How Vulnerable Are You?
February 1, 1970

Acts 4:1-22

John M. Buchanan

Elsa is 0.K. and that is good news indeed for a lot of concerned people. Elsa,
you will recall, is the heroine of Born Free — an excellent motion picture about
a lion, raised in captivity as a house pet and companion. Elsa responded eagerly
+o gentleness and affection and care. Her natural instincts for foraging, stalking
and hunting were smothered by the careful provision of food and attention by her
captors. And when the decision was made to return her birth-right; to release her
to the freedom of the jungle, she had to be taught. ‘She had to be trained to be
free: uneducated in the ways of security and saftey. Well, Elsa made it. Not
long ago her captor identified her in her natural habitat, doing what free lions
were born to do.

There is a life parable in the story of Elsa who was born to be free, who
became a captive of security and comfort, who was very vulnerable when she reclaimed
her lost freedom.

We believe that God has created us to be free. By this we do not at all mean
life without restraints, moral anarchy - (if it feels good, ao it). Freedom, in
a Christian context, means life encumbered by nothing that might restrict our
ability to realize our potential. Christian freedom means the liberty to become
everything we can - to grow to the fullest extent of our manhood ~ to exploit and
use every ability, every gift, every latent possibility God has given us. It is
the freedom to become what God created us to be.

Christian freedom is the ability to live for others: the liberty to rise
above self-concern and give one's life away for that which is ultimately good and
important and worthy. For the Christian, this is what life is all about -
"Becoming all that we arc able to become - and living for others." This is what
we believe God had in mind when he created us in his image, and breathed the breath
of life into us.

But God, in his infinite wisdom, has also built into us a very strong drive

for saftey and a sensitivity for security. We come by it naturally: we have it

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in common with all the lower animals. We are programmed, by the wisdom of providence,
to avoid danger, to retreat from anything that threatens and to seck the situation
that is secure. It's a good thing too, for it is hard to imagine any kind of
sustained human cxistence if all of us lived “devil may care".

God made us this way and it's a very good way to be except for the fact that
there is a conflict betweon sceking security and exercising freedom. If our ultimate
concern is to be safe, to be totally secure, we aren't likely to go too far in
realizing our potential as human beings. And it almost goes without saying that
we will not be too torribly concerned about living for others.

For the fact of the mattor is that when we expand our horizons, when we stretch
our intellectual and emotional and physical capacities we have to sacrifice 4 little
security. Anyone who has ever made the decision to go back to college knows the
truth of that. It's always casier not to: it's safer not to risk the financial
loss. We are vulnerable when we try to become more than what we are. We become
critically vulnerable whenever we even attempt to live for cthers. To give - to
extend ones' life into the life of another - to fight for what is right and good -
to stand for convictions is always to be vulnerable. It is always to open oneself
to hurt - the hurt of rojection, the hurt of failure. It is always too vulnerable
+o insult and loss of csteom. It is, of course, to be open to loss of time and
ability and money.

And go many ~ porhaps a majority of us - simply don't try. Many simply opt
for life in a shell — in the safe cocoon of non involvement and security. Many
of us would just rather not be that vulnerable.

Our New Testament lesson this morning, taken from the 4th chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles, is a good cxample of how Christian Faith, when it is lived, becomes
synonymous with vulnerability. Peter and John had been involved in healing a lame
man outside the gate of the Temple in Jerusalem. The man was jumping; shouting ita
gonerally making quite a commotion. A crowd gathered, and Peter used the occasion
to deliver a strong testimony to his Lord Jesus Christ. The 4th chapter of Acts

tells us that the number of people involved was quite large - that the incident

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generated a lot of popular support for the Christian movement. The authorities,
however, took a rather dim view of what was transpiring. Peter and John were
arrested on the instigation of the Priests and Sadducces, ostensibly for preaching
about the resurrection. There is a problem here for the interpreter in that the
Sadducees were ordinarily tolerant to a fault of all views. They did not belicve
in a resurrection, but therc is no other indication that arrests were made for
differing from their particular theology.

The fact is that thoy -— the Sadducees, along with the chiof Priests were the
real political power in Judea; that their political clout existed only at the whim
of the Roman government; and that it was predicated upon their ability to keep the
peace. A popular uprising, a mass movement of any kind, would more than likely
result in Rome withdrawing the political power they had, and establishing, ts its
stead, a tight police statc.

And so their concern was not so much theological as it was political and
personal. When Peter and John had a hearing in the morning there was a lot of talk
about how this healing miracle took placc, and the consensus of those gathered +o
sit in Jctepasiagi’ was that while nothing could be done about that, Peter pa John
should be enjoined never to do anything conspicuously in the name of Jegus Christ
again.

Poter's responso was classic: "You yourselves judge whether we should obey
you or God. For we cannot stop speaking of what we have seen and heard." They
were given another warning, in stronger terms, and then set free, — but now very
vulnerable men. In a sense the outcome of their lives was determined at that
moment when they chose to decline saftey and to proceed doing what they knew them—
selves called to do.

Simon Peter had come a long way to this point. From rough fisherman to follower
of Jesus: from the one who always spoke first and showed his ignorance to the one
so full of anger and loyalty that he physically attacked a guard who was arresting
Jesus: from the one who, alone, followed Jesus through the night of questioning

and trial - to the ono who denied him. And now - rough fisherman, standing in the

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midst of the most learned and powerful men in his nation, speaking eloquently and
strongly in a manner that impressed even them. Peter had come a very long way from
the fish nets on the shores of Galilea, and it is interesting that Poter's growth
as aman accompanied his deepening commitment to Jesus Christ. He camo alive, grew,
found himself on the cutting edge of life and literally in its seat of power when
he gave his life to something other than self, saftey and security. He grew into
his freedom — and simultaneously ~ his terrible vulnerability.

I think the Church of Jesus Christ is called to be what Peter was. I think
the Church is called to confront the powers that be in the name of Jesus Christ,
and there to speak a word about sick men and oppressed men and poor men. The catch
phrase for several years has been "the Church must be relevant", and we are told
that people are leaving our ranks because of rampant irrelevancy, and that the
public generally views the Church as a not very important or influential partici-
pant in society.

In a sense, I agree. Much of what happens in the churches —- much of what
masquarades as Christianity is totally irrelevant: irrelcvant to the realities
of life in 1970, irrelevant to the personal needs of men and women who live in 1970.
Much of it is irrelevant because to be relevant is to be, first of all free - free
of all restraints that rostrict our doing what we know God would have us do; free
to live for others - and that means vulnorability. Peter discovered that. So
long as the Apostles stayed in a little room talking about Jesus they were safe.
That is, irrelevance may not be exciting, but it's secure. When they took to the
streets, howover; when thoy healed sick people and talked to thousands of people
they became extremely vulnerable.

Presbyterians fancy thcir church in terms of venerability. The Presbyterian
Church, the Presbyterian tradition is venerable, and we like it that way. But TI
have the nagging suspicion that God is far more interested in vulnerability than
venerability.

I thank God for Presbyterian leadership that has made us vulnerable in recent

years. We may make mistakes, we may err in judgement, we may rush in where the

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| proverbial angels foar to tread - but that's the risk of being vulnerable. And

if we take this New Testament at all seriously it is a risk eminently worth the
taking.

So far you and I are still secure. It's one thing for the Eastern Liberals
in New York to pontificate about race and poverty and war. It's another thing
entirely in Central Indiana. And yet at the bottom of it all these is a very
personal decision to be made by every individual who wishes to call himsclf a
Christian. We are callcd, as individuals, to be free and to be vulnerable.

Charles Lamb tclls the story of an individual who was born a man and died a
pookkeeper. "Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my
sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my
accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation
presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered

into my soul."" ["The Superannuated Man"; ;see Plain Words for Troubled Times: The

Protestant Hour, E. Campbell]

I think we know a little bit about that. I think everyone of us has expericnced
the very real pressurcs which security creates. We know the enslavement to the
symbols of success and the good life ala 1970. We know what it means not to be
free, to succumb to lifc of self-centeredness because its safe. And we know the
bad taste in our mouths when integrity forces us to look at what we are doing with
the life God has given us.

How many times have wo run for cover rather than doing or saying the right and.
honest thing? How many times have we backed away from conflict or shied away from
involvement with othcrs and then justified it as prudence? I have - many times —
and you have too.

In order to love another person, you must be free. You mst be willing to be
vulnerable. To be 2 Christian meang to love others - to place their well being
and welfare at least on an equal level with your own. I+ moans to stand with them
and for them, and many times it means standing all alone. To be a faithful disciple ,

of Jesus Christ is to be cxtremely vulnerable.

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The world needs that today. Our commmity needs individuals who do more than
talk: individuals who are willing to be vulnerable for the sake of their faith -
and yet we — you and I — need it most of all. We need to taste the heady wine of
freedom: of life for others: of life as God created it to be in all its beauty
and love.

Theodore Roosevelt said it well, and I conclude with his words:

"Par better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumph, even though
checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy
much nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows not
victory nor defeat."

Are you willing? Are you willing to be vulnerable?

Amen

Our father, forgive us for building our own prisons of saftey and security.
Gird us with courage that we may be free. Sustain us in all things, that our

lives may worthily reflect your love; Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen