Sermon for Sunday, May 18, 2008

YOU WILL BE MY WITNESSES

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Acts 1:1-8

¹ In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning ² until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. ³ After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. ⁴ While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. "This," he said, "is what you have heard from me; ⁵ for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." ⁶ So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" ⁷ He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

 I want to start by looking with you at a painting. A print of this hangs in my office and this print has been very important for our congregation over the past twelve years. The painting is by Rene Magritte, an early 20^th century surrealist.

What do you see in the painting? I think the picture is about being able to see what is and then to envision what can be from what is. I think the picture is about having vision for the future—seeing the now and envisioning “then”. I think it is important for each of us to be able to do what the artist is doing—being open to what is possible, what can be, in our personal life. This might be an exercise for you to do on your own later today—to look at where you are and to ask what you would be doing three years, five years from now if you knew you could not fail? What would be your vision, your dream?

I like using this painting for our congregation also and this is how it was used several years ago when we many of us were involved in a time of strategic planning. We looked at scripture together—passages like the one we just heard. We looked at the growing population in the Denver metro area and the dire need for a stronger Methodist and mainline presence. We looked at the opportunities for reaching people with a healthier personal theology and social justice emphasis from a progressive Christian perspective.

We did all that and we prayed earnestly for God’s vision to be at work. And then we took a bold step of faith, very, very bold, and we bought almost 17 acres of prime and very costly ground and now here we are. Here we are having outgrown our relatively new building and about to embark on another bold journey of adding space so we can move toward the vision that we felt God calling us toward several years back—a church on a hill, a beacon, a lighthouse, a place that has overtones of the feelings people felt when they went to worship at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus—LET US GO UP TO WORSHIP—to lift our eyes upward and our feet upward and be elevated toward God.

That was the image I had one week ago when we had a day of prayer on the Saturday before Commitment Sunday. I had an image of the future for this unique congregation named after the disciple Andrew, the disciple who kept inviting his friends, his relatives, even some pagan Greek folks to come and get acquainted with Jesus. Andrew the inviter. Andrew the evangelist, the witness, who could not help but introduce others to Christ.

My image in our prayer vigil was of our full and complete lower parking lot and of people getting out of their cars on a Sunday morning and walking up the beautiful memorial walkway where there will be places for the interment of ashes and cremated remains, walking up that walkway five years from now to come into the building. The area they will park and walk from is bare and graveled now, but in my vision it is lovely and it’s packed with people.

The people are coming into the building for the purposes named in our mission and vision statements—the ones that have been twelve years in the making. They are being invited, received, nurtured, challenged and sent forth from here to live as committed Christians in this world.

And if we look at the vision statement, the preferred picture of the future on the front of the bulletin, here is what we are already committed to do:

First of all, for us to offer radical hospitality. That is the point of last week’s story of the two boys who broke into the church to play pool and being given the key finally by the minister—radical hospitality. That means greeters on Sunday morning when people arrive, provision of nametags, folks greeting each other at the end of the service, a loaf of bread delivered to each first time household, good processes of assimilation after someone has joined. It means being a very welcoming congregation.

It means an experience of passionate worship—worship that touches our heads and our hearts, worship that engages our minds and our feelings. Several people have told me what was so moving for them last week as we received 300 commitment cards on the altar table. They said they were brought to tears that morning—not because of the sermon, but from seeing so many children bringing their penny banks up to the altar table, knowing that each of those children will feel a connection with the next building phase: “I helped build that new room or that new sanctuary” they will be able to say!

Transformational spiritual growth is what happens to people who study and read the Bible together or spend time in the Just Faith class and are changed by what they discuss and study. That growth occurs just as it did when the church began to meet right after the day of Pentecost. It is the sort of change and transformation that we heard St Andrew member Scott Finger talk about four weeks ago in his two year journey out of alcohol dependency and the valley of darkness into this community of faith.

The fourth part of our picture is that we are a community of extravagant generosity—people who live the belief that God has blessed us so that we can be a blessing—so we can pass on to others a portion of that blessing and we do that by going way above our goal to build one Habitat House for one family and instead do one and a half homes and we are about to have a chance to do that again this summer for a family where there is a father a mother, a grandmother and four children. This is a congregation of folks known for extravagant generosity—that is why our leaders have been approached over the past four years to lead workshops for other Methodist congregations who want to create generous people and move members beyond tokenism to cheerful, joyous, sacrificial giving.

The last part of the vision our Leadership Council has adopted says that we will be involved in risk taking mission and service to others. This is something else that this high commitment congregation is known for—service and outreach that involves us beyond ourselves, outreach to children in not only in Belize but now through Central America because we just learned a few weeks ago that other teachers beyond the school we have helped with in Belize, other teachers have come to the town of Forest Home to see a model example of pre school education in that school we have invested in and go back to do a similar thing! Risk taking mission and service made us say, right after we got into this new building that of course we want to provide space every few weeks for homeless families to be housed and cared for here as they receive education and training to get them off the streets and learn to be self sufficient-of course we will do that, we said, and we provided the space and the volunteers to do that. This summer we will be hosting families for two weeks in a row-a highly unusual engagement and we will need your help.

That is our vision for this congregation-people will experience those five values so fully that they will come to know God and be changed.

The list is an adaptation from a book by one of our Methodist Bishops, Robert Schnase, and the five activities felt so right that we unanimously embraced them several months ago and said that they feel just like what we have been doing here for a long time!

These five experiences are not unique with Bishop Schnase. They were the same things that were happening 2000 years ago when the Jesus movement began at Pentecost. People reached out to invite and welcome others. They worshiped fervently together. They studied and learned about God and felt God present to them in new ways after Easter and Pentecost. They grew and were transformed. They gave joyfully and sacrificially to those in need. They cared for the poor and the widows and the orphans. And something was said about the early Jesus movement that I hope can be said today-See how those Christians love each other and love others.

Let’s go back to the picture by Magritte and talk about seeing what is and being able to see what can be: I think Jesus was offering that vision of the future when he told his friends after Easter that what he wanted them to do was—to wait—something very hard: WAIT. Meet regularly and pray and learn-and then God’s fiery, noisy spirit will overcome you and empower you to be my witnesses-my messengers-right here in this city and then in surrounding regions and then across the world. Christ saw the future and the disciples fulfilled it.

It happened because the conditions were just perfect for the movement to spread and turn the world upside down. Have you ever thought about that-the event and message of Jesus came into history at exactly the right time?  Five things were present for Paul and others to offer their witness: the incredible engineering of Roman roads made possible thousands of miles of transportation across Asia and Europe. Merchants could travel easily and frequently and because of that commerce and trade, the message could spread. Third, there was a common language that everyone had to know to get by-the Greek language then was like English today, the common tongue that anyone needed to know whatever their native language was. The fourth factor was the Pax Romana, the relative peace of the first century world that Rome was committed to keeping-that let people fulfill Jesus vision to be his witnesses. The fifth factor was a deep and broad hunger and curiosity about spiritual matters that made people more open to hearing about Christ.

Paul referred to that when he went to Greece and walked around the city of Athens and saw many statues and altars to different gods including one to an unknown God, and he told his curious listeners, it is that “unknown god” I want to tell you about!

The time was ripe then. The time is ripe today, and that is what St Andrew leaders said twelve years ago when we voted to move and buy land and build so that we can be witnesses of Christ’s abundant life to the many, many people who need to know they don’t have to leave their brain at the door of the church and who are longing for opportunities for outreach and service and the chance to make a difference and who know they can’t take the Bible literally but want to know the Bible and take it seriously and use it to form a moral and spiritual compass for themselves and their children.

We looked at the opportunity and the demographics in Denver twelve years ago and we said, this is where God is calling us, this is God’s vision for us-to be this kind of growing, outreaching church that will be a beacon not only for our area but will be a teaching congregation where we can share what is working for us and also keep learning from others. This is the vision that has pulled us into the place we are and it is the vision that will continue to stretch us and mold us so that through God’s light shining here and through the joy we feel, others may come to know and praise God.

What would you paint if you were the artist in the picture and the goal was to look at the present state of your life and what you might attempt if you knew you could not fail? What would you paint if you were doing that for this community of faith named after that contagious fellow named Andrew?

Sermon Library