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HOW FAR CAN WE REACH?

4/28/2024

Romans 13:8-10
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Mark 16:15
He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

You may have noticed that there was no video, no message posted for last week. That’s because I was attending the Disciple’s Annual Regional Gathering here in Northern California–Nevada. I was away several days, then arrived home Saturday night just in time to crawl into bed and grab a few hours of sleep before getting up Sunday morning and diving straight into morning worship.

No time for writing out a formal message, no time for recording and posting one. My message in church that morning was entirely “winging it” with a lot of Q & A as I tried to share some of what I had received at Gathering. The only problem, if abundance is ever a “problem,” is that there was just so much, I struggled to make a coherent story out of explaining it.

I faced the same issue once again when I attempted to describe it all in the brief newsletter we send out every week – there was too much to share in too small a space – so I ended up with one paragraph. I wrote:

I can’t begin to fit it all here in this small space so I’m just going to tell you my favorite thing about this gathering and that is it’s beautiful diversity! Both female and male preachers, and leaders from all over the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Black, white, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, Latin Americans, young leaders, older leaders — some are pastors, some are chaplains, some are teachers, some lead through their music. Some lead through national ministries. Some work in urban settings, some in the country. Some big churches, some small. We are so richly blessed in the diversity of gifts and in the people with whom we share this region!

So, that’s our starting point today – but I want to expand it out into the wider world and share with you some more of the amazing things that followers of Jesus do, whether as part of a recognized “titled” position in a church or by working with a large multi-national organization or in the various things people do on their own initiative, things like:

Buying a homeless person lunch
Gathering food for a local Food Bank
Helping an elderly neighbor with their shopping
Honestly listening to someone who is troubled and just needs to know that someone hears them

These are just random first thoughts -- the list could go on forever. The ways we can minister to each other, whether ‘officially’ or ‘unofficially’, is endless.

Several people I know in our Region have repeatedly gone out to sites in the aftermath of nature’s catastrophes and spent a week or more, under the guidance of a local DOC church, helping to clean up and rebuild. Others serve on regional committees, all up and down our large region. Others volunteer to teach required Continuing Ed. Classes, or head Search Committees.

We here at Church of the Open Door, have chosen to focus on two entities that serve the unhoused and/or food-insecure in our local area--Plowshares and our local food bank. But that does not begin to come close to the ways we reach out to others to help.

I’m not saying all this to show how marvelous we are, honest, but instead, to help us recognize the many, many, many ways to show our love for God’s people in our actions.

We are followers of Jesus, our Lord and brother, who long ago told us to “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to all creation.” That Gospel of loving one another can be preached so many different ways and people from our region are living out that love of neighbor in some pretty wonderful ways – some big, some small – all of them done because someone, somewhere cares.

In a possibly apocryphal story St., Francis of Assisi once instructed his friars to “Preach the gospel at all times -- and if necessary, use words.” Sometimes, actions say more than words.

So, think about it. What do you do, what have you known others do, that may not show up on any church’s “official “ ministries list—things that are most certainly ministering to our brothers and sisters around us? How have you been ministered to by others? How have you loved others as you love yourself? How far does our love reach?

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"They Were Filled with Wonder"

4/14/2024

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Psalm 9:1-2
I will give thanks to You, O Lord, with my whole heart;
I will declare all Your marvelous works.
I will be glad and rejoice in You;
I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.

Acts 3:1-10
Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer. A man lame from birth was being carried, whom people placed daily at the gate of the temple called Beautiful to ask alms from those who entered the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. Peter, gazing at him with John, said, “Look at us.” So he paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.

Then Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but I give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” He took him by the right hand and raised him up. Immediately his feet and ankles were strengthened. Jumping up, he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God. They knew that it was he who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what happened to him.

Let’s get ourselves oriented in the post-Easter world of Jesus’ followers. For forty days he was with them, appearing in various places to various people – still teaching them and explaining, as well as they could be hoped to understand it, how their whole world was about to change – within them and all around them.

After those forty days he was taken up into the heavens and was seen no more, but the last thing he said to them was that they were to remain in Jerusalem and wait for what would come. What came was the Holy Spirit, filling them with courage and knowledge and the gift of God’s own power.

In the swirl of wild happenings that began after the Spirit’s arrival, this reading from Acts comes a few days after Pentecost Day itself and just before the reading we heard last week about how the believers gathered together and shared everything in common.

So here we are – Peter and John are on their way to the Temple for the regular nineth hour prayer time. This would be at 3 p.m. by our reckoning. The fact that the two Apostles had a regular prayer time at a public gathering, suggests that things had calmed down significantly in the forty-plus days since Jesus’ crucifixion. Even the events of Pentecost Day hadn’t raised any immediate serious push-back from the authorities. The Temple and the Romans apparently believed that the execution of Jesus had rid them of that problem. They were about to find our differently.

So the two Apostles are on their way to prayer but as they were entering the temple precincts, they were stopped by a lame man begging at the Beautiful Gate, as it was named.. This man was a familiar sight, having been carried to this particular spot at the Temple to beg every day. But today he would be given a gift he most likely never imagined.

Peter stopped and told the man, “look at us.” He then continued, “I have no silver or gold, but I give you what I do have. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” Then Peter took his hand and raised him up and they walked into the Temple together.

“Neither silver nor gold...” These words and what comes after them are so familiar, at least to those of us raised in a church setting, or as regular church attendees, that they have lost their deep meaning. As with so many Bible stories, they’ve just become “the story.” We no longer hear hear the actual wonder in what those words are saying.

But the people there that day heard and saw the wonder when the lame man, the beggar they all knew, stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God!

How often do we manage to relate a story from the Bible to our own lives? Especially one of the miracle stories? Can we even guess what the lame man felt? He had been helpless – for who knows how long? He’d been carried by others to his spot at the Beautiful Gate day after day, perhaps year after year, to beg -- scripture doesn't give us a timeline. That was all he was good for in the eyes of his world. That would be his whole life.

And suddenly he has been restored, not only to health and freedom to move on his own, but also to his role as a member of society again – a whole person.
Have you ever had an experience such as this? Had a total stranger walk up and hand you the answer to every one of your woes? For free?

And then there’s Peter. What did Peter feel? Peter, who just weeks before had denied even knowing Jesus. He had seen Jesus heal others in his time with him, but did he ever before this moment truly believe that he could do the same? Was there a voice in his head telling him this was all just a fairy tale, or had the Spirit truly eradicated every doubt?

In the book of Acts, Luke (or whoever the writer of Acts may be) has Peter making speeches right and left – long, impassioned speeches. Peter who never spoke in public all that much.

Perhaps the most dramatic healing that occurs in the whole Book of Acts, is the healing of Peter – Peter who loved Jesus and believed in him wholeheartedly, but had so much trouble loving and believing in himself. Peter, who so truly became the leader Jesus named him to be, the Rock on whom the church would in time be built.

There are many kinds of healing.

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"In or Out? Where do we meet the Risen Jesus?"

4/7/2024

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Psalm 133:1, 3b
How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity! ...
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

Acts 4:32-35
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions were their own, but they shared everything they had with each other.

With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.

For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

The events of the weeks and early months immediately following Easter – the death of Jesus and his rising again in one form or another, come down to us in a tumultuous jumble from the concluding pages of each of the four gospels and then largely from the Book of Acts.

It’s hardly a tidy straightforward narrative – more a series of individual vignettes from an increasingly multiplying and diverse people who call themselves ‘Followers of the Way of Jesus.’

Jews from the areas around Jerusalem and Galilee, educated in the prophets and their ancient writings were, for the most part, the first of his followers, but after Pentecost, they were soon joined by new converts from all over, Greeks, Phoenicians, North Africans, Syrians – those who followed Jesus since the beginnings of his earthly ministry and those who only heard of him in his last year here, as well as those who never saw or heard him in this life but only came to know him through the stories of those who themselves had seen and heard.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to be meeting, in no particular order, some of the people who laid the foundations for what we experience today as “church.”

Our primary reading for today comes from Acts –The Book of the Acts of the Apostles -- and describes the lives of some believers in the weeks following after Pentecost – the Coming of the Holy Spirit.

All the believers were one in heart and mind. They shared everything they had with each other...
God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them.

It is described this way several times in those early weeks, they hung together, shared their meals together, even lived together.

From time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

It would still not have been entirely safe to advertise oneself as a follower of Jesus too publicly – it was after all, only a short time since Jesus was executed. While they weren’t necessarily hiding, they didn’t often choose to flaunt it in the faces of the Temple authorities, either. So they kept to themselves leaving it to their leaders, Peter and John, to do the public speeches and healing.

And as they stayed together and built their lives together, they welcomed newcomers and they shaped the story that was building as to who Jesus was and what he was becoming in their minds and hearts. And in time the home groups spread out further and further into new lands and new people and the story grew. And the believers held together with each other, and they drew more believers in, and the story expanded, and the story grew and eventually became church.

And over the centuries these new churches continued to call people to come in. And that can’t be bad... can it? Isn’t it true that most of the things that Jesus told us directly to do were not about forming our circles and bringing others inside. Weren’t they about going out to where the people are?

The only time I recall Jesus saying anything about going inside was his instruction to do our praying privately—“in the closet”-- instead of standing on street corners showing off our piety.

Now I understand that what the earliest Christians were doing wasn’t always about being exclusive – they were gathering to support each other and to learn from each other and share what they knew, but unfortunately, down through the centuries the story has changed, little by little, until in many cases it has become “Jesus lives in our church—come inside here and we’ll show him to you,”

But Jesus doesn’t live in our church buildings. He lives in the hearts and spirits of every believer and in all creation. Matthew’s gospel tells us: “Go and make disciples of all nations,” (Matthew 28) or as Mark’s gospel tells us: “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16)

So, where do we find the risen Jesus? Inside the church or outside with the people? Should we be enshrining Jesus’ words with those who share our beliefs or carrying them out into the world to share with everyone? I’m pretty sure it’s not Inside or Outside—it’s both. We find Jesus in those who know him just as we find him in in all creation. But to find him at all, we have to open ourselves—both to hear and to share.

Jesus told us to care for each other – but, except in a handful of cases, he didn’t specify HOW Finding that HOW is up to us.

So we come to church to re-charge our batteries, to remember who we are and whose we are, to learn, to share, and to find that sometimes elusive HOW.

Thanks be to God.

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HOW FAR CAN WE REACH?

"They Were Filled with Wonder"

"In or Out? Where do we meet the Risen Jesus?"

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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