Sermon: "Taking the Risk"

Third in the "Beyond These Walls" series.
Delivered May 7, 2006 by Rev. George Antonakos.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Theme: In order to be agents of reconciliation for Christ to others, we need to take an inside look at some things that may be keeping us from being faithful messengers.

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Well, today we are going to talk about a bully that someone had to confront and engage and they didn't want to. When I was pastoring in Central Pennsylvania, I decided to do some continuing education in marriage and family studies and I remember in particular one of the instructors making the point that really stuck with me. And that was, let's say a couple who is struggling comes and sits down and talks and all, and it's one thing to share a technique about communications skills, maybe better listening skills and that has certain value. But if inside of the folks that you are talking to there is a need for some inner healing, maybe there has been abuse issues or abandonment or whatever, the communication techniques of how to be a better listener and all will only go so far, that what else needs to happen is that you have to explore through safety and time and trust and even a little risk, what those issues are. And it takes risk for both the person who is sending the help and the person who is receiving the help. And I thought about that dynamic in regard to this Easter season sermon series, Beyond These Walls and how it relates to our communication of the gospel with other people. See we can do the very important step of teaching each other how to say the words, communicate the words that tell of God's love and all and share the actual gospel message and invite people to respond and that's all very critical. It's just that unless there are some things in us that get worked on from an inside inner healing kind of way, many times we will not be willing to take the risk. We won't be willing to bridge the gap because there is something that is causing us to be a little blind to what's going on.

And so in order to be agents of reconciliation for Christ to others, to be willing to risk and share, we need to do kind of an inside look at some things that may be keeping us from doing that. In today's text we see an example, a perfect example of a Christian who was invited to share the good news with somebody that God had set up for him and yet this person really was not very thrilled about the opportunity and did not want to share the good news. And so, technique was not the issue. It was some internal stuff that needed to be reoriented. And so I want to ask you as we begin to consider what the Lord is trying to do in this messenger that we will also think about what doesGod want to do in us in order to help us be people that communicate the gospel more effectively and be faithful witnesses of the truth that's in Christ. We are going to be in Acts, Chapter 9, Verses 1 to 19. It's on page 777 in the red pew Bible if you would like to follow along. The first nine verses we are not going to concentrate too much on because we need that for context. They deserve a sermon in themselves, but we are going to focus on Verses 10 to 19 on a focus of the person who is being sent to share the good news. Acts, Chapter 9 and let's pray first.

Lord, we give you thanks for your love and grace. We know that it takes both the Holy Spirit and word of God together to speak to our hearts and bring forth transformation that we need. Thank you that you are in the process of conforming us more to your image and we pray that through this text and through it being preached and through the word being made visible through in the sacrament that we will understand more about your grace to us and how we can be vehicles of that grace to others and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Acts, Chapter 9:

"Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.

"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."

The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, "Ananias!" "Yes, Lord," he answered. The Lord told him, "Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight."

"Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.

"But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."

Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength."

So in this passage there is both a sender of the message and there is a receiver of the message and it's interesting to see how God is working simultaneously in both of them to create this opportunity. Today we are trying to look at what God was trying to do in the life of the sender in order to deepen his effectiveness so we can deepen our effectiveness. Now if you look at Verses 11 and 12, it can not be more explicit what God was asking Ananias to do, and I have counted the things and I think I've got the right count; that in Verses 11 and 12 there are 11 distinct details in the message from the Lord Jesus to Ananias that he was to be aware of and carry out. I mean it could not be more plain that he was asking him to take these steps. Any yet Ananias' resistance is really understandable and he expresses that resistance in many ways in Verses 13 and following and he prays it all back to the Lord like are you really sure Lord that this is what you want me to do. And if he could have quieted his fear just for a moment, he would have recognized something that we all need to recognize when it comes to communicating our faith. That in our faith encounters, God wants to help us, God really is trying to help us first and foremost to perceive the greatest needs in the person who is receiving the message, even before we tell them anything about God. God wants us to help us perceive the need in the other person and the reason I say this is because at the end of Verse 11, it does not say that Saul had a vision of someone coming to tell him about Jesus, even though that is exactly what happened eventually, he said he is having a vision that someone named Ananias will come and lay his hands on him to restore his sight.

Evangelism happens most effectively when we understand the listeners or the receivers point of deepest need in the present moment. That's where the Lord tells Ananias to start, at the point of Saul's need, because Saul was messed up. He was confused. His whole paradigm of life had gotten turned upside down. His day was so totally different from everyday that had gone before it and God created this. God stirred up this blindness. God caused that blindness to occur. And yet, even though that is the case he encourages his sender, his messenger to go and deal with that particular point of need so that he might be open to the other things that he was about to hear.

You know I don't know if you have noticed it, but you don't get very far when you go and tell somebody they have a need, before they think they have a need. Have you ever noticed that? Before somebody has recognized something, that if you go and you are the messenger and you say, "Now listen, you have this need and I am going to tell you all about it." You know what you usually get when you do that, right? Mind your own business. Who are you to tell me and all of that? But here we see again that God wanted the need to be met first; he wanted the person to be aware of it and we are to address that need in the best way we can. See, Jesus healed and preached. Jesus fed and preached, right? Keep it in balance. In Verse 17 when Ananias gets it, notice what he says when he goes to see Brother Saul. He says, "Jesus has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit." You see how the need is there right with all the spiritual stuff that is needed too?

One of the things at Central Church that we use as resource is something called Natural Church Development and we have been working on using this as sort of a diagnostic tool to make sure that we are staying balanced and healthy in all eight of the quality characteristic of a growing church and one of those characteristics, which we have discover that we should be paying more attention to is something called need based evangelism; need oriented evangelism. It's not that we are weak in this area; it's just that we could get stronger in understanding how to connect the good news while being more aware ahead of time of the needs of those that we are trying to connect to and with. One of the suggestions from the NCD materials is to try to get us all to think about who it is that makes up our extended family. Your extended family according to this resource is everybody in your relational network who does not yet have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the church. What would that list look like? Okay? For instance, when you leave from here today you will be handed an Operation Andrew card, it's part of the Franklin Graham festival, but you know we can use this with the Franklin Graham festival or anything else, because you are not only being asked I think in this context to just put down the names of people in that network, but I would like to encourage you to do is draw a line down the thing, put at the top of the column Need and when I think these people in my relational network, what is their need, their primary felt need in their life? And to start to think about that and start to pray about that. Is it relational tension? Is it stress? Is it loneliness? Is it addiction? What is it? And then use that in a prayerful way and a caring way before we even share with them the good news.

I got some insight from the NCD materials and I was adjusted in my thinking. I kind of thought that evangelism to be most effective was like two wings of an airplane, you know care, social justice, ministry and then share. But now I am thinking of it as three blades of a propeller and it means you have to have all three of these things in balance, all of us do, in order to effectively be a missional church. You have to have care for other needs. You have to pray and then you have to share the good news. If you get any one of those things out of the equation, any of us and all of us, we get imbalanced. And so, that's what I think God was trying to work in Ananias heart, that see where Saul's need is Ananias and touch him at that point.

Secondly, God deals with Ananias in another way, at the point of his own inner fears in the present moment. If the first point is seeing the need of the receiver, then the second point is being reoriented about the need in us the sender. Again, it's understandable that he would react in the way that he did. If any single one of us were in his shoes, I dare say that we would have all have had a resistance reaction like he did. We would have all done what he did. If I stop to think about it, I bet we have all done what he did anyway. I am sure anybody who wants to be a messenger for the good news has had an experience where you had been prompted to or encouraged to talk to somebody else. And yet, inside of you there has arisen something that has resisted that prompting. You have been asked to stretch and to bridge a gap to another person and yet we pose all kinds of excuses. We will say things like, especially if it's somebody who we consider to be unreceptive or somebody who is hostile, we say things like, "A lot of folks have told me about that person; "Their personality just is not conducive for the gospel"; "They won't listen" or "They don't care."; "They won't even really care about what I have to say," and "If the truth be told, I really don't like them much anyway."

There is a story about a minister being examined on the floor at Presbytery. It was back in the day when your theological P's and Q's really had to be on mark and it was a grueling examination; theological stuff, pastoral stuff. And finally one guy gets up at the end and he adds more fuel to the fire and he says, "Young man, would you be willing to be damned and go to hell for the glory of God?" And he thought for a minute and he said, "Yes sir. I would be willing to be damned and go to hell for the glory of God. In fact, I would be willing for this whole Presbytery to be damned and go to hell for the glory of God." Now we can be right in the middle of sharing a lot of religious stuff, but inside of us something else is going on at another level, right? That's not so kind and not so gracious, right? I mean seriously, think about this if God came to you and gave you 11 different points of detail about why you should go and talk to Osama Bin Laden, and how he has prepared him in advance for your visit, what would your reaction be? I mean even if you knew that God had set him up and was ready for your visit? I mean don't you think that in each and every part of us there is a part of us that would say, "No way. I don't want him to believe, I don't care that he believes." And if he did believe, what would that then require of me?

Well Ananias got over that too, because he followed through and among other things he baptized Saul and that is huge theologically, because to baptize him meant that he was included in the covenant of faith and the covenant of grace. See, people who are baptized you can't call outsiders anymore and as Jesus' servants were called to share hospitality and love with whoever God called, no matter who they are or where they are from or what they have done. That's the challenge and the call of God. And it's clear in this narrative context that God is saying to Ananias, love your enemy. Love your enemy. And Ananias did not say, "No, I am not going to do it." I mean, he hedged and he was doubtful, but he decided not to listen to his emotions, rather and listen to the word of God. He didn't go with fear. He went with love and he presented the information that he was called to present.

Many of you know Rene, she is a well loved person in this congregation and she worked with our youth and she and her husband have gone to Shanghai, China. He is working there and they are using this as a way of being ministers and kind of missionaries in a way. She sent an email to a bunch of us and the last paragraph stood out to me about what she experienced in regards to how quick we are to presume about what God might want to be doing. It says that,

"I have learned that here in China they really do not say 'no.' I am not sure if there is even a word for no, but the idea is that no comes too fast and easy. You need to give it thought and weigh your options. 'No' is too presumptuous. I have been thinking a lot about this in my own life. How often do I say 'no' to God, because I am being too presumptuousness about the outcome? So I think that 'Yes Lord' would be something I will begin to practice. I will call it the spiritual discipline of yes."

And so, that's basically where Ananias says "Yes, I will move forward. I will not live in my prejudices. I will not live in my judgments." And so I ask you is there a person like Saul in your experience, in your sphere of influence, maybe even in your own family to where God is calling you? Come, bridge the gap. I can do great things especially when you think about the person's need before you start to talk to them.

Ananias gets it again and he thinks, okay God just told me this person is going to be his chosen vessel, his chosen instrument and I am going to go and talk to him. And notice what he does, this is the third thing about how God worked in Ananias' heart and how he responded. What Ananias says in Verse 11, I love this. The first thing he does when he walks in the door is just what he was told to do; he places his hands on Saul. Now that is theologically significant in that it is saying, first of all I am not here in my own name. It's like when people get ordained here in the church and the elders lay hands on, or anybody gets commissioned to go do something, it's basically saying we are representatives; we are doing this in the name of Jesus, okay? But look at what he says after he lays his hands on him, okay? What does he say? What does he call him in Verse 17? Brother. He says, Brother Saul. He doesn't say, "Hey Saul", but he says, "Brother Saul."

If step one is starting to see a person's need at a different level and step two is reorienting our present understanding of that need beyond our fears and prejudices, then step three is touching the need in the name of Jesus. Gods love comes most effectively through people who now they serve a sending, merciful God; that they are going not only in their own name, but they are going in the name of Jesus, they are going in his power, they are going by his commission, by his word in connection with him. That is what we are going to be celebrating in communion. We are celebrating already our connection in him and that really when we go to be evangelist or messengers, we are going in his power and in his strength. He is the true sender. He is the one who has commissioned us to be the voice and the hands, but the power is all Gods. Ananias could not confer the gift of the Holy Spirit on Saul. Only Jesus could do that, but it was his voice and his hands that was part of it. We are ministers with Jesus.

Someone asked a theologian; somebody came up to him and said, "When were you saved?" And he said, "I was saved 1900 years ago, when Jesus died on the cross and rose again on my behalf, that I entered in to that life by faith and now that life is what courses through me in order to reach out to other people." Norman Vincent Peale, a famous pastor of another generation, well known for his book, "The Power of Positive Thinking" relates a story about his own upbringing and about something that he saw on his father's example when he was only 10 years old. It is a story about risk. It's a story about bridging the gap and not being worried about reputation and all of that. Normal Vincent Peale said that he never knew anyone who loved people more genuinely than his dad and he was quick to respond to any case of human need.

And once when he came home late on a winter day his wife and Norman's mother reported their request to call a certain telephone number. So the father did and when he telephoned it proved to be on the other end a brothel, a house of ill-repute, a house of prostitution and the woman on the other end of the line told Norman Vincent Peale's dad, who was a pastor, that one of her girls was desperately ill and was dying and that she was fading in and out of consciousness and in her lucid moments she was asking that a pastor come and visit with her and pray with her. And the lady on the other end of the line said, I don't know of any pastor, but once on a Sunday night I slipped into the back of your church and then slipped out again before the end and I thought you might be an understanding person. And so, Peale said his dad said he would come and his father hung up and described the situation to his mother and then said, "Norman, put on your overcoat and come with me on a pastoral errand of mercy." Mother said, "Clifford, you are not going to take our 10-year-old son to that place of sin." He said, "Yes I am for Norman can see Jesus Christ reaching for one of the sheep who was lost, but wants to come home to the father's house and besides in a place like that, what better protection is there for a man than his own 10-year-old son."

So at the house they come to the door and the red light above the door and conducted to a room where this pathetic looking, young 19-year-old woman, pale as a sheet laid dying and his father had been a doctor and so he recognized immediately that she was in her last stages and she heard and she said this, "I am a bad girl reverend, she said, but my family are godly people and I was raised a Christian and I attended Sunday school, I was baptized by our preacher, but I have brought shame on my mother and father. I am bad. I am a bad girl." And he said, "No you are not a bad girl. You are a good girl who has been acting badly." It wasn't time to talk about theology at that moment, okay? "You are just a good girl who has been acting badly." And he took her small right hand and put it in his and said, "What's your name?"And she said, "Mary" "Do you love Jesus, Mary and do you believe that he has forgiven your sins and that he will forgive your sins and wash them all away, so that in your soul you will be pure?" And she said, "Yes." And he said, "Do you give yourself now, your whole soul, your whole self to the Lord asking for salvation?" Again, she said, "Yes" adding, "I asked the Lord to save my soul" and then he said, "Well, then I declare to you in the name of Jesus that you are saved." He didn't save, he was saved, you are saved, but the one who sent me declares this to you and opening his Bible he read from John, Chapter 14: "Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me and in my father's house there are many mansions and if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you on to myself and where I am, there you may be also." And then we went and prayed with the young woman. They learned later after they left that it was only hours before she died, but Norman Vincent Peale makes the comment that he remembers that all of the other women were standing around weeping openly watching this happen and he said that that night he saw mercy and compassion and in the person of my dad delivering that ministry in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. And he said that that was one of the determining factors in his becoming a pastor himself. Caring, praying and sharing; all three need to be in balance.

And what I want us to understand as we move to this table, is that that's exactly what God has done for us. God saw us at our point of deepest need, right? God came when we were at our lowest point and spoke kind words to us, the good news of Jesus and met needs in our life before we ever would even listen about the good news of Christ. And now he asks us as we strengthen ourselves in this holy sacrament to then become messengers of compassion in to a world that's in need. The message we share is this: that he who knew no sin, became sin for us, on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. That's the message we share. That's the message we celebrate around this table in the power of the Holy Spirit, so come and be strengthened again remembering that we were cleansed and had been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, who now invites us in to life of the father, the son and the holy spirit to be his messengers in to the world.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that we can come around this table again, deeply aware of our own poverty, deeply aware that there is no good thing that dwells in us and yet celebrating your life, because you have become the sacrifice. It is your death that has reconciled us to you and by faith we enter into your death and your resurrection and your life with the Father, and so we pray Lord Jesus that you would help us all who are gathered here to remember of the power of your blood that cleanses us from sin of your presence and nearness that is here right now as we celebrate and of the future hope that we have as we look toward the Kingdom of heaven. Lord, thank you that you are still a friend of sinners. Thank you that your Holy Spirit comes to convince us of these things and we open our hearts again to you and we lift them up to you so that might rejoice and celebrate in what you have already done for us. So by your Holy Spirit come upon us and these gifts so that they might be to us nothing other or less than the body and blood of Jesus, his life in us, as we partake in faith. We ask it in your name. Amen.

© 2006, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org