2) Holy Chaos
a sermon based on Acts 4:5-12
by Rev. Thomas Hall

A solitary figure jerks involuntarily. The predawn air chills him to the bones. A man sits upright in the darkness and brushes the straw from his tunic. The stench is overwhelming. But it doesn’t come from the animals he shares quarters with, but from human stench. The man smells like he’s slept in those subway corners at Penn Station, the ones that homeless people urinate in. He has no change of clothes-wears the same 100 cotton until the seams give out. Can usually go for eight months in the same tunic.

He reaches for the one thing that he has owned for almost forty years: a bowl. If he gets enough pocket change today, he’ll eat tonight. But where will he hustle? These days Jerusalem has more than its share of my kind, he thinks. He’s been down to the marketplace for a week now, but hasn’t eaten in three days. Gotta get something today, he mutters. The man doesn’t really mind begging. Done it for nearly three decades; knows all the angles, can read people like a scroll. Knows some good places to get cash, too. The man has no family, no wife, no kids; not even a name; the only people who know him are down at city hall-there he’s a welfare statistic. When he runs short of cash each month he likes to go down and sit on the corner near the church. And today’s Wednesday. That means it s prayer meeting night. I’ll hit those do-gooders for some cash; he knew what he would tell ‘em; he’d tell them that he was down on his luck-again.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when they came. He’d seen them maybe a dozen times before. Can’t recall them ever stopping, though. He eye-balled them once over. A dime, maybe a quarter, but that’s all I will squeeze out of these blue noses.

"Alms for the poor," he intones in his most pathetic voice; "Alms for the poor, sirs."

"Quiet, man!" says the scruffier of the two. "Look at us! Do we look wealthy to you?" The lame man started to agree that no, they didn’t look too well off themselves and so started to look elsewhere. "We aren’t cash rich, see, but we are going to give you something-In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up right now and walk!"

The beggar was already looking for new customers when he felt iron grips on each of his wrists and then his whole body was catapulted straight up to his full height. These men had actually lifted him up! But something strange happened in their action. He felt stinging in his dead limbs. The sensation hurt terribly, but that was good. He had never felt anything in his dead limbs. Then he felt strength surge through his legs like a 200 volt shock. At first he wobbled like a new born colt. Then he began to prance like a young stallion and finally he broke loose into a full gallop weaving in and out of the pillars in Solomon’s Porch. Within five minutes over a thousand people gathered around this wobbly, jumping, laughing man. He now was on his way to prayer meeting walking, leaping and praising God.

Among the crowd wee the church officials-the senior ministry was near the drinking fountain with a mug of stale coffee, chatting with a staff member when the commotion first caught his attention. Other community leaders happened to be in the Temple for a meeting that afternoon. So they joined the crowed to see what had caused such confusion. And when they saw this smelly old vagrant their jaws dropped. They stood there stunned and bug-eyed because they recognized this man-he was one of the regular Wednesday beggars.

But what they heard next made them grind their teeth and set their jaws taut. Two men were giving the crowd an explanation. They didn’t catch the whole sermon, but enough of it to enrage them. These men were laying the death of Jesus at their doorstep! There were a few of the religious leaders who had plotted his death, true enough. They had hoped that things would get back to normal. People returning to church, getting on with the summer camp program. But now this. And to make matters worse, these two soapbox preachers were saying that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-their God, for heaven’s sake!-was in on this affair. That God had personally raised Jesus from the dead and that it was this same Jesus who had effected this miraculous cure on the beggar.

Snapping his finger, the senior minister, motioned to the guards and they arrested the two preachers and the ex-invalid and put them in the slammer to await a hearing. But what could they do? This healed man stood right there in front of God and everyone-completely, permanently, totally, embarrassingly healed. Even during the defense the next day this healed man stood right beside the preachers as exhibit A. "There is no other name under heaven given to us by which we must be saved," they had heard these two preachers say. "No other name? Indeed!" the senior minister spit out. "What about Messiah? Isn’t it through God’s Messiah that the Jewish nation is to be saved?" Well, the scruffy one as well as said that this, Jesus is Messiah and part of God’s plan for salvation.

"But healed or not, this thing has got to stop," all the worship leaders agreed. "Intimidate them, that’s what we’ll do," they decided. Anyone can be intimated into compliance and then threaten them that if they ever, if they ever try to do this confusing charismatic healing thing again, they’re history.

So they called the three back-two preachers and beggar-and scowled and glared, threatened and intimidated, and scowled and glowered some more. But Peter said to their orders, Peter said, "Well, judge for yourselves who’s really on trial here-either God is in this or he isn’t. But we’ve reached our verdict and we cannot not be silent about what we have seen and heard. We’re not going to keep our heads in the sand and just go through the motions."

Well, when these preachers and their newest convert returned to the group of Christians at the edge of town, it was time for them to be astonished. Their number had now mushroomed from two thousand to over five thousand believers. So they listened to each report and then got busy and prayed. But not just any kind of praying. No gibberish here. Not even the spontaneous kinds of prayer that folks sometimes send up during the offering. They might as well as prayed from a prayer book, for their prayer was "canned." They prayed the psalms-everybody saying Selah at the right time or hallelujah. They prayed as they had always prayed. They prayed a prepared prayer together and aloud.

The floor seemed to reverberate when all five or six thousand prayed in unison. The newcomer-the healed man-panned the room; lots of things to pray about he thought. A new church building, an educational wing, a food bank, new pews wouldn’t hurt either. Yet as he listened he heart this ancient prayer from Psalm 2 and then a strange petition tacked on to it: "Look at their threats, and grant your servants to speak you r word with all boldness, and stretch out your hand to heal . . ." As the healed man started to pray for boldness he felt it-his second miracle in two days. For a deep rumbling began to shake the building like an earthquake. He took it as an answer to prayer-and so did the rest in the room. And from that day-the Spirit went to prayer meeting, everyone began to speak of their faith in Jesus boldly and without fear.

The gospel is the power of God that brings wholeness and healing; but when the power actually breaks out among us, we are faced with a decision-to rejoice like the man who received healing, to become angry and attempt to keep this new thing under wraps, or to pray -to send heavenward a dangerous request for even greater boldness to proclaim the gospel as the power of God.

Discovering how to Enable, Equip, and Encourage may be one way that God desires to do a new thing among us. Choosing to heal you and me of the memories of our hurtful past may be the new thing that God desires to do in this place. Giving us boldness to speak of our faith in God’s work in our life may be the new thing. What is God doing among us? What is God doing in our community-in our lives-and what is our response to God’s gracious and glorious inbreakings and eruptions? Rejoice! Be astonished! Pray! And see what God will do in our congregation and through our congregation when we are willing to go before God during the time of prayer. Amen.