First Congregational Church, UCC

We have reached the end of the Acts of the Apostles. It feels a little anticlimactic without a rousing speech from Paul commissioning the rest of us to continue running the good race and fighting the good fight the way many of Paul’s letters do. Acts ends with Paul busy doing the very things he has done all throughout his ministry: preaching about the Kingdom of God, teaching people the ways of Jesus, and supporting the believers.

That may be the final important lesson for us to learn from the first church. As followers of the Way, we don’t need to be preoccupied with writing the last chapter of our own life stories. The last chapter shouldn’t be any different than the middle chapters. Of course we may find ourselves in different places with different people in our lives and different sets of challenges to face, but if we are faithfully following in the way of Jesus, there ought to be a consistent storyline throughout our lives. No matter where we go, no matter who we are with, no matter what the circumstances we face the same qualities of Christian character ought to be visible. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul referred to those qualities as the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

Those qualities are included in the words that surround us every time we gather in the courtyard at church. Like Paul’s story in the book of Acts, they are the qualities that should consistently define our life together and our individual lives as we follow the way of Jesus.

As you come to end of the Acts of the Apostles, what are some of the lessons you have learned from the stories of the first church?

The final chapter in the story of the first church reconnects us with the first chapter of Acts. The story began with Jesus commissioning the disciples saying, “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Paul’s commitment to be a witness for Christ has taken him a long way from home. Throughout his journey, he seems as drawn to Rome as Jesus was to Jerusalem. Rome for Paul was like Hollywood for a movie star or Broadway for an actor or Wall Street for a stock broker. It was the locus of power in the Roman Empire. It held the greatest risk for Paul, but also the greatest opportunity.

And yet in today’s text we are told that the first thing Paul did when he arrived in Rome was to repeat the same failed pattern that he followed in every city he visited. He called together the Jewish leaders and gave his testimony before them, hoping that they would recognize him as a faithful Jew and be convinced of his testimony that Jesus is the messiah. We can hear in their opening greeting that Paul is preaching to a deeply skeptical audience: “we would like to hear from you what you think, for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against.”

Today we face a similarly skeptical audience as we seek to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the residents of Battle Creek. Research tells us that the views that people who are thirty and under have of the church are extremely skeptical. About eighty percent of them don’t belong to any faith community and the three most common perceptions they have of the church are: 1. It is judgmental, 2. It is hypocritical, and 3. It is anti gay.

The last chapter of the book of Acts ends in the same place where we find ourselves today. We have our work cut out for us as we seek to overcome the skepticism of a public that is waiting to see if we actually believe and are committed to living out the message of God’s redeeming love that we proclaim in the name of Jesus Christ.

At last Paul completes his journey to Rome in the spring of 61CE. That he is a prisoner seems almost secondary to the narrative at this point. Paul is first and foremost an evangelist and he was eager to begin his ministry proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the city that was the hub of the Roman Empire.

Paul is not the founder of Christianity in Rome, but his arrival was eagerly anticipated by the believers, some of whom traveled over forty miles from the Forum of Appius to greet him when he arrived. When he saw them, “he thanked God and took courage.”

What strikes me about this part of the story is how insignificant Paul’s arrest seems to be. He does not seem at all distressed that his freedoms are restricted, and it doesn’t seem to have any detrimental impact on his ministry. Perhaps it even enhances his status among the believers as one who is respected for his willingness to stand up for his convictions.

There is a sense in which as people of faith we are never free to do as we please. We who have answered the call to discipleship are always bound by commitment to Christ. The paradox of our faith is that God’s grace has set us free to become servants. Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer once wrote, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

Somehow we seem to have found ourselves in the middle of an action adventure novel. After surviving his shipwreck at sea, Paul and his shipmates are pleasantly surprised to discover that they have landed on Malta, an island south of Sicily, where the natives show them “unusual kindness.” But as soon as that episode closes, a new adventure begins. While gathering firewood, Paul is bitten by a deadly viper snake. The natives take it as a sign that Paul is an evil man, but he shrugs off the viper and remains unaffected by its deadly venom. This leads the natives to re-evaluate their assessment of Paul and they begin to deify him. When Paul heals the father of Publius, the leader of the island community, along with many others who were sick, the islanders provide a fully provisioned ship for them to continue their voyage to Rome.

For a moment it felt as though I had wondered into an Indiana Jones movie. This part of Paul’s story seems to have been embellished in the telling and has acquired a folklore feeling.

Folklore is an important way that we convey meaning. There are experiences in our lives that become larger than life as we retell the stories because in retrospect we realize they were more significant than we imagined.

When I first came to church, I was impressed by the folklore surrounding Dr. Carlton Brooks Miller and his ministry at First Congregational Church. He obviously has had a huge role in helping our church grow during the early part of the 20th century. His charisma is legendary and whenever his name is invoked it is spoken with deep awe and reverence, but I’m fairly confident he put his pants on one leg at a time.

I don’t mean to diminish the significant of Dr. Miller’s life and ministry in any way. Folklore is extremely important. We don’t remember the historical details of a person’s life. We remember them for the impact that they made on us and on others. That impact is always larger than the sum of the actual words spoken and deeds enacted.