Pentecostal Preaching, Part 2

Peter stepped into the God-given moment. Through faith in Christ, he and John had healed a lame man who came daily to the temple to beg for alms. The incident caused a great stir and Peter preached to the gathered crowd. While the circumstance of the sermon was different than the first he had preached, the content reflected the same commitments: it was biblically driven, had Christ as its subject, was courageous in its pronouncements, and called for the people listening to be intellectually honest (see previous post). It was solid pentecostal preaching. There is an additional component to pentecostal preaching, however, that shows up in these seminal sermons: the call for repentance.

What is repentance? In the words of one commentator, it’s a “spiritual about face.” This definition is helpful. Peter is bold to point out to his listeners that they had conspired and “denied the Holy and Righteous One . . . and killed the Author of life.” The first thing, therefore, that the crowd needed to repent of was their antipathy toward Jesus. No longer could they regard him as they had. The categories they had placed Jesus in that allowed them to dismiss him as a charlatan had to be renounced. His divine messiahship had been vindicated in the phenomena that were taking place and a “spiritual about face” was called for.

So, added to the characteristics of what constitutes pentecostal preaching is the call for repentance. But it’s important to note the order of repentance that Peter summons. The first thing that anyone needs to do is abandon their condemning conceptions of Christ. This is primary, for it’s only when a person in is union with the “Author of life” that calls for moral reformation make any sense. To repent of moral failures but not be brought into fellowship with Christ accomplishes no eternal good. A cleaned up pagan is in no better position before God than a thoroughly debauched one. What unbelievers need to do is “repent and be baptized . . . in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of [their] sins.” 

Though it might seem self-evident, Christ needs to be kept front and center as we bear witness to him. It’s Jesus that people need to know. Once that is settled, calls to live in a manner that is pleasing to God can follow.

Productive Belonging

It must have been an awkward moment. The church had received a letter from Paul and had gathered to hear it read. They felt a close kinship with the apostle and were anxious to know how he was doing. They were already excited and glad to have their friend Epaphroditus back. Word had gotten to them that he had been gravely ill, almost to the point of death, so to have him back in their midst was both a relief and a joy. But what of Paul? What news, words of encouragement or instruction might he have included in the letter that Epaphorditus had brought with him? All were summoned, and up to this point they had been both encouraged and warned by his letter, all to their edification. But now a deafening silence has descended upon them. Two much respected women of their number, Euodia and Syntheche, had been singled out by Paul and not for praise. He had entreated them to reconcile, to “agree in the Lord,” and asked another in their church community to help them. How would these two respond?

Such opportunities are part of what is called sanctification, the process of transformation that God has entered us into, changing us from what were without Christ to what we are in Christ. Such occasions are given by God to test our faith, expose remaining sin, or learn what it means to love him and others with all of our being. The above incident, suggested by Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, illuminates the important role the church community plays in our sanctification. He knew the church and he knew the people involved. He was also well aware of the problems that could arise within a church when two respected members of its congregation were at odds with each other. So, he spoke up. And given the manner in which he did this, he placed the obligation for helping these two to reconcile upon everyone in the church.

God intends for us to work at the new self that we are in Christ and he has designed that this be done in community. The importance of being part of a particular church cannot, therefore, be overemphasized. It’s in community with other Christians where we learn to walk in the humility, unity, and love that God expects his gospel-birthed children to pursue. I’d like to think that the two women in Philippi seized the opportunity. I’d like to think the entire community was edified by their example. If they did, together they would have experienced the answer to Paul’s petition when he prayed that their love would “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:9-11).

Gospel Trangression

The late George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama, proclaimed in his January 14, 1963, inaugural speech, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In June of that same year he sought to make good on that declaration when he blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama, seeking to prevent Vivian Malone and James Hood, two black students, from registering at the school. And again, in September of 1963, he sought to prevent black children from attending four different elementary schools. A product of his culture and an adherent to the mores of the then “deep south,” Wallace was acting in accordance with his self-justifying, self-promoting, and self-protecting worldview.

But in 1979, Wallace said of his “Stand at the Schoolhouse Door,” “I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over.” He had come to faith in Christ and as a result he “apologized to black civil rights leaders for his past actions as a segregationist. He said that while he had once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness” (“George Wallace,” Wikipedia). This is the transgressive power of the gospel. Awakened to his sin of racial and cultural gerrymandering, he crossed the boundaries of race, history, and societal pressure to seek reconciliation.

We need to seriously consider this kind of outworking of Christ’s reconciling death on the cross. The sin that separated us from God has also consistently generated sinful societal boundaries that serve to keep some in power while forcing others to the margins. In the process of reconciling all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, Christ calls his disciples to pick up their crosses and follow him as he transgresses those lines to implement his plan for his sin-racked creation. And, as reconciling us to God took the transgressive act of the Son of God leaving the glories of heaven that he might both live and die for us on this earth, we can expect that following our Lord across sinfully constructed boundaries will cost us something. It did for him. But motivated by love and empowered by his Spirit we can prove effective agents of reconciliation in an often cruelly divided world.

"Can we all get along?"

“Can we all get along?” This was the plaint of Rodney King in 1992 in the riot torn city of Los Angeles after violence broke out in the wake of what most perceived to be an unjust verdict that acquitted the officers who were caught on videotape beating him. An already strained relationship between the LA police and the black community reached a breaking point with devastating results: 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, and over $1,000,000,000 in damages; a terrifying and troubling example of sin’s disruptive power.

The truth is we can’t all get along. Fractures in even the strongest of relationships seem inevitable. Peace between people takes work. Recently at Neighborhood Church, we considered two of the resources the gospel provides in that effort:  unity and forgiveness. By unity is meant our commonality as human beings. We are all made in the image of God. This means that we are not free to regard others in a manner any different than how we would want to be regarded. We are all made in the image of God, yet we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We are all in need, therefore, of the redemptive and reconciling work of Christ. That’s true whether you are the slave owner, Philemon, or the slave, Onesimus (we’ve been looking at Paul’s letter to Philemon on Sundays). For those in Christ, our commonality is deepened for we all have him as our head and all drink from the symbolic one cup. Embracing our commonality goes a long way in undermining presumed superiority while instilling humility, two important ingredients for removing enmity between people.

The necessity and ability to forgive flows from the fact that through the reconciling work of Christ we have been “delivered . . . from the domain of darkness and transferred . . . to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). The expectation is that as the Lord has forgiven us, we will also forgive; as we know the blessing of being forgiven, out of love we must grant it to others (Colossians 3:13). The contrast of reactions between the father and the older brother in the familiar parable of the prodigal son reveals the kind of heart Jesus wants us to have: ready to forgive when repentance is proffered.

I suspect each of us can think of a person who presents a challenge along these lines. We should make that one a project: praying for him or her to come to an understanding of how he or she has offended, while at the same time asking God for a heart that is desirous to lovingly pronounce forgiveness when the Lord answers our prayers for the other.