TEXT: Acts
Once
The Baptismal Waters Have Dried
It's
springtime, which means the football teams are getting back to work. I know that baseball is probably three
quarters of the way through its season by now – I don’t really know; I don’t
pay attention to baseball. Where I come
from baseball is how some kill time waiting for football to start again. In the spring, games aren't yet being played;
that's still long months away. This is
training time - muscle toning and quickness drills and review of the
fundamentals.
But
whatever the particular workouts, what's finally going on is discipline; not
for its own sake, but so that the group will function more effectively
as a team. As William Ward put it,
"The price of excellence is discipline. The cost of mediocrity is
disappointment." It's more than
simply practice. It's thoughtful
planning and intentional shaping; it's choosing to do specific things because
you need the fruits of what those specific things have to offer - because you
want to do something well. And it
doesn't happen automatically.
One
of the great fallacies of marriage and parenting is that it just somehow
happens. People assume that just because
they know how to pull off a wedding, they know automatically how to have a
marriage; that just because they know how to have babies, they know
automatically how to be parents. It
would be no different from believing that just because you know how to turn on
a car, you necessarily know how to drive one.
Just as catastrophic are the consequences of marriages inadequately
prepared and indifferently maintained, and of children mindlessly reared.
I
would contend that the same misconceptions exist about being a Christian. Somehow we begin to believe that just because
we have been baptized, we know what it means to follow. The truth of the matter is, that while the baptistry is the only appropriate place to begin that life
of faith, it is no place to stay, and certainly is no place to end. Life will not leave us there at the water's
edge, dripping and high. It moves on to
terrain that is often dustier and dry, sometimes rocky and sloped - to places
where faithfulness easily withers.
...like
those along these quieter, more ordinary roads that stretch on this other side
of Easter. There is birth, to be sure,
but finally there must be growth as well - and health, for we have learned from
other things that if we do not provide for maintenance, sooner or later things
start to fall apart. If all we have is
leftover steam we become simply "shoot-from-the-hip" disciples who
occasionally hit with our faith, but more often than not, miss; and pretty soon
fizzle out altogether.
And
we are called to more than that. I
believe that God is calling us to engage life directly - head on - rather than
simply responding to life as it comes our way.
We are called to invest the resources with which God has graced us - our
time, our strength, our skills, and our devotion - rather than simply spending
them until they are gone.
So
where do we go from here, and how do we keep ourselves alive? What kind of framework can we erect within
which to live out and strengthen our faith - not as some arbitrary set of trees
we have to notch to keep ourselves in good standing, but as disciplines that
will help do something well? Luke, in
this second chapter of Acts, lifts up the pattern of the early disciples as a
model of discipline for the living of these days after the baptismal waters
have dried – after we have finished beginning – and how our lives now begun,
can be nourished as well as raised.
They
"devoted themselves," he says to the "teachings of the
apostles." Bible Study, in other
words. Part of the reason is the need to
maintain our bearings - what William Willimon calls
"keeping ourselves straight about who and what we
are, and what we are to be about as followers."(Acts, p. 40)
But
part of that also is simply the natural need to grow. As William Barclay emphasizes it, "We
should count it a wasted day when we do not learn something new and when we
have not penetrated more deeply into the wisdom and the grace of God."
(Barclay, p. 30)
I
was underscoring to the kids in the Preparation for Baptism process last week
that we will never get finished learning what it means to be a Christian and
what the
The
"common life" was also an important part of the pattern of the early
church. We would be more familiar with
the simple word "fellowship."
The early church, Luke tells us, took fellowship seriously. More than simply a time to come together and
eat – more than coffee and cookies – fellowship is that sense of being a part
of something larger than oneself. It is
that notion of the body that Paul so graphically describes. It is that kind of "community" they
sought to live out as described in those following verses - a community
sensitive to individual needs; holding all things - possessions, joys, sorrows,
hungers, and blessings, to say nothing of weaknesses and strengths - all of our
lives - in common.
In
our individualistic, privatistic culture, the idea of
“common life” sounds puzzling at best and intrusive at worst. The notion that we have some need for
each other, some responsibility to each other seems quaint, perhaps,
but unnecessarily expensive in both time and money. Even legislatively – one of those bodies of
government charged with looking after the “common good” – efforts to shape and
influence life in the “public square” are either denigrated or pushed to the
periphery in consideration of life in the private sector.
But
as the early disciples quickly learned, we are more than an assortment of
individuals. We need each other to hold
onto when afraid, or tempted, or puzzled, or alone. We need each other to lift us up when we
fall, and to guide us back when we are lost.
We need the positive peer pressure of a community of faith. We need the strength of fellowship. But community life is a discipline no less
than any other, and must be worked at and held to and owned.
Part
of that community life will take particular form. The disciples, Luke tells us, attended
steadfastly to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. One of the most nourishing disciplines in
every generation of the church is participation in the moments of worship. Those aren't self-serving words of the
preacher intended to guilt you into coming to church. They are affirmations of the early church,
and humble confessions from experience.
No,
I don't expect that every Sunday you'll leave here on a soul-buzzing high. Sometimes the sermon won't touch you, and the
hymns will leave you cold; sometimes the baggage you bring in your own heart
and mind will keep you from worshipfully entering in. But faithfulness, like love in a marriage, is
not always a feeling, but a will.
Discipleship is a commitment whose rewards are discovered in the keeping
- not always in the minute to minute, but certainly over the long haul.
We
gather together around Christ's table to eat and drink in his name, and through
that simple ceremony come more fully to grips not simply with his memory, but
his presence. Here, and on your knees in
your own closet of prayer, we place our lives at God's disposal, and share and
listen, and attend. And there, in that
crucible of silence is forged a relationship that feeds and strengthens and
sustains. A life both
representative and real.
Perhaps
you have seen - at least in pictures - the oriental trees in miniature. The word "bonsai" is Japanese for
"tray-planted", which suggests their less-than-natural state. Bonsai trees are not hereditary dwarfs, but
rather normal plants of several varieties that are disciplined through the
pruning of roots and branches, and the training of branches by tying with
wires, into their beautiful and striking form.
It is diligent, persistent work.
Developed because of the Japanese love for nature, the trees are representative,
miniature reminders of the larger versions outdoors, brought close and inside
to be experienced and enjoyed.
And
we, it seems to me, will not naturally grow in faith. It is through care and constant attention
that we, too, will become embodiments in miniature - of the very
Now
that the rush is behind us, and beginning has come to an end, how will you
nourish the faith born in you, and how will you keep it alive? How will you grow and flourish and
witness? There's a Bible on the shelf
that longs to be remembered, and a church that you might not just come to, but one
in whose fellowship you are invited to live.
There is bread and wine on the table just waiting to be broken and
poured; and there is a God waiting to listen, but also to speak. And there is a discipline through which we
might remember the sound of God’s voice, and each others.