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Dr. Phil Amerson
April 11, 2010
“Resurrection Practices”
Acts 5:27-32
Prayer: Remind us O God that we are on the drafty side of resurrection. Make us disciples of the new day, people who hear our call and practice the resurrection in our daily living. Amen.
It was the theologian Paul Scherer who said, “The resurrection sets us in a world that is no longer self-contained but open, drafty, as the winds of eternity blow through it.” The resurrection sets us in a world that is no longer self-contained but open, drafty, as the winds of eternity blow through it.
I’ve come here today to talk with you about someone I do not yet know and someone that you don’t know either (or you might). I come to talk with you about one of your future pastors, someone perhaps who doesn’t yet know that God is calling them to ministry, someone in some part of the world that is one day going to hear the call and say, “Yes, I will follow.” In the United Methodist Church we believe in an educated clergy, so that means that person will go to seminary. If they are truly smart, they will come to Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, and we will have the opportunity to share with them what it takes to have 1,800 bosses. More important, we will have the opportunity to share with them about the winds of eternity that continue to blow through our world and call us to new understandings and new places.
I don’t know who she is or who he is, but God is already at work in that person’s life, already beginning to prepare them for the day when they will come and serve who knows who. It might be First United Methodist Church, Bloomington, Indiana. I’ve come on behalf of that person who will be open to the winds of the spirit.
I wish I could tell you or show you or introduce you to some of the students who are currently in our school and some who have graduated in recent years.
If I could, I would introduce you to Jake who says, “I’m just a country boy from northern Indiana, but I got to go and spend time in the Holy Land. I lived there for a year, and I come back with the world a whole new open place.” He also comes back with a Palestinian girlfriend, but that’s another matter.
Or I wish I could introduce you to Eric and Susan who have felt God’s call on their lives. They are going into the Kansas City suburbs, and they are starting a new church.
Or I wish I could introduce you to Paul from Michigan who has this crazy idea of starting a coffee shop in the Loop. He’s going to do it as his way of doing ministry.
I wish I could introduce you to Katie, a recent graduate, who is an assistant pastor in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was very involved in working with the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane. Katie has given herself in ministry. She has a remarkable spirit.
I wish I could introduce you to Immanuel who graduated just a couple of years ago. Before he goes back to the Congo, he is spending a couple of years as a pastor in Iowa. What a remarkable man Immanuel is. He is going to finish a PhD and go back and teach in a theology school in the Congo.
I dare not forget Momo. I just met Momo this year. What a man! He is from Liberia. His father was a medical doctor. In the terrible crisis there, the tribal warfare one with another, Momo’s father was targeted and killed. Momo stayed on and worked with a number of groups that were trying to help in Liberia, and then the word came that his name as well was on the list. They were coming after him. Because of the good services of the US military, they were able to get him out and bring him to the U.S. He now is a U.S. citizen, but do you know what this young man has done? He has brought 17 other young people to the United States to see that they are educated. He adopted three of those young men who now are in school at Cal State up in Sacramento. I wish I could tell you about Momo and the way he slept in his car so he could save money to go to those kids. I wish I could introduce you to him, and he could tell you about his decision to be a military chaplain, because he wants to pay forward the debt he feels that he owes for his life.
It is a remarkable thing seeing God’s call on the lives of people. It is a remarkable thing indeed. It’s not a new thing. It goes all the way back to the very beginnings of the church. You heard it reported in the Book of Acts, this starting time, this season of beginning. It is really quite a story. It is one that is full of pathos and drama. It is one that teaches us that every congregation is so much bigger than we think it is. Every congregation is centuries deep and continents wide. Oh, I take that back! It is millennia deep and universe wide! Every congregation is beyond its walls. In the early church, that is part of what was being discovered.
Here they are. There have already been some interesting stories. I will let you read about Ananias and Sapphira. There have already been some tests of this new church, but interestingly enough, in the middle of that, you begin to see the very same people who were so reluctant before Calvary and resurrection are suddenly so bold in their faith that you can’t shut them up. In this scripture lesson today, it says that they still continued to be witnesses even though they had been dragged before the High Court, even though they had been put in jail, even though somehow wonderfully and mysteriously they had escaped or been released from jail. There they were again preaching. They didn’t go to the edge of town. They didn’t go up to Galilee. They didn’t run off to Syria. They went to the temple, right where they would be seen. They publicly said, “We must tell you about the resurrection. We must tell you about this new life, this wind that is not contained, the wind of eternity that blows through our lives.” It is a remarkable thing indeed.
Wendell Berry is my favorite poet. I hardly get through a sermon these days without quoting him. He has written fascinating articles recently about our tendency in this country to get stuck ideologically. I won’t have the quote exactly right, but it is something like this. He says the capitalists are wrong if they think we can solve everything by volunteerism. The liberals are wrong if they think that you can have systems that won’t be corrupt and won’t be problem ridden. He says that the call is to a new community that sees the world with new eyes. The resurrection, you see, is set in places that can’t be contained by our ideologies or our limited understandings.
One of the great gifts that I had when I was here was the gift of spending many wonderful moments and hours with Herman Wells. I remember one time when I had some problem, and I went over to see Hermie. He listened very patiently, and then he leaned back and said, “You know Phil, it helps if you can see things in 50 year blocks.” Then, he laughed. Do you remember that laugh? He said, “Of course, it is easier for me. I’m ninety-four.”
It helps if we can see things in the larger prospective of the church that extends deeper than the centuries and wider than the continents. It helps to understand the resurrection gift.
I get out and preach quite a bit in different congregations here and there. I’m in Kalamazoo next week and Normal, Illinois the week after. I can go in a church and almost smell what is going on. I’m always glad I can leave. I must tell you I get awfully homesick for you. There are days when I am having some difficulty with the faculty. You know faculty, don’t you? The reason faculty wars are so ferocious is because so little is at stake. There are some days when I am with faculty, and I will come home and talk about the good old days in Bloomington. Elaine will say, “Just sit there, I’ll get you some iced tea, and I’ll tell you some stories.” It is then that I remember that the church is centuries deep and continents wide. It is bigger than any one place and broader than our ability to ever fully embrace it.
Barbara Brown Taylor also goes out and preaches. I think she was a preacher here at one time. Barbara said that one Sunday morning, she was there with the pastor before the service, and she said, we always have the same conversations. But this time, the pastor looked at her and asked her a question that she did not know how to answer. He looked at her and said, “Barbara, tell me. What is making you more alive today?”
According to that great theologian A.A. Milne (actually the theologian is Winnie the Pooh), Winnie says, “And what if you were to stop and think and forget to ever start again?” It’s a dangerous thing to come to a university town and quote the theologian Winnie the Pooh. It is even more dangerous to come and talk about stopping to think and forgetting to start again.
The resurrection calls us daily to that question. What makes you more alive today? What calls you to new understandings that are broader and deeper than the understandings you had yesterday? What can you do to help secure the port for those who are called to ministry, who will stand among us and remind us of a resurrection that is not self-contained, where the winds of the spirit and the winds of eternity continue to blow?
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