Bible Text: Acts 28:30-31 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry | Series: Acts | They say half of life is just showing up.  I think that might be a Woody Allen line.  Showing up certainly seems to be a theme in the book of Acts.  Luke opened the book of Acts with the story of Jesus’ ascension and Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit would indeed, show up.  And when the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus said, you will be my witnesses:  first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Just as Jesus promised, the Holy Spirit came, and when he did, amazing things happened!  The whole rest of the book of Acts tells the story of how Jesus’ prediction came true.  We read about the gospel being preached in synagogues all over Judea, how the good news was shared with Gentiles, how the gospel kept showing up even in the midst of persecution, and how even the young Church’s worst persecutor would go on to become a witness for Jesus Christ.

That persecutor, Saul, became Paul, and it was Paul who fulfilled Jesus’ prophecy that the gospel would reach “the ends of the earth”.  Luke didn’t have in mind the ends of the earth like we might think of it—the boondocks or Timbuktu or something.  He had in mind the city of Rome, which was the capital of the Roman Empire.  To bring the gospel there was the equivalent of getting something on You Tube today.  If you can get it to that one central location, there’s no telling how it will spread from there!  Paul brought the gospel to Rome and the kids say today, it went viral.

If half of life is showing up, the other half might be how you get there.  For Paul, showing up in Rome was no small feat.  As we talked about last week, Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem for preaching so fervently about Jesus that the Jewish authorities wanted him killed.  When they couldn’t get the government to do that for them, they formed a conspiracy to do it themselves.  Paul was actually safer as a prisoner!  So Paul exercised his right as a Roman citizen, and appealed his case to the emperor.  But the trip from Jerusalem to Rome was no ride in the back of a police car.  Paul had it rough as a prisoner.  He weathered sailing through storms, endured shipwrecks and being stranded for three months on a desert island, survived a snake bite, quelled a mutiny on a ship, went for weeks at a time without food–all while being a prisoner!

I can only imagine how he felt when he arrived in Rome.  Rome!  The most sophisticated city in the world—and here’s Paul, a tentmaker from Tarsus, a prisoner, a man who for thirty years had been sacrificing himself to preach the gospel.  Yes, he would witness, as God had said.  But then what?  He was up against some really big guns in Rome—the highest court in the land, no appeals after this.  They had the death penalty available to them and were not afraid to use it!  Paul knew there was a good chance he would not be leaving Rome alive.  Yet, he remained optimistic, and he wrote in his letters to the Philippians and to Philemon that he hoped to visit them soon.

We don’t know if Paul ever got to make those visits or not.  The Bible doesn’t tell us what happened to Paul.  Tradition tells us that Paul was acquitted in Rome and from there traveled to Spain on a missionary journey.  Tradition also tells us Paul was beheaded in Rome by the Emperor Nero.  But we don’t know for sure, and Luke doesn’t seem concerned about what ever happened next to Paul.  The book of Acts ends with the verses we read this morning.  Chapter 28 verses 30 and 31 tell us that Paul spent two whole years in Rome, boldly and without hindrance preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ to all who would come.  God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles.  And that means Luke’s work is done.  He has recorded for us how the Holy Spirit did indeed show up as Jesus promised, and how the disciples were witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.  End of story.

Except of course, we know it’s not the end of the story.  Jesus’ disciples are still witnessing to the ends of the earth.  That’s why I entitled this sermon, “Chapter 29”.  It’s our job to keep writing the story, to carry on the work begun in Acts.  And that is really exciting work!  This summer people from our congregation carried the gospel to Kentucky, and I am just thrilled to hear this morning about that missionary journey had on people.  This month our blue envelope contributions are going to UMCOR, which is the humanitarian relief agency of the United Methodist Church.  They take the love of Christ everywhere there is a disaster, and stay there until way past everyone else, long after the disaster has faded from our memories and new ones command our attention.  Even if we never personally go anywhere, or personally give to missions, we are all still missionaries.  Every week people from this congregation carry the gospel on all kinds of missionary journeys:  to their workplace, to their neighborhoods, to their families.  And every week we come together, to get our batteries recharged, to connect with God and support one another.

Every year our lead pastors are asked to write a “State of the Church Report” as part of our preparations for Charge Conference, and every year I struggle with what to write.  I have been accused in the past of being overly optimistic, so I try to be realistic and fair.  But on the other hand, if the pastor doesn’t have hope, who will?  This is God’s church, nestled in its place in God’s world.  We have no reason to be anything other than hopeful!

The book of Acts certainly ends on hopeful and victorious note.  Now that Paul has gotten to Rome, Luke is 100% confident the gospel will go viral. He says Paul preached “boldly and without hindrance.”  This is the climax of Luke’s story!  Sure there will be ups and downs, expansions and contractions, along the way.  But the long line of the rest of the story is going to be outward and outward and outward, spreading and growing until every end of the earth has been reached with the good news of Jesus Christ.  What do you think?  If you were writing the State of the Church report for Lima United Methodist Church, do you think we are people who are filled with that hope and confidence and sense of victory and joy?  Are we sharing the gospel “boldly and without hindrance”?

In July, while our mission team was in Kentucky bringing the good news to people through hammer and nail, I went to a workshop on digital evangelism:  how to bring the good news to people through websites and social media.  It’s hard to be filled with hope and joy when you’re confused and scared!  There is no doubt the Church with a capital C in America is in a time of transition, and we are learning to re-tool, and find what works best for new generations of people.  We are on our way to new forms of community.  Since half of life is just showing up, church leaders are putting a lot of energy into figuring out how and where to show up in our day and age.

But just showing up isn’t enough.  How we get there is critical.  We must do that in communion with God and with each other.  Will we guard each other’s hearts along the way?

Let me tell you about a pattern I have heard about in other churches and ask you to examine with me if you think it might be happening here at Lima.  Do you ever hear comments to the effect of, “Our church would be growing if it weren’t for ____.”  “That problem would be solved if it weren’t for ____.”  “If only our pastor would ____, everything at church would be fine.”  Have you ever heard yourself say things like that?  Maybe it’s about the sanctuary heating system.  Or the less than expected offering income this year.  Or the low numbers of children and youth.   If only so and so would be different in such and such a way, everything would be fine.

I admit, I’m guilty of this, too!  We may see these as innocuous comments, innocent enough justifications for why our church is not perfect.  Or maybe we completely believe them. Either way, what comments like that boil down to is BLAME.  And on homecoming Sunday, it seems right to emphasize that no one feels at home in a church where they are getting blamed.

The truth is, blame does not solve anything.  For example, we can say, “Young families just don’t care enough about church to choose it over soccer,” until we are blue in the face, but it will not make a single new family visit our church.  By blaming the young families, we are failing to take up our responsibility to be witnesses to the ends of the earth, even the soccer field.  A better use of our energy would be to think about how we can carry the gospel to them instead of blaming them for not coming to us.

The second thing that is important to remember about blame is, blame is really just shame on the offensive.  Blame is really just shame on the offensive.  Deep down we all know we aren’t perfect.  But we have a hard time admitting our faults and feeling the shame that comes from not being perfect.  Instead of owning up to what we’ve done wrong, we blame others.  This is a part of human nature that goes all the way back to the beginning.  In the Garden of Eden, when God asked Adam about eating the fruit from the forbidden tree, what did he say?  Eve made me!

We also have a hard time accepting other people’s faults.  So instead of feeling the shame that comes when someone close to us embarrasses us, we look around for something to be angry at and blame.  Every school teacher I know has experienced this, a time when a student got in trouble, and rather than accept responsibility and work toward better behavior, the parents get mad at the teacher and school  Blame is like a heat-seeking missile, looking to land on any convenient target so we can be spared feeling the shame.

Change in church, just as in the rest of life, is inevitable.  While that can be exciting, there is also a grief associated with that.  I hope we can make a promise to each other, though, that in our grief, we will not turn on each other.  In our discerning about what God would have us do differently individually and collectively, that we will not become people who blame each other for the church being smaller, or imperfect, or whatever change is bothering us.  Instead I hope we can make a promise to each other that we will support each other as we properly feel our grief and shame.  I hope we can make a promise to each other that we will work on our problems without blaming and shaming.  If we can do that, we are likely to create an atmosphere where joy and light and hope prevail:  the very kind of atmosphere most needed to help new and old people feel at home in this congregation.

They say half of life is showing up.  The other half may be in how you get there.  That is why we are going to begin a focus on the Apostles’ Creed, so we can examine more closely where it is we stand firm, and how we go about moving in concert with the Holy Spirit.  But what I want to know right now is, people of Lima, how are you?  Are you filled with hope and confidence and a sense of victory and joy?  I know you believe God is still calling us to be witnesses, I see evidence of that every week.  I know you believe the Holy Spirit wants to empower us to share God’s love boldly and without hindrance, I see that manifest in many ways.  I heard you say earlier this morning that you believe God will bring to completion the good work begun in us.  And I am trusting that you believe grace is a much better remedy for shame than blame is.  Given all of that, people of Lima, I believe we can write our own Acts Chapter 29 with hope and confidence and a sense of victory and joy, and I hope you believe it, too.  Amen.