Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 4/25/10
Rise Up!
Psalm 23
Acts 9:36-43
One of my favorite columns in the Wall Street Journal is “Bookshelf”. The reviews there are consistently both interesting and informative. This past week Joseph Loconte wrote a wonderful piece about Eric Metaxas’ new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Metaxas is dead-on in his read of Bonhoeffer. There are some, like noted atheist Christopher Hitchens, who would just as soon discard or ignore the role of faith in Bonhoeffer’s life. They would rather paint him as a great humanist or ethicist in his courageous stand against Hitler and the Nazi’s persecution of Jews. But Bonhoeffer’s faith was profoundly orthodox. Even a cursory read of his work leaves no doubt that it was his faith that drove his choices. In fact, when he visited Riverside Church in New York City – a church known even then for its social activism – he was stunned by what he called the “self-indulgent” and “idolatrous religion” that he found there. It wasn’t that he was opposed to social activism, quite the opposite. What he opposed was activism divorced from sound theology.
In 1940 Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined Admiral Canaris and others in a plot to kill Hitler. He was arrested in 1943 and charged with assisting Jews and subverting Nazi policies. Two years later, when his role in the conspiracy was uncovered, he was executed.
The power of Bonhoeffer and his lasting contribution to our understanding is the unsparing way in which he combined faith and action. He didn’t just talk about it. He lived it. For Bonhoeffer, the mark of authentic belief will always be an unreserved obedience in every realm of life. It is this same combination of faith and action that we find lifted before us in our second lesson this morning. Let’s turn to it.
Acts 9: 36-43
Consider the dynamics of what we are seeing here. On the one hand we have a community filled with grief at the untimely loss of a dear sister. On the other, we have Peter coming in and restoring this woman to life and health. Faith on the one hand. Action that makes a difference on the other.
Part of this story’s power lies in the way it manifests God’s presence and care in our world – precisely the kind of care the psalmist was talking about in our first lesson. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” This healing embodies the very premise of that psalm: that God knows each one of us and is intimately involved in each of our lives.
Here in this text we see our Shepherd in action; God taking care of his people. And in the miracle of this healing, God is placing his stamp of approval on the message this early church was proclaiming. The healing becomes a visible sign of God’s presence with them.
But there is an issue just beneath the surface here: if miracles happen (and I believe they do), then how come so many of our own prayers seem to go unanswered? How is it that God responds in one case but not in so many others? It would seem that either God is very arbitrary, or that we ourselves are somehow lacking – our lives not good enough, our faith not strong enough, or our prayers not quite adequate enough.
That read is more common than you might think. Back in seminary I had a professor who was once told by well-meaning friends that his prayers for his dying child weren’t being heard because he just didn’t have enough faith. What a horrible message to leave with a grieving parent; and undergirding it, what a horrible understanding of God.
But in the face of these miracles what else can we conclude? We can know that the loss of a child is wrong and contrary to everything we’ve seen of God. We can know that the loss is evidence not of God’s will but of the brokenness that is so much a part of this fallen world. We can know all these things but part of us still wonders: if God could heal someone like Dorcas, how come he chooses not to heal us, or heal our friend or family member?
That’s what so troubling about these miracles. It is not that we don’t believe them. It is that believing them raises so many other questions in the face of our own experience.
Now some respond by discarding the miracles altogether; treating them as the stuff of myth or literary exaggeration. They relegate God to the sidelines of life and insist that he is no more than an observer. That is essentially where Rabbi Kushner goes in his well-known book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. If God isn’t involved and doesn’t intervene then we can’t blame God for so many of the struggles that we encounter in this life.
The problem there is that this approach is so contrary to what we see of God in Scripture. Was the psalmist wrong in speaking of God as our shepherd – as one who actively watches over us and provides for our needs? Even more troubling, what do we do, then, with the incarnation which stands at the very center of our faith? We celebrate and affirm a God who chose to take on the form of human flesh; a God who became one with us, who shared our joys and sorrows and who ultimately gave his very life for our sakes. There is nothing passive or distant about that kind of God.
But there is an alternative. We can affirm that God is indeed an active God and at the same time recognize that He doesn’t answer all our prayers, and that he doesn’t always bring the healing for which we long. We can make the choice, in other words, to embrace the ambiguity.
No, we don’t always understand what God is doing. There are times when he feels very distant to us. Yet we make the choice to believe in his love and goodness based not on our own experience, but based on what we’ve seen of him in the person of Jesus.
The invitation of these texts is to embrace that kind of faith. But there is challenge here, as well: the challenge to translate our faith into action; the challenge to become Christ’s hands and feet in the face of so much suffering around us.
When Peter heard about the need in Joppa, he didn’t say “I’m sorry I’ve just got too much going on in my life right now.” Or “I’m sorry, but let me tell you that I’m praying for you.” No, he did something. When he heard about their need, he went. And it was in going and doing what he could that he became God’s instrument in the life of that community.
That’s where we experience so much of God’s presence today. That’s where God is moving – in individuals like Peter who make the choice to obey. Do you wonder where God is in the face of your own struggles? God is right there in the outstretched hands of your sisters and brothers in this community of faith.
But if those hands don’t reach out, if we become too preoccupied with our own concerns and our own felt needs, it doesn’t happen. That is both the great privilege and the extraordinary responsibility that God has given us. The privilege, on the one hand, of being used by God to make a difference. The responsibility, on the other, to actually make that choice. If we don’t do it, then it isn’t going to happen – there will be needs and there will be injustices that won’t be addressed.
Bonhoeffer got it exactly right. Real faith pushes us out beyond ourselves, and beyond self-interest. Real faith calls us to obedience. Peter’s call to “rise up” is God’s challenge to each of us this morning; the challenge to rise up out of our lethargy, to rise up beyond our fears, to rise up and become that Church that is God’s answer to so much that is wrong in the world today.
Where are you seeing a need that might be addressed? Who do you know who could be blessed by having someone come up beside them and support and care for them? The great power of the Church lies not in the institution but in its people. God moves and God is felt where individuals like Peter make the choice to move beyond Sunday morning and put our faith into action.
So where is God calling you to make a difference this coming week? What can you do to take this great gift of life and become a blessing? Rise up! And together may we become a people through whom others come to experience God’s presence and God’s touch.