May 31, 2009
Pentecost
“The God of Surprises”
Acts 5:17 – 32

I had a head swiveling experience a while back. I walked over to the Red house next door to the church one morning to look for a reference book. It was earlier in the morning, before anyone else was around the church. I was all by myself. I entered through the back kitchen door, fleetingly remembering the months I lived in the red house when I first moved here. I walked into the dining room. As I walked in, I passed another door-way on my right. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a person standing right there in the doorway. While I only had the barest glimpse, I instinctively knew it was a stranger. My head involuntarily swiveled with the surprise to get a fuller look, and I thought, I’m by myself with some nut case hanging around the red house. I looked and two beady eyes stared back. It was a little strange.  He was dressed in black, with a colorful Hawaiian flower lay around his neck and a straw hat. He turned out to be a skeletal manikin dressed up in clothes. Who needs coffee in the morning with a surprising jolt like that?

To say I was surprised is to put it mildly. Surprise runs through the story we’ve just read about Peter and the other apostles jailed for their faith. What I think we’ll discover is that God brings surprises. This is the idea this story communicates so well; God brings surprises. We might even end up deciding that it is part of God’s nature to surprise us.  Notice with me some of the surprises that must have swiveled heads during this encounter between the followers of Jesus and the authorities.

We find that some followers of Jesus are thrown into jail. No surprise there. It’s not the first or the last time that will happen to Christ-followers. The Bible mentions that the High Priest in Jerusalem and other religious leaders were fill with a zeal to stamp out this message of the apostles, that Jesus is the Messiah, risen from the dead. They were so angry at them that they threw them in jail. It says literally, that, “They put their hands of them.” I can almost picture the soldiers picking them up by the back of their shirt collars and throwing them into the cell. The next morning, the High Priest calls a meeting. Isn’t that what religious folk are supposed to do, call a meeting? They hammer out a procedure of what to do with these followers of Jesus, discuss in detail what should be done and get themselves all ready first, before the prisoners are brought before them. The religious council gets all ready. They are in full control. Then, they call for the apostles to be brought in as prisoners. “Bring in the prisoners,” the cry goes forth. “Bring in the prisoners.” “Bring in the prisoners,” and when it gets to the little guy at the end at the prison, he calls back, “They’re gone.” They’re gone.” “They’re gone.” The officers have gone to the prison, found everything in order, the sentries in position, the doors all locked, but, when they open the cell door, it’s empty – just like Jesus’ tomb. It’s empty! Talk about a head swiveling surprise! “It’s what?” How is it possible that the followers of Jesus are not in prison? How did they escape?

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Now, it doesn’t say this, but maybe the religious council starts talking about it being an inside job. Some of the guards might be sympathetic to Jesus. Maybe even some of the members of the Sanhedrin, the religious council, are secret followers of Jesus. The conspiracy rumors swirl. The whole council is thrown into confusion.

What the High Priest and council don’t know is that God has acted. Surprise! God sent an angel to free them. There was no human hand that unlocked their cell doors. It was God. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that the religious council gathered, planned, thought they were in complete control, asked for the prisoners to be brought in and they were gone. They weren’t in control. Their expectations were stood on end. You’ve experienced that too, about God. Haven’t we all. God surprises us, out of the blue. Different than we expect; different than our thinking. God surprises us.

The angel brings Peter and the apostles out of prison and commands them, “Go, speak in the temple all the words of this life.” The command sounds similar to Jesus’ great commission, “Go… and make disciples, teaching them to observe all I have commanded them.” (Matthew 28:19) Jesus final words are renewed here. So, first thing, when the temple gates open, in go the apostles to teach and talk about Jesus, risen from the dead.

The apostles in the temple is in itself a real surprise. After all, the apostles are arrested under the authority of the High Priest. Where do we expect High Priests to hang out? In the temple, of course. So, if they are thrown into jail by the Priest, and escape, the last place they would want to go is back into the High Priest’s back yard. They would be a little easy to spot – and within easy reach. Imagine the surprise of the High Priest and the whole council when they not only discover that the prisoners have escaped, they are right next door.  How do you think Peter and the apostles felt when the angel tells them to go to the temple? Do you think they tried to bargain with the angel? “Ah, instead of the temple, how about commanding us to get on a ship and go in the opposite direction? We can be as faithful way over there as we can here.” No, God was telling them to go right back into the High Priest’s back yard. But, go they did. You ever feel that God is nudging us to do what we think is the last thing we would want to do? God is the God of surprises. It takes trust to follow this God of surprises, because He acts and asks differently than we expect.

Now, when the temple guards go out and get the apostles and bring them into the religious council, they do so gently. They have a healthy respect for these Christ-followers who manage to get out of jail and, instead of fleeing, walk right back in to the temple. Now, the council had earlier warned the apostles to stop talking about Jesus.
When they come in, the High Priest reminds them about the earlier warning not to speak of, that, that, person – notice he can’t even say the name of Jesus. Peter replies, “We must obey God rather than you.”

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Peter goes on to say. (verses 30, 31) Here’s yet another surprise. Peter quotes the verse these religious leaders were saying, Deuteronomy 21:23, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” The Old Testament prohibits hanging anyone on a tree. Anyone who is hanged, is cursed by God. Jews after Jesus have loved to quote this verse to prove that Jesus could not have been the Messiah. Their reasoning is as follows: Jesus was hanged on a cross made from the wood of a tree; therefore, Jesus is cursed by God. In fact, Jews came to refer to Jesus as, “The hanged one.” It was a term of ridicule. Jesus is the cursed one of God.

And, Peter – another surprise – agrees with them! Jesus is the cursed one of God. He became cursed for our sake, because he took all our imperfections and sins upon him. It was hard for the religious leaders to think of themselves as people who sinned against God. It was hard for them to think they needed to repent from something, just like people today.

But, we need to repent, every one of us. Let’s talk about repentance by taking a mental side trip to Sweet Eats Bakery just up the White Horse Pike. Sweet Eats is a bakery that stands for excellent baked goods, sweet and very rich. Now, just imagine the owner of the bakery receives an order for a large, chocolate cake. He gives the order to the baker who mixes the ingredients and bakes it. When it’s done, she hands it off to the cake icer. The icing is key. It must be a dark chocolate icing, silky, smooth, and rich, with scalloped edges all around. So the cake icer mixes the icing ingredients and then spreads it onto the chocolate, dark cake. However, he didn’t clean out the mixing bowl before he started, so particles from the licorice icing from the last cake and the fluorescent green from the cake before get mixed in with all the dark chocolate. When the icing is spread, there are flecks of red and green all over the cake. The owner can’t sell that cake. Word would quickly spread and he would soon be out of business. It would ruin his name. The prophet Isaiah says, “Your sins have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid God’s face from us.” (Isaiah 59:2)  Our actions, however well intentioned, are not pure. And, God, who is totally pure, can not be part of what is impure. So it is, that, out of tremendous love, all our impurities and sins are placed upon Jesus, who dies in our place, that we might be fully pure, dark, chocolately and rich. “And, the Lord has laid on him the sins of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6) What surprise is this! What we deserved, the fate of death, was placed upon him. Jesus suffered death in our place. When he rose up from death, he broke the power of death, so that anyone who is in Christ only passes through the door way of death to eternal life.

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The God of surprises hasn’t finished yet. Peter goes on to say, that the “Holy Spirit is witness to Jesus, and has been given to those who obey him.” Here is yet another surprise. The very Spirit of Jesus is given to those who follow Jesus. To those who give their lives to Jesus, Jesus gives his Spirit to them. The Spirit is present in Peter. Those who examine him can see there is something different about this person. It’s the same Peter, who fumbled and bumbled his way around following Jesus, but now there is a difference, a Spirit difference.

The presence of the Holy Spirit made the crucial difference in Peter’s life. He is no different from us. For, on this day of Pentecost, which we celebrate today, the Holy Spirit is poured out on all believers, with this promise – “Upon all will I pour out my Spirit, declares the Lord.” (Acts 2:17) Pentecost was not a one-time event that happened to his followers soon after his resurrection. Pentecost is the first in an on-going series of pouring out Jesus’ Spirit upon everyone who surrenders their lives to Jesus. That happened in the first century and the second and the sixteenth and the nineteenth and the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. The Spirit is poured out and given; given as God’s empowering presence for every believers. What a gift!

Here’s yet another surprise. The Spirit is absolutely essential for the Christian. No one will ever believe that they are trust themselves to Jesus, a hanged man, a cursed man, “the hanged one,” unless the Holy Spirit is present in our witness. The apostles needed the Holy Spirit. Paul needed the Holy Spirit. After he has seen the resurrected Jesus, Paul is struck blind. Three days later a disciples comes in and says, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 9:17) Even Jesus needed the Holy Spirit. The first significant event in his adult life, chapter one of Mark’s gospel, is his baptism which concludes with the Holy Spirit coming down and into him, taking up residency in Jesus. It is only when he is filled with the Holy Spirit that his public ministry begins. If the apostles needed the Holy Spirit, if Peter and Paul needed the Holy Spirit, if Jesus needed the Holy Spirit, then we, too need the Holy Spirit.

Peter’s witness even indicates how the power of the Spirit flows in our lives. He says, “The Holy Spirit is witness to Jesus and has been given to those who obey him.” The “him” in that sentence refers to God, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Obeying the Holy Spirit so important. The Holy Spirit is given to each Christian so that we will obey the nudges and will of the Holy Spirit. Obedience to the Spirit gives the Spirit room to work in our lives and through us for others.

We celebrate Pentecost best when we chose to obey the Holy Spirit. There is nothing complex about it. We simply look and listen for the nudges of the Holy Spirit. Having such a ready attitude can begin with something quite simple. It is to say something like this: “Holy Spirit, I will obey your nudges today.” It’s a simply, daily exercise that unleashes the Spirit’s presence in our lives.  “Holy Spirit, I will obey your nudges today.”
Are you interested in praying that prayer? Are you willing to pray regularly, “Holy Spirit, I will obey your nudges today?”

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