Scripture
readings: Ephesians 4:1-16; Acts 1:1-14
The 2016
Wahluke High School Valedictorian, Guadalupe Abarca, made a statement that is
so normal to hear at any graduation, and yet it is very important. She said, “I
believe this class will push boundaries to make this world a better place,
whether in large or small ways.”
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| Photos at White Bluffs, Hanford Reach Nat'l Monument May 2016 |
In the
Book of Acts, Jesus, just before he returned to the command-post of heaven,
called his people to push boundaries. Jesus said, “You will receive power when
the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in
all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) Is this a
calling or an order? Is it a prediction or a challenge? “You will be my
witnesses.” You will do it.
Somehow,
I seem to remember a phrase from when I was a kid, and maybe it comes from the
old World War Two Prison Camp comedy “Hogan’s Heroes”. My friends and I used it
on each other for fun. A German officer said (in an American imitation of a
German accent), “You vill do it; und you vill like it!”
Jesus
says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and
to the ends of the earth.” It’s as if Jesus gave us a crazy target laid out more
or less flat on the ground of this round earth. The bull’s eye is where we
stand and we find that the target is as big as the world; maybe as big as the
universe. To hit the mark, and win, means going out, as far as you can. It’s a
crazy target.
We
Christians get the target completely wrong. You see how it is. Maybe it’s Jesus’
fault. Jesus is the bull’s eye. Jesus is the center. We come to Jesus. We find
his love. Our target is the center.
No, his
love finds us. And we find ourselves with Jesus at the center. Then Jesus does
his magic (his sleight of hand) and the mark, the bull’s eye, moves to the
outside. Who can play this game?
You see
how we get it wrong. Jesus is the center, but we start out as Jesus’ target;
Jesus’ mark. It’s hard to be an intense follower of Jesus (an intense
Christian) unless we see how the target works for us; how (without Jesus) we
are farthest out from the center, until Jesus hits us with his arrow of love. (Jesus
is the best cupid.) But, without that, we are (each one of us, in our own way)
one of the farthest out.
The great
British preacher of more than a century ago, Charles Spurgeon, expressed this
feeling of being farthest out. Spurgeon said, “While others are congratulating
themselves, I have to lie humbly at the foot of Christ’s cross and marvel that
I am saved at all.”
Charles
Spurgeon was only 15, and he was a very, very good boy, when he met the living
Jesus, but Spurgeon knew his own heart. And he knew that all human hearts, and every
human life, have the same deep need. All humans are, in some way, furthest out,
and they need to be found and given meaning by the infinite love of Jesus.
We never
know that we have been farthest out until we understand why Jesus chose a cross
as the only way to reach us, and hold onto us, and change us. We never
understand what all people need until we know that only an arrow in the form of
a cross can go the whole distance; all the way to the farthest out. We never
understand what people need until we know that this arrow is never meant to hit
anyone, except in the sense of winning them and loving them.
What
brings this out (what powers us to understand, and motivates us to want to take
Jesus’ arrow to those who are farthest out) is the Holy Spirit. We never
understand this crazy game, and this crazy target of Jesus, until the Holy
Spirit fills us.
The
disciples are a good lesson for how it is with us. The Spirit was with them. Jesus
was working on them with the Holy Spirit. We read that Jesus instructed them
through the Holy Spirit. (The Holy Spirit is the life-giving power of God.) The
Holy Spirit makes weak things powerful. The Spirit makes dead things, or inanimate
things, alive.
The
infinite love of God, in Jesus, is a living thing that can’t live in us until
the Holy Spirit gives us enough life, within ourselves, to receive it. The infinite
love of God, in Jesus, is a living thing that can’t reach out, through us to
others, until the Holy Spirit gives us the living heart and the living will to
reach out to others, even to those who seem farthest out.
Jerusalem,
all Judea, and Samaria, and the ends of the earth are like rings of a target
that really has an almost infinite number of rings.
Here the
crazy target changes again. Here we are at the center again. Once again the
whole point is not to stay in the center. Just as shooting at a target and hitting
the bull’s eye is hardest, when you’re standing away and aiming at the target
from a distance; so it is true that, when you are at the center, and the game
is to shoot farthest out, then the farthest out is the hardest shot, and we don’t
want to do it. We don’t even want to try. We pretend that aiming at the center
(where we are) is best.
That’s
one reason why the disciples asked Jesus for the target of restoring the
kingdom to Israel. That was a model for a different target where it was best to
live at the center and let the farthest out come to you. That would be easy.
And a lot of Christians want the model of the target to be the one where it’s
good to stay in the center.
There is
a lot to learn from Jesus’ crazy target. We are called to be witnesses. Surely
the most important job of a witness is to provide evidence.
It’s our
job to provide our evidence for Jesus to the world. We are called to start by
aiming at the center, closest to where we are. This part of the target is the part
of the world that includes our families, and our friends, and our neighbors.
This
model for the target means gradually moving out, geographically. We actually do
this because we give our resources, including our money, and this supports
mission around the world.
The
churches of the early disciples helped to support Paul, and the other apostles,
and the other witnesses, who went farther and farther out from the center. The
Book of Acts tells us about Christians trying to fill the world with the
message of Jesus who does fill all the world, and who wants to fill all the
hearts of all the people in the world.
The Holy
Spirit gets his way with us, and baptizes us with his truth, when we look at
those who are nearest, and at those who are farthest, and (looking at both) we
see people who will have a new life if they are filled with Jesus. Even the
people we treasure the most may be full of so many great gifts, and yet they
lack the gift of Jesus who would pull all their gifts together. Or maybe they
lack the gift of Jesus in the same way that we may lack that gift: if we have
the Holy Spirit teaching us, but our hearts are not being filled with the
Spirit.
Jesus
told his disciples not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the baptism, or the immersion,
and the flooding, and the washing of the Holy Spirit. So we are often called to
wait for the things that are most important. But you need to know that waiting
is active. Waiting, in the Bible, is not like sitting in a waiting room.
Waiting
means being ready for anything and, in this case, ready for something. Waiting
is not about sitting, or puttering around, or doing what you normally do. I
normally like to read. That’s how I like to wait. I like to read in a waiting
room in order to get my mind off of what’s actually going to happen next. That’s
not the waiting that Jesus asks for.
Waiting
means praying, and praying means wanting, and also listening. When the
disciples prayed, they realized that they also needed to be prepared. They
needed to be prepared to be called and prepared to serve. That’s why they soon
appointed a replacement for Judas, who had betrayed Jesus and hung himself.
Waiting meant being ready to serve and being prepared to go into action,
whatever that required of them.
So we are
called to pray, and to pray for the Holy Spirit to find us ready for anything,
and prepared for anything. They did that praying constantly, and they did it
together. Each of us should have a consistent focus in prayer, not only for God
to take care of us, but for God to show us how to be ready and prepared for
what he wants us to do next.
But it’s
not enough for you or me to do this on our own. I have to believe that Jesus
wants us to pray for this together. It’s what he told his disciples to do, and
our existence as God’s people is built on the same foundation as theirs. We are
going to wait for what God wants us to do next by praying as a congregation,
and learning (as we listen in prayer) to be ready and prepared.
We want
to be ready and prepared by knowing, for sure, what Jesus has given us to live
by; and by knowing how to share with others the difference that Jesus makes. We
want to be ready and prepared for the crazy target of Jesus.
The disciples
had trouble understanding the target. They liked staying in the center, and
they didn’t even understand the center. Jerusalem was the holy city, the place
where God focused his presence on his people. Jerusalem was the center, and yet
it was also the place that was farthest out. Its people were the most resistant;
just as we all are without the continual help of Jesus. Maybe you find the
center of your own target and your own world to be the same way.
Providing
evidence for Jesus by their words, and their lives, and their actions was not
easy in Jerusalem, the center. You know this is not easy in our own centers.
Our families and our friends who are not close to Jesus are a hard center to target.
And here
the crazy target is easy to misunderstand again, because (as I have said) this
is a target we don’t hit. The arrow of Jesus and the cross, and the change in
our hearts because of him, are not things you can hit anyone with, although the
other person may feel like you’re hitting them. If a witness gives evidence,
then you are not hitting, but giving something to your target. Since the Holy
Spirit is the power of God, and the power of God comes through Jesus, then you
are giving them power, or offering them that power.
In that
way, as witnesses, our job is to empower those who are closest to us. If we
find that those who are closest to us are also farthest from us (as Jerusalem
was) then our job is to empower those who feel farthest from us. It works
either way.
Our own
loved ones, neighbors, and friends need the empowerment that we have received,
and Jesus says that the power of the Holy Spirit will make it possible to reach
the outer limits and those who seem farthest from us. This can seem impossible,
but the Holy Spirit empowers us and makes the impossible possible. This is what
we believe.
The
disciples believed this and it worked, even when they didn’t understand what
they were doing. But their success, in the Spirit, was not easy. The Book of
Acts tells us that every step of the way was strange to them. They were always
moving into the unknown, and it was different every day.
This is
the other strange thing about the crazy target of Jesus. The target in front of
them was as big as the world, but there was another target within them.
Jerusalem, all Judea, and Samaria, and the ends of the earth were not only
boundaries “out there”. They were also boundaries within them. The boundaries were
formed by what was familiar to them, and by what was unknown to them, and
unwanted. These were the boundaries of where they were comfortable and where
they weren’t.
The target
of Jesus produced worry, and fear, and tension in the disciples. The Lord was
requiring them to do today what they had never done before. Tomorrow they would
have to do what they didn’t know how to do today.
They hit
those boundaries right from the start. Even before they left Judea, which was the
boundary of their comfort zone, they found themselves talking to the enemy Samaritans
and the pagan Romans. (Acts 8 and 10) They were talking and worshiping with
people they didn’t want to talk with, or worship with. They had to make
decisions about how they needed to change what they did and how they thought,
in order to meet the target of Jesus.
They had
to push their boundaries. They had to let Jesus and the Holy Spirit push their
boundaries for them. The Holy Spirit requires churches to change what they do,
and how they think. The Book of Acts tells us this in every chapter.
To be filled
with the Holy Spirit requires the waiting in prayer that will change us and
make us ready and prepared for this. Or else, we may decide that what the
Spirit calls us to is not for us. That is a decision for comfort, and comfort
is nice, but comfort can be a far different thing from fullness. And that makes
a difference.
Jesus
died on the cross to give us a new life; a life free from everything that
divides us from the love and purpose of God. He gives us a new life free from
everything that divides us from the ability to truly love God, and to love others,
and to love the whole world as God so loves it.
This new
life begins with forgiveness and forgiveness feels a lot like comfort. But
comfort is a word that originated from the idea of the strength and power to go
forth and live.
The
comfort that comes from the Holy Spirit always leads to the kind of life we
find in the Book of Acts. In this life we have been made so alive by the power
of the Holy Spirit that we grow, and we extend our reach. We reach out to
others, and we change, because we have been made alive in Christ, and living
things are always moving and changing.
Jesus is
pushing our boundaries, and we are pushing the boundaries for Jesus.
That is
what we are waiting for, and praying for, together: a new life that’s new every
day: really new! running on the power of the Holy Spirit! Get ready for it to
begin!
