“What Boundaries to our Faith?”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Text: Acts 10:34-48
We sat around an old antique-covered room on Wednesday in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Five of us met with a professor who is now retired and who spent many, many years as a distinguished professor of theology. Even though he was retired and there are many lines in his face, many grey hairs in his beard, there is still a sparkle and a twinkle in his eye when he talked about the church and its future, and where the world is going.
We asked him if he had any advice for us, those who were still in various ministries across North America. He said there was one thing that had been on his mind and he said that he was not suggesting that it applied to all of us and to our ministries in particular but, as a general trend, there is something that the Church has got to stop doing. We paused. Our ears opened even wider. He said, “We must stop calculating everything, and leave room for the Holy Spirit to move.”
As he started to peel away this core of wisdom, it was obvious what he was talking about. You see, he is concerned that many churches, even successful ones, in the short term anyway, have this sense that there is a magic formula that we need to find for it to grow and expand and be lively and to have a passion.
He said, “You know, that formula where you have the right programs, or the right amount of parking, or the right signage, or the right kinds of music, or the right kind of preachers, or the right kind of event planned around the church, and if you bring all of these things together and you calculate it very well, then you will have this franchise that will work like magic: everything will just fall into place. But the problem with this is that often it allows no room for the power of the Spirit. It is so calculated, so organized, so scripted, that the Spirit has no role to play. When the Spirit moves, when the Spirit guides, when the Spirit corrects, we quench the Spirit, because we've got our program, and it is all nicely and neatly structured and organized, and if we follow it, Bingo! Everything will turn out just fine!”
He then quoted another theologian from Boston, John Jefferson Davis, at Gordon Conwell Seminary. John Jefferson Davis was making exactly the same point in a new book that he has written about the Church. He says that even in some of the most successful mega churches there is what he calls “a God vacuum” where everything, again, is all very slick and neat and calculated, but God seems to be absent. Everything moves on time and with pace, and every sentence, every song, every prayer is manipulated in such a way that God isn't needed at all.
Jefferson Davis argues that even more than that, the invisible God and God's Spirit is often marginalized. There is no silence, there is no depth to the analysis of scripture; everything is just a calculated machine. Then he quoted from the great T.S. Elliott, who in a wonderful poem, Burnt Norton, addresses his contemporaries. He wrote the following that the contemporaries are:
Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Humid apathy with no concentration.
For Jefferson Davis, and for the old professor with whom we met, there is the belief the Church is often like T.S. Elliott's contemporaries: distracted, entertained, brought into something great and glorious, but is there not a God vacuum?
In our text there is a sense in which even the great Apostle Peter had to learn the lesson that this professor was conveying to us, namely that there had to be room for the power of the Holy Spirit to move in the lives of believers. No matter how great and how wonderful the plan is, unless the Spirit is present, nothing good happens.
It begins with the story of Cornelius. We actually pick up the text in the Book of Acts after the story of Cornelius has taken place. It is a long story, but it is a very simple one. Cornelius is a Roman centurion. He is a good man, he is a wise man, and he cares for the poor. Even the Jews who were under his care and under his military might recognized him as a good man. One day, Cornelius has a vision, and in that vision God appears to him and says, “I want you to go to Joppa and send some of you emissaries and there they will find a man called Simon Peter. When they encounter this man, they are to invite him back to meet with you and to talk to you.”
Astonished by this vision Cornelius can do no other. He sends out two emissaries and a servant and they go and they meet this man, Simon Peter. In the meantime, Simon Peter has had a vision. The Lord has appeared to him and told him that in fact all the things of the earth can be eaten. Even with the restrictive Jewish laws, still all food is made by God and is worthy of consumption. Strange kind of dream really! Not your average dream!
I dream about things that I can consume. I dream about hamburgers and fish and chips and all kinds of things! And, I hear God saying, “Oh, it's all very well, you can eat any of these, Andrew, it is all perfectly fine.” My doctor doesn't agree with God, however, but that is another story. Peter is having this dream, and he sees this vision of a blanket coming down and falling and all the things of the earth are edible, and all of a sudden, Cornelius's representatives appear.
Now, this may sound like a strange story, but something very powerful is going on. The emissaries from Cornelius say to Simon Peter, “We'd like to invite you to come and to meet this great Cornelius. Would you be willing to come and see him?” So, Peter says, “Sure. I'll travel with you, and I will meet Cornelius.
So, he arrives in Cornelius's house and he is astonished that it is full of guests, all wanting to hear what this Jew, Simon Peter, has to say. Now, remember, all of Cornelius's friends are Gentile, but they want to know what this Simon Peter has to say. Simon Peter is astonished that the Holy Spirit has been at work amongst these people, and he starts to unfold to them the story of Jesus of Nazareth, and how Jesus of Nazareth, because of his resurrection from the dead, has drawn people to himself. There in that place, Jew and Gentile, those who were circumcised and those who were uncircumcised, those who had restrictive diet laws and those who did not, in one place, experienced the power of the Holy Spirit.
This gathering at Cornelius's house constituted one of the great moments of transformation in the life of the early Church. It changed everything: Jew and Gentile coming together. It shattered Peter's previous views. You see, Peter believed Jesus was the Messiah of the Jews, and he was unsure as to whether or not one had to become a Jew first to be able to receive the Messiah. He thought one had to abide by Jewish laws and regulations in order to be able to enter the Church. Then he realizes that the Spirit of God is already at work in the Gentiles, and as he preached Jesus Christ, these Gentiles turned to him, and he is astonished.
He learns two great lessons. The more I think of these two great lessons, the more I think this is what the Church needs to learn again today. The first of these lessons is that it is not the program that matters; it is the power. Peter, you see, had a set view, a set series of beliefs. He was convinced that they were right, but he needed to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit to see how the Holy Spirit was at work in others.
I couldn't believe it! When I got up yesterday morning and I opened the Toronto Star, and here I am thinking about the importance of Cornelius and Peter, when I read this headline: “Fight Over God Splits GTA Alcoholics.” Now, the story is incredible! It boils down to this: there are some who want to take Alcoholics Anonymous groups and separate them from the normal program. They want to do so by removing any reference to God or to a higher power.
They have set themselves up as AA groups that are atheist or agnostic and remove any reference to the higher power. All the others who run Alcoholics Anonymous say, “You can't do this! The moment you remove the higher power, the moment you remove the power of God, then Alcoholics Anonymous fundamentally changes. The twelve steps no longer have any meaning.” And so, there is this debate, and it goes on in the newspaper, and they interview people.
One of the arguments against having God in the AA meetings is that all of that was written back in the 1930s and we have now moved beyond. Listen to the language: we have “moved beyond” God. Somehow we don't need God anymore. But there were two great witnesses there who had another view. One of them was a Roman Catholic priest who has been an alcoholic for 50 years. He says he's an alcoholic even though he hasn't drunk for 50 years. He's been involved in the AA movement. This is what Father Pete Waters said:
“People and agencies can help, but the only one who can restore that person to permanent sobriety is God.”
A lady who has been a member of a group for many years, said the following, and this is classic!
“You need to believe in something higher than “yourself.” After all, “yourself” got us drunk.”
It is a fascinating article! You can read it online.
What is at the heart of all this is the question of whether the program is the way in which a person can stop drinking, or whether it is the program that affirms God, who is the one who helps you stop drinking? AA has always been based, going right back to the early days of the Oxford movement, that great influential movement, that it is to the higher power that the person must turn if they wish to be healed and restored.
I can't begin to tell you how many people that belong to AA I have ministered to over the years, whether in Halifax or in Ottawa or here, but especially here, and especially people who come to our Hill Group anonymously, which is right. They nevertheless seek out spiritual counsel and they tell me that they know and they understand that alone they cannot get through this.
Even with the help of their friends and their mentors and their counsellors, they cannot get through the terrible pull of alcoholism. One of the arguments they use is this: when they are not in the group and they are not surrounded by others, when they are alone, it is then they want to drink. And, when they are alone, and they know that the power of God is with them, they understand they are not alone, they are not alone, and God can comfort them.
It is not the program; it is the power. It is not the calculation and the steps; it is the one who empowers those steps. That is what Peter realized. It is not the religion. It is not the formalities. It is not all the great symbolisms that count. It is the power of the Holy Spirit. When the power of the Holy Spirit is at work, Peter is astonished - he can even work amongst the Gentiles and can transform them!
What was really remarkable for Peter was that when he was speaking to the Gentiles in Cornelius's living room, it was the Spirit, not his words, that was moving in the hearts of the listeners. You can take Peter's great speech about Jesus and you can analyse it and cut it to pieces and say, “Oh, this was a brilliant speech! This was a marvellous, marvellous presentation!” but the real power in it came from the Spirit.
I read a fascinating story in an old copy of Reader's Digest that was sitting in a doctor's office and had been there since the time of the last century! As I was flipping through and realizing just how marvellous President Clinton is these days, and all the great cars that are for sale for, you know, at $9,995 and stuff, way, way back this was, and gas was what $1/litre or something, I started to read this story. The headline of this story was Words Don't Mean Anything Without The Power Of Action. Well, a preacher loves this stuff - right? Ding, ding, ding!
I started to read it, and it was about a major in the USSR Air Force. His name was Osipovich. He was a pilot in that great Air Force in the 1980s. One day, he was invited to talk to schoolchildren about the importance of peace, something that the major believed in. He booked the morning to teach the students about the importance of peace but he had to renegotiate his time schedule and it meant that he actually had to go on his sortie, not in the morning when he normally flew, but at night time in order to accommodate his speech to the students. That night was September 1, 1983. It might not be a day you remember but you will when I tell you what happened.
That was the night that a Korean Airline (KE OO7) flew into Soviet airspace. As a result of a number of calamities, misinformation, pilot errors, instruction errors, a pilot was ordered to shoot down KE 007. The pilot was Major Osipovich, the plane, a civilian airliner with 269 passengers aboard. It brought the superpowers to the brink of disaster. Osipovich was terribly, terribly hurt by all this. He realized what had happened and was shattered by it, even though he was doing his duty.
What was evident was that he might have had all the good words in the morning, and might have had all the right things to say, but he needed the guidance and the power to do the right thing at night, and he didn't. You can have the program, but if you don't have the power, what do you have? You can have the right words to say, but if you don't have the Spirit, you don't have the right power to say them.
There was one last thing that Peter learned and it was to transform his whole view of God. He learned it is not the person; it is the praise. What astounded Peter was what he learned about God in all this: that God has no favourites. We all think that God has favourites, but God doesn't. What God does expect and this is regardless of Jew and Gentile, slave or free, male or female, it mattered not in the Scriptures, it was that they were obedient and they did what was right, they gave to the poor, they accepted forgiveness and the grace of Jesus Christ and they acknowledged that Jesus was Lord of All.
It didn't matter if you were Jew or Gentile. If you believed those things, if you were dedicated to living a holy and righteous life, if you were willing to accept the grace of Jesus Christ, then the power was there for you, the promise was there: the Covenant. Peter was shattered by it. He couldn't believe it. It astonished him. You see, he had determined who was going to be in the Kingdom by looking at the people, while what God was looking at was their praise, their adoration, their obedience. He had already established who was in the Covenant; God had opened up the door of the Covenant to let the faithful in.
I thought about that again with a particular alcoholic I met. I had known him quite a long time, but didn't know that he was afflicted with that disease. One day, I received a telephone call to go and meet him in a part of this city where they have a detox centre. I went to the detox centre, and you don't just walk into a detox centre, you have to announce that you are there, you have to receive permission to go in, and you don't meet all the way in, you meet in an anteroom, where only you and the person you are seeing can be together.
On a cold day, a bitterly cold day, a -30C day, in an anteroom that had little heat, this man who was detoxing and I sat and talked and prayed. I knew this man as a Christian. I knew this man as a deep believer. In fact, I would say that he would have as much faith as all of us in this room combined. That is how devout he was. But still, he was detoxing. He said to me, and I have never forgotten it, as we read from the Scriptures, from Acts II, and the coming of the Spirit, to a passage in Philippians and the promise of rejoicing in the Lord always, “I have known the Lord nearly all my life, but today I need him!” Then, he quoted a line, not from Scripture, but from Alcoholics Anonymous in its book, and I thought it magnificent! The line goes as follows: “I thank and I praise God every day not that he opens the gates of heaven and lets me in, but he opens the gates of hell and lets me out.”
It is not the program; it is the power. It is not the person; it is the praise. That is what makes the Christian faith so wonderful! Amen.