THE POWER OF ATRTH John M. Buchanan

Acts 2:43+47 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
May 23, 1982 Columbus, Ohio

Many miracles and wonders were being done through the apostles, and
everyone was filled with awe. All the believers continued together in
close fellowship and shared their belongings with one another. They
would sell their property and possessions, and distribute the money
among all, according to what each one needed. Day after day they met
as a group in the temple, and they had their meals together in their
homes, eating with glad and humble hearts, praising God, and enjoying
the good wil] of all the people. And every day the Lord added to their
group those who were being saved. (Acts 2:43-47)

There is a marvelous line somewhere in Carl Sandburg's Lincoln saga which
describes the time just prior to the Civil War....."Something was dying and some~-
thing was being born.” Something is trying to be born in the second chapter of
Acts, Something altogether new is described in that text. Something is in the
process of becoming. The Acts cf the Apostles is, essentially, the pre-natal
and birth record of the most important movement in all of human history.

The believers, those stubborn, stalwart souls who stayed together after
Jesus was crucified, after the resurrection and his disappearance, were in Jeru-
salem. They stayed close to one another. They met each day, apparently, in the
temple. They ate meals together, They were so close that they sold their be-
longings and live communally, according to their needs. They sang a lot, ‘They
prayed a lot. They were consistantly happy. They lived with a sense of barely
restrained awe at what God had done and a sense of unrestrained joy and anticipation.

Some of the newness resulted in schemes that didn't work. The early experiment
in conmunal living was discontinued because it didn't do what the community hoped
it would accomplish. But the concern for the needs of one another found other
expressions. The verbal picture is of a group living in two worlds, one of which
was dying and the other in the process of birth.

The power of that idea is lost on us, I fear, although the idea of birth it-
self retains great strength. There is no more evocative event than human birth.
It has a power of its own, almost mystical, Birth evokes, inherently, a sense of
awe, a sense that life is larger and more profound than our individual lives.
There is joy at birth, nearly always. Birth signals newness, new possibilities,
new hopes and dreams,

The early Christian Church didn't have much going for it: a tiny speck on
the map of the world: a handful of souls in the miliijons upon millions of people
Rome counted as subjects. The early Christian Church had no money, no influential
leadership, no army, no plans. It did, however, have the power of its own birth.
It had the simple certainty that God intended it to be: that the risen Christ
would give it whatever resources It needed. And that was suffictent.

Iwo thousand years have passed and for a variety of reasons our religion ts
different from the experiences of the first believers, If Acts 2 is the literary
equivalent of birth and infancy, our religion, I suppose, would qualify as middle-
aged, at least. Certainly mainline Christianity is not notorious for its excite-
ment and vitality.

The late Harry Golden, witty editor of the South Carolina Israelite commented
acildly: "If I were faced teday with the decision my ancestors faced.....become a
Christian or die.....I would pick a church fast. There is nothing to offend me in
the modern church. The minister gives a talk on juvenile delinquency once a week,
reviews a movie next week, then everyone goes downstatra and plays bingo. ‘The
firat part of the church they build these days is the kitchen. Five hundred years
from now, people will dig up these churches, find the steam tables, and wonder .
what kind of sacrifices were performed." (see Raines, New Life in the Church, p. 75)

More to the point, there is a built in tension in the church between the
vision of what we could be and the reality of what we are. We dream dreams about
the Kingdom of God, but spend most of our time talking about the color of paint
for the walis.

Daniel Jenkins is an Englishman who wrote an important book a number of years
ago under the title, The Strangeness of the Church. In it Jenkins maintained that
the church was strange precisely because it seems, on occasion, to know the secret
to rebirth. Unlike other organizations which are born, come to maturity and die,
much like living things, the church keeps being reborn ~ Jenkins maintained. It's
true. Old churches, crusty, traditional, venerable old churches keep showing
evidence of new birth.....New members - young people, saying yes to faith and
lave and hope and Jesus Christ - adults deciding to be baptized. Heyond that
internal vitality, two things will happen in the life of this church in the next
thirty days which an old, wornout institution simply couldn't handle. In two
weeks a group of members of the church will board a van and travel te Scotts Run,
West Virginia, and from there take a Mobile Health Fair into some remote mountain
villages. Because of something happening in the life of this Christian community
dn Columbus, Ohio, some folks in West Virginia will encounter professional medi-+
cal attention, nutritional education, dental hygiene for the first time in their
lives, And then, a week later - 125 children from the Eastside of Columbus will
begin a aix week, daily program of education, recreation and skills development,
in a program called Rainbow ‘82 which will happen because of something about the
life of this congregation; something strong and new; something always present,
but always looking for a way of being bom.

The life of the church is renewed and reborn when the church decides to follow
Jesus Christ. The same dynamic happens individually. We Presbyterians shy away
from the idea of personal rebirth, however, We are much too restrained to give
in to the emotionalism of the born-again movement. Unfortunately, we have for-~
gotten the fact that rebirth is a process and not an event. In our disagreement
with the tactics of the evangelicals we have very simply eliminated the experience
altogether. That's too bad because there is great power in birth, and great per-
sonal potential in the idea of individual rebirth. The psychological disciplines
know that, even if the churches have forgotten it.

Sometimes the opportunity for rebirth in the sense of personal renewal comes
after a devastating personal crisis: in fact, sometimes the crisis is necessary
for the birth to happen. Sometimes new doors open only after old ones slam shut.
Sam Keen is a theologian who lived through a classic midlife crisis and later,
reflecting on his pilgrimage, wrote:

“Any radical turning point in the life of a person or a culture - adolescence,
the death of a child or a friend, crippiing disease, divorce, retirement,
defeat in war - involves a death of the ld and, hepefully, rebirth of the
new, Failure," Keen observes, "gave me a chance to start over."

(Beginnings Without End, preface)

-2—

Sometimes personal rebirth happens in a situation that feels like death
itself: sometimes we have to fail in order for a new and better plan to emerge.
Sometimes a kind of rebirth happens when we experience the actual death of a
parent, or spouse, or friend: sometimes personal rebirth happens after a divorce,
when an individual - out of the broken piecas of life ~ puts something new,
stronger, and bigger — together.

But sometimes rebirth ia an even slower, and less intense process, not
unlike physical growth. Sometimes rebirth is a growing into awareness that begins
imperceptibly and after years of thinking and struggling and praying, flowers on
occasion, dramatically and beautifully. That is how it its for most of us. And
sometimes rebirth doesn't seem to be happening anywhere, we feel stale, There
doesn't seam to be any new possibilities on the horizon. Sometimes the power of
birth needs an intentional assist. Sometimes you and I are called to look honestly
at the old world im which we are living, and to decide to change it some: actually
to be more generous; actually to take the coat from our back and give it to the
person who has none; actually to turn the other cheek, or forgive the offender
we so enjoy disiiking; to see how our own duliness is deadening our marriage and
family and simply to decide to Love and be reborn. Sometimes, very simply, you
and I are called to say “no" to the old world, the old comfortable self, and
"yes" to the possibility of newness. For instance, to say no to the prejudice
we cling toe as the last fading remnant of some dying racial superiority because
we know it is wrong; to say yes to grace and honesty and love in ways that are
unusual and untraditional and new.

There is power in that. ‘There is power in the birth of a new person. Power
and joy and a sense that the future 1g full of hope. The promise is that God is
always working to make us new; to open new possibilities, to produce new growth
in us, make us bigger and better and fuller persons then we thought possible.

The promise of Christianity - suggested so simply and innocently by the infant
church - is that in obedience to Jesus Christ - we become part of a whole new
creation, not unlike being born again. AMEN,