Sunday Sermon: The Change That Brings the Greatest Joy
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Text: Acts 15:3
Series: “Why Church Matters"
August 30, 2020, Conversion
If there’s anything we give lip service to today as followers of Jesus, but don’t really yearn for, it’s the concept of conversion. I say that because of how when you ask most people to define the term, they will answer more along the lines of alteration, a mere reshuffling of the furniture of life, but not in any way close enough to the complete reordering of everything that results in all things becoming new.
It's like the story of the young man who had been doing his best to keep his old car running. It was a time in his life when he didn’t have much money and had to do most of the upkeep on the car by himself. But one day he ran into something that was more than he could handle. So, he reluctantly took the car to a repair shop for some expert assistance.
The mechanic at the shop looked under the car hood for a couple of minutes, and then emerged to pronounce the verdict. “What you need,” he said, “is the radiator cap solution.” “Oh,” said the young man, trying not to sound too confused.” “Do you mean the radiator cap isn’t holding enough pressure?” “Well, that’s part of the problem,” answered the mechanic. “But what you really need is to lift the radiator cap, drive another car under, replace the cap, and that should solve the problem.” That, evidently, is the radiator cap solution. But I’m sure the young man wasn’t ready to hear that diagnosis; do you? I would imagine that he was anticipating some less involved answer that wouldn’t cost him a lot and wouldn’t from him much of a sacrifice.
But then is any of us ready to hear a word that requires anything like that from us? I’m not sure that we are. We call ourselves a part of a faith community that actually began with a call to change and to dramatic change at that, but over the centuries we have become one that has become so impervious and resistant to change that it’s little wonder that one of our favorite church songs is “I Shall Not Be Moved.” And all the while we hold to that viewpoint under the guise of wanting to be a church that is more “like the church in the book of Acts.”
Well, maybe we need to go back and take another look at that church, which, as the church has always had to do, must ever be revisiting its life and witness in the context of the new reality to which the Holy Spirit is always directing it.
Consider this story before us this morning from the 15th chapter of Acts. Talk about a tipping point; this chapter, which for all intents and purposes is recorded in the very middle of the Acts account, has the church coming together to wrestle with a most pivotal issue - namely, what do they do with these Gentiles who have come to faith in Jesus?
The story takes place in Antioch, in Syria, the place where the Bible tells us that Jesus followers were first called Christians. To this point in the story most Jesus followers had come to faith in Christ from a Jewish background. Yes, there had been some instances of Gentiles trusting in Jesus, though most of them were Gentiles who were considered “God-fearers.” That is to say, they were Gentiles who had embraced the law of Moses and had then come to trust in Christ. Think of the Ethiopian eunuch and Cornelius the centurion.
But here in Antioch many Gentiles were becoming believers in Jesus and they were sharing together in the community of faith with believers from a Jewish background and all of it was happening without incident.
This word had reached the elders in Jerusalem and they had dispatched a party to Antioch to investigate this new reality, the thought of Jews and Gentiles sharing together being unthinkable to some in the Jerusalem church. Yes, those persons who couldn’t wrap their heads around the thought of Jews and Gentiles following Jesus together were willing to receive Gentiles, as long as those Gentiles were committed to observing the law of Moses, and, in particular, circumcision. But to the elders in Antioch, especially Paul and Barnabas, who had seen firsthand the Holy Spirit’s amazing work among Gentiles over the course of their first missionary journey, they could not disagree with this viewpoint more strongly, and thus they received the Antioch church’s commission to go themselves to Jerusalem to hash out their differences with the elders there so that the good news of Jesus might continue its advance “to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
And so Paul and Barnabas make their way to Jerusalem, along with other unnamed representatives, and as they make their way through Phoenicia and Samaria, non-Jewish territories, they tell of how the Gentiles have been converted to faith in Christ, which makes all the believers in those communities “very glad.”
Two things should be noted about this verse. The first is that their telling of the Holy Spirit’s transforming work among the Gentiles is not a surface explanation; it is a detailed account of what has taken place. Some have noted how the word that Luke uses to describe this detailed account employs a medical term in the first century, which is something you would expect from a physician like Luke. Consider it a diagnosis, an explanation that hits to the heart of the matter and gives the recipients a course of action to pursue. In other words, it is a diagnosis that leads to a prescription, one in which Luke is saying, “Here is how the believers from Antioch explained the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who had come from a Gentile background, and this work clearly sets the stage for how God’s redemptive purposes are to be proclaimed going forward to all persons, both Gentiles as well as Jews.”
Secondly, the explanation of the Holy Spirit’s amazing work makes those who receive it “very glad,” or as we might also translate the phrase, “with exceedingly great joy.” Do you remember the last time the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to use such an expression? It was in the second chapter of his gospel, where when describing the angelic announcement of Jesus’ birth to the lowly shepherds, themselves the last group you would expect angels to appear to, the angel of the Lord tells them, “Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in Bethlehem, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” In other words, God’s salvation in Jesus Christ is a universal salvation. It is a salvation that is meant for everyone. No one, neither unclean shepherds nor lowly Gentiles, is beyond the pale of God’s saving grace in Jesus.
Do you see what this staggering good news means for us today? It invites us to consider how we might join God in a work that is capable of changing everything and everyone, including us! What I mean by that statement is that too much of the time we become locked into a mindset that accepts the premise that things will always be what they’ve always been. What’s the phrase that’s being tossed around today? “It is what it is.” In other words, the present reality is an unchangeable one, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
And while that’s probably true and there’s not that much we can do to change the present reality, in the power of the Holy Spirit, are not all things possible?
You look at the whole panoply of Scripture and you see story after story of a God who shows up precisely to upset the status quo. From the book of Genesis, where God moves and works with the void and the darkness and says, “Let there be light,” to the book of Revelation, where the feared beast that emerges from the sea is finally subdued, and everywhere between God is at work to redeem His creation and put everything back to what He intended it to be. And of course, all of it is centered around Jesus, whose death may have appeared to be the end of a very good life, but on the third day God moved and raised Jesus from the dead so from that point on everything has been changed.
Here's what that can mean in your life and mine, and in the life of this church. We have lived too long wondering what’s around the next corner. Instead of doing that, why not live with a sense of anticipation about what’s around that corner because of how we believe that God is at work even in this season? If we could do that, then like these believers from Antioch in the book of Acts we might yield ourselves even more to the power of the Holy Spirit and know the Spirit’s never-ending joy and we might take more seriously both the privilege and the responsibility of calling everyone to the wondrous change that takes place when one invites Jesus into his or her heart.
Can you do that this morning? Can you yield yourself to the power of the Holy Spirit that alone is capable of changing everything and everyone, and changing it for the better?
Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest that I was introducing to some years ago while devoting more attention to spiritual formation. It was a dry season in my life even though on the outside it probably seemed to most people that all was well. But I needed an overhaul, one in which I might experience a “radiator cap solution” of a spiritual nature.
I was living in a political community, where the kinds of conversations we’re seeing taking place now aren’t ones that just happen every four years; they happen every day. It’s an ongoing reality, which can be enormously draining when you’re trying to manage ministry in a climate like that.
But Rohr helped me to experience a good measure of revitalization by reminding me that as a Christian I have three options in facing my everyday reality: first, I could go about it, continuing to do the same old thing with the same old mind, which he termed conservatism; or second, I could go about by doing a new thing with an old mind, which he termed liberalism; or third, I could begin doing a new thing with a new mind, which he called authentic faith. Those first two options? They both avoid the necessary dying to self, which Jesus said was a prerequisite to becoming His disciple. Only the third one leads to exceedingly great joy, because it alone is grounded in love – a love for God and God’s creation and a love for neighbor that mirrors one’s love of self.
So, if this morning you are weary of puttering through life with a mind that’s not exactly hitting on all cylinders, pull your life up and under the power of God’s Holy Spirit and be converted. Then join God in the work of conversion He is doing in every place and every season. And when we do that together, then like the church at Antioch, where they were first called Christians, in all that we’re about, we will be exceedingly glad.