Disciples ACTing OUT: Resurrection Hope

May 1, 2011 2nd Sunday of Easter

Acts 2:14a; 22-32, Psalm 16, 1 Peter 1: 3-9, John 20: 19-31

Disciples ActingOUT

Week 1: Resurrection Hope (What does resurrection mean? To me? Today?)

This week we begin a new five-week sermon series. You can see from the insert in your bulletin that it is call "Disciples Acting Out." No, I'm not going to be preaching on people acting badly...though I probably could given the chaotic state of the world these days. Rather, I hope to bring us some insights on the first disciples and how they took the Gospel out into the world. We'll look at the recordings of their ACTivities, and what happened in the first century to cause the Church's phenomenal growth, where on one day 3,000 souls were added to their number.

We will be looking at the NT book of Acts the whole month of May. The book of Acts is the sequel to the gospel of Luke. Written by the same writer, Luke wanted to tell his friend Theophilis about what happened after Jesus "ascended." Luke part 2, called Acts, records the advancement of the gospel as Jesus' disciples took it from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and to the whole of the Mediterranean world.

Acts is a book about the power of the Holy Spirit. It traces the Spirit's infilling of the disciples and the influence of the Spirit's guidance, teaching, and motivation. In many ways, Acts could have been entitled, the Adventures of the Early Church. In Acts we also see the power of the early church that was reliant on the Holy Spirit for its ministry.

So how is that relevant to Pisgah church here in the year 2011? Well for one, these men and women were ordinary folks just like you and me. They had families, jobs, domestic duties, and drama, just like we do...a different kind of course...but drama. For another, both them and we serve the exact same person, our Lord Jesus Christ. Third, if those undereducated, country fishermen and tradesmen could grasp the power of ministry for a pagan, chaotic, and desperately needy world, so can we. If we are committed to impacting our community for the kingdom of God, we too need the power of God to act out ourselves.

The scripture we read from the second chapter of Acts today is part of the sermon that Peter gave on the day the Holy Spirit arrived and indwelled the believers. Peter, the guy who had denied that he even knew Jesus, has become emboldened like never before and was preaching...really Acting outside his cowardly bounds. But to understand not only the power of God in Peter, but also some of his motivation for preaching this message we need to back-peddle to the beginning of Acts for just a moment.

Luke begins his sequel to the gospel with a flashback...to the moment of Jesus' ascension. That moment was not only important but was a serious turning point for the disciples. There are two points I want to make about the ascension. First, I want to talk about what the disciples realized from the event and second, what may we realize about it.

For a moment imagine yourself a disciple. During the last three years, your life has been turned up-side down. You have left everything you knew, your job, your family, your home, your life to follow an itinerant rabbi, the man that you thought was the son of God. You did this because you saw in him one who would act to restore the kingdom of David. You believed he was the person and the fulfillment of the prophesy about the Messiah that you had heard since you were a toddler.

Jesus was the one...you knew it. And things had been going pretty good until about 40 days ago. That was when the world truly fell apart for you and all your brothers and sisters. Jesus had been killed. Worse, he had been crucified as a shamed blasphemer of God.

It was true that he had warned all of you that it would happen, but you and the others just couldn't see it really happening. That Friday your heart was truly broken and the discouragement and fear of what was going to happen felt as if it was strangling you.

Then a miraculous thing occurred. Three days after he was killed and buried, he was seen alive, first by the women and then, Jesus himself appeared to you and your brothers in the upper room. Jesus was again truly alive. It was him in the flesh standing in the midst of the room. Only the scars remained to remind you of his death.

When you witnessed him, you knew that Jesus was the resurrection; he was the life; he was the truth, just as he had said. His resurrection was actual physical evidence of the promise of the resurrection that you had heard about. Jesus had fulfilled the promise of God right before your very eyes. Jesus, in overcoming death as he did, had begun the work of restoration of Israel and the world; the promise of God...ages promised...was a reality. With your own eyes you saw him. As did other for some 40 days.

About the time you thought the roller coaster of life was beginning to slow down a little bit, today you have just heard Jesus' words again...about taking the message of the resurrection to all the world...about waiting for the power of God to come to you and, that Jesus would be with you all until the end of the age...you watched as he disappeared into thin air. After the shock of that moment, it took you and the others a little bit of time to gather your wits. (As it would have ours, I suspect.) But now you and your sisters and brothers are no longer hopeless, now your hope is in the resurrection! How will you act now.

One disciple began to act out immediately. When the power of God came, Peter was all about getting the word out, telling the world about Jesus, his death, and the good news of the resurrection. That was Peter's message in total and it was the one that gave the disciples real hope.

Over the centuries, this good news has been subjected to and at times hijacked by the influence of various philosophies, (Platonic and Gnostic primarily) in unorthodox ways. I wish I had more time to talk about that today but just ponder these questions. What does the NT really teach about the resurrection? What does that mean to me?

The whole of the NT teaches that the resurrection of Jesus is the first evidence of the new heaven and earth that God has in store for us. Jesus has not gone away into the sky to build a golden kingdom somewhere else. God has acted in Jesus to restore, to re-create this world, this creation. The kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ.

The disciples understood what was happening when Jesus came and stood in their midst on Easter morning. It took them a bit of time for it to register, I'm sure. They witnessed the resurrection in Jesus, whom Paul has called the first fruits...meaning the first one, the first solid evidence of the God's promise of a restored world, the new kingdom. It's the good news! The creation of God has been saved through Jesus Christ.

If we can grasp the understanding that the disciples had, we will also have the powerful resurrection hope that they had.

Sometimes we have fallen into the notion that the meaning of the resurrection is only about individual salvation, and act to get me to heaven. But the NT teaches that resurrection points to God's plan to renew the whole world. And that plan includes you and me.

And why should that give us hope? Think for a moment if you will like this. In the new age, we will be fully alive, our bodies fully restored to perfect health, fully human, fully bearing the perfect image of God, just as we were created to be. The earth, and all of creation will also be fully restored, perfected. Evil, sickness, death, sorrow, guilt, pain will be no more, and we will live eternally with the Lord and with one another. For me that is good news!

The disciples got it, and it was such good news that they gave their lives to tell it, knowing that they had seen the evidence in the resurrected Christ. And what's more, the power they needed to spread that news was supplied to them, just as it is to us.

So, how are we to act out? Who are we going to tell? What are we going to do to bring the kingdom of God more fully in the earth than it is today? All good questions, but better left for another Sunday...this month.