Acts 4:1-22 The Church of Courage Sermon preached September 22, 2013 Opening Theres a story about a soldier

who enlisted in the 82nd airborne division and was assigned to jump school. He eagerly asked his recruiter what he could expect at jump school. Well, the recruiter said, Its three weeks long. What else? asked the young soldier. The first week they separate the men from the boys. The second week, the separate the men from the fools. And what happens the third week? the soldier asked. The third week, said the instructor, the fools jump. Jumping out of an airplane takes courage. And so does being a follower of Jesus Christ. Scripture Were going to look this morning at the story of Peter and John from Acts chap. 4, where they just cant keep quiet about something amazing that has happened in their lives where they show real courage, to talk about the Lord and his gift of eternal life To recap - its been less than two months since Jesus resurrection and ascension into heaven - church formed by Holy Spirit at Pentecost - and Peter & John are in the temple in Jerusalem - center of Israels religious life - and just done healing - sermon last week man handicapped from birth, cant walk, begs by temple gate - he asks Peter and John for money, but no coins clinking in pockets, take him by the hand, raise him to his feet and heal him in name of Jesus... Crowd gathers, presents what we call a teachable moment, Peter preaches impromptu sermon under the power of the Spirit and thousands more come to Christ. Verbal proclamation of Jesus has led church to grow from 70 at beginning of Acts to 3,000 after Peters first sermon on Pentecost and now after this sermon, they grow by another 2,000 and the first church of Jerusalem now has 5,000 people.

But this provokes a response But the powers that be dont like it - and they show up to tell Peter and John, to shut up. Greek - has meaning of sneak up on - wasnt that the chief priests and their security detail come up and say we need to have a reasoned conversation about this - they pounce like an ambush and haul Peter and John away and put them in jail for the night And then the next day haul them before the most powerful and important people in Israel (besides the Romans) - probably all decked out in expensive robes, in a beautiful room with guards holding weapons all around The idea is to intimidate them into silence - no more of this Jesus talk! Before powerful people You ever been in front of someone who is deliberately trying to intimidate you? Your boss, calls you into his office for and unscheduled meeting, sitting across but his chair is higher than you - and he holds your future in his hands Or in a courtroom - judge - they make you stand up when she enters and then she peers down at you from up high seated on the bench - and she holds your future in her hands When were in a situation like that - mouth goes dry, heart hammers in your chest, and very easy to knuckle under Now, remember who Peter and John are - they are fishermen from the sticks - Galilee and they are standing in chains before the most powerful people in the country - and you may recognize some names here: Annas and Caiaphas? They condemned Jesus to death - these are the guys who had Jesus crucified because he was a threat to their cozy collaborating agreement with the occupying Romans. And they drag Peter and John up on charges for talking about the Jesus they executed, the Jesus they thought they had gotten rid of. Luke tells us they were greatly disturbed by this Jesus-resurrected-from-the-dead talk, and they wanted to intimidate Peter and John into shutting up.

They were right to recognize Jesus is dangerous Do you remember a few years back when Mr. Rogers died? After his death there were emails going around saying that Mr. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister (which is true) but some of the other claims were That he was a veteran. He was, in fact, a war hero. And the reason he wore the sweater was to cover shrapnel wounds in his arms. That Mr. Rogers was a Navy Seal and the reason he wore the sweater was to cover the tattoos that were up and down his arm. And, that he actually had 25 confirmed kills Trouble is, none of that stuff is true. Mr. Rogers was not particularly dangerous. But Jesus is. He upsets our carefully constructed ways of keeping God out of our lives. He upsets societies and religions and institutions that abuse and keep people down. And the darkness of evil, doesnt like his light. Almost everywhere the church has taken the Gospel - if it hasnt been spread through violence and colonialism - it has provoked opposition and often persecution. From the time of our scripture reading - to today. It takes courage to be an authentic follower of Jesus. It takes courage just to talk about Jesus. What is courage? Now we often think that courage is the absence of fear, or acting in the face of fear. Theres been some interesting work done on the relationship between brain structure and what looks like courage - the example of a woman well call Sally who has a congenital brain malformation that has left her completely fearless. As Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa, and his colleagues describe in Current Biology, the otherwise normal well call her Sally - is incapable of being spooked. She claimed to fear snakes and spiders, and maybe she did in her pre-disease childhood, but when the researchers took her to an exotic pet store, they were astonished to see that not only did she not avoid the snakes and spiders, she was desperate to hold them close. The researchers took Sally to a haunted house, and she laughed at the scary parts She was shown clips from famous horror films like The Silence of Lambs and Halloween, and she showed no flickers of fright. 3

And Sally makes her own horror films in real life. She walks through bad neighborhoods alone at night, approaches shady strangers without guile, and has been repeatedly threatened with death. We have an individual whos constantly putting herself into harms way, said Mr. Feinstein. If we had million Sallys walking around, the world would be a total mess. But the absence of fear - has nothing to do with courage, real courage. Courage has three parts: commitment to a principle identification of danger if you act on that principle acting in spite of fear and danger For instance - a soldier named Salvatore Guinta in Afghanistan who was awarded the Medal of Honor - his unit comes under fire from the Taliban - they are outnumbered and in danger of being encircled - Guinta described the enemy fire like this: There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky....Theyre above you, in front of you, behind you, below you. Theyre hitting in the dirt early. Theyre going over your head. Just all over the place. They were closeas close as Ive ever seen Two men were quickly killed and five wounded. One of the wounded, the squad leader Sgt. Brennan was grabbed by Taliban soldiers and they were hauling him away, trying to capture an American prisoner. Guinta, still under heavy fire, went after them and shot one of the Taliban soldiers, the others dropped Brennan and ran. Brennan was grievously wounded; Guinta tended to him while they waited to be evacuated. One of the soldiers in the unit said to Guinta, Gallardo told Giunta later on, "You don't understand . . . but what you did was pretty crazy. We were outnumbered. You stopped the fight. You stopped them from taking a soldier." The soldier said of Giunta. "For all intents and purposes, with the amount of fire that was going on in the conflict at the time, he shouldn't be alive." So what did Guinta do that was courageous? Commitment to principle - protect your fellow soldiers, leave no man behind Identification of danger - go after Brennan and I probably will get shot

Acting in spite of danger - he goes after Brennan and rescues him. Our courage to proclaim Jesus J & P say to the men who have told them to stop preaching, We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. They are committed to a principle, or better, a person - Jesus of Nazareth, who calls the to tell the whole world about him. And they have clearly identified the dangers - arrest and maybe death...and they go forward in spite of danger. I wonder why there is not more of that kind of courage, in the church in America today. We know the principle - that we too are called to be witnesses to the risen Lord Jesus Christ - we know the principle - but why dont we openly share and live the gospel? Because, I think, weve identified danger and we shrink back: Like danger that people will think were fanatical - its ok in this culture to talk about spirituality and church - church as a place where you go to worship and fellowship and do some good things - but talking about Jesus is another thing altogether. And talking about what Jesus has done for you, and what youve seen Jesus do - you bring that up at a party, good luck getting invited back. Or were intimidated by workplace rules that try to legislate talk about religion out of the office - and if not that, you might get identified as that religious guy, or woman, like the Seinfeld episode where that was said with a sneer. But - if Jesus Christ has changed our lives...if weve seen Jesus Christ do wonderful and even miraculous things...and if we believe that he is the way and the truth and the life like John and Peter salvation is found in no one else... how can we not talk about him? Not in an obnoxious way, not as an assertion of our right to do so - but out of genuine love for other people? Think of what were withholding from people when we dont have the courage to tell them about Jesus Christ Read a quote from Penn Jillette a while back that stuck with me, kind of nailed me, really. Jillette is half of Penn & Teller, the duo who bill themselves as eccentric magicians with a psychotic twist - they do a lot of shows in Vegas. Jillette is also an outspoken atheist, critic of religion. His three cars have license plates that read "atheist", "nogod", and "godless. Jillette says of himself that he is beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God ... I believe there is no God. 5

Yet one time after one of his shows a fan gave him a Bible. Surprisingly, Jillette was grateful and later said, How much do you really have to hate somebody to believe that eternal life exists, and not tell them? Think about that, the next time you clam up about your faith during a teachable moment! In a world filled with so much suffering and evil and death and chaos and cruelty - how can we keep silent about the news that in Christ death no longer has the last word? When we see somebody hurting and struggling, how can we keep silent about how Jesus has healed and sustained us? Im not talking about a deep theological conversation - just sharing what Jesus has done for you and people you know - just like Peter and John pointing to how Jesus healed the man who was lame who got this whole incident started. Where we get courage I heard Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian say that Christianity is the only one of all the world religions that teaches that God is courageous, had to be courageous. What he meant was that in other religions, the God or gods are remote from the pain and struggles of human existence, untouched by suffering. They serenely rule the universe while we down here try to summon up the courage to deal with cancer or a struggling child or addictions or any of the rest of the mess we face. To be a god is by definition to be above being human. Except for the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ In Philippians chap. 2 Paul quotes a first-century Christian hymn that sings out what God did in Jesus Christ - that in Christ God humbled himself and took on our humanity - and that he humbled himself and became obedient - going to death on the cross for our sakes. The night before his arrest, the gospels tell how Jesus and his disciples were in the Garden of Gethsemane and how Jesus prayed so hard and fervently that his sweat was like drops of blood, he prayed let this cup (of suffering) pass from me because he knew that he was about to take on himself the sins of the whole world - and die. Jesus came to save us, knew the cost - and went ahead anyway. Thats courage. How did he do it? In the book of Hebrews - a book about keeping your courage in the midst of opposition and persecution - the writer says that Jesus was able to 6

face the cross because of the joy that was set before him - the promise of resurrection. And because of his courage, we can have courage. In our scripture it says that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit when he testified before the council about Jesus. And elsewhere Jesus promised the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of God - to everyone who trusts in him. If you love and follow Jesus, you have the Spirit of God living in you who gives you the words to say and an ocean of courage to draw from. And you have the same promise that sustained Jesus during his ordeal - the promise of resurrected glory. I am standing up here because when I was an 18-year-old college freshman, another student had the courage to tell me about Jesus Christ, and that conversation completely changed my life. And some of you have the same kinds of story. And that goes all the way back, to that church in Jerusalem, where people like Peter and John found the courage to talk about what Jesus Christ had done. Conclusion When I was graduated from seminary, the commencement speaker and Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson (who did the Bible translation The Message) told a story about his days growing up in rural Montana. When he was about five, Peterson lived next door to a large farm. He loved to watch the farmer work his fields, and would stand just on the other side of the fence bordering the farmer's property, watching the farmer riding through the rows in his big green John Deere tractor, wishing he could ride along with the farmer. One day, while riding along, the farmer spotted Peterson standing there. The farmer stood up straight from his seat, and made a large sweeping motion with his arm, like this. Peterson didn't know how to interpret what the farmer meant, and he became frightened, and ran back to the house. The next Sunday, Peterson saw the farmer at church. The farmer walked up to the young boy, and demanded "When I waved to you out in the field the other day, why didn't you come?" "I...I thought you were telling me to go away," Peterson stammered. "Go away," said the farmer, "I was waving at you to come to me. How do you tell somebody to come here?" "Like this," said Peterson. "Like that," roared the farmer. "Piddly!" A few days later, Peterson again stood by the fence separating his yard from the farm. The farmer went by about a hundred yards away, and saw Peterson there by the fence. Again, he stood up straight from his seat in the tractor, and motioned to Peterson with a great, sweeping gesture. Peterson moved hesitantly across the fence, then broke into a 7

run, and dashed across the field. The farmer reached down his thick hand, pulled the boy up into the tractor seat and onto his lap, and away they drove together, across the field. And Peterson said, Lets tell people about Jesus Christ, with a great inviting wave of the arm, so they can know him and have eternal life How about it? Amen.