4-23-2006

Celebrating the freeing, supportive presence of God. So your experience of God may become your experience of life. It is wonderful what God can do!

“Surprise!”

April 23, 2006

We usually associate the word “Surprise!” with a party or gathering commemorating an event such as a birthday or anniversary. It is intended to give an individual or a couple a joyful jolt of happiness.

Not all surprises work out as intended. There are those that turn out much better than could be expected, and then there are those that end up in disasters. After all, not everyone likes a surprise.

As a young woman, there were two things that my ex-wife, Lynn, loved to do. One was to bake cakes, and the other was to throw parties. Even before she took that professional cake-baking course, she loved to surprise our children and relatives with uniquely-shaped, and lovingly decorated, cakes —particularly cuddly looking animals!

There was one more thing that she loved doing—and that was planning a surprise party. We were married about two years when my parents’ 25^th wedding anniversary came up. I tried to emphasize that I really believed my mother would appreciate any thing but a surprise party. She wouldn’t hear of it. We asked my sister, Cheryl, to take charge of the diversion until it was time to bring them to our house where old friends and wedding party members would be waiting.

My sister was wise enough to know that to do any pushing would have created unhappiness and anxiety. Complicating the diversion was the fact that Cheryl had our two grandmothers along. To make a long story short, we were yelling “surprise” over an hour later than planned. My mother looked as though she’d rather be anywhere but there at that moment! For years after, my mother always said that she can not even remember the first part of that anniversary party … only the parts that followed the shock of surprise.

            Our Scripture from the gospel of John this morning reminds me initially of the opposite reaction to a surprise. The disciples were all locked in a house because they feared the other Jews. They were already uneasy with fear when all of a sudden, without warning, and in the blink of an eye, Jesus appears out of nowhere and stands among them!

            The writer of John describes this event in an amazingly understated manner when he writes [simply], “Jesus came and stood among them.” According to John, no one is startled, no one is shocked, no one is surprised! As a matter of record, Jesus is the first to speak by offering these words, “Peace be with you.” He immediately shows them the holes in his hands and side to which no one seems to comment. Jesus speaks again and turns the previous greeting into a blessing and continues by making an important call on their lives. He does this by saying, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Even to this momentous event of receiving the power of the Holy Spirit, followed by receiving the heavenly authority to forgive and retain sins, there is still no comments, no questions, and no apparent surprise.

            Actually, I believe the event of Jesus’ appearing was so startling and unexpected, that the disciples were speechless! They had very little time to recover before Jesus was giving them more surprises: The surprise of being sent by God just as Jesus had been sent! The surprise of receiving the power of the Holy Spirit! The surprise of receiving the heavenly authority to forgive and retain sins. I really do believe that they were speechless!

            No one should blame them for their speechlessness. Under the same circumstances we, too, would probably have been overcome by an overload of information!

            The bigger question is: When was the last time you were surprised by God? At the time, did you even recognize that it was God doing the surprising?

            As Christians living in a society that takes each and every event as being “the luck of the draw,” we, too, have tendency not to recognize the actions of God in our lives. For example, are all cancer remissions simply the work of physicians and medications? Certainly not the ones which happen without any medication at all!

            I believe our God is a God of surprises! You do not have to read the Scriptures for long to see that God continually surprises people with new thoughts, new ideas and new instructions. God’s very plan of salvation is truly a surprise to rational thinking!

            In our Scripture from the book of Acts this morning we again have occasion for surprise! Verse 32 says that “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” Can you remember hearing that Scripture when it was being read back in the days of the Cold War? I do! I actually had several persons in my congregation comment about how communistic and socialistic this passage of Scripture was – that perhaps it didn’t even belong there. I was surprised to hear that verbalized.

            We can be thankful that the writer of Acts does not see this precise social method as being a requirement! The writer simply says, this is why they did it and this is how they did it. We are to accomplish the same in whatever way we go about it.

            Woven within this paragraph are two key phrases that express the power of the real meaning. The first is in verse 34: “There was not a needy person among them.” The second is in verse 35: “It was distributed to each as any had need.”

            We can reasonably conclude that it matters less how much was sold or who owned what, as opposed to the needs of the needy were always met. Whatever the social system, God expects the needs of the needy to be met. This is the true test of a society—is it meeting the needs of its constituents – particularly those with more desperate needs?

            As we look to our mid-term elections, and the current campaigning, we should always do so by asking the candidates and the parties involved: “What is your plan for meeting the needs of your neediest constituents?” The goal should not be simply how we can benefit most, or even necessarily how to lower taxes—as attractive as that might sound!

            First and foremost, God says we should be about the business of those who are unable to come up with the basics. Once they are cared for, God wants to be the one to supply the needs for the rest of us.

            Surprise! Who would have thought that we should take care of our neighbor first? Surprise! Who would have thought that God wants to bless us for doing so? The church is charged with this as part of its mission from Christ. And in a free, democratic society, which has a tendency to refer to itself as Christian, it is our responsibility to hold that society – that government – to its claims; to make it think and work with an attitude of caring and providing—yes, even an attitude of distributing the wealth!

            Surprise! Christ is alive and does care about the immoral contrast between multi-millionaire executives lording it over minimum wage employees! Surprise! Christ is alive and does care about the immoral contrast between rich people having easy access to cosmetic surgery while others have less or no access to basic health care!

            God stands in the midst of the stingy and gluttonous with a righteous anger, but God is not recognized or heard! God stands in the midst of the poor and hungry with a broken heart, but sees a world so much more bent on looking out for “number one,” than for its starving and diseased children!

            Surprise! It’s up to us to recognize God in our midst and hear the living Lord’s command: “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.” Surprise! God’s here today and waiting for us to say, “Here am I, send me!” Amen.