Getting a Reputation--February 13, 2020

Getting A Reputation--February 13, 2020

"Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he came by. A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured." [Acts 5:12-16]

The early church had a reputation for bringing people to life.

That sentence--and that reality--both inspires me and haunts me.

I know it is easy to romanticize the life of the early church, or to imagine that it wasn't fraught with challenges, beset by divisions, and often hounded by the powers of the day. I know that there were a great many difficulties for the early community of Jesus, and it seems to me, too, that an honest reading of the Scriptures indicates that a lot of the time they were making things up as they went along. The first generation of what we call "church" did a lot of designing the plane they were flying in and building the boat they were already at sea sailing in.

So I don't mean to simply pine for "the good old days of church" to the book of Acts and say, "If only we could do things like they did back then...." both because we can't go back in time, and because we aren't called to duplicate a past era but rather to embody Christ for the present moment to which we are called.  And there are a lot of good things to be grateful for in this present moment, two millennia later, that weren't yet ironed out in the first generation of the church.  (You know, like, they hadn't decided yet at this point in the book of Acts that you could be accepted as a disciple of Jesus if you were a Gentile....and that's me.)

But what strikes me here about this short scene from the early days of the Jesus movement is that the followers of Jesus were getting a reputation for bringing people to life.  They had a hunch that life just might break out wherever the followers of Jesus went, and so even when they were afraid to join up, they would line the streets where the apostles just might be walking, in the hopes that life might break out among them, too.  And to hear Luke tell it, this wasn't empty hope or wishful thinking--the sick, the hurting, and the ones troubled by spirits all found themselves brought fully to life from just being around the disciples.  You almost get the impression that life just erupted wherever Peter and James and John and the rest went, that the power of God to give life just flowed from them without a thought, so that folks from around were just hoping to get touched by Pete's shadow.

Now, I know that this kind of cult of personality can go terribly wrong, and I know that plenty of religious hucksters have abused the hope of healing to solicit donations from hurting and sick people who placed their earnest faith in people who did not deserve it.  And I don't mean to say that the plan for the 21st century church should be to promise that people will be cured of cancer if the shadow of the preacher touches them during the sermon (that sounds like a terrible mash-up of liturgy and Groundhog Day).  But I do mean to suggest that there was something genuine about the early church that gave it a reputation for bringing people to life... and that life included everybody.

Luke seems to make a point of that here, too.  You had folks who weren't brave enough yet to join the disciple community or profess their allegiance to Jesus (which was a pretty dangerous thing to do), but they were still hopeful that they could be healed of their sicknesses anyway... and they were.  The gift of life--of healing from sickness, relief from hurts, liberation from the power of unclean spirits--was given all around, not just to church folk, not just to "their own," and not just to dues-paying, offering-giving members of the Jesus Fan Club.  The early church had a reputation for being loose that way--it just gave away the gift of life to anybody and everybody.  The followers of Jesus became known for giving life, not on condition that someone joined the church or made a decision for Jesus or prayed the right prayer first, but without condition and without fine print.  We were reckless... prodigal... extravagant.

You know... just like Jesus.

And this is what haunts me as much as it inspires me.  I don't know that when people think of "church" today, they have that same impression.  I don't know that when folks hear about Christians, they think, "Oh, those are the folks who bring life wherever they go!"  And I'm pretty sure that folks don't expect the Respectable Religious Crowd to be giving away good things for free without a sales-pitch, a guilt-trip, or a winking, "But I need you do me a favor first and join my club..." that comes along.

All of that is to say, a lot of folks' impression of the church in 21st century America is that we are NOT interested in helping folks who aren't already "like us" or "in the club," or "members in good standing."  A lot of folks assume (correctly, because church folks SAY things like this, or post things like this on their social media) that we're only supposed to "take care of our own" and that others who stand at the street corner hoping for help are just mooching and leeching and lazily siphoning off the rest of the "good people."  A lot of folks in the communities where we live think that the church is a building inside which people are taught to justify their own selfish "Me and My Group First" mindset, because we give them no reason to think otherwise.  We don't have a reputation like Peter did for being so full of God's life-giving power that others were brought to life more fully just by being in his presence.  We don't have a reputation for being "loose" with Spirit-given life like the first disciples got known for.

And this story both challenges me and encourages me to change that.  This ancient anecdote tells me that it once was that way, that we have been and once again could be a community known for life breaking out among us.  I can see it in our future again because it was a part of our foundational past. I can see it like the image C.S. Lewis uses in his story of the creation of Narnia of a world so new and brimming with life that a piece of toffee that touches the soil becomes a seed of a toffee tree, and a lamp post that gets stuck in the ground sprouts roots and becomes a permanent living thing.  The early church was so open to letting God's Spirit move through them recklessly and abundantly that they were known for life spilling over out of their presence in the room--and we could be that, too.

Dream with me here for a moment: we could be people that others choose to sit by at the coffee shop because they know they will find a kind and listening ear.  We could be people that others are willing to share their troubles with because they know our first impulse will be to listen with love rather than to condemn or ostracize them.  We could people who are the first the community turns to when there is a disaster or a tragedy or trouble, because they know that we are committed to walking through those times with others, rather than hunkering down and caring only for our own.  We could be people who are known for life breaking out among us, not just for church members, but for everybody--and we could be a part of God's ongoing mission to bring all of creation back to life in the fullest.

All of that could be our reputation, and if it happened, people would say, "Doesn't surprise us that they are known for abundant life and reckless grace--that's what Jesus was all about, too."  There is our once-and-future legacy--to be people in whom the overflowing life of Jesus is shared with all.

And it starts now, in what you and I choose to do with this day.

Let's get cracking.

Lord Jesus, let your life spill over through us in the needs of everyone around us, and let us get a reputation like yours, for being loose with life, and healing, and love.