Doug's Sermon: Standing in Common by the Name of Jesus

Doug preached the following sermon at the Warden Woods Mennonite Church this morning:

Standing in Common by the Name of Jesus

Drunk? Who? Us? We are not Drunk it is only 9 am in the morning. Thus, Peter, in Acts 2, answers crowds perplexed at a group of uneducated Galileans speaking in the language of the Parthians, Medes, Elamites and a host of others - a host of Israelites gathered in Jerusalem from as far away as Rome for the first national festival since the execution of the agitator from Nazareth. What did THIS mean? Why some scoffed—“THIS-- it is only Rude Galileans and CHEAP wine” other paused to listen to Peter’s speech.
Apocalypse NOW. The Day of the Lord has come. And the Spirit is poured out to overflowing on the flesh of men and women. The vision of Joel is being fulfilled: Daughters will rise up and prophesy! The Very Old shall dream new dreams…slaves shall lift up their voices and be heard .…. And EVERY one who CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED.
Some more than paused to hear this message. They became faithful. Faithful to a renewed political movement. An extraordinary movement in which all things were held in common.
In the text for this morning Peter and John stand for questioning, questioning for their part in healing a handicapped panhandler. “By what power or by what name did you do this?” What medical board authorized you to heal? Are you properly licensed? What power, dunamas, has moved you to act in such a way? But perhaps this isn’t the question at all. Peter and John insist on attributing the healing to Jesus, but the inquiry seems bent on who authorized them to speak in the temple. They are arrested while preaching and released with a solemn charge to speak no more in Jesus’ name. Over and over again the first few chapters of Acts underscore the importance of the very name of Jesus. It is a question of authority nearly every time. It is a question of power, of political allegiance. The very name of Jesus, it seems, is subversive.

In the Sunday School hour, I spoke with some of you about the causes of homelessness. We made a long list of reasons why people might end up on the street. As I said then, many people suffer the effects of more than one of those reasons. Some people wind up on the street for, really, just one of those reasons. A lost job. An injury or a disability. When I think, however, of people afflicted by a multitude of street issues, my mind goes first a foremost to a man named Jeff. The causes that keep Jeff on the street are legion. The first time I met Jeff, I was on a street outreach walk. I was so new on the job that I didn’t say a word, but only listened as Jeff spoke with my outreach partner. His wheelchair was broken. One of the footrests had been completely destroyed by another fellow on the street whom I later found out had once been Jeff’s lover. Jeff is aboriginal. He would have to wait several days or even weeks before all the bureaucratic work with ODSP could be completed and his wheelchair fixed. Of late, at night, Jeff has taken to plugging his electric wheelchair into a socket on the outside of the building at Sanctuary. He has at least a drinking problem. An empty flask of Listerine sat abandoned under Jeff’s chair the last time I saw him. And, oh yeah, the chair is broken again. One of the wheels completely flat. Jeff has apparently lost any sense of hope. There’s a permanent spot set aside for him at one of the handicap accessible shelters, but he rarely uses it. More often than not, he simply urinates in his chair without so much as an effort to make his way to any number of accessible washrooms in the downtown core. I’ll be honest. I probably have as little hope for Jeff as he does for himself. If the Lord is my Shepherd, he’s certainly not Jeff’s. [pause before slowly reentering exegesis].

The setting for our passage from Acts 4 today is tongues of fire, the spirit overflowing, and a community of women and men living together and sharing all their goods in common. Acts tell us that many became faithful as a result of John and Peter’s Pentecost message. They numbered about 3000 and they took to breaking bread together and to praying. While according to the church’s calendar we remain between the Resurrection and Pentecost, the lectionary reading for today has us circling around Pentecost already. This is what it means to live out the Resurrection. The community of Jesus and the Holy Spirit is growing exponentially. The powers that be are taking notice. But, what really gets the authorities’ attention in a big way is a healing, a healing and a sermon that adds 5,000 to the 3,000 of Pentecost.
Peter and John meet an old, lame beggar at the gate called beautiful. He asks them for money. Peter answers I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you in the NAME of Jesus Christ of NAZARETH. Get up and walk…
And the man “entered the temple with them walking and leaping and praising the Lord.”
Peter takes this opportunity to preach a sermon. He claims that this act of healing is proof that Jesus is who he said. As chapter 3 verse 16 puts it: It is faithfulness to the NAME of Jesus, his name itself that has made this man strong.”
In the middle of such speaking Peter and John are seized. Fearing perhaps the same fate as their Lord they come before the rulers, elders, scribes and the chief priest, Caiphas to be questioned. It should be noted in passing that there are no Pharisees here. Eventually, Peter and John are freed. Those who have taken them captive find no way to punish them, as chapter four says later, because of the people, who were praising God for what had happened. Along the way, Peter and John speak the famous words “We must obey God rather than men, for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
As the story continues in chapter 4, John and Peter return to their friends, where there is a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And, in a repeat of chapter two, we are told in verse 32 that, “the whole group of those who were now faithful were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”
A few weeks ago, I spent time in Ottawa at Street Level, a conference for “Truthtellers and Peacemakers” put on by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s National Roundtable on Poverty and Homelessness. Sister Sue Mosteller and Bill van Buren of L’Arche Daybreak were there to focus our attention on a spirituality of brokenness and presence through stories, joke telling, and reflections upon art and Scripture. Of the plethora of poignant stories shared at the conference, perhaps most poignant for me was Bill’s story. Bill, who has an intellectual disability and a high-pitched, contagious laugh, was the first core member of L’Arche and traveled and spoke for years with Henri Nouwen. Over a long period of time, Nouwen and others urged Bill to make a life book, a collection of letters, pictures, and other scraps from his life. After constant refusal, Bill finally agreed with the caveat that nothing from his first sixteen years of life be included. You see, before Bill arrived at L’Arche, he was homeless. Decades later, Bill is one of the fortunate ones. Rather than revolving his way through asylums, group homes, boarding rooms, and further stints on the street like so many others similarly situated, Bill has found supportive housing in the context of a permanent Christian community, for the entirety of his adult life. This story is an inspiration for the work of Lazarus Rising, indeed.

And as I sat listening to Bill and others at the conference, a name and a face kept forcing their way into my mind. There’s an older man who is a vital part of the community at Sanctuary. In his early sixties. Hunched over a good bit. Long white beard. He faithfully leads outreach walks on Monday and Friday evenings. If you ever come out for one of Lazarus Rising’s walks on the third Friday of every month, you’ll meet Frank. I’ve learned a lot already from Frank. At first, I guess I just assumed that he was a staff member. But he’s not. Just before we went to Ottawa, we learned that Frank has been on the streets again for a few months. Unlike Jeff, Frank is one of those who is out on the street for a single reason. At some point in his fifties Frank lost a decent job as the result of a merger, a job he’d held in an office downtown for years and years. At his age and with his routinized disposition, Frank was simply not able to begin a new career from scratch. He has a reasonable sized RSP that matures when he’s sixty-five, one for which he’d incur sizable penalties for early withdrawal. The folks who run welfare have found out about the RSP and are insisting that he has to take the penalty, make use of those funds now, and that he can go back on welfare when he is penniless again. But Frank is loathe to take any sort of penalty, he’s had sixty-five as a goal in his mind for some time, and so, he’s on the streets again.

As I racked my brain in Ottawa, wondering who might take Frank in, I considered challenging Mennonites in the GTA to take Frank or someone like him in when I had opportunities to speak such as this one this morning. But then I got to thinking, you know, my wife and kids and I live with another couple and their kids in a situation that’s trying to model itself on these early chapters of Acts, would we be willing to take Frank in? Frank has no substance abuse problems, no psychiatric diagnoses, no history of criminal activity, and yet there is something about the way our society works that tells us that it would be dangerous, wrong, extraordinary to take Frank in. Someone else should do it. It’s the government’s responsibility to deal with these people. The real problem is with the welfare folks, right? What’s needed is more money, lest stringent regulations. But what about the kingdom of God? What would the folks in Acts do? Well, I couldn’t get these questions out of my head. And so, we are in the process of seriously considering inviting Frank into our community house.

You know, someone asked me just the other day if I really thought an end could be put to poverty in this world. I assumed they had in mind the recent head-line grabbing, bracelet wearing “Make Poverty History” campaign. I was and will be rather blunt. Taking a very small percentage or even a very large percentage of G-8 countries Gross Domestic Product and setting it aside for the poor will not end poverty. Poverty is and will be a continual by-product of our entire economic way of life. We could get everyone off the streets tonight, and a new crop of homeless folks would begin arriving in the morning. An assault on poverty can only be launched from an entirely other political and economic perspective. In point of fact, these early chapters in Acts finds us near the beginning of what is the most fecund moment in revolutionary political history. This is a time before the Constantinian sell-out of the Church to state violence. This is a time before a deep rift between Jewish and Gentile Christians. This is a time when Jesus’ teachings regarding wealth and poverty are taken so seriously that Church members begin holding all things in common. And this is also a time when Jesus’ disciples are determined to multiply into militant cells. In short, from the Resurrection through the first fourteen chapters of Acts, we have record of a time when a group of pacifist radicals who reject the law of empire in favor of God’s law are militantly recruiting for membership in their communist collective. Can you even imagine the violence of reactions to a similarly committed collective in North America today? Communism. Pacifism. Radical Missionary Recruitment. A rejection of secular Law. Now that is a recipe for a political nightmare.
But what about Jeff? Our native friend in the wheelchair? I began by talking about Jeff because he’s someone I can’t even imagine reaching. I’d like to say that the Holy Spirit moves as she will. I’d like to say that its still possible that a Christian follower of a radical political movement might eventually be able to pass by Jeff on the way to worship and say “In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise up and walk.” It would be lovely to rejoice with a paraplegic “walking, and leaping, and praising God.” But you know what, I can’t honestly say that I believe that that will happen. Do I believe that God could and might still do such things? I constantly tell myself that I do. [long pause]

As we move in the life of the church toward Pentecost, it would be lovely to see the Holy Spirit create a community of 3,000 Christian Communists. It would be lovely to be a witness to the type of sign or wonder that would immediately add an additional 5,000 people to share all things in common. 8,000 or more radically faithful people of God with a common purse. And, what’s more. All of this happens in Acts, in a population the size a small North American town!
Could it happen here? Now? The twenty-first century? In Toronto? It is only in the name and by the power that has gathered us together here this fourth Sunday of Easter that we even dare dream such things. [more quietly] Jesus. Of Nazareth. The Messiah of Israel.