“The Church Has the Power”
Acts 1:6-14
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church
David A. Shirey
I thought about doing a special promotion for today. It would have been interesting to run an ad in the Coloradoan and on our Facebook and Instagram pages reading: Free dynamite! Persons attending worship this Sunday at Heart of the Rockies Christian Church will be handed free sticks of dynamite. Children and youth are especially encouraged to attend and receive a stick to take home with them.
It wasn't my idea. It's straight from the Bible. Dynamite, you see, is an important biblical word. It appears 88 times in the New Testament. That's a lot of dynamite! The vast majority of its occurences are in the Book of Acts and in Paul's letters to the churches he helped start.
In Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the word is δυναμιν: dunameen. In our English Bibles the word is translated power. Specifically, the power of the Holy Spirit.
After his resurrection from the dead that first Easter, Jesus said to his disciples: “I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49)
The Book of Acts picks up where Luke leaves off, with Jesus saying, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)
And Paul, in his letter to the church in Ephesus that Bible scholars tell us was to be shared with all the churches across the Mediterranean (“Hey, Paul sent this letter. Pass it on!”), he writes, "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." (Ephesians 3:16-18)
In sum, dynamite is power Jesus promised his disciples would receive and Paul yearned for churches built on dynamite power.
There are a lot of people who'd get a good laugh out of that – saying churches are powered by dynamite. I can hear some smart aleck say, Pardon me, Preacher, but if you asked me to come up with one word to describe my experience of church, dynamite wouldn’t make the top ten. Words that mean the opposite of dynamite would be there instead. Words that connote more fizzle than sizzle. Know what I mean?
I do. I keep track of the reasons people don’t go to church or quit going to church. Some of the reasons I’ve heard over and over include hypocrisy (They talked the talk, but they didn’t walk the walk, so I walked), wrathful religion (painting God in shades of mean), exclusion (Churches that roll out the Not Welcome mat). Then there’s boredom, the polar opposite of dynamite. Someone says Church? B-o-o-o-oring. My college roommate used to say, “Dave, I’d rather sleep in my own bed than on a hard pew or in an upholstered chair. That’s why I go to church on Sunday mornings at Bedsheet Baptist and listen to Reverend I. M. Snoozin’.” Boredom turns people away from church. I can understand how for many people words like church and dynamite don't seem to belong in the same sentence.
Which points to a problem. Namely, Jesus promised power (dynamite!) to his followers, but all too many people's experience of the Christian faith is anything but dynamic. It breaks my heart there are untold numbers of people who have checked out Christ’s church, found it to be anything but dynamite, and checked out.
I’m here to testify, however, that my experience of following Jesus Christ has been an exhilarating adventure. Years ago, back in the 1900s, I received a flyer advertising a conference titled Discipleship in the 21st Century. What struck me was the photo that served as the background on which the text was printed. It was a whitewater rafting expedition. Eight or so people wearing helmets and life vests, paddling furiously, working together to shoot the rapids, navigating safely through rocks and treacherous passages, water splashing up furiously left and right. The look on their faces was of people utterly alive. That to me is a picture of church at its best. That's how I’ve experienced life in Christ who said, "I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). Oh that God would kindle the power of the Spirit within us! Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard says all of us ought to come to worship with heightened expectation. She wrote, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”[1]
So, what happened? Why is it that what Jesus promised isn’t many people’s experience of the Christian faith? Where’s the power?
Consider this – At the end of Luke’s Gospel and in the first chapter of Acts, Jesus promises power. In the second chapter of Acts (the Day of Pentecost), they received that promised power when the Holy Spirit came upon them. But in between the promise and its fulfillment what did they do? The answer is they prayed. "They returned to Jerusalem, and when they got there, they went up to an upper room where they were staying… and with one accord they devoted themselves to prayer" (Acts 1:12-14). Note the chronology: 1) The promise of power 2) Prayer 3) The promised power. Which suggests to me that if Jesus promised dynamite to his followers but there’s a notable absence of that promised power, there must be a short in the circuit somewhere – most likely in the place reserved for "devoted prayer."
I asked myself this week (and you can ask yourself, too): Am I aware of the dynamite power of God's Holy Spirit in my life? If the answer isn’t an emphatic "Yes!" then I need to ask myself if the phrase "devoted to prayer" describes my spiritual life. If it doesn’t, then there's the problem. Simply stated: where there is no prayer, there is no power. Where there is a little prayer, there’s a little power. But where there is a life devoted to prayer – striving to discern God’s purposes, listening for God’s Word, getting yourself out of the way so that God’s way can proceed – there’s dynamite: power for living life with verve, purpose, and a peace that passes all understanding.
Jennie and I spent nine years of ministry in Wilmington, NC on the Atlantic coast throughout the decade of the 90s. During our time there, we took direct hits by Hurricanes Bonnie, Fran, and Bertha. What we learned as a family is that post-hurricane, the first two questions that proceed from people’s mouths are 1) Are you all right? and 2) Do you have power? Power as in electricity, which after hurricanes we were without for anywhere from hours to days to weeks. We learned that life is not good without power. No power, no lights. No power, no water (we had a well). No power, no stove. No power, no refrigeration. No power, no hot water heater. No power, no air conditioning. Which all added up to no power, no patience. Orneriness, short tempers, ‘hot and bothered’ were the order of the day. In sum: No power. No good.
Laura, our youngest, was four years old when one hurricane blew through. She’d go around the house, reach up, turn on a light switch, and when nothing happened, she’d announce, “We don’t have the power (pronounced the pow-uh).” One day late that week we went to the church. Out of habit, she reached out to turn on a light switch, and voila – the lights came on! Her eyes lit up, her jaw dropped open, a huge grin broke out on her face, she tossed her arms up in the air and shouted, “The church has the power!” She told everyone she could find, “Mama, the church has the power! Will (her brother), the church has the power! Betsy (her sister), the church has the power!” My siblings in Christ, the church has the power – the power of the Holy Spirit – and it is available for the asking, the asking that is fervent prayer.
I hasten to add this: the power of the Holy Spirit is given for a purpose. That purpose, according to Scripture, is so we can be Jesus’ witnesses here in Fort Collins and to the ends of the earth. Jesus ascended to the right hand of God on high, but we disciples remain here below to continue Jesus’ work empowered by the Holy Spirit (what someone called “Jesus’ presence in his absence”). “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is to empower us to be Jesus’ witnesses – living, breathing embodiments of Good News.
A man named Sheldon Vanaucken wrote a book titled “Severe Mercy.” It was a compilation of letters he had written to C.S. Lewis when he was searching for God but had not yet made a Christian commitment. In one of the letters, he wrote, “The strongest argument I have yet for Christianity is Christians. Their love, most of all. Their joy, as well. Their certainty of things to come.” He added, “The strongest argument I have found yet against Christianity is also Christians. When they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and complacent. When they are narrow, judgmental and repressive, lacking love, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths in my mind.”[2]
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church, on this Pentecost Sunday I want to remind you that you’ve been promised power from on high to be witnesses of the Good News here in Fort Collins and to the ends of the earth. Devote yourselves to prayer so that, filled with the dynamite of the Holy Spirit, you’ll be witnesses – compelling arguments in favor of Christianity. In a world where the behavior of too many Christians turns people off, may you turn people on to the beauty and blessing and inclusiveness of life in Christ. Rather than being hypocrites, be people of integrity. Rather than espousing wrathful religion, be merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love. To the many people who have been turned away by a church’s Not Welcome mat, roll out the red carpet of your wide-armed welcome. Rather than being boring, be a vital, vibrant, dynamic people.
May it be said of you what my daughter shouted thirty years ago: “The church has the power!”
“Which church, Laura?”
“That church, the one that sits sentinel up there on Heartside Hill – Heart of the Rockies Christian Church. They have the power!”
May it be so. AMEN.
[1] Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982.
[2] quoted by Dave Johnson in “Lead With Love,” a sermon delivered at Ginghamsburg Church, August 7-8, 1999
