Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Acts 4:5-12
This morning I’m going to focus my preaching on the story from Acts, of which we heard only a small part of a larger story that starts at the beginning of Acts 3 and goes to the end of chapter 4. I encourage you to go home and read the whole story! Let me try to paint the scene: Jesus has died on the cross, appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, and has ascended into heaven. The first early church is forming in Jerusalem. On his way to the temple, Peter heals a man lame from birth, who immediately begins to walk. Since this healing happened on a busy street, all of these people on their way to the temple see this miraculous event and are amazed. They’re wondering how this guy Peter could do such a thing. But when the religious authorities catch wind of not just WHAT Peter did but that Peter and John are teaching the people that it was by the power of the resurrected Christ that Peter was able to heal this man, they have Peter and John arrested.
And so we come to the section of Acts we heard this morning. Peter and John are on trial. The religious authorities ask them, “’By what power or by what name did you do this?’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.’” It’s not because they’re so great that this man is healed, it is by the power of Jesus Christ of Nazareth that this man is healed, Peter and John testify. It is clear that the religious authorities are threatened by this power. Why?
Well, if you remember back a few weeks, these are some of the same people who tried to crucify Jesus because of his message and ministry. In fact, they did see him killed. They thought they succeeded in eliminating Jesus and suppressing his followers. But to their great disappointed surprise, Jesus didn’t stay dead. He rose from the dead. He appeared to his disciples. And even after his ascension, the religious authorities learn with this healing of a lame man that you cannot stop the power of the resurrected Christ. Death couldn’t stop that power. His physical absence couldn’t stop that power – and if the resurrected Christ’s power can be shared with all of his disciples, just think of what could happen?! And we know from the book of Acts what DID happen because of the power of the Holy Spirit at work through the name of the resurrected Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Thousands were baptized. Thousands believed. Day by day, more to their number was added. These new Jesus followers gave generously to all who were in any need. They ate together, cared for one another, visited one another, healed one another. These early Jesus followers changed the world.
You know what’s great about what we read in Acts about Peter and John? Acts says the religious authorities “realized they were uneducated and ordinary men.” Those in power are threatened because they see that the amazing power of God in Jesus Christ is working in ordinary, uneducated men, not just through the religious establishment, and actually in spite of it. Have you started making connections to this story in Acts and your own life yet? If not, you might be thinking, WHY does this story in Acts matter for us? Well, the power of the resurrected Christ working in ordinary people hasn’t stopped. This is not just a cool story that happened 2000 years ago. In fact, that same power of Jesus’ name is working in all kinds of people throughout the world even today. Sometimes I think the biggest barrier or obstacle we have to overcome as people of faith is our own doubt and disbelief that Christ’s resurrection power could possibly still be at work in us. We limit God’s power with our unbelief. I mean, even take this story about Peter healing a lame man so he can walk. Unless we’re a doctor or physical therapist, we probably think we can’t do that. Yet I’m sure many of you have heard stories of miraculous healing in someone’s life that you know. Why not?
We want to be on Peter and John’s side. We want to imagine ourselves in those early disciples’ shoes, caught up in this new Jesus movement, excited and ready to go. But the truth is, it’s really easy to see ourselves more on the side of the religious authorities – doubting in Jesus’ resurrection power, even acting against it. Limiting it. Suppressing it. Jesus can’t do those things anymore. He’s not alive. We can’t see him – our rational brain tells us. I know that this month in particular for us as a church has been a challenging one. Three funerals in one week. Winter weather that refuses to give way to spring. Unease and disagreement in our congregation about how we are moving forward as a church to make a better, bigger impact in our community for the sake of the gospel. It is easy to focus on the negative, to look at what we don’t have, to think about our limited capacity as ordinary sinful human beings and doubt and disbelieve that Jesus STILL today can do amazing, unbelievable things through us. I had a colleague this week say, “the biggest obstacle for our churches today is actually believing that through doing simple things like praying, listening to the community, and grounding our lives in scripture could actually make a difference.” But it does! Like Peter and John, let’s be witnesses to the power of Jesus working in our lives. Let’s testify about what God has done and can do through us! God really does work through ordinary, uneducated people stumbling around, not even sure if we know quite what we’re doing, to do unbelievable, extraordinary things!
When I was in Chicago this week, I had the opportunity to hear from ministry leaders in two very different congregational settings in Chicago. Both told unbelievable stories about dying congregations that are experiencing new life. One pastor said that in the late ‘90s the church members had to put netting up to keep the bricks from falling onto people passing by the church, the building was in such disrepair. Now it’s a vibrant ministry comprised of mostly young families in their 20s and 30s. They’re so connected to their neighborhood that their building is full all seven days a week, and they’ve made such an impression with their initial care for creation efforts that they got a local company to pay for solar panels for their church. They produce so much solar energy that their electric company is giving them credit on their account: they use their building all the time, and they’re getting paid for it. They’re doing MINISTRY! Another church on the west side in an impoverished area of Chicago feeds an average of 150 people a week with their “Taste and See” worship service, mostly for ex-offenders transitioning back into the community. That’s double the number of people that are there on Sunday morning, but they have a church that is a lifeline to the immediate neighborhood. It’s the power of the resurrected Christ working in ordinary people to make an extraordinary difference. These churches are bringing healing to their communities in Jesus’ name, not by their own efforts. In fact, I believe, without Jesus’ resurrection power, they could not do what they are doing.
Healing the lame, experiencing new life because of Jesus’ name is not just a story we read in the Bible about the past, but what we can experience now, today, as followers of Jesus Christ. God is more powerful than we can imagine, and God’s power can work through us. For all the times our unbelief gets in the way, we pray to God that we might see and believe, just as Peter and John saw and believed in the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Rebecca Sheridan
Good Friday, March 30, 2018
John 18:1-19:42
Jesus’ last words on the cross were, “It is finished.” What was finished with Jesus’ death on the cross? Christians have spent the next 2000+ years thinking about, writing about, speculating about that answer. I will not claim to offer a definitive answer tonight! For the most part, having those powerful words of Jesus’ crucifixion from John’s gospel ring in our ears is enough. Recently I watched a video of Richard Delbene, an Episcopalian priest who helps people learn how to pray. He talked about our traditional view of God as someone “Up there” not being a very helpful one. If God is only “up there,” God is somehow unreachable, distant, uncaring, uninvolved. Good Friday reminds us that God is not just “up there.” In fact, God came down here to meet us in our lowest of lows, as deniers, betrayers, murderers, sinners ALL of us, to save us from ourselves. To save us FOR each other and FOR the world that God so loved and made. And so perhaps it is enough on this holiest of nights to remember that it is finished, here on the cross. God came down for us in Jesus Christ as a little baby in a manger, to grow into a man full of grace and truth to teach us, heal us, love us and save us. That’s it. We don’t have to go anywhere else or do anything else to get up to where God is, God is here, with Jesus, with us, on the cross.
In John’s story of Jesus’ crucifixion, it is easy to place ourselves in the uncomfortable spot of the one who like Peter, has denied Jesus. Or like Judas, who has betrayed Jesus. Or like Pilate, has handed over Jesus to be crucified. Or like the crowds, quickly goes from loving Jesus to hating him and wanting him to be killed, shouting “Crucify him!” To live a cross-shaped life as Jesus lived is to recognize that Jesus came to restore relationships with each other, as we remembered last night, but also to restore our relationship with God, in the vertical. Jesus came down from a heavenly throne, from a kingdom not of this world, to live in our world, to save us from ourselves. It is wise for us to reflect tonight then on a God who still lives in our midst and in our messiness, who is not just up there, seated on a throne watching stoically but here living, dying, rising with us. God is present, on the cross, here tonight, with us now in our suffering, in our mistakes, in our greatest weaknesses offering redemption and new life. That is why this is Good Friday. That is partly what Jesus means when he says, “It is finished.” It is enough to know that God came down for us, to love us and restore our relationships with God and one another. Amen.

Rebecca Sheridan
Maundy Thursday, March 29, 2018
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
What do you think about when you look at a cross? What emotions does it evoke? The cross carries much symbolic meaning for us as Christians, but when the religious and Roman authorities chose to crucify Jesus as the execution method there was not much symbolic about it – crucifixion was practical. Reserved for political prisoners who committed treason, it was cheap, it was public (everyone could see and learn what punishment would await you if you were too outspoken against the Roman government), and it was painful, allowing a person’s legs and arms to be stretched in such a way that they would slowly suffocate to death. One of the most powerful stories we have to tell as Christians is how we have reclaimed an instrument of torture, power, and death to be an instrument of healing, redemption, and life. For us, today, and throughout the world, the cross is a universal symbol of salvation: a sign that sin, death, and the devil cannot be defeated. God repurposed a tool for destruction into a powerful symbol to remind us that for God, nothing is impossible, that all things can be reconciled back to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There is nothing to fear. In its simple shape, the cross reminds us of how God’s love in Jesus Christ works through us both horizontally and vertically. God so loved the world (horizontal) that he gave his only son so that all who believe in him may have eternal life (vertical). Jesus on the cross restores our relationships with each other and with God.
Tonight, John’s gospel reminds us of the ways God brings us into right relationship with each other, the horizontal. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet as a symbol of his love for them. Then he asks them to wash one another’s feet. Jesus shares a meal with them and asks them to feed others. And then he gives them a new commandment, “love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” How does everyone know that we love one another? How do we follow Jesus’ commandment in loving one another, in being the visible reminder of Jesus’ work of restoring relationships on the cross?
Tonight, we have a very intimate way of loving one another in having our feet washed, but we also show our love for one another in worship when we share the peace. When we take communion together, when we visit one another in the hospital or at home, when we muster courage to introduce ourselves to strangers, when we feed others through our financial gifts of gifts of time, when we write and call our legislators for policies that uphold our Christian value to protect the most vulnerable, we love one another. Forgiveness, grace, peace, healthy relationships. This is the horizontal love of God that we extend to one another just as Jesus extended it to us on the cross, at the table, with a basin of water, with an outstretched handshake of peace.
Jesus’ death on the cross is not just a sad story with a happy ending at Easter. It’s also not just about a personal Jesus who dies for human individuals who believe in him to have a reserved spot in heaven. Jesus’ arms, open to all creation on the cross, connects us to one another in a way that nothing else does. In an increasingly divided, isolated, individualist world, Jesus brings all kinds of different people together in miraculous ways. Jesus arms, extended at the Passover table meal, reaches from Matthew the tax collector to Simon the zealot, from Peter the denier to Judas the betrayer. Jesus’ arms still today have the ability to embrace everyone: liberal, conservative, old, young, male, female. God’s love, in Jesus, is wide, expansive love that holds very different people close, calls them beloved, offers radical forgiveness, and then asks them to love one another.
We leave in silence tonight not only because this is one of the holiest nights of the church year where we focus on the core of our story as a Christian people together. We leave quietly because the worship isn’t technically over. We’ll come back tomorrow to continue the story. Good Friday is not another separate worship service, but a continuation of the great Three Days as we wait and watch with the disciples, with Jesus. Our worship doesn’t really end until after Easter morning so we can fully contemplate what Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection mean for our lives! Tonight we talked about the horizontal arms of Jesus on the cross. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the vertical love of God on the cross where Jesus comes down to meet us, again, again, and again. I invite you then to pray, and come back tomorrow night continue the worship as we hear God’s great story of love for us in Jesus Christ on the cross.
Amen.

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Psalm 51:1-12
If you ever sit and wonder what pastors do in their free time, well, I have a confession to make. I like to watch reality TV shows – not really shows like these (Jersey Shore). I like reality fixer-upper shows on the Food Network, PBS or HGTV like Flip or Flop, This Old House, and Restaurant Impossible. I’m actually not a very handy person myself – while in theory it sounds fun to restore an old piece of furniture or remodel a bathroom, I know from personal experience it’s better for me to “supervise” while others do the work or it’ll never turn out like I want it to. I think I like these shows because there’s something very satisfying in turning something that isn’t very good – a failing restaurant with not so good food and outdated décor – into something desirable: a house that can double or triple its value on the market, an updated living space, a family restaurant that might be able to succeed for another generation.
I may not be the handiest when it comes to physically remodeling a space, but when it comes to the work that I do as a pastor both here at Bethel and with the synod, I’m often working with congregations that are a bit like that outdated family-owned restaurant or house that needs an updated kitchen. In fact, Pastor Rich and I have joked that we could create our own reality TV show called “Church Impossible.” When we visit congregations across the synod, we encounter the same issues over and over: buildings that are difficult to navigate even for a pastor (which door takes me to the sanctuary?) and mostly sit empty, people that kind of just sit and look at you rather than welcome you and ask how they can help, churches that obviously haven’t had young people with kids visit in a LONG time. The root issue that often all of these congregational visits boil down to is not about the church building needing updating or the space needing to be more welcoming: it’s a people issue. Until we open ourselves to God changing our hearts, nothing else will change.
People are people, whether we’re trying to run a successful restaurant or a church. And unless people are open to trying something new and willing to take a hard look at their own unhelpful patterns of behavior, nothing changes for good. On Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, we read Psalm 51 together, and today as we look toward the end of Lent and entering Holy Week, we read Psalm 51 again. A lot of us recognize this psalm because we often sing it as a part of our liturgy during the offering: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with your free spirit. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. The great thing about singing something over and over is you memorize it. What can also happen, though, is we sing it or say it without thinking about what we’re actually saying.
What the psalmist is saying to God is first that he knows he needs to change. There is something not right about his behavior. Specifically, he says earlier that his “sin is ever before me.” Lent is a season when we focus on confession of our sins and repentance of those sins. It’s not fun or easy to admit that we sin, but we cannot change in a way that GOD wants unless we first start with admitting something is wrong. We are not perfect. We mess up. We need God’s help to move forward, and that starts with giving up our control to let God lead. Easier said than done!
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. This is the psalmist’s plea, and this is our cry this Lent. The good news is with God, restoration is possible! Just like that old house or failing restaurant or struggling church, God is able to make all things new, to restore joy and renew a right spirit within us! We need God’s help. We can’t make anything right on our own. But with God, all things are possible. In our study on The First Paul by Marcus Borg and John Crosson, we were learning more about Paul’s description of what it means for a Christian to say he or she is “in Christ.” The way the authors put it, we need a spirit transplant. We need God’s spirit to take over ours, to live by God’s heart rather than our own will and desires. I know I’m a pastor, but I have personally been going through a time of spiritual growth with a depth I haven’t experienced for a long time. As a synod staff, we’ve begun an intentional spiritual growth process called Companions in Christ where we share how we’ve seen God at work through our life journey and then learn new prayer practices. For a busy mom, it can be hard for me to find time to pray, to really open myself up to what God is trying to say to me so that I can live by God’s heart, not my own. I’ve learned some new ways of praying that doesn’t feel like one more thing to do – it’s prayer time I look forward to. I really can’t say enough about how awesome this experience has been for me so far to intentionally grow in my prayer life with a group. I’m excited that we’re working on a plan to invite as many of you as possible here at Bethel to join us in a similar journey with our Bethel Relaunch.
God wants to create in us clean hearts so we know God’s desires in a deeper way personally. And God’s spirit desires not just for individuals to be whole and well, but for societies to live whole and well in Christ’s way, not by the world’s way. Restoration is possible – a new way of being, a new way of doing, a new way of living in Christ with a spirit transplant. That is Psalm 51’s hope for us, that is God’s hope for us.
A colleague of mine recommended a book that I was able to read recently called, Tattoos on the Heart by Father Gregory Boyle. Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention ministry started out of his Catholic parish in Los Angeles about thirty years ago. Talk about a community in need of some healthy change! One of their first ministries was a free tattoo removal service so ex-gang members could get jobs and stop identifying with their gangs. One of the more powerful stories in the book is when Father Boyle told of a middle-aged business man pulling up to the church in a luxury vehicle who had grown up in the neighborhood. Here’s what Father Boyle writes, “He takes in the scene all around him. Gang members gathered by the bell tower, homeless men and women being fed in great numbers in the parking lot. Folks arriving for the AA and NA meetings and the ESL classes. It’s a Who’s Who of Everybody Who Was Nobody…This man sees all this and shakes his head, determined and disgusted, as if to say, ’tsk tsk.’ ‘You know,’ he says, ‘This used to be a church.’ I mount my high horse and say, ‘You know, most people around here think it’s finally a church’” (p.73). The church had a spirit-transplant. God opened them up to what was going on in the community, and they responded with job training and resources, tattoo removal services, a homeless drop-in center, and more. The community responded by wanting tattoos on their hearts from God more than the false community of a gang that offered conditional love. “Create in me, a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” we sing, we pray, we plead this Lent. It’s time for us to start finally being a church. Now, I realize we don’t have a lot of gangs or homeless people in our neighborhood, but while we can easily get distracted by stuff going on with us here at church, outside these walls are spiritually if not literally starving. We so easily forget what the church is really about. I can’t say it any clearer than that people. We need a change of heart. It’s time for us to allow God to renew a RIGHT spirit within us and to live by God’s spirit instead of by our own will and desires. Think of what could be possible! Because restoration of our lives, of our churches, of our community is possible, but only with God, only with God’s spirit transplant. Amen.