Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · April 11, 2010

Litany and Confession

From Psalm 118

The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

            The Lord is my light and salvation. In God I trust.

There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous.

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

            The Lord is my light and salvation. In God I trust.

This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

            The Lord is my light and salvation. In God I trust.

Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! Let us pray.

Though the eyes of the world have beheld the seeming surrender of our    

            Christ,

The eyes of our hearts have been opened!

Christ is risen; Christ is risen, indeed. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Tim Carson

Gracious God, giver of all perfect gifts, we give you our thanksgivings, our deep gratitude of the heart, for you are the source of all that is; we, the recipients. 

We pray for every place that you are which is this entire world – from Columbia to the mineshafts – wherever people hurt, wherever they rejoice. Our hearts are with you, where you are already.

So give us the tokens of grace whereby we might know you, love you, and serve you. Mobilize our gifts for the greater good and for the witness of this congregation. Strengthen us when we feel weak. Comfort us when we feel lost. Empower us when we feel challenged. All for your sake. 

So, we pray the prayer our Lord taught us to pray, saying…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

Acts 5:1-11

But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. “Ananias,” Peter asked, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!” Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him.

After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price.” And she said, “Yes, that was the price.” Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And a great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.

Message

Stewardship Sermons Just Kill Me

Jacob Thorne

Well, that’s quite a Scripture. We will get to it. But first, I want to begin, this morning, by sharing with you a story about a man named Tony.

Sixteen years ago, Tony was 42-years-old. He was fit, a former college football player. After school, he became an orthopedic surgeon in New York. One afternoon, in 1994, he was at his lake house for a family reunion. 

Just picture it. It was a nice day. It was breezy. There were just a few storm clouds in the distance. There were a couple drops of rain but nothing to worry about. 

Tony decided that he should call his Mom, because she was not at the family reunion. He went down to the gas dock by the boat. He picked up the receiver on a pay phone. He called her and was engaged in conversation with her. The clouds were starting to roll in just a little closer, but he does not worry. They were having a great conversation. His Mom said, “Good-bye.” He was still holding onto the phone. Then all of a sudden, SLAM! A flash of lightning hit his face. His body flew forward, then backward, and then he was on the ground.

Tony relates, “I looked down at myself. My consciousness floated up with me. I said to myself, ‘I must be dead.’”

His story continues. He says, “The woman, who was waiting next to me to use the phone, came over and started doing CPR. I had this bluish-white light surround me. I had the realization that my children were going to be OK. I saw all of the moments of my life pass before me – the highest moments and the lowest moments. I thought to myself,” says Tony, “this is the most glorious feeling I have ever had.”

Right when he thought that, SLAM, again. He was back. He knew he wasn’t dead, because he hurt all over. The lightning had actually struck his face, traveled through his body, and exited out his foot.

By this time, his family members had all surrounded him. They had called an ambulance. The paramedics arrived, but Tony, being the doctor that he was, said, “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m fine.”

Several days later, after consulting with a neurologist and a cardiologist, Tony was given a clean bill of health. But Tony didn’t feel that everything was normal. Over a period of two or three days, he started to have this strong and inexplicable desire to listen to piano music. This was totally new for Tony. Never before had he ever expressed an interest in the piano. He didn’t own a piano. He had never played the piano, and his entire music collection consisted of rock-and-roll. Tony began to have this crazy craving. It was like something deep within his heart calling him to a new passion. 

He purchased a piano. He learned how to play. For hours on end, before and after work, in the middle of the night, all he would do was practice the piano. When he did sleep, for just a few hours at a time, he would have these dreams where he was wearing a tuxedo. He was in front of a concert hall. He was playing this beautiful music. He would wake up, and he would write down the music he had been playing.

All along, the music was there, deep, deep within him. All Tony had to do was let the music come to him and open him up. Tony says, “As Mozart said about his music, it was a gift from heaven.”

Over a period of time, Tony began to think he had been saved for a special purpose. Tony’s experience had brought him closer to God. Tony felt that he had a spiritual experience. Tony believed that by tuning into the music, he had been given a special mission in life. But in order to discover this, he first had to die.

Now it seems, at least to me, a little bit strange to be talking about death in the week after Easter. Last Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of Christ, just as we do every Sunday. But here we are again, and our text this morning is a text that they tell you in seminary to avoid at all costs. That would be wise, because this Scripture, from the book of Acts, is full of questions, ambiguities, complexities. But in order to understand what the writer of Acts is trying to convey, it is helpful to go back just one chapter. In Acts 4, Barnabas, one of the leaders of the early church, sells all of his possessions and gives everything he owns to the church.

When describing the early church, Chapter 4 says, “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

It almost sounds ideal. Doesn’t it?

The text continues with saying, “With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not one needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them all and brought the proceeds of what was sold.”

When Barnabas sold his land, he laid everything at the feet of the apostles.

So, then we get to today’s reading, Chapter 5. Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, also sell a piece of land. They, too, put the money at the feet of the apostles. But there is just one little catch. Not all of their money is given back to the church. When the apostle Peter asked Ananias and Sapphira, separately, why they held back the money, they both fall over and die. Really.

If you read this story too quickly, it is easy to assume that God caused them to fall over and die. This isn’t the case, however. They simply fall over without any explanation at all, and the writer of Acts says, “Great fear seized the entire church.” Fair enough, because it is, without a doubt, strange. But if you read the story carefully, there is one key difference between Ananias and Sapphira, [in Chapter 5] and Barnabas [in Chapter 4]. There is no mention of resurrection or of grace in Chapter 5.

Holy Week, what we experienced last week, confronts us with this very same question. On which side of the cross will we choose to live? Will we live on the Good Friday side of the cross? That is, will we choose to live in darkness? Will we live in fear? Will we see all of our riches as something we worked hard for and not as a gift given to us by the grace of God? 

Or, will we choose to live on the Easter side of the cross, the resurrection of Christ?  This is the side that is characterized by light, by hope, by gratitude, by peace. The choice is ours. 

But if you live on the dark side of the cross, you will live in fear. I guarantee it. Our Scripture reading this morning demonstrates it. The Good Friday side of the cross leads you to believe that what you own is yours, not a gift given to you by the grace of God. The Easter side of the cross, though, affirms our belief in the resurrected Christ and of a reality that is so much deeper than ourselves. 

We witness this just two weeks ago on Palm Sunday when our fifth-grade baptismal candidates made their confessions of faith, because when you make your confession of faith – when you live into the promises of your baptism – each day we die to our old selves, and we rise up into our newly-embodied lives.

I once had a seminary professor who said when people would ask him, “When were you saved?” he would reply, “Every day! I am saved every day.” If you fail to see a new way of living, as the writer of Acts suggests was the case for Ananias and Sapphira, who in the midst of a great movement of a rally to bolster and commit everything to the community of Christ, made a secret plot not to carry it out, then you might die. Even literally, because sometimes, a heart just can’t take it.

Allow me to go back to Tony, who said he had been saved for a special purpose after being hit by lightning. He didn’t discover that purpose, he would tell you, until he died. For Tony, this was literal. He had to die in order to discover who he needed to become. Tony knew, that in order to fulfill his mission in life, he had to change the way he was living. Tony, who is a doctor, turned to the cardiologist, the neurologist, all of the specialists to help him explain his newly-found mission in life. But they couldn’t explain it. They couldn’t, because Tony believed his experience was spiritual.

As Christians, we claim that the heart represents what it means to be human, what it means to live in a relationship with others. The heart is the core of our personality. It is our passion, our energy, our humility. It is no surprise that the word “heart” occurs in the Bible 592 times.

The writer of the book of Proverbs understands this when he says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life.”

The heart of the matter is always, according to Scripture, a matter of the heart, and Ananias and Sapphira both died of broken hearts. What they forgot, perhaps in the moment when they needed it most, is the fact that when our hearts are broken, when we aren’t living life the way God intends us to, God offers us an invitation and calls us back. The prophet Ezekiel understood this when he heard the Spirit of the Living God speak to him and say, “A new heart I will give you. A new spirit I will put within you. I will remove from your body the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh with the spirit of the Living God.”

When you start living for others first, you start having a mission in life. When we start living differently, we have to be open to the possibility of our lives being drastically changed.

The other day, I came across a story about the Salwen family. One day, in 2006, Kevin Salwen, along with his 14-year-old daughter Hannah pulled up at a stop light. To their left, was a homeless man. To their right, was a guy sitting in a really nice car. Hannah said, “Dad, if that man didn’t have such a nice car, then that homeless man could have a meal.”

Kevin then said, “Well, yes, I guess. But if we didn’t have such a nice car, then that man could have a meal.”

This comment of Kevin’s hit home more deeply than he ever intended. (You have to be careful about what you say to your children. You know this. Right?) By dinnertime, Hannah was all worked up. She said she didn’t want to be part of a family that just talked about doing good. She wanted to be part of a family that actually did something. Kevin, along with his wife, Joan, patiently explained that they did a lot. They said, “Hannah, we volunteer at the food bank. We give checks to charities. We let a family live in our basement after the hurricane.”

After they said all of this, Hannah just rolled her eyes. The mother, Joan, said, “Oh, Hannah, that is so annoying. Don’t do that. What do you want us to do? Sell the house?”

“Yea,” said Hannah. “That is exactly what I want us to do.”

So, incredibly, based on the advice of their 14-year-old, eye-rolling daughter, the Salwens sold their house. (I’m simplifying the story here just a little.) Eventually, they gave half of the proceeds of the sale to a charity. When asked why they did such an outrageous act, they say, “We don’t expect anyone else to sell their house. We know it is ridiculous, but everyone has something they can afford to give away.”

As part of this experience, they have written a book, The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back.” They have appeared on all sorts of television shows. They travel around the country; they share their stories. One day, they received an e-mail from a young student affirming their belief that they were helping others re-evaluate life’s most important values and goals. It said in the e-mail, “I have always dreamed of living in a big mansion and marrying a millionaire. But now, I see the world is a largely-connected community. I owe that to you. You are making a difference.”

That is what it is all about. Creating and living in a culture that is defined by its generosity, by its sense of community, by reaching out to others, not by isolationism and greed. 

The question becomes, "How do we reach this goal?” And let’s just be blunt about it. The question is also, “How do we know what is the right amount to fill out on our pledge cards?”

Well, here is the answer: “I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you a right amount. Only you can decide.” But as you do pray about your financial commitment to the church, I do know that there should be at least two guiding principles. 

The first is to know that giving should never ever be done out of fear. Our stewardship commitment is an expression of our faith and a matter of our heart. 

At the end of the Old Testament, people begin to forget what giving to God is all about. In the book of Malachi, people give more out of a sense of obligation instead of grace and thankfulness. They begin to give God their spoiled fruits and their sick animals. God, speaking through the prophet Malachi, says, “If you don’t want to give, then please, don’t give, because giving should always be an expression of your faith and an expression of your gratitude.”

The second guiding principle is to know that giving builds community. All that we own is already a gift from God. Ananias and Sapphira struggled so much with their financial decision, because they knew, even though they may have not articulated it, they were separating themselves from the community in which they lived. When we live for ourselves, and not for others, we cause pain and division.

The more I study the gospels, I am convinced that the deepest core of who Jesus was – what he cared about most deeply – was healing others. I see every single day the gifts, that each of you give to this church, heal others and create wholeness in an otherwise fractured world. So, as you consider what to give this year, listen to your heart. Listen with your heart. Think carefully about where you are investing, and what you are investing in. Don’t be afraid to live on the Easter side of the cross, to take hold of the life that is really life.

If you hold back, will God strike you dead? Absolutely not! Will lightning ever strike you? I can’t say. But if you give from your heart, will you be blessed? The truth is, “For sure. Absolutely so!”

Through Christ, we all say together… “Amen.” 

Benediction

And now may the grace of God, the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you now and forever. The service has ended, but life is just beginning. Amen.