Read Genesis 12:1-8 and Acts 1:1-8 here.
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Did you know
there’s a place in London called the Ministry
of Stories?[1] I am thoroughly fascinated by this
place. It’s a place that’s designed specifically
to
Do you like
stories?
It’s fun to
use our imaginations to come up with stories, and to hear stories that came out
of someone else’s imagination. We read stories in books, watch them on television,
listen to them on the radio, see
them acted out on the stage, and
watch them in movies. I particularly
enjoy science fiction and fantasy stories that involve made up worlds where the
laws of physics are a little different from our reality.
For me, these
stories work best when they involve people
developing relationships and dealing
with situations in which their thoughts
and feelings are like what we also
experience, so that the setting can be incredible and fantastic and
mind-bending while still conveying profound
truths about our lives. Stories like
these become classics that get read and reread because they ring true to us,
even though they came from someone’s imagination.
Maybe the
most powerful stories are the ones that are about real-life events and real people who have experienced incredible
things or overcome tremendous obstacles to accomplish amazing things. Stories about real life engage us and
encourage us. They give us hope.
I got to talk about one of these stories this past week when I was reading
to the first graders at the grade school.
They’re learning about the Olympics, and one of the ideas in the book I
was reading to be was “underdog.” The example they gave was the 1980 U.S. ice hockey team.
How many of you remember this? The team wasn’t expected to win much
of anything, but then they DID win and kept on winning, and despite all the
predictions against this, won the gold medal.
This was
back before the Berlin Wall came
down and we were still in the midst of the Cold
War, when Russia was still feared as the power behind that wall. The team that the U.S. beat to win that gold
medal was Russia. The Russians were the
favorites, and the United States victory that day was called “the greatest upset in sports history.”[2] Nobody thought the U.S. even had a chance to
beat Russia at hockey, just like nobody at that time thought we would see an
end to the Cold War. But we did, and
maybe the one victory gave us hope that there could be the other.
Stories about real life give us hope.
We may not
think about the Bible story of Abraham from the book of Genesis quite that
way. Ancient history doesn’t sound like
real-life history to us. It’s lacking in
detail. The timeline is not strictly
chronological. But this ancient story
still engages us and encourages us, and gives us hope.
Just before
Abraham’s story in Genesis, in chapter 11, we read about the generations
between Noah and Abraham, so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so on…and, by the way,
the text goes on to say, Sarah was barren and had no children (11:30). Remembering
all that begatting, and that Sarah is barren, we come to God’s promise to
Abraham, “I will make you into a great
nation and I will bless you . . . and all the peoples of the earth will be
blessed through you” (Gen 12:2-3).
Quite a promise to make to a man who has no children.
In the midst
of barrenness, there is hope.
In the midst
of barrenness, God brings a vision for the future.[3]
Q. Who was the smartest man in the Bible?
A. Abraham. He knew a Lot.[4] (Ba-dum-pum)
We call this
Abraham’s story, but really, this is
God’s story.[5] “God is not just a character in the story,
rather God is the author who makes the story possible and whose nature and
purposes are revealed in the telling of the story.”[6]
I
particularly like reading this part of God’s story, because at a time in my
life when I was asking, “Does God really
call people to leave behind their childhood home and go to new places?” I
read Abraham’s story and saw that God does call people that way.
God calls people to go to new places,
and blesses them for their obedience and trust in him.
Abraham is
remembered for this in the celebration of faith in Hebrews 11:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. (Hebrews 11:8)
Abraham’s
story has become part of my story, and helped me to
understand how God is working in my life. Maybe the story of how God worked in
the life of Abraham has also become a part of your story like it has mine? Genesis 12 helped me and my family to follow
God and leave California, and I have met others with similar stories. In telling each other our Genesis 12 stories,
we have been an encouragement to one another as we saw how God was speaking to
us in similar ways.
There’s
something else we learn in Genesis 12 about life in those times . . . it was intense. Literally.
They lived in tents. (Gen
12:8) (Sorry, couldn't resist...so I guess that means not sorry.)
We read in
Acts how Jesus says something to the disciples that sounds a bit like what God
said to Abraham. Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and
Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). It’s a call
to go and tell their story. A witness is
one who tells what they have seen and heard.
Even though
the disciples have spent three years with Jesus, heard Jesus teaching about the
Kingdom of God and how different that is from earthly kingdoms, and they have
watched him be crucified and die, and then be resurrected, and then had an additional
40 days of teaching, they are still asking, “Now are you going to take
over the government?” (Acts 1:6)
I’m sure
Luke must have forgotten to include Jesus’ giant sigh of frustration at the
disciples’ question, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also rolled his eyes,
and maybe even said a little prayer, “Lord, help us.”
Ok, so maybe
Jesus didn’t really get frustrated, but he did tell them not to worry about
that, and then told them this:
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses …” (Acts 1:8).
And then
Jesus was taken up to heaven, and, not surprisingly, the disciples are left
standing there in shock, looking up into the sky.
Then two men
dressed in white come talk to them. This
would be one of the few times angels appear to people in the Bible and don’t
start off with the words, “Don’t be afraid.”
Why not? Because what they have
just seen makes the appearance of angels seem rather commonplace.
Those two
men point out something else – don’t
keep standing there looking up into the sky.
This isn’t the end of the story.
And as we see if we keep reading Acts, it’s just the beginning of the
story – a new story, a story that continues today in each one of us.
What is your story?
What has God been doing in your life?
How has God given you hope?
We each have
a unique story. When we are trusting God
and following Jesus and spending time with people, there will be times when
people will ask us about our story, asking why we have hope. With all that’s going on in the world today,
with all the difficulties and problems we face, why do we have hope?
The Bible
tells us to be prepared to answer that question:
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. 2 Peter 3:15
The church
is a place where we have opportunities to tell our stories, and to work on
being prepared to go out and tell our stories to people who don’t yet see that
they’re also part of God’s story. One of
the wonderful things about small groups, like the ones we’re starting up next
week, is that we get to talk about how God is working in our lives, and we get
to help each other see how God working in each other.
Jesus tells
us to go and be witnesses, to go and tell what we’ve seen and heard. Jesus tells the disciples to go to Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of earth.
They did literally over the course of the book of Acts tell the story in
Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and beyond, telling the story to those close to
them, their families and friends, and in their churches, their synagogues. And to people who they would normally avoid,
the Samaritans.
For us that
means talking with people we know and who are like us, and also getting to know
people who are not like us. It means
taking the time to get to know one another, and in the process of developing
relationships, listening to their stories and telling our stories.
The
disciples did what Jesus told them to do - they continued even beyond the
Samaritans. They went to the gentiles,
which means they were telling everyone.
This story was for everyone.
We read in
Paul’s letters and in some of the parts of the book of Acts that the disciples
had major struggles over whether it was ok to include gentiles in their
churches at first, and this gives us the impression that including all people
in God’s gift of salvation was a new thing that came because of Jesus. But really Jesus was reminding us all of what
God had said way back in the beginning, in Genesis, to Abraham:
“all
the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you”
This is a
promise, and a prophecy. It’s looking
ahead to the children that Abraham didn’t yet know he would have, and their
children, and their children’s children who would become the nation of
Israel.
And it’s
looking ahead to the descendant of Abraham who would come centuries later and
die on a cross and be resurrected for every single one of us, so that each one
of us would know the blessing of God’s love and forgiveness.
Each one of
us is a descendant of that promise. Each
one of us is part of the blessing. We
have received it through our faith in Jesus.
It’s in our DNA. And we pass it
on by telling our stories.
Our stories are meant to be told.
How many of you
have had clogged drains in your homes? Think
about what happens to the water in the sink or the bathtub when the drain is
clogged. It’s coming in from the faucet
as clean, clear water, but as it collects in the tub or sink and as we wash in
it, it gets cloudy and mucky. The longer
it sits there, the more yucky it gets.
The blessing
of the gospel is like that. The good
news of the gospel is clean and clear water that refreshes our souls. But if all we do is take it in, it gets
cloudy and mucky like a stopped up sink.
It needs to keep on flowing. We
need to pass it on. We need to tell our
stories.
What is your
story? How has knowing Jesus affected
you?
Where have
you seen God at work in your life?
Our stories might be big and dramatic, or simple and ordinary. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a pretty story
or a theologically correct story. We
just need to tell our stories, here at church, and to our families and friends,
and to the people at work and school, and to people in new places.
Notice that before Jesus told the disciples about being
witnesses, he says, “You will receive
power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”
That needed to happen first. They didn’t go right out and start
telling. They went back to that place
where they’d been hanging out and they
prayed. Then the Holy Spirit did
come quite dramatically on Pentecost, and after that they started telling their
story.
That’s the first step for us, too. Pray. Let’s ask God to send us the power of the Holy
Spirit to guide us and encourage us and help us to know when and where and how
to tell our stories.
[2] Jim McKay, host of ABC
Sports, as quoted here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/61728/20-things-you-might-not-know-about-miracle-ice
[3] The Expositor’s Bible Commentary
[5] Not a new idea, but expressed well here: https://relevantmagazine.com/next/blog/6-main-slideshow/1137-your-story-must-be-told
[6] Willimon,
William H.. Acts: Interpretation: A Bible
Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (pp. 2-3). Westminster John Knox
Press. Kindle Edition.
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