The riot

                        One video.  A short message, with an explosive reaction.  How is it that one low quality film…consisting of no more than 10 minutes or so…can send nations into a frenzy?  The opinions of a few people stir up millions into a riot.  A cheaply made video costs many people their lives.  What makes a group of people react in such a way to the expressions of others?  We all have a way of thinking about who we are as a nation…a group of people living together.  Economies…governments…ideals.  We are good with money, or we have an impressive cultural history that stretches back centuries.  We boast in our freedom to disagree with our national identity and have an abundance of opinions, or we see ourselves as strong defenders of our religious and cultural identity.  This is us…this is who we are.  We unite in the way we see ourselves, and when we feel that people are threatening our group, our group gets angry.

            The region of Ephesus had a strong cultural identity.  They were known as “keepers”.  Now usually, “keepers” referred to cities who protected buildings that honored the Emperor.  Ephesus, however, was a special area, because it housed one of the great wonders of the ancient world:  the temple of Artemis.  This temple had about 120 pillars, each 60 feet high, laid with gold and precious jewels.  The centerpiece of the temple housed a 20 foot tall image of Artemis, that supposedly had fallen from the heavens.  At one time, the temple was a powerhouse of religious identity, being the destination for an annual pilgrimage, and hosting a giant party full of wild sex and binge drinking.  Pilgrims would even buy souvenir shrines to bring home to remember their trip…because what happens in Ephesus, stays in Ephesus.

            Over time, the keepers of the temple of Artemis had become so efficient at throwing these parties, that they accumulated a mass of wealth that made them the equivalent of a national bank.  Imagine, throwing parties so wild that you end up at the top of the Dow Jones Industrial index!  Demetrius was the CEO of party central in Ephesus…he was the big businessman who kept the temple’s net worth at an all time high.  Demetrius was the guardian of guardians, who aimed to keep the business machine...the image of Artemis…and subsequently, the identity of Ephesus, straight on course.  Progress.  This nation was well on its way to making history.

            And along came Paul.  Well, not just Paul.  Along came this gang of people who refused the status quo.  This new little faction in society that did things differently, and named themselves some arrogant title.  The Way.  They were somehow performing feats like the fake magicians, and winning people to their group.  This man, Paul, apparently had a way with words, not just with his Jewish people, but even with the Ephesians!  People were refusing the old traditions…refusing the old religion.  They had such nice libraries, full of expensive and rare books…they destroyed them!  What is wrong with people nowadays?  But the last straw…the final tip of the scale…people stopped coming to the party.  Business was down…the market was declining.  People stopped buying souvenirs…they started moving on to something else! 

            Of course, when people stop following the status quo, the “keepers” get angry.  Without the status quo, people are not quite sure what to do…what to think.  Who are we?  Was this ever a good thing…to sell shrines, and hold lavish parties?  Who is doing this to us?  People grab their pitchforks and torches and go look for some comfort in revenge.  They grasp around for reasons to retaliate…to gain back a sense of identity.  They band together, so that they can tear others apart.

            Does this sound familiar?  Isn’t this what is going on overseas right now?  People feel their national identity threatened, and so they retaliate, through violence, through demonstrations and riots, and so on.  But those nations are not alone in their riots and retaliation…do we not do the same thing to each other?  Through social media, we now see our friends frequently dividing over political and religious issues.  Every week, a different issue sends people off in opposite directions, breaking friendships and ending conversations.  We, living in the “civilized world”, are no better off.  And in thousands of years of progress from the ancient near east to our present day, nothing has changed.  Disrupt the status quo, and people fall to pieces.

            But did Paul and the people of the Way intend this disruption?  Did they send out messages insulting the Ephesians, or attempt to ransack and burn the temple at Ephesus?  We catch a glimpse of this provocative community in a letter from Pliny the younger to the Emperor Trajan.  Let’s look at some of the habits of the early Christian community that inspired such rage: “they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food.”  So, they met and sang…which might be annoying, depending on their vocal talent.  They encouraged one another to be honest and sincere.  Hmm.  They valued strong marriages, they tried to stay out of debt…what is wrong with these people?!

The Christian community was just strange.  Different.  They weren’t out to spite people, or to make everyone else feel uncomfortable.  They didn’t go insulting their neighbors for getting rowdy-rowdy at those parties, and they didn’t aspire to be the first in a great line of Pit Preachers.  They didn’t make any attacks on local temples like some of the other peculiar religions had done.  The Christians at Ephesus weren’t set out to cause a riot…that wasn’t in their mission statement when the church came together.  They simply wanted to obey.  They were patiently awaiting the return of the Messiah, and they followed the rules of His house.           

For love and obedience go hand in hand.  I always wondered why Jesus drew a connection between love and obedience when He said, “Whoever keeps my commands loves me.”  Isn’t that setting the bar way too high?  If God’s love means God’s forgiveness, then why should we obey?  Isn’t love unconditional?  And yet, the beautiful description of the early Christians gives us an answer.  They obeyed because they loved Christ…not the other way around.  Their obedience was a direct result of the love and trust invested in Christ.  They were waiting.

  We live in an age of suspicion.  We are taught to question…to think for ourselves.  Don’t do what you’re told…take things with a grain of salt.  We are taught not to trust.  It is no surprise, then, that we turn on anything that upsets our status quo…that goes against the grain.  And yet, we are called to obey.  We are called to trust…to be patient, and carry on the torch passed to us through the centuries.  And we do so because we love Christ, and trust that obeying Him will give us something better than the status quo.  We are set apart to wait on Christ.

And so, the Christians lived differently.  They wouldn’t come and eat or drink at the parties, because they preferred to eat food that honored the one God.  They wouldn’t go out of their way to succeed in business, by any means necessary.  They wouldn’t leave behind the wife to have a weekend with the wild girls of Ephesus.  Really, the only interaction they had with the rest of the community was to talk about the man that they worshipped as God, how He had changed their lives, and to help others in His name.  But they added nothing to the status quo.

  We too are called to wait.  We are not called to send out humiliating videos of other cultures, or to make violence against anyone that doesn’t agree with our principles.  And yet, we are also called to reject the norm.  And though some of the details have changed, the heart of the early Church still flies in the face of the status quo.  We are called to be responsible and generous with our money.  We can succeed in business, but not by stepping on other people, using them for our excessive gain.  Likewise, we should not be irresponsible, taking on loans, and stretching ourselves thin to accomplish foolhardy plans.  We should use our money responsibly and generously, ultimately for the sake of helping those who need assistance.

We are called to be responsible in marriage.  I don’t want to speak too much on this topic, as we will be discussing purity in the upcoming weeks.  In the ancient world, marriage was a means for social advancement.  Marriage helped men make alliances, and as soon as they acquired gain, they would move on to another marriage.  One ancient Roman citizen boasted of 27 marriages, and wives would often keep track of the years through their different marriages.  And, as we see from the history of the cult of Artemis, ancient Romans had no qualms about sharing women, even when married.  The Church treated marriage much differently.  They treated adultery seriously, barring adulterers from the community until they proved to be repentant.  As Christians, we are called to model strong, monogamous marriages to a world that sees such a thing as stuffy and outmoded.  In an age where people sleep with each other to judge whether a partner is fit for marriage…where sexual freedom is prized above marital commitment…we are called to run against the status quo.  We are called to confess the joy of monogamy…the thrill of getting to know someone over the course of 20, 30, 40 years and more. 

And most importantly, I see a trend today that people are less willing to listen when their worldview or beliefs are challenged.  Friends part ways when they see that someone feels a certain way about an issue.  Members of churches will hop from church to church until they find their status quo.  Why, I’ve even seen family members erupt to the point of near abandonment over sports rivalries!  (I’m not kidding)  Here, I see two important elements in descriptions of the early Church:  they met together, and they helped others.  They neither abandoned each other, nor did they turn their backs on their community.  For we profess the love of Christ…from which neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us.  This love lives in us…this love binds us to each other, and we owe this debt of love to everyone in the world.

And it is from this love that we obey Christ.  It is in this love that we wait for Him.  This love motivates us to live differently…to abandon the status quo.  And as we live differently…as we wait…we likely will cause dissention.  People don’t like to have their worldviews challenged…they don’t like to have their cultural identities threatened.  And yet, like those early Christians, who did nothing more than wait on their Messiah…caused an upheaval without lifting a finger against their neighbors.  In fact, a member of the community stood up to defend those early Christians, because they hadn’t violated any laws.  This is not a community motivated by hate, but by love.  They were able to live differently…to challenge the status quo.  They could be generous and not contribute to the bank of Artemis…they could honor marriage by not participating in the orgies.  But they didn’t do so to spite the Ephesians…they did so to obey…to obey the Messiah, who had come for their community…and for the Ephesians, and the Romans, and the Jews and the whole world.  They obeyed their Messiah because they trusted Him…they were waiting, because they were in love.  This is why we obey…why we choose to live holy lives, different from the status quo…not to break laws and to spite the rest of the world…we wait because we are in love…and this love will one day come to make holiness our status quo.  But until then, we wait…

Waiting

What is it about the night that evokes fear in children and adults alike?  Is it that our eyes are so heavy, that we cannot fight the weight of sleep dragging us down into the caverns of our subconscious?  Or are we anxious about what might be hiding in the silhouette, where light no longer stands guard?  Throughout history, the realm of night has belonged to delinquency, wantonness and evil. 

In the deep dark of the night, children huddle under covers for fear of something sinister, waiting in the shadows to pounce upon them.  In some cases, this fear is unfounded, and a mere switch of the light reveals a pile of clothes, or a misplaced chair.  But in Uganda, the boogeyman is real.  Every night, Ugandan children try to sleep, haunted by stories of their friends and family who have been snatched from their homes, taken into the bush and forced to fight for the Lord’s Rebellion Army.  Most are forced at gunpoint to kill, so that they will become accustomed to inhumane behavior.  Others are made into sex-slaves, and mangled or murdered if they are no longer needed to serve.  This is the nighttime routine…death scratching at the door every moment that your eyes get heavy…passing through Uganda like a plague.

            How can one sleep with death making such a racket at the door?  The sons of ancient Israel knew no sleep in their desert homes, as Egyptian guards came to steal them away…to offer them up as sacrifice so that the God of Egypt…Pharaoh…could get a good night’s rest.  How someone can sleep through thundering blows against so many children is beyond my comprehension.  As Pharoah slept through the commotion, God heard the cries of His people, and raised up a prophet to fire off a warning signal to Egypt.  And Pharaoh slept.  So God sent a few more raucous messages, accompanied by flies, frogs and fleas.  And Pharaoh slept.  Finally, as God exhausted every option, He settled that the only way to get Pharaoh’s attention would be to return Pharaoh’s own message to Israel…and so, God’s messenger went door to door, hunting the sons of Egypt in the night.  The only way to repel this boogeyman was to paint the blood of an innocent on your doorposts in the night.

            And as Pharaoh began to awake, the Israelites packed their bags and laced up their Nikes.  As soon as the Master signaled, the Israelites were ready to flee.  Like an Olympian sprinter on the starting blocks, the Israelites were poised, waiting for the gun to fire.  This is the mood of the Passover meal…not one of mourning, but of expectation.  When Jewish families participate in their meal of deliverance, they hear the blood of their ancestors shrieking from the earth.  They remember the angel of Death wandering from house to house, whispering into doorways, only to relent at the aroma of blood.  This is a meal of deliverance...a meal in which Jewish people are able to participate in that state of preparedness, where at any second, God would arrive to lead them out of slavery…to lead them home.

            Jesus and His followers ate this meal every year.  They knew the stories, and they knew the process.  They felt within their chests the exhilaration of sharing the meal of deliverance…eating together, and praying that God would once again return to deliver His people in a world long since dormant to God’s voice.  The disciples had been looking for such a deliverer…the Messiah, who would return to rescue God’s people from the clutches of an evil empire.  Although they were surrounded by other figures that claimed to be the deliverer, both charlatans and the Caesar himself, the disciples had staked their claim in this Rabbi named Jesus.

            Jesus performed many miracles, and taught them many lessons, and the disciples began waking up to the fact that Jesus was the answer to the cries of so many generations of the sons of Abraham.  The disciples believed this so much so that all other options began to disappear.  Nobody else that they had ever encountered seemed to have the answer to the death that constantly loomed on their porch.  Even when Jesus began talking about weird stuff like eating His body and drinking His blood, the disciples knew that He was the one that they had been waiting for.  Jesus once mused to them, “Are you going to leave me, like everyone else,” to which the disciples responded, “To whom else would we go?”  Jesus wasn’t simply a choice amongst many others…He wasn’t a candidate with a good sales pitch.  He wasn’t the best looking option, or some sort of last resort.  He was the only option.  He was the Messiah…the deliverer.  The one they had been waiting for had arrived.

            And then Jesus started talking about leaving.  He told the disciples that they needed to start preparing to stay awake.  Put on a pot of coffee, because it might be a while.  In that age, Roman soldiers would stand watch at night, to protect against any nightly intruders.  Their shifts changed at sundown, midnight, when the rooster crowed and at dawn, and at each shift change, the Roman soldiers were expected to be awake when their peers came to provide them relief.  The night guard had one responsibility:  do not fall asleep.  A drowsy night guard would be like a lifeguard who cannot swim, or a chef who cannot taste.  Jesus made it clear that night was coming, and that His followers could not be sure exactly when the sun would rise again, but that they could know one thing for certain:  keep awake!

            And this lesson would not be lost on the disciples.  They might have failed Jesus in Gethsemane, and in letting Jesus get captured.  But the disciples were Jewish…they knew how to keep awake.  They carried the expectation of thousands of their Jewish ancestors deep in their bones, and as soon as Jesus ascended into the heavens, the disciples began the wait.  They knew the death that surrounded them…the despair into which the world had been plunged.  They lived in the midst of an empire that excelled at swift and exact execution of anyone who dared challenge the traditions of Rome.  But they also knew that their doorposts had been painted red with the blood of the Savior.  Jesus had torn His body apart to feed His people the meal of deliverance, and had bled on His people to shield them from that shadowy death that flew back and forth from one household to another.  The disciples were covered…now, they simply had to wait.

            And where are we now?  What does the Church do 2000 years later?  Many options have come and gone, and yet nobody has stepped up to the challenge.  We have seen great rulers and movements, thinkers and dreamers come and go, and yet death continues to roam across the earth, meandering from one country to another, starting wars and kidnapping children…starving families and inflicting disease.  2000 years later, the Church still only sees one option.  To whom else would we go?  We are waiting for Christ.  

            Or have we moved on?  It seems as though when we lift the veil of history, we see people making the same mistake.  We forget so quickly…we are a drowsy creation.  When our needs are fulfilled, then we tend to forget that something greater is on the way.  We eat our fill, and then claim a place on the couch to take a nap.  How embarrassing to be in this position when the homeowner returns!  It is a great danger to live in our country, because we, unlike most of the world, enjoy a great deal of comfortable living.  We have air conditioning, all-you-can-eat buffets, discount stores and welfare.  If you don’t have it, chances are you can get it through a bit of diligence.  Now, I’m not trying to claim that you sin when you enjoy a meal, or when you can get a good night’s rest.  Yet, I do think that we run the risk of falling asleep. 

I find myself in the same predicament on Friday nights.  After a long week at work, I have many plans of watching movies with Kelley, or finishing a book, or working on a project.  However, inevitably, when I get settled on the couch, regardless of what Kelley and I are doing, I black out, only to find Kelley prodding me and telling me to go to bed before I become a permanent addition to the couch.  I even fell asleep playing a video game once…a rare feat indeed!  Do not underestimate the combination of weariness and comfort.  Jesus did not instruct the disciples to crane their necks upward and gawk at the sky until He returned.  He was extremely vague about the details of His return, but He was equally clear that when He returned, He wanted to return to a lively house.  Surely, we won’t fix all of the world’s problems before Jesus returns…but we had better not be asleep when He gets back!

             Most Americans do not find this teaching daunting, because we are not heavy sleepers.  In a culture of crammed schedules and crowded life plans, we are not keen on wasting our time on sleep.  If anything, we are too impatient to stay in one household for too long.  We think that this new leader will be the answer to our problems, or that that movement is what the world needs, if only people would rally behind it.  We are appalled by a different political issue every week, and redraw our lines in the sand over and over again.  We are saturated with statistics, and stories, and solutions, and we constantly shift our paradigms to accommodate the ever flowing sea of change around us.  The question has become, to whom will we not go?

            But Jesus told us to wait.  He prepared a meal for us…He set the table, served us dinner, and after we finished eating, He told us to wait a while until He returned…that He would be back to rescue us.  Have we moved on?  Is it that we are scared of what looms in the darkness, so much so that we cannot stand the wait any longer?  Or are we drowsy?  Have we lost the expectation…the cries of a thousand generations before us, asking God when He will return to rescue His people?  The Lord’s meal is precious.  It has been shared by generations of Christ’ followers.  Some have sold everything to eat the meal.  Others have eaten at the expense of their friends, their family, and their home.  Some have even given their lives to eat at the Lord’s table.  Generation after generation have shared this meal, handing it on to the next generation to wait patiently for the Lord’s return.  And now, the baton has been passed to us.

            At the beginning of each year, we repeat the motto of our particular church body:  “Don’t just go to church…be the Church!”  What does it mean to be the Church?  In so many words, we talk about the importance of following Christ, not just on Sunday morning, but from Sunday to Sunday.  We also talk about investing in one church body…not hopping around, taking from this ministry and that gathering, but focusing your time on contributing to help one part of Christ’ body be excellent.  However, this year when I say “Be the Church”, I challenge you to now think about the Lord’s meal.  Think about how Jesus tore apart Himself to feed you…how He covered your house with His own blood so that death would stop harassing you.  Think about the generations of Christians who have given everything the possessed to carry this meal into the future…to share the table with a new generation of Christians.  Think about how long people have waited, patiently and responsibly, for the return of the Master.  To “Be the Church” is to take up this baton…to run the next leg of the race, praying that at any moment, you might be the generation that sees the Master return to the house.  You can help clean the house, or help someone else get their things prepared.  You can stand at the door, inviting in others who are fleeing the scourge of death that roams rampant in the night.  Invite them into the one place that death cannot invade. 

            When we gather together, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes again.  We do not gather here because we want to hang out, or because Kelley’s cooking is good, or because we like Graham’s guitar playing.  I know we don’t gather here for the preaching.  We don’t even like each other (I’m kidding!)  We gather here because we know that there is no other option…there is no other solution than Jesus.  We stay awake, because we want to be the first people to greet Him when He returns home.  We lovingly, and carefully, take His meal, because if we are not the lucky ones who see Him return in our age, then we can share the meal with those who will carry it into a new age.  In all, we gather because we need to poke and prod each other to stay awake.  It is easy to become weary, as time presses on.  It is easy to let our eyes wander…tempting to want to flee the house in search of something else.  But we are not called to flee…we are not called to rest.  We are called to keep awake.  Because when our time comes, we want to be the ones who waited for Christ…just as He waited, and still waits for us to come home.

...and waiting...

Last week, we talked about our call as a church:  to wait for the return of Christ.  We return to this mystery every time we eat the Lord’s meal.  And each time we eat this meal, we are taking part in something that has gone on for centuries.  Generations of believers before us have waited for Christ to return, and now, it is our turn to wait.  But how do we wait?  We will be exploring answers to this question over the next few weeks, but we will enter this study as Christ commanded us to the Kingdom of God:  like children.

            Are we not all, each one of us, a bunch of children riding in the back of a car?  “Are we there yet?  When will we get there?  Can we stop…I can’t wait any longer?  Is this it?”  The disciples made a habit of asking the Lord these questions.  And who could blame them?  The Old Testament scriptures taught the disciples to ask this question.  Throughout the Old Testament, we hear people asking, “How long, Lord?  How long?”  Can anyone name the Old Testament person who asked this question the most?  Likewise, this phrase appears in the Psalms around 20 times.  The Lord even asks it of His people…how long will you act this way?  And now, the disciples asked this question of their Lord:  “How long until you establish Israel?”  In other words, how long will Israel be in this mess?  How long will we be beaten and killed for being Jewish?  How long until people stop laughing at us?  How long do we have to put up with all the opinions, the chatter, the different lifestyles…how long until we can be free?

            Have you ever felt this desire…the intensity of being focused on a goal…the passion to see results?  Some people are ambitious and determined, stopping at nothing until they achieve their goals.  Others tire out over time and lose focus.  Or maybe you have not yet found something in life that you have chased without abandon.  This is how Jesus describes His gospel…a gospel that makes people sell everything that they have, drop all of their plans, and go back on all of their commitments.  It is no wonder, then, that the disciples get so worked up about finally getting to cash in that hidden treasure…the gigantic pearl.

            How long?  The Lord answers the disciples, “Stop.  You’re overstepping your bounds.  You’re in God’s territory now.  You don’t get to know when this all will come to a close.”  How fair is that answer?  You’ve followed this God-man, Jesus.  You’ve seen Him perform miracles to the unlikely and the unhelpful.  You’ve seen Him teach and reach out to the ungrateful.  You’ve seen Him beaten, tortured and murdered by the State.  You’ve even seen Him conquer death…the greatest victory the world has ever witnessed…and now, Jesus is saying that the journey isn’t over.  Not yet.  Many things are allowed on a journey, but apparently, certainty is not allowed.  We simply cannot be certain when this great story will draw to a close.

            But the Lord does not leave the disciples empty handed.  In fact, the Lord gives the disciples an unexpected treasure that extends from their present into ours, and into eternity:  the Church.  God truly is a giver.  He is always coming at us from all sides.  He created the earth, and then came down and walked with His creation.  He came down as a cloud to give Moses the Law.  He came down when Solomon built Him a house.  He came and became one of us.  And now, Jesus said that God was coming down to be a power source…the nucleus of the Church.  Was this the great ending that Jesus had been promising?

            Not quite.  In fact, this was a great beginning…the whispered word that commanded the universe to roar into existence...the gust of wind that transforms a small campfire into a full forest blaze.  This gift would transform the disciples into witnesses.  The actual word used here is ‘martyr’.  Now, the word martyr usually brings to mind crosses, pikes, flames, bears, sharks, and other such gruesome images, because many generations of martyrs experienced such things.  However, the word martyr can refer to any sort of witness of the Lord.  In fact, the word martyr is related to the word ‘memory’, as martyrs reflect the memory of Jesus in the world.  As we are all members of Christ, we all remember Christ, until He returns.

            The disciples would reflect the memory of Christ as witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  The fire began with God’s people, and spread outward, to the extended family, to the despised, to Gentiles, to Rome, and to the farthest peoples.  But it all started with the disciples…a group of men and women who had their world turned on its head…who had traded their lives to follow this rogue Rabbi…who felt this desire deep within their hearts…how long?  And now Jesus was teasing them with a few words about the future…and these would be His last words to His followers.  For as soon as He finished speaking about martyrdom, He floated up on a cloud into the sky and disappeared.

            Now, I don’t know about you, but this part of the Bible almost always makes me want to laugh.  Can you imagine the confusion here?  No goodbyes…no warning…no 3, 2, 1, we have lift off.  Jesus simply floats away in a cloud, likely similar to the cloud that consumed Moses in his encounter with God on Mt. Sinai.  Jesus was, and continues to be, a mysterious Lord.  And as He floats away into the sunset, the disciples are gawking up into the skyline.  Suddenly, two men appear and criticize the disciples for trying to figure out what’s going on.  “Guys…stop gawking.  You look silly.  You will probably be just as confused when He comes back, so stop ogling the sky.”  This whole event plays out like a Monty Python sketch.

            But isn’t that a common reaction?  To try to figure out what’s going on?  You know that thousands of people scan the news outlets every day trying to figure out when this whole thing is going down.  People publish books, hold seminars, direct movies, publish documentaries, triangulate Mayan calendars…anything to get a sneak peak at when the story will come to an end.  We want some sense of control…just a little certainty, so that we don’t feel completely helpless.  Yet, with all of our investigative abilities, we tend to look in the wrong places.  We look to the sky for a God that constantly comes down and dwells among us.  We confuse the creation with the Creator.  We search for the living amongst the dead.  Apparently, as much as we try, we are not fully capable of certainty.

            Thankfully, God doesn’t require certainty from us.  God doesn’t ask us to figure everything out…to investigate all of the mysterious footprints that He has made on creation.  God simply requires obedience.  This is the heart of covenant…the heart of waiting faithfully.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  If you know me, you know that I love to think.  I love to read, to question, to discuss and to investigate.  When I ask about your major, I’m not just trying to create conversation.  I want to mooch off of your education!  Yet, as much as I love to think…to investigate…to attempt to understand all of God’s creation, God does not judge me by how much I understand.  But He does expect me to obey.  No matter how hard I stare at the sky…no matter how much I concentrate, I will not make Christ’ return any less mysterious.  However, when He does return, I want Him to catch me being obedient.

            Over the next few weeks, we will look through the book of Acts and try to outline more specifically what the waiting Church looks like.   In what ways are we called to obey?  What should we be doing when Jesus comes back?  Yet, our passage for today provides a clue in successful waiting:  mystery.  Mystery can be frustrating.  Some criticize mystery as a cop-out for not investigating and explaining all angles of an issue.  Laziness.  Others describe mystery as an opiate, which distracts people from concrete reality.  Delusion.

Conversely, mystery can help us to maintain our focus.  Mystery provides the impetus to keep going…to keep striving along this long journey.  Imagine your favorite food…mine would be my wife’s world-famous chocolate chip cookie cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  Now, imagine that I only have one of these cupcakes left, sitting on a plate at home.  I cannot stop thinking about this cupcake, so I go home, unwrap the cupcake and devour it.  No more cupcake.  Now I am left alone with my desire and nothing to fill me.  What good is it to consume something that goes away?  Thank God that we cannot consume Him…that He consumes us.

This is the beauty of God’s mystery.  God feeds us with the food that never ends…we drink of the fountain that never runs dry.  God’s mystery ensures that we must always pursue Him and demands that we continue to obey Him.  This is the beginning of our exploration on waiting…that we not be caught with our heads to the sky, necks craned and mouths gaping, but that we be obedient.  If we consent to obedience, then we are ready to explore what God has waiting for us as we wait on Him to return.

Seeing and Being Seen...

The supermarket is a jungle.  In the ancient jungle, the hunter needed many weapons to avert certain death by predators.  The panther lurking in the shadows of plants could easily jump forward and seize its prey.  Enter color.  The human eye provided an effective defense against predators, detecting different wavelengths of light and providing depth for different objects.  Man could now tell the difference between a banana leaf, and a heaving furry mass of teeth and claws breathing death right at its prey.  Enter marketing.  Marketers have learned how to make their products stand out in a supermarket.  They know that reds stand out more than any other color.  They know that yellows and golds make people salivate.  They know that when people shop in a counter-clockwise pattern, that they spend more money per trip.  They know that the more space a product can take up on the shelf, the more likely a shopper will be to buy their brand.  Marketers have become the new predators, preying upon poor consumers who shop with their eyes more than their brains.

We need to see.  Colors, shapes, and contrast create variety that helps us to distinguish between objects and pick out specific targets to view.  But in the supermarket, seeing doesn’t seem to protect us…our vision is blurred by our inclinations…our tendencies to act without thinking.  Our human nature.  When we let this nature have its way, we aren’t able to see things clearly.  We tend to focus on the wrong things, while the more important targets recede into the landscape.

However, the disciples saw more when they went up to the Temple to pray.  They didn’t see what Luke intentionally calls the Beautiful gate.  Beautiful things draw us…they stir emotion in us and pull at our insides.  At that time, some of the priests were concerned that Jews were moving away from the beautiful structures and traditions of Judaism.  The Jews were dividing.  Some were steadfast in the traditional atmosphere of the Temple…the senses were engaged, from the burning of sacrifices, to the ornamental depictions of Eden, to the call and response of reading and prayer.  Yet Peter and John weren’t distracted as they went to the temple to pray.  They didn’t just see the decorations…the pomp and frill of their religion.  God opened their eyes to true worship.

What everyone else saw was speck of dust on the ground…an accessory to the landscape of the Beautiful Gate.  What Peter and John saw was a man.  He stood out.  And he did not stand out because he asked them for money.  In fact, this would make him even more prone to recede into the background, because this was his job.  It was what he had done his whole life…being carried in by someone else, and holding out his hand for something…anything, so that he might be able to survive another day.  He was part of the landscape of the Temple…just another detail of worship, like the art, the sacrifices and the reading.  But not to Peter and John.

To Peter and John, this beggar was you and I.  This beggar, who understood need.  This man who could not control whether or not he survived from day to day.  This man who depended upon the wealth of others to survive.  This man had no deceptions about his status in the world.  He had no intentions of moving up the social ladder…this wasn’t in the cards.  He even needed someone to carry him to a place where he could ask for money.  He came to the table empty-handed, like a child who depends upon parents for survival.  This man was a dog under the table, begging for scraps…he was each one of us.

Is this not our communion?  Which one of us has something to offer at the Lord’s meal?  None…not one.  We are not there to serve, but to be served.  We come to the table to eat.  We are the beggars…we are the children.  There is only one who offers…only one who gives.  Christ Himself, gives to us, feeds us His own life.  We bring nothing to the table but an empty stomach…a heart that needs nourishment.

Peter and John saw something more.  They saw past the beggar, and saw the man.  They saw the hands reaching for something more than silver and gold.   They saw a stomach that hungered for something that would not vanish in a few hours.  Their view on the world was changing.  Things that didn’t matter began to recede.  The old order of things…the way that beggars were just a part of the landscape…the traditions about social behavior and religious interaction…these things all began to recede, and Jesus began to advance.  Their eyes were opening.

In other words, Peter and John were not experts on how to be cool.  Maybe they began to not care about what was or was not cool.  Possibly, they didn’t even know what was cool.  They were losing interest in focusing on the surface of things.  Louie Giglio talks about the “veneer” of what happens on Sunday…that someone wears the right graphic tee, or cool watch.  That we have can lights and fog, or that we nail our deadpan one-liners, or that our graphic design team mocks up an awesome jpeg for our sermon series.  Now, these things are not bad in themselves, but there must be something deeper.  Jokes or no, cool watch or no, graphic design mock up or no, Jesus can be there…but to find Him, we need to push past the façade.  We cannot be distracted by the appearance.  Peter and John were looking for something going on below the surface.

Because on the surface, Peter and John were mere miracle workers.  To a passerby, they were like other miracle men who healed, or performed various supernatural feats, and turned a profit.  Now don’t get me wrong…everyone loves to be amazed.  We all need our attention drawn by something beautiful…something that creates a desire within us to move, and to pay attention.  But these men were no mere miracle workers…they weren’t selling their name, “The Amazing Peter and Wonder John”.  They were doing these deeds in the name of the Christ…the Messiah.  They named another authority, Jesus, who was stirring up the order of things.  At first glance, these men were like the other rogue magicians, but below the surface, they were offering so much more.

Appearances can be deceiving.  The smallest seed can grow into the tallest tree.  I’ve met men on the streets of San Fransisco who had PhD’s…who have the Old Testament memorized in both Hebrew and English.  When you meet that beggar on the side of the road, you might be meeting a king.  Saul Williams puts it this way, “I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane…I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal…I can think of nothing less likely to fly…There are no wings more weighted…I too have felt a heaviness…The stare of man guessing at my being.”  What do you see when you look at someone?  Do you see their clothes, or do you see their character?  Can you look past the politics and see their potential?  Or do you see them at all?

We all have a sight problem.  We have a problem seeing the people that our nature won’t let us see.  We see the people that we want to see.  The people like us…the people that interest us.  Of course, we see our friends.  We see other Christians, we see other athletes, or other intellectuals, or other leaders, or athletes, or rebellious outcasts.  We even see our enemies…the people that stand out.  We see the people that offend us…the religions, or lifestyles that make us uncomfortable.  These things stand out when we survey the landscape.

But whom are we missing?  Who recedes into the landscape?  Recently, UNC housekeepers were recognized for their contribution to the UNC community.  Have you ever met the people who clean our bathrooms?  Or the people who serve us food or keep up the grounds or drive the buses?  What about the people who serve in a restaurant?  Or delivered you a pizza?  Now, I’m not suggesting that you hail a waiter, sit him down and ask him for his life story.  He will probably lose out on much needed salary from tips while you chat.  But you can see these people.  You can go beyond the surface…offer more than the status quo.  You can make their jobs easier.  You can make their salaries more manageable.  You can offer them a smile, or a handshake…you can listen to them.  You can give them the benefit of the doubt.  You can begin to see.  See that something bigger dwells beneath the surface…a bigger story than the veneer that we impose upon the world. 

Because the smallest seed can become the biggest tree.  Something so big hiding in something so small.  That Christ Himself might dwell in us.  That as we eat this meager bread, and drink this grape juice, that we are eating and drinking of the King of Kings.  Is this not a communion with our Lord?  Our eyes are so easily deceived, and we can lose focus.  This is not a mere ritual…this is us waiting on the Messiah.

            And so, Peter and John demanded that the beggar see as well. They said to him, “Look at us!”  At that moment, they saw each other.  Their eyes were opened.  At that moment, both Peter and John, and the beggar pushed past the veneer and looked deeper.  And Jesus sprang forth.  Is this not a communion with our Lord?  That we see Jesus, and that He looks back at us?  Something deep and intuitive exists here.  When David Crowder describes the difference between classical and bluegrass music, he describes classical as more calculated and organized, while bluegrass touches the deeper, more intuitive parts of a musician.  Classical music has an audience that watches a performance, while bluegrass music has an audience that whoops, hollers, and participates in the music.  The division between musician and audience collapses…there is community. 

            We are about to sit at the table with our Lord.  You are about to see, and be seen.  There is a weight to this meal, the weight of 2000 years of saints sitting at the table.  The weight of God’s fullness busting at the seams.  But there is also a comfort…an intimacy, that when we are seen by the Lord…when we touch the hem of his robe, that anything exposed to Him can be cleaned.  That we all sit with one another at peace, as we are His beloved.  That the One we have waited for, hiding in a piece of bread and a sip of juice, can finally be reached.  As we come to the table, come as a child.  Let Him see you, and be prepared to open your eyes.  This is the One we have waited for…