywhere around us and among us.

We are reading through the whole Gospel of Luke this week as Valley Covenant participates in the Covenant Community Bible Experience. The story of Luke makes it plain that what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God is in your midst” is that the reign of God had already come among His disciples. As they witnessed Jesus teach and heal and befriend outcasts, they saw the kingdom as a present reality happening in their midst.

Likewise, entry into and participation in the kingdom of God for contemporary Christians is not a matter of having some internal spiritual condition or focus. It’s a matter of joining in the story those first Christians saw unfolding among them, in their life together and in the people around them. Through the living presence of Jesus, the kingdom of God is still in our midst.

It went the opposite direction of what one might expect. As I helped do interviews with new ordination candidates in our denomination this week, I realized that what used to be a 10-page, single-spaced, typewritten ordination paper is now expected to be closer to 15 single-spaced pages in a computer font that makes the word count even higher than on typewritten pages.

Normally, old guys like I are bemoaning the relaxing of standards, the easing of requirements from back in the day “when I had to do it.” And I’ve done my share of that griping. Our seminary, for instance, recently shaved nearly a year of classwork off the credit requirements for a Master of Divinity degree.

The situation was ripe for such gripes in the first years of the Christian church. As we continue the story we started two weeks ago in Acts 10, this Sunday reading Acts 10:23-48, we find the first inklings, of a temptation which Jewish Christians would confront for a long time, the desire to complain that faith in Christ was too easy for Gentiles, that they perhaps needed to meet some of the same kind of religious demands with which Jews grew up.

Though as Paul points out in Galatians, Peter’s courage on the issue would wane later, at this point the lead apostle is in the vanguard on not putting unnecessary requirements on converts. Seeing the Gentile members of Cornelius’ household willingly receive the Word about Jesus and then the gift of the Holy Spirit, Peter exclaims in verse 47, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

I recently attended a philosophy conference exploring the nature of faith. The primary theme of the discussion over ten different papers was whether “belief” is essential for faith. Though that sounds very strange, the question was whether genuine faith requires a complete and total conviction about and affirmation of certain facts. Is it possible to say coherently “I’m not sure if I believe it, but I have faith in it?” For the Christians present, the aim was partly to allow for expressions of faith in Christ from those who suffer doubts. Requiring that a person be absolutely convinced about matters like the resurrection of Jesus in order to have a living faith, might be too stringent a cognitive requirement on faith.

Regardless of how that philosophical debate comes out, it’s clear that God is concerned that we focus on what’s really essential and in this text I’m seeing two essentials, a positive response to God’s Word and the work of the Holy Spirit. The Gentiles listened gladly to the Good News about Jesus and the received the Spirit. That was enough for them to receive baptism and be initiated into the church.

The lesson for us is, on the one hand, to hold on to those essentials of Word and Spirit ourselves, being attentive to the Scriptures and led by the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, we too don’t want to withhold admission to circle of faith from those who also focus on those essentials, receiving for themselves the Word as guided by the Spirit.

I didn’t write a blog post last week for this past Sunday’s sermon because I was really busy planning the worship service. We held a joint service with our new friends Igelesia de Cristo Manantial de Vida (Spring of Life Church of Christ) and we did our best to make the whole service bi-lingual. It took quite a bit of thought and preparation. Thanks to great help it went well. Keith Tungseth from our conference Hispanic ministries was here to translate the sermon, children’s message etc. Mantial de Vida’s worship team was able to lead singing in both languages and our own pianist Lynn Kane likewise. Our sanctuary was packed and everyone had a great time, not to mention a lot of great food afterward.

So it’s fitting that this coming Sunday we arrive at a turning point in the book of Acts which stresses that worship like we experienced Sunday was the new norm for Christianity. In Acts 10:1-23, Peter learns that his hang-ups in regard to associating with non-Jewish people are something he needs to get over, along with getting over his upbringing in regard to what is acceptable food.

Though one might read this text as a spiritual lesson about loving others being taught with the mundane image of eating strange or objectionable food, it’s actually all part of the same thing. Yes, down in verse 28, Peter makes the metaphorical connection between not calling any food profane or unclean and not calling any person profane or unclean. But being able to eat the unclean food was part of that lesson. At the end of the chapter, verse 48 we find Peter not only needed to visit Cornelius’ house, he needed to stay there several days. That means he had to eat Gentile food for awhile. He could not live out the lesson about people without also living out the lesson about food.

For us this means that our Christian love for others has to take form in practical ways. As many a missionary has discovered, it may mean eating some strange food when offered. It may mean sitting through worship in a language you don’t understand. It could mean going to parts of town where you don’t feel comfortable. We don’t just get to have a warm, glowing good will toward folks who are different from us. The Holy Spirit calls us to demonstrate that love in concrete sacrifices of our own feelings of security and comfort.

Peter had to get over it in order to follow the Spirit’s leading. So do we.

As we read the stories of the Bible, it’s good to remember how we tell our own stories. We don’t relate everything that happened in detail and we may not even get events in exact order. If you ask me about my education and life as a young man, I’ll tell you that I went to college, then grad school, then seminary, then accepted a call to my first church in Nebraska. And I’ll put in that during grad school I met my wife and we were married, maybe backing up to offer the detail that I was engaged to someone else before I met Beth. If you’re trying to get it all down on a time-line it might be confusing and there may even be some important events left out. Almost certainly whole years may be passed over without even a mention.

That’s what we encounter in the next part of Paul’s story as told by Luke in Acts 9:23-31. Verse 23 gives us a little clue in the phrase, “After some time had passed…” Verse 26 is less clear, but we learn in Galatians 1:18 that “When he had come to Jerusalem…” is probably three years after the escape described in verse 25.

The truth is that we cannot be at all certain of exactly in what order events unfolded at this time in Paul’s life and ministry. The big piece missing in our text from Acts is found in Paul’s telling of his own story in Galatians 1. There in verse 17 he tells us that he went away and spent time in Arabia before returning to Damascus.

Paul’s point in Galatians 1 is that his sojourn in Arabia, however long it was, was a time of preparation, a time when he received directly from the Lord some of the Gospel message that he preached as an apostle. His concern was to answer the charge that he was not a true apostle, that the Lord had not appeared to him and given him a specific charge and message. His Arabian interlude seems to have been the time in which God confirmed and gave Paul his message to non-Jews.

So you could say that this Sunday’s message is about what’s not there in our text, that gap between Acts 9:25 and 9:26 which seems to be the journey to Arabia. Like Jesus Himself spending 40 days in the wilderness or Moses out on the mountain meeting God or Elijah waiting for God in his cave, Paul prepared for his mission by gearing up spiritually in an attitude of prayer and attentiveness.

Last week I spoke about how essential Christian community, the Body of Christ, is to the development of our faith. This week we see that there is certainly a place for a private devotion and storing up of spiritual energy in one-on-one communion with the Lord. As my wife likes to say, it’s not either-or, it’s both-and. Alongside what we gain in fellowship and sharing with each other, we are also equipped for Christian living and service by time alone with God. May He give us grace to order ourselves in ways that include both that corporate dimension and that individual dimension of spiritual life.

I’m not an aficionado of old automobiles, but one aspect of the Stanley Steamer has always fascinated me. It’s not just that it was a relatively successful steam-powered car, but that because of its immense torque it didn’t need any transmission. That meant that it could do a full reverse on-the-fly. You could be steaming along going forward, then pull a lever and be moving just as fast backward. Try that with a modern car!

Something like that happened in Saul’s life when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus in Acts 9:1-22. From heading full tilt toward persecution of Christians and the fledgling church, Saul turned and became the greatest advocate and missionary for faith in Jesus, a total course reversal almost instantly. Even his name changed from Saul to Paul.

Our world and the Christian faith are completely different from what would have been the case had not Saul reversed direction there on the road to Damascus. Christianity might have died out and been a relatively unknown little religious movement like so many other religions of the Roman Empire. Instead, Saul’s conversion set him on a course to spread his new faith all over the Mediterranean world and even into Europe.

Maybe God has some reversals in store for you and me. We would probably greet them with dismay and disappointment, but if God reverses us, then the new direction may be just where we need to head. Let’s be ready for God’s hand on that gear shift or steering wheel.

I’ve never cared much for the “seeker-sensitive” model of worship and church life, from the time I first encountered it something like twenty-five years ago on a “field trip” to Willow Creek Community Church during one of our Covenant midwinter conferences. It seems like Bill Hybels and Willow Creek have modified their approach along the way, but even now there is discussion about whether creating a “wide on-ramp” for folks who would generally give church a miss is the right thing to do, for instance, this article on the CT website three years ago.

However, our text from Acts 8:26-40 this week reminds me that “seekers” have always been around and reaching them is part of the Christian mission. I see them arrive at our church door, like a 10-year-old boy who dropped by when worship was over a couple weeks ago to ask questions of the pastor, including whether one could be a Christian and still believe in evolution!

The Ethiopian eunuch’s story shows us that “seeker-sensitivity” is less like bringing popular secular music into worship and serving Starbucks in the narthex (but of course it would be the “foyer” or something non-churchy like that) than it is having one-on-one conversations of explanation and exploration like I had with that young man asking questions.

One gets the impression that Philip was winsome and gentle in his approach to the Ethiopian, as he leads with his question, “Do you understand what you are reading?” Yet that question was more than simply meeting that traveler “where he was.” Philip didn’t offer to join in some traditional Ethiopian music or a conversation about what the eunuch did for a living. Instead he immediately and directly offered to take the man to a new level of understanding of the faith and spiritual life for which he was already looking.

My guess is that we might bless the seekers around us more by treating them like Philip treated that ancient seeker. Let us be forthright both in worship and in conversation about who we are and whom we worship, ready to come alongside with good explanations of the Gospel so that seekers may rise to a new spiritual level rather than Christians trying (and failing) to appear less committed than we are.

Finally, though, we should also remember that before the Lord we are all seekers, all of us lacking in understanding of God’s Word and in need of whatever help we can find in community with other believers to grasp what we are reading.

It sounds like the new Harry Potter book is pretty disappointing. Unlike the main series which ended years ago, Beth and I did not rush out to buy the new volume. I was put off by the fact that it’s a script for a play rather than a novel. What’s even worse, I learned when I read reviews last week, is that much of it appears to have been written by a couple of writers other than J. K. Rowling. There were lots of negative reviews.

Our family loved the other Harry Potter books, the idea of a school for magic and the wonderful characters captivated us. I enjoy fantasy in general, whether it’s Lewis or Tolkien, Butcher or Zelazny. Stories of an enchanted world where the impossible can happen bring me lots of pleasure in leisure moments.

Yet as Christians have always recognized, there is subtle danger in being too caught up in concern with magic. Fantasy stories are one thing, but when we begin to have the perspective that we can deal with the world and our lives on the terms offered by magic, then we’ve gotten off track. We see that happening to an early Christian convert in our text this week from Acts 8:4-25.

Though Simon the magician is severely judged in this passage, we might give him a little benefit of the doubt because verse 13 says, “Even Simon believed. After being baptized, he stayed constantly with Philip…” Let’s assume that Simon was a sincere new believer. If so, then his error has deeper implications for us. It’s an error into which a genuine Christian can fall, the error of treating the things of God like magic.

Magic is essentially about control, about power over our lives, our world, our destiny. In that regard it’s not that different from what we try to accomplish with science, with medicine, with psychology, with computer technology, with economics, or with politics. We might suppose that the difference from our modern “magics” is some spiritual dark side to magic or the simple fact that it doesn’t really work.

But Simon Magus (as he came to be called in the middle ages) doesn’t seem to be aware that magic does not work, and he certainly enjoyed the power and prestige that came with it. In verse 10 he even enjoys what the people call him, “the power of God that is called the Great,” labeling him as some sort of magical, spiritual force.

So when he encountered what was so obviously a greater power–verse 13 says he was amazed by the miracles Philip did–Simon naturally wanted it for himself. Though he sincerely believed in Christ, he was attracted to and tempted by power, the ability to control the world and control others. That kind of control still tempts us as Christians, even if we get it by other means and call it by other names.

Stories about magic are a lot of fun, but the story of our faith is not about magic, but about power which belongs only and truly to God. It’s not ours to buy or to discover by science or to command by ritual or good behavior. As Philip says in verse 21, it’s God’s gift, and we can only receive it in humility and acknowledgement of our weakness.

Last Saturday July 30 was National Whistleblower Appreciation Day according to a resolution passed by unanimously by the Senate on July 8. Who knew? I didn’t until I googled “whistleblower.”

The National Whistleblower Center web site says, “The designation of July 30th is to commemorate legislation passed by the Continental Congress on that date in 1778, which stated that government employees have a duty to report misconduct, fraud and other crimes in government to the appropriate authorities in a timely manner.”

Web articles about Whistleblower Day note that many whistleblowers suffer retaliation, loss of job, etc., for bringing to light corruption or misconduct in the agencies for which they work. A day recognizing them is part of an effort to highlight their struggle to bring important truth into the open and help government and other agencies obey the law.

Bureaucracies and governments have often been hard on those who speak uncomfortable truths. In our text for this week from Acts 6:8-15, 7:51 – 8:3 one of the first deacons from last week’s text encounters retaliation for the uncomfortable truth he spoke to the Sanhedrin. After rehearsing the more tawdry parts of the history of Israel, detailing their rebellion against God and the leaders He appointed, Stephen pointed out in chapter 7 verse 48 that the presence of the temple would do them no good, since God does not dwell in an earthly temple. Moreover, in verses 51 and 52, they were guilty of opposition to the Holy Spirit through their murder of the “Righteous One,” that is, Jesus.

The result was the ultimate retaliation. Stephen became the first Christian martyr, dying by stoning at the hands of the Sanhedrin. Yet as he died he said something that was not whistleblowing and that indicated his purpose in exposing the evil deeds of the Sanhedrin was not to do them harm. Echoing Jesus’ own words from the cross in verse 60, Stephen prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Our notion of a whistleblower story with a happy ending is that the person revealing the uncomfortable truth is vindicated and that the corrupt officials or managers or whatever get the punishment they deserve. But the Christian form of the story turns that happy ending on its head, with the “whistleblower” sacrificing his life and his murderers receiving a gracious prayer for their forgiveness.

Stephen’s offer of forgiveness, rather than righteous judgment, is what triumphs in the end. As verse 58 and chapter 8, verse 1 say, a young man named Saul was present, helping and approving of the murder. And it won’t be long until Acts shows us Saul receiving that forgiveness and becoming one of the greatest speakers of truth to corrupt and evil powers. Let us remember Stephen and Saul when we wish the truth to expose evil and remember that the final trajectory of Christian truth is forgiveness.

I like organization, so much so that I can procrastinate some more important task for quite awhile as I clean off my desk, arrange flies in my fly box, or delete unused files and icons from my computer desktop. So I enjoy reading about how the first church got organized to better accomplish its mission.

The move to organize food distribution to the poor in Acts 6:1-17 was driven by irritation and discomfort, like when on a much lesser scale I get fed up with all that clutter on my screen. The irritation for the church is described the complaining of one group against another in verse 1, “Hellenists” griping against “Hebrews” “because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.”

The Hellenists were Jewish Christians from the “diaspora,” Jews generally living outside of Palestine. Their main language was Greek. The Hebrews were Jews from in and around Jerusalem, Judea, etc. and their main language was Aramaic. The neglect was a matter of language and culture bias, a disregard for Jews considered to be in some degree second-class because of their lack of facility with the “native tongue,” although even Aramaic was not the classic Hebrew of Old Testament times.

As we face times in which we are being urged to discriminate and build barriers based on culture and language, it is crucial to see that from the beginning the church structured itself to address those biases and break down those barriers. So the “ordination” of the first deacons was all from the less advantaged group, the Hellenists, as we can tell from their Greek names. The organization deliberately put marginalized people in positions of leadership.

And the leadership of the deacons was not limited to “waiting on tables,” work which verse 2 might give the impression is less significant than the work which the apostles did. But the stories of the first two deacons, Stephen and Philip, in the subsequent chapters make it quite clear that they did significant “spiritual work” as well as supervising the food distribution.

Let us at all levels of church life, from small groups to denominations, get organized in the manner portrayed here, putting unexpected people into leadership and letting the Holy Spirit cross the barriers which keep us apart.

The result of such organization is obvious in verse 7, “The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.” That last result regarding priests might look like an inroad into an upper class in Jewish society, but the number of priests in first century Israel meant that many of them were in poverty. The availability of food and support distributed fairly may have enticed many of them into the fold. What may we learn from this?

I haven’t read Nick Vujicic’s book Unstoppable: The Incredible Power of Faith in Action, the self-told story of a man born with no arms or legs. As a Christian he managed to overcome that monumental burden, become a motivational speaker, get married, have children and be a witness, as his book title suggests, to the power of faith in Jesus.

I came upon Vujicic’s book because what struck me in our text for this Sunday, Acts 5:17-42, is the refrain of Jewish authorities attempting to stop the apostles from talking about Jesus and their consistent refusal to desist, especially Peter in the familiar verse 29, “We must obey God rather than human beings!” [TNIV]. So “Unstoppable” became the sermon title. I then remembered to 2010 train film by that name with Denzel Washington and then found references to Vujicic’s life and book on-line.

Always a little skeptical of “victorious-Christian-life” stories (see some comments in last Sunday’s sermon), I read the negative reviews of Unstoppable by Vujicic and found that several readers thought he focused a little too strongly on himself and his own achievements in overcoming huge disabilities. Not having read the book and wanting to exceptionally charitable to a man who holds to faith as strongly as he does, I will still say that if those critical reviews of Vujicic’s writing are at all accurate, it reflects a significant difference from the unstoppable witness of Peter and the other apostles.

Acts 5 does not really give us the sense that those first witnesses to Jesus were unstoppable. In fact, both Acts and history record that many of them were stopped cold by persecution and martyrdom. Their witness ended when their lives were ended. What was actually unstoppable was was the Holy Spirit given to them through the grace of Jesus Christ. Though the apostles, like Nick Vujicic, exhibited great courage, it was their Lord and Savior who could not be stopped.

Critics of Vujicic complained that his book was too much focused on himself. The apostles had very little to say about themselves and a great deal to say about Jesus. Their messages constantly repeated what Peter said again in verse 30, that though He was crucified by the authorities, that did not stop Him. God raised Him from the dead and His life and power are going forward in this world.

Again, I want to be very charitable to Vujicic and I imagine in conversation he would be the first to attribute his victories and success to Jesus. I just want that to be the lesson we consistently hear in stories like his and in biblical stories like today’s text. Jesus is the overcoming, unstoppable force, and as we trust in Him we are simply hopping aboard that mighty Train which roars down through the ages carrying our world into the kingdom of God.

I find this week’s lesson from Acts 4:32 – 5:11 pretty scary. Like the story of Simon in a few weeks, it demonstrates the danger of approaching spiritual life from wrong motives and for duplicitous reasons. Almost as scary as the text itself is this YouTube video of “The Ballad of Ananias and Sapphira,” but it pretty much gets the lesson right.

As the end of that silly song suggests, the frightening thing is to examine one’s own life and heart to find those ways in which we may imagine we are fooling others spiritually, or worse, fooling God.

The text may seem like a total downer, but it’s good to remember that the episode begins with a beautiful description of sharing and common life among Christians. It’s a picture of kingdom life, of what happens when God truly reigns over us and we enter into the kind of living He created us for.

There is also a muted but distinct word of grace in Peter’s condemnation of the couples’ lie, verse 4, “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal?” In other words, Ananias and Sapphira were led into a totally unnecessary deception by the false perception that they had to attain some standard of giving set by others in the congregation. But the reality was their total freedom in Christ to give more or less according to their own desire. The only fault was the attempt to appear more generous than they actually were.

May we all learn the lesson of that blessed freedom which God gives to us through the grace of Jesus. We don’t have to leap some spiritual high bar to enjoy His love. It’s all a gift, given regardless of our personal merit or worthiness or accomplishment. Let’s not fail to receive that freeing grace and may we offer it to others in such a way so that no one is misled into thinking being a Christian means being a spiritual superstar.

Ursula Le Guin is no friend of Christianity. Yet when one of my daughters recently mentioned her account of dragons in A Wizard of Earthsea, I remembered how one aspect of Le Guin’s Earthsea fantasies touched my imagination. She suggests that the power of wizards is in their ability to discern the “true names” of things. By knowing the names of things one discovers their true power and gains some control over them. Thus the true names of human beings are often closely guarded secrets.

Le Guin’s fantasy about the power of names is not far from an attitude which appears in Scripture. Moses is given the true name of God, and Jacob’s question to “man” with whom he wrestles at Peniel is “Please tell me your name” (Genesis 32:29). As we move on in Acts this coming Sunday, we find that, like the name of God in the Old Testament, the name of Jesus takes on power and significance. In Acts 4:1-22, the Sanhedrin asks what name has been invoked for a lame man’s healing and Peter replies in verse 10 that it was “by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

What’s interesting is the perceived power of Jesus’ name, even by the Sanhedrin, whose main concern in verses 17 and 18 is to prevent further speaking “in this name.” But the apostles indirectly but clearly refuse to abide by the command not to speak in the name of Jesus, suggesting that their mandate to speak in this name is from God, and that “we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard,” in verse 20.

I wonder about our own courage as contemporary followers (and bearers!) of the name of Jesus Christ. One of my first public arena challenges as a pastor was an invitation to pray at the opening of the Nebraska legislature. I’m afraid that recognizing the pluralist/secular audience that I ended up offering my prayer “in Your holy name, Amen,” rather than with my usual invocation of the name of Jesus.

Courage to claim and speak the name of Jesus is also called for when we Christians are engaged in exactly the kind of activity in which Peter and John were engaged, doing good for others. They were entirely ready to let everyone, including the authorities, know that they did what they did in the name of Jesus. I wonder how often the good we do, whether in health care or compassion toward the poor or in advocating for justice, is as courageously and clearly identified as work done in the name of Jesus.

Of course, if we are going to boldly declare the name of Jesus over what we do, then what we do must be consistent with that name. That’s the gist, I think, of the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan. We cannot be people of faith only in name, without exhibiting the serving love which is at the heart of the name of our Lord. If we really want to claim the name, then let us claim all that it entails.

The word “beggar” has gone out of fashion. I’d guess it’s not your immediate label for the folks you encounter at traffic intersections or on the peripheries of parking lots as they hold up cardboard signs or ask you directly for spare change. I’m not sure what the proper term is now. Perhaps it’s better that there not be catchall category and that we regard each person in need simply as another human being and try to understand his or her plight in its own unique character.

Yet the activity of “begging” persists, whether it’s a homeless person seeking help from a passerby or a recognized charity soliciting by mail or a child pestering a parent for a toy. Much of it leaves somewhat of a poor taste in our mouths. We teach pets to beg, but don’t feel it to be an honorable activity for people.

That negative perspective on begging may be part of why some find biblical faith so distasteful. As our text for this Sunday highlights for us, our relationship to God is often to be in the position of beggar, asking for the help we need. Acts 3:1-10 does not use the word “beggar,” but the man in the story is often characterized as “the beggar at the Beautiful Gate.” He is crippled, unable to walk and friends bring him there everyday to beg alms from those entering the temple. Peter and John encounter him much the same way you and I meet those who beg at street corners.

I don’t know about you, but in those meetings with needy people I never have the confidence and courage with which Peter and John greeted the beggar at the temple gate. Peter looked directly at the man and asked him to return the gaze (it’s likely that beggars were expected to advert their eyes from those they were soliciting). Peter then confidently declares the lack of any financial gift and then offers something far better.

The text raises a couple issues for us. First, how might we follow in the footsteps of the apostles in our own relations with people in need? Even if we cannot offer a miracle of healing, do we have something better to give than some coins or bills to meet a temporary need or desire? Much helping ministry in our own church and community at least tries to operate on the basis that folks need genuine relationship with others and with God as much or more than they need food, clothing, shelter, money, etc. At its best, this principle is not an excuse to withhold the material help, but a desire to come alongside and befriend people in a way that may lead to more lasting solutions, just like the return of the crippled man’s mobility. There’s much more to say about this, but the idea of befriending those in need points us toward the second issue.

If we are going to genuinely befriend people in need, then there must be some acknowledgement of commonality. We are not completely different, and especially not really any better, than the people who ask us for help. As the old phrase goes, we are “beggars all.” The last bit of writing by Martin Luther expressed his consistent understanding of our need for God’s help and grace, even to understand the Bible. Just before he died, Luther wrote, “We are beggars. This is true.”

Acknowledging our own beggarly need for God and His grace is the foundation of a true relationship with Him and a power to transform our relationships with others, including those who seek our help. When we realize that we do not stand above those we help, but come together with them to seek God’s help, to draw on the same divine source of strength and provision, then it’s easier to drop the barriers which divide us from the poor, the sick, and the stranger. In relation to our Lord we too are helpless like the beggar at the temple, not even knowing for what we truly need to ask.

I approach this coming Sunday’s text from Acts with some trepidation. I cannot count the number of sermons, devotional talks, and the like, which I have heard holding up especially the last few verses of Acts 2:29-47 as a model for current church life, often making an unfavorable comparison of present churches to what we see there in the early days of the church in Jerusalem. Even the name of a Christian music group (2nd Chapter of Acts) in the twentieth century implies that there is something about Christian life in these verses that has been lost and which needs to be recovered and implemented once again today.

Something about the desire to return to and recapture a lost golden age of the church rubs me the wrong way. It partakes of a general human tendency to view at least some aspects of the past as superior to our present condition. That viewpoint was expressed in the 18th century in a “primitivism” associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, who suggested that human life in an older, simpler, more primitive form than modern western civilization was somehow better.

In Christian history there has been a recurring call to get back to the beginnings and restore the glory of the primitive church. Chrysostom in the 4th century was one of the first to make the Acts 2 church an indictment of current church life. Almost all the reforming movements of Christianity, including Protestantism and Evangelicalism, had a sense of returning to something earlier, more basic, and better than the then contemporary form of Christianity.

I won’t deny the suggestiveness and even normative force of verse 42, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” That fourfold description of church life–which we might unpack today as Bible reading and teaching, sharing in community, receiving of the Sacraments, and participation in well-ordered devotional worship–would be an excellent schema for any congregation’s mission statement.

However, it should be clear that verse 42 even with the additional activities named in verses 43-47, cannot really capture all that Christians have discovered and received from the Lord over the last two millennia about how to be His people. Despite the statement that “the Lord added to their number” in verse 47, nothing is said about how to accomplish the growth of the church. And verses 44 and 45, about the sharing of possessions, are pretty much ignored by many people who want to see the surrounding verses as a normative primitive model for current church life.

The plain truth is that the story of primitive glory days, to which we can somehow return, is as much a myth in church history as it is in human history in general. The faith which Peter preaches in the text just preceding (verses 32-36) those “primitivist” verses is that glorious life together is a gift which comes by the grace of God who sent His Son to die and rise to redeem us into the hope of our own resurrection. The glory is in the future, not in the past.

We can certainly learn something from that first church, as I’ve said, but we cannot read off from these verses, or from any collection of Bible texts alone, a detailed plan for being the people God wants us to be. That can only happen through an on-going relationship with the risen Jesus and a constant willingness to receive again the message of the Gospel and discover how the Holy Spirit is going to implement that message in us today.