Hearts, Heads, and Hands; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM; April 15, 2018; Easter 3b, Luke 24: 36-49
In today’s gospel we find Jesus risen from the dead, touching his disciples’ hearts, opening their minds, and sending them out with a job to do. Christ utilizes all of who we are, our hearts, heads, and hands. Some of the last words in Luke’s gospel are Jesus’ last words to his disciples, a sort of parting sermon. In the lesson from Acts we find one of Peter’s first sermons after Pentecost. Preaching is an important part of the Christian life.
Preachers are probably the butt of more jokes even than mothers-in-law. A preaching professor of mine tells the one about a student preacher who after finishing preaching his masterpiece, piously asked the professor, “With what prayer should I begin my sermon?” The professor responds, “How about `Now I lay me down to sleep?'”
Yet, even with all the jokes about preachers and preaching, you’re here today and I’m preaching again, as are pastors all around the world each Sunday morning. Preaching has, at its roots, commands from Jesus like the one we find in our gospel today to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. The sermon we hear in Acts is just one of many recorded in that book. There we find eight of Peter’s sermons, nine of Paul’s and seven more from others.
One might think that all that preaching might be more like a lullaby to the early church than a rousing march. But that is not the case. The church came alive in response to the preached word. Paul said,
But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? …So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes thorough the word of Christ.
However, the preacher can only do so much. The listener must be ready and expecting to hear, to analyze and interpret, and then to apply. What do you hope for in worship? Are you actively listening today and every day, listening for the word of God for your life?
It is terribly hard to steer a parked car. It is even more difficult to steer a parked Christian. Sometimes we are like parked cars, waiting passively for direction. The church that Peter and Paul and others preached to immediately after Jesus rose from the dead was parked, so to speak. They were waiting for direction, wondering: “Where do we go from here?” “What do we do now that Jesus is risen from the dead?” “What does all of this mean?” They waited for direction and energy. Then the Holy Spirit came among them like a mighty wind. It was then, with their engines fired by the flames of the spirit, that Peter began preaching.
Whenever Peter preached, he preached to those questions of theirs, “Where do we go from here?” “What do we do now that Jesus is risen from the dead?” And “What does all of this mean?” The people responded not with “Good sermon, pastor,” but with “What can we do?”
Peter tells them in his first sermon, “Repent and be baptized.” We might think that his sermon must have been a real humdinger to create the response it did. Acts 2: 41 tells us that “Those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about 3,000 persons were added.” Wow!
I suspect that the truth is more that the listeners brought their openness and eagerness to the worship and not that the sermons were terribly entertaining or captivating in and of themselves. In fact in Acts 20 we find this story.
On the first day of the week Paul talked with them and prolonged his sermon until midnight. There were many lights in the upper chamber where they were gathered. A young man named Eutychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer and being overcome by sleep he fell down from the third story and was presumed dead. But Paul looked closer and saw he had life still in him.
Paul’s sermons went on for hours and a man sitting in a window sill was lulled to sleep. As long as the sermons might have been, sleep was not the usual response. Action, a response of hands to what was felt by the heart and understood by the head was more the pattern and is to be our pattern as well.
In the New Testament sermon accounts we find a dialogue of questions from the people and sermons in response to those questions. We find words of encouragement and responses of action. The people came to worship expecting to be moved in their hearts, challenged in their heads and sent out to do something with their hands.
We are people with hearts, hands, and heads. All three of them have to be activated if our Christian life is to be full and alive, otherwise we are like a triangle whose two sides flop down and leave only a flat line.
Shel Silverstein says in a poem from his book A light in the Attic:
If we had hinges on our heads
There wouldn’t be no sin
Cause we could take the bad stuff out
And leave the good stuff in
It’s not so simple as that. We don’t really need hinged heads, we need active open minds, that can sort out the good from the bad, minds that are eager to grow and change and learn, minds that are ready to grapple with what it means to be a Christian today. We need not only hearts moved by the love of God, and hands put to service of others, we need heads opened to new understandings and challenged to learning and growth.
Olive Ann Burns wrote an excellent novel called Cold Sassy Tree. In it there is a scene that I just love that addresses this problem of using our minds when it comes to faith. The main character of the novel is a wise old grandpa, E. Rucker Blakeslee, who struggles in 1906 to make some sense out of life. His grandson, Will Tweedy was run over by a train and lived to tell about it. In thinking about his unusual escape from almost certain death, Tweedy asks his grandpa if he thinks he is alive because it was God’s will. His grandpa replies that …it is not that, but instead it is that the boy was smart enough to fall down between the tracks.
To that the boy responds that …maybe God gave him the idea to fall between the tracks. Grandpa’s response is that… the boy can believe that only if he thinks that it was God’s idea for him to be on the trestle in the first place. The grandpa continues by telling his grandson that… God gave each of us a brain and that it is God’s will for us to use it — particularly when a train is coming.
Will Tweedy then asks his grandpa… if God wills any of the things that happen to people. The grandpa ponders the question for a while and answers that... while life may bully people, God does not. He ends his explanation by telling his grandson that … there is much more to God’s will than death and disappointment. He tells Tweedy that… it is God’s will for people to be good and do good. It is God’s will to love one another. It is God’s will to be forgiving. “Folks who think God’s will jest has to do with sufferin’ and dyin’, they done missed the whole point.”
God gave each of us a brain and it is God’s will for us to use it, when we face an oncoming train, or when we face any of our everyday struggles. When the disciples saw the Risen Christ, they were scared out of their wits, thinking they had seen a ghost. That day they had doubt and fear and then later joy in their hearts over what they saw. Jesus called on them to use their brains, to see that ghosts do not eat fish. He opened their minds to the scriptures and then he sent them out to proclaim his message. There were no sleepers in the room when Jesus spoke to them. Their hearts and heads moved their hands to action. May it be so for us today as well. Amen