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Acting Without Thinking
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
May 17, 2009
The Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:44-48
Sometimes when I am
standing at the back door, shaking hands with people as they come out of the
sanctuary, some dear lady will look up at me and offer an apology. “I know I’m
not supposed to say I enjoyed the sermon,” she begins, and I wonder, “Who
told her that? Was it her mom? Did she say to her when she was a little girl,
‘Now, you’re not going to enjoy this but please just try to sit still and suffer
through it.’ Is that how it was?” I don’t know about you, but I enjoy
listening to sermons. In fact I’m going to Atlanta for a few days this week to
do nothing but that—listen to sermons. It’s an event called the “Festival of
Homiletics” (which is just a fancy name for preaching), and this year some 1,600
people have signed up to sit in church pews for the better part of a week and
listen to the world’s best preachers do their thing. Fred Craddock will be
there. Desmond Tutu will be there. Barbara Brown Taylor, Tom Long, Walter
Brueggemann, Barbara Lundblad, Joseph Lowery…the list goes on and on.
One of my favorites is
Methodist Bishop William Willimon, who is so funny and sarcastic that I can’t
help but enjoy his sermons, no matter what my mother told me, and he often tells
stories about what people say to him after he has finished preaching. He used
to be the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and he said that one day, after
a particularly rousing sermon on how we ought to win the lost and change the
world, he shook hands with a woman who said, “Well, thank you, Dr. Willimon.
You’ve given me a lot to think about.” And he probably didn’t say it to her but
he said it to us, the thing that popped into his head at that moment: “Oh, is
that what this is all about? I worked on that sermon all week so that you would
have something to think about?!” Now, don’t get Dr. Willimon wrong. He
appreciates thoughtful listeners as much as I do. But that sermon was intended
to move people to action, not reflection. He was hoping for a different
response.
Imagine if Jesus had said
to his followers, “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of every nation,”
and they said, “Well, thank you, Jesus. You’ve given us a lot to think about.”
It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? Mostly because Jesus’ followers didn’t seem to
spend a lot of time thinking. There is a reason that the book about them is
called the Acts of the Apostles and not the Thoughts of the
Apostles. If it had been the Thoughts of the Apostles it would have been a very
slim book, and by itself it wouldn’t have made for very good reading. I’m
thinking about that example from John 21:3 where Peter, after thinking about it
for a while, says “I’m going fishing.” And the other disciples said, “We will
go with you.” You can’t really make a whole book out of that, can you? But
maybe it’s best that those first followers of Jesus weren’t deep thinkers,
because if they had thought very long or very hard about some of the things they
did, I feel almost certain they wouldn’t have done them.
Let me give you just two
examples:
First there is Philip, one
of the seven who was chosen in chapter 6 to oversee the daily distribution of
food in the Jerusalem church. After the stoning of Stephen and the persecution
that follows he goes to Samaria and begins preaching the gospel there, and when
the people respond he baptizes them. Think about it: here is Philip, a Jew,
baptizing Samaritans! As you will remember from the story of the woman at the
well in John 4, Jews do not share things in common with the despised Samaritans,
and if a Jew wouldn’t normally drink from a Samaritan’s water bucket how do you
think he would feel about sharing the bath water of Christian baptism? Yikes!
But Philip doesn’t stop
there. He is told by an angel of the Lord to go down to that wilderness road
that runs between Jerusalem and Gaza and off he goes. When he gets there
he sees this Ethiopian eunuch coming—the queen’s
treasurer—riding along in his fancy chariot, decked out in his splendid robes,
reading from the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit tells Philip to go and run
alongside the chariot and when he does he hears what the eunuch is reading, that
passage about a lamb being led to the slaughter, and how the sheep before its
shearers is silent. “Do you understand all that?” Philip asks. “How can I,”
the eunuch replies, “unless someone explains it to me?”
So Philip climbs into the chariot and before they’ve
gone too much farther he has told him the whole story, how Jesus died to take
away the sins of the world, and how anyone who repents and believes can be
saved. Apparently the eunuch does repent, he does believe, and when he sees
some water there by the side of the road he says, “Look! Here is water. What’s
to keep me from being baptized?”
Well, actually…plenty.
The man is an Ethiopian,
first of all—a stranger and a foreigner. He doesn’t look Jewish or sound
Jewish. He is in no respect a “Son of the Covenant.” And then there is that
unfortunate other thing. Leviticus 21:20 insists that a eunuch “may not
approach the altar of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 23:1 says that no one in this
man’s condition “may enter the congregation of the Lord.” Here’s a man who may
not approach the altar of the Lord, who may not enter the congregation of the
Lord, and yet he asks, “What’s to keep me from being baptized?” Philip might
have said, “Lots of things. Everything! You’re an Ethiopian eunuch,
for crying out loud!” But according to the oldest and most reliable manuscripts
Philip didn’t say a thing. The eunuch commanded the chariot to stop; he and
Philip went down into the water; Philip baptized him; got carried away by the
Holy Spirit (quite literally); and the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. I’ve
often thought it was a good thing that all this happened out on a wilderness
road somewhere, because if it had happened during the Sunday morning service at
the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem the deacons might have called a special
meeting for that same afternoon to inform Philip who could be baptized and who
could not.
What was he thinking?!
And then there is Peter,
who was staying down in Joppa at the home of Simon the Tanner. He went up on
the rooftop for his noontime prayers and while he was up there he got hungry and
fell into a trance. He saw the heavens opened, and something like a sheet being
lowered by its four corners. Inside the sheet were all kinds of animals, birds,
and reptiles that were considered “unclean” by the Jews (you can find the whole
list in Leviticus 11). A voice said, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” But he
said, “By no means, Lord. I have never eaten anything that was profane or
unclean.” The voice said, “What God has made clean you must not call unclean.”
This happened three times and then the whole business was carried back up into
heaven.
While Peter was still
wondering what to make of all this three men arrived at the house. They had
been sent by Cornelius, a Roman centurion from Caesarea, who had been told in a
vision to send to Joppa for a certain Simon Peter, who was staying at the home
of Simon the Tanner. While they were standing at the gate the Spirit said to
Peter, “Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with
them.” And that’s what Peter did. He went to the home of Cornelius, a
centurion, an upright and God-fearing man who was well-regarded by the whole
Jewish nation. When he got there Cornelius fell at his feet but Peter said,
“Don’t do that. I’m a man just like you are.” And then he told them: “You know
that it’s against the Law of Moses for a Jew to associate with or even visit a
Gentile, but God has shown me that I am not supposed to call anyone profane or
unclean. So when I was sent for I came without objection. Now, what’s this all
about?”
So Cornelius reported how
an angel of the Lord had appeared to him and told him to send someone to Joppa
and fetch Simon Peter who was staying at the home of Simon the Tanner. When
Peter heard it he said, “Well, now I understand that God shows no partiality,
but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to
him.” It’s a huge admission on Peter’s part. After all those years of thinking
that the Jews were more special than anyone else Peter is able to see that in
God’s eyes all people are special, even these uncircumcised Gentiles. And so he
starts to tell them the good news about Jesus, but apparently it is a long
sermon, the Spirit grows impatient, and while Peter is still speaking the Spirit
falls and these Gentiles start speaking in tongues and praising God. The
circumcised believers who have come with Peter are astounded that the gift of
the Holy Spirit has been poured out even on the uncircumcised, and Peter says,
“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the
Holy Spirit just as we have?” Apparently no one could, and so Peter ordered
them to be baptized, these Gentiles! He had just said that it was
against the Law for Jews to associate with them or even visit them, but here he
was baptizing them!
What was he thinking?!
Well, he wasn’t thinking.
He was acting. Don’t get me wrong. Thinking is not a bad thing. I’ve always
admired thoughtful Christians. But historically when Christians have thought
about what the church should be and do they have turned to three sources of
authority: scripture, tradition, and reason. If those first believers had
relied on the authority of Scripture to tell them what to do they would have
never preached the gospel to Samaritans or eunuchs or Gentiles, and you and I
would not be here today. If they had relied on the authority of their religious
traditions we wouldn’t be here today, because there would have been no place for
the likes of us within first-century Judaism. And if they had appealed to the
authority of reason I doubt we would be here either, because it just wouldn’t
make sense to take the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, to those who weren’t
looking for him. But instead of thinking about what made sense and what didn’t
these first believers allowed themselves to be swept away by the mighty wind of
God’s Holy Spirit, and it took them to places they would have never gone.
And that’s why Baptists
and many other Christians have added a fourth category of authority: along with
scripture, tradition, and reason we look to the authority of experience. When
Philip and Peter were presented with the objection that what they were doing
wasn’t in the Bible, that it had never been done that way before, and that it
didn’t make sense, they could appeal to experience. They could say, “God’s
spirit fell upon us and filled us with power. It moved us out of the church and
into the world. It told us to preach the Gospel to outsiders. And then it fell
upon them just as it fell upon us. How could we say no to the Spirit of God?”
That’s an excellent question, but sometimes Christians do. Sometimes even
Baptists, who are big on experience, say no to the Spirit of God. We shake our
heads and say, “That’s not in the Bible,” or “We’ve never done it that way
before,” or “That just doesn’t make sense.” Let me just remind you that if
those first believers had said those things none of us would be here today.
Christianity would have remained a small sect within Judaism, and when those
first believers died their faith would have died with them.
I don’t want us to act
without thinking. We’ve spent months talking about what the church—this
church—is supposed to be and do in these days. But I don’t want us to think
without acting, either. I don’t want us to get stuck in endless theological
discussions or appeals to historical precedent. So maybe we could do this:
maybe we could do what those early believers did. They spent time waiting and
praying for that promised power from on high. They waited a long time. They
said a lot of prayers. But when that power came they went. Near the end of the
Book of Acts someone says about them, “These are those people who are turning
the world upside down.” I wish they would say the same about us someday. I
wish they would say that the people of Richmond’s First Baptist Church turned
the world upside down, and that heaven—which used to be up there somewhere—had
come to earth.
—Jim Somerville © 2009
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