The Scattering Of Lesser Figures
Sermon
You Have Mail From God!
Second Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
A certain physician started to practice medicine in a large city. His ambitions were strong and opportunities seemed plentiful there. Success was his right from the start. His practice became almost too large for him to handle. Fame and praise were heaped on him to overflowing. But he forgot that a doctor should do more than heal sick bodies. For this physician, a patient was only interesting if the sickness was interesting and then only as a stimulus to further his fame.
One day the prominent doctor got a letter from his best friend. The friend knew the doctor's reputation and begged him to come to the small town where he lived and try to save his sick little boy. When the letter arrived the doctor was engaged in some research work that could make him famous. He delayed his departure for a few days to complete his valuable research. When he finally arrived in the little town, he was too late. His friend's little boy was dead.
The doctor struggled long and hard with his emotions. His pride had made him a traitor to friendship and service. Gradually he began to develop a new mental attitude of love and service. He resigned his city practice and moved to the small town, becoming a lesser figure in his profession.
On a visit back to the city one day he encountered a puzzled colleague. The colleague could not understand how he could be satisfied with burying himself in a small town, denying himself a place in the sun. The good doctor confessed that his fame had eroded. Certainly there would be no great monuments erected in his honor and no big speeches by important people at his funeral.1 He was, indeed, a lesser figure on the world's stage of medicine. But his life, he believed, had been a success because he had felt a need to live for others and because love had entered into his life.
A unique aspect of Holy Scripture is the way it weaves together life narratives to convey to its readers essential truths about themselves and their world. As we look at today's text, its unspoken objective is to provide us with an appropriate interpretation of our own lives. The story of Philip among the Samaritans possesses all the ingredients necessary to bring truth to lesser figures like you and me. The text is not an abstract about inclusivity. It is a story which addresses our sins and fears and our hopes and experiences. You and I are lesser figures. We will not be the world's shakers and movers. We will not write the best-sellers, preach before the throngs in leading pulpits, discover the great cures, and become parents of the Academy Award winning actress. Most of us, wildly chasing our dream of bigger places and larger arenas, will, perhaps, wrestle most with the twin sins of our existence: wanting what we do not have and fearing that we will lose what we do have.
Here, then, is the appropriate Scripture for us lesser figures. It speaks of the preaching of Philip which contained a huge deficiency. His preaching was not accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in Acts all the other preachers seemed to have given the Holy Spirit to their converts as soon as they baptized them. What's more, Philip, who carried the gospel beyond the big city of Jerusalem, is a lesser figure who received the apostolic imprint. Along the way he encounters a magician named Simon who is so powerful all the people flock to him for his fame. And this same Simon wants to know how much it costs to buy the Holy Spirit, only to be shown that it is a free gift. The story in a very real way points out what usually happens when the gospel is scattered among lesser figures far away from its home base, in this case, Jerusalem.
Perhaps you and I cannot identify with Moses among the Egyptians, Jesus before the Sanhedrin, or Paul before the Athenians. But we scattered, lesser figures have all the elements of our lives there in Chapter 8 of Acts as we encounter Philip among the Samaritans.
That the gospel ever got out of self-centered Jerusalem was itself something of a major miracle. Pascal was fond of saying that it is the pathetic fate of God to be everlastingly misunderstood. Heavenly oracles and prophetic words, such as Jesus' great commission to go into all the world, are usually misconstrued by humans.
"Scatter!" said God to the first family. And Cain built a city! To a later generation God said, "Scatter!" and they built a city with a tower that tried to reach into the heavens! "Scatter!" said God to Abraham, "and in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed." And Abraham and his sons equated the message with their own little nation. "Scatter!" said God to the descendants of Moses. "And occupy the promised land I have given you," and they ransacked the mines and quarries of the whole earth to build a Temple of the Lord and royal palaces in one central spot! "Scatter!" screamed God through the prophets. And the priests dug up (or created) a long-lost(?) book called Deuteronomy during a Temple renovation project which enabled them to go out in the countryside and slaughter 300 rural priests and destroy their shrines in the name of "morality" and "progress!"
Then came God to earth. "Scatter!" he urged. "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." But all the world to them meant the little territory lying around the Mediterranean.
"Scatter!" urged the Christ. The gospel was meant to be preached to Gentiles (and Samaritans) as well as Jews. And his followers created the Apostolic Church through which every Scripture had to pass for approval or editing!
In the words of F. W. Boreham, "The Catholicity of a magnificent purpose was strangled by the parochialism of a conservative race."2
Today's text is a text laced with extremism. It probably shook its first century hearers more than it shakes us for we are quite comfortable with our parochial spirituality and see the Holy Spirit as something that can be purchased, if not with money, then with prayer and meditation. We tend to focus on the instruments of the Holy Spirit, holding up our favorite passages of Scripture to justify our liberality or our fundamentalism. We use our gothic facades, stained glass, and booming choirs to create an ambiance that arrests the spirit on one hand, while also acquiescing to the contemporary, hand-clapping shouts and rhythms of Generation X in our early-morning services. We are the magicians of our day. Like Simon, the magician, we want to know, "What's the cost so I can have this power, too?"
A great violinist was scheduled to play a concert in Houston, Texas. The Houston newspaper, however, didn't focus on the artist. It used most of its space to describe his original Stradivarius violin. In fact, the morning of the concert, the front page carried a picture of the great instrument he would play. That night, the hall was filled with people. The musician played extremely well. As he finished, the crowd thundered its applause. When the clapping subsided, the musician carefully laid his bow down. He carried a chair to center stage. Raising his violin over his head with both hands, he slammed it across the back of the chair. The violin smashed into dozens of pieces. The audience gasped. Walking back to the microphone, the artist said, "I read in this morning's paper about how great my violin was. So I walked down the street to a pawn shop. For thirty dollars I purchased a cheap violin. I put some new strings on it. That's the violin I played this evening, then smashed. I wanted to demonstrate that it isn't the violin that counts most. It's the hands that hold the violin."3
In this image-conscious world you and I need to pause every now and then and reflect on the God who inspires our faith and is the reason for the existence of our churches, our Bibles, and our hope for eternal life.
The Holy Spirit moves through people at God's discretion. There is no formula that can be evoked to get it. It is a divine gift. Some commentators4 focus on today's text and maintain that it means the church should rebuke and exclude "those like Simon who did not change their heathenish lifestyle and attitudes."
Actually, it seems the Holy Spirit held back from offering itself because Peter and John (read the Church) had not obeyed Jesus' command to serve as his witnesses to Samaria. Part of Jesus' great commission was that they were to testify in Samaria. Yet it was not the church that took the message of Jesus to Samaria, it was the Hellenist Philip. The Samaritans believed him and were baptized. But the Holy Spirit held back and forced the apostles to come and bless the Samaritans.5
The Holy Spirit seems to have rebuked the church for its parochialism. Since Peter and John preached the gospel in "many Samaritan villages" on their return to Jerusalem, one might say Peter and John appeared to have taken their own advice to Simon and repented of their own bitterness! Crazy things happen to God's word when "lesser figures" like Philip and you and I try to carry it beyond the boundaries of our own search for comfort and ease.
Thank God for the scattering of lesser figures.
_____________
1. This story was compiled by William Vickland, lay minister of the Little Brown Church of the Air, WLS, Chicago. It was printed in The Little Brown Church of the Air, Sermon Stories. The Reilly and Lee Company, Chicago, pp. 154-157. I have transposed the story into my own words and summarized its narrative.
2. F. W. Boreham, The Blue Flame (New York: Abingdon Press, 1930), pp. 220-223. His chapter, "The Instinct of the Circumference," was most useful.
3. As told in Herb Miller, Fishing on the Asphalt (St. Louis: CBP Press, 1987), pp. 32.
4. My colleague Will Willimon is the author of this quote as he calls attention to "the church demanded reprentance" in 8:22, in Acts: Interpretation -- A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988), p. 70.
5. Marion Soards, Thomas Pozeman, and Kendall McCabe make this observation in Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (New York: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 102.
One day the prominent doctor got a letter from his best friend. The friend knew the doctor's reputation and begged him to come to the small town where he lived and try to save his sick little boy. When the letter arrived the doctor was engaged in some research work that could make him famous. He delayed his departure for a few days to complete his valuable research. When he finally arrived in the little town, he was too late. His friend's little boy was dead.
The doctor struggled long and hard with his emotions. His pride had made him a traitor to friendship and service. Gradually he began to develop a new mental attitude of love and service. He resigned his city practice and moved to the small town, becoming a lesser figure in his profession.
On a visit back to the city one day he encountered a puzzled colleague. The colleague could not understand how he could be satisfied with burying himself in a small town, denying himself a place in the sun. The good doctor confessed that his fame had eroded. Certainly there would be no great monuments erected in his honor and no big speeches by important people at his funeral.1 He was, indeed, a lesser figure on the world's stage of medicine. But his life, he believed, had been a success because he had felt a need to live for others and because love had entered into his life.
A unique aspect of Holy Scripture is the way it weaves together life narratives to convey to its readers essential truths about themselves and their world. As we look at today's text, its unspoken objective is to provide us with an appropriate interpretation of our own lives. The story of Philip among the Samaritans possesses all the ingredients necessary to bring truth to lesser figures like you and me. The text is not an abstract about inclusivity. It is a story which addresses our sins and fears and our hopes and experiences. You and I are lesser figures. We will not be the world's shakers and movers. We will not write the best-sellers, preach before the throngs in leading pulpits, discover the great cures, and become parents of the Academy Award winning actress. Most of us, wildly chasing our dream of bigger places and larger arenas, will, perhaps, wrestle most with the twin sins of our existence: wanting what we do not have and fearing that we will lose what we do have.
Here, then, is the appropriate Scripture for us lesser figures. It speaks of the preaching of Philip which contained a huge deficiency. His preaching was not accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in Acts all the other preachers seemed to have given the Holy Spirit to their converts as soon as they baptized them. What's more, Philip, who carried the gospel beyond the big city of Jerusalem, is a lesser figure who received the apostolic imprint. Along the way he encounters a magician named Simon who is so powerful all the people flock to him for his fame. And this same Simon wants to know how much it costs to buy the Holy Spirit, only to be shown that it is a free gift. The story in a very real way points out what usually happens when the gospel is scattered among lesser figures far away from its home base, in this case, Jerusalem.
Perhaps you and I cannot identify with Moses among the Egyptians, Jesus before the Sanhedrin, or Paul before the Athenians. But we scattered, lesser figures have all the elements of our lives there in Chapter 8 of Acts as we encounter Philip among the Samaritans.
That the gospel ever got out of self-centered Jerusalem was itself something of a major miracle. Pascal was fond of saying that it is the pathetic fate of God to be everlastingly misunderstood. Heavenly oracles and prophetic words, such as Jesus' great commission to go into all the world, are usually misconstrued by humans.
"Scatter!" said God to the first family. And Cain built a city! To a later generation God said, "Scatter!" and they built a city with a tower that tried to reach into the heavens! "Scatter!" said God to Abraham, "and in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed." And Abraham and his sons equated the message with their own little nation. "Scatter!" said God to the descendants of Moses. "And occupy the promised land I have given you," and they ransacked the mines and quarries of the whole earth to build a Temple of the Lord and royal palaces in one central spot! "Scatter!" screamed God through the prophets. And the priests dug up (or created) a long-lost(?) book called Deuteronomy during a Temple renovation project which enabled them to go out in the countryside and slaughter 300 rural priests and destroy their shrines in the name of "morality" and "progress!"
Then came God to earth. "Scatter!" he urged. "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." But all the world to them meant the little territory lying around the Mediterranean.
"Scatter!" urged the Christ. The gospel was meant to be preached to Gentiles (and Samaritans) as well as Jews. And his followers created the Apostolic Church through which every Scripture had to pass for approval or editing!
In the words of F. W. Boreham, "The Catholicity of a magnificent purpose was strangled by the parochialism of a conservative race."2
Today's text is a text laced with extremism. It probably shook its first century hearers more than it shakes us for we are quite comfortable with our parochial spirituality and see the Holy Spirit as something that can be purchased, if not with money, then with prayer and meditation. We tend to focus on the instruments of the Holy Spirit, holding up our favorite passages of Scripture to justify our liberality or our fundamentalism. We use our gothic facades, stained glass, and booming choirs to create an ambiance that arrests the spirit on one hand, while also acquiescing to the contemporary, hand-clapping shouts and rhythms of Generation X in our early-morning services. We are the magicians of our day. Like Simon, the magician, we want to know, "What's the cost so I can have this power, too?"
A great violinist was scheduled to play a concert in Houston, Texas. The Houston newspaper, however, didn't focus on the artist. It used most of its space to describe his original Stradivarius violin. In fact, the morning of the concert, the front page carried a picture of the great instrument he would play. That night, the hall was filled with people. The musician played extremely well. As he finished, the crowd thundered its applause. When the clapping subsided, the musician carefully laid his bow down. He carried a chair to center stage. Raising his violin over his head with both hands, he slammed it across the back of the chair. The violin smashed into dozens of pieces. The audience gasped. Walking back to the microphone, the artist said, "I read in this morning's paper about how great my violin was. So I walked down the street to a pawn shop. For thirty dollars I purchased a cheap violin. I put some new strings on it. That's the violin I played this evening, then smashed. I wanted to demonstrate that it isn't the violin that counts most. It's the hands that hold the violin."3
In this image-conscious world you and I need to pause every now and then and reflect on the God who inspires our faith and is the reason for the existence of our churches, our Bibles, and our hope for eternal life.
The Holy Spirit moves through people at God's discretion. There is no formula that can be evoked to get it. It is a divine gift. Some commentators4 focus on today's text and maintain that it means the church should rebuke and exclude "those like Simon who did not change their heathenish lifestyle and attitudes."
Actually, it seems the Holy Spirit held back from offering itself because Peter and John (read the Church) had not obeyed Jesus' command to serve as his witnesses to Samaria. Part of Jesus' great commission was that they were to testify in Samaria. Yet it was not the church that took the message of Jesus to Samaria, it was the Hellenist Philip. The Samaritans believed him and were baptized. But the Holy Spirit held back and forced the apostles to come and bless the Samaritans.5
The Holy Spirit seems to have rebuked the church for its parochialism. Since Peter and John preached the gospel in "many Samaritan villages" on their return to Jerusalem, one might say Peter and John appeared to have taken their own advice to Simon and repented of their own bitterness! Crazy things happen to God's word when "lesser figures" like Philip and you and I try to carry it beyond the boundaries of our own search for comfort and ease.
Thank God for the scattering of lesser figures.
_____________
1. This story was compiled by William Vickland, lay minister of the Little Brown Church of the Air, WLS, Chicago. It was printed in The Little Brown Church of the Air, Sermon Stories. The Reilly and Lee Company, Chicago, pp. 154-157. I have transposed the story into my own words and summarized its narrative.
2. F. W. Boreham, The Blue Flame (New York: Abingdon Press, 1930), pp. 220-223. His chapter, "The Instinct of the Circumference," was most useful.
3. As told in Herb Miller, Fishing on the Asphalt (St. Louis: CBP Press, 1987), pp. 32.
4. My colleague Will Willimon is the author of this quote as he calls attention to "the church demanded reprentance" in 8:22, in Acts: Interpretation -- A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988), p. 70.
5. Marion Soards, Thomas Pozeman, and Kendall McCabe make this observation in Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (New York: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 102.
