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Foundry United Rev. |
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The Fruit of Discipleship: Wonders and Signs (It’s a God
Thing) Sunday, October 29,
2006 |
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Acts 2: 41-47 Rev. |
The
Acts 2 church experienced awe because “many wonders and signs were being done
by the apostles.” (Acts 2: 43) What do
we make of this? Hebrews
2 says that signs, wonders and miracles are ways that God gives testimony to
the truth of the gospel. (Hebrews 2: 2-4) What
are we to think about signs, wonders and miracles? I’ve
had friends who, when something good happened in their lives in an unexpected
or surprising way, would explain it by saying: “It’s a God thing.” Just
what do we believe about signs and wonders and miracles…and God things? Do we
believe that God watches each one of our individual lives and manipulates
reality around us, so that sometimes God chooses to perform wonders, signs
and miracles in our lives? Is every stroke of good luck an act of divine
intentionality? This past week when I was late for a meeting and I really
needed to find a parking space and suddenly there was one…was that a God
thing? When we get sick or well is that a personal decision by divinity? What
about accidents and hurricanes? The biggest
problem with thinking that God manages the universe this precisely is articulated
by John Updike in his novel A Month of
Sundays. The novel is about a Protestant minister who has a nervous
breakdown of sorts and is sent for a month to recover in a facility for distressed
and demented clergy. The
minister is supposed to do nothing but therapy and rest, but he is so
addicted to sermonizing that he secretly writes a sermon every week. The
sermons that Updike writes for his character have bizarre twists and endings,
but otherwise they are actually pretty good sermons. One of
the sermons is about Jesus’ miracles. The problem with Jesus’ miracles, the sermon
says, is not their plausibility but their selectivity. “If
these few, why not all the ailing? Why not all the ailing from the beginning
of human time? More, of animal time? Why, indeed, institute, with vitality,
pain and struggles, disease and parasitism?”[1] In the
sermon he uses the example of the woman who had an issue of blood for 12
years, who surreptitiously touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. “Doesn’t this
make us angry?” Updike’s preacher asks. “Angry that this plucking, this
seeking out, this risk of humiliation was demanded of her, when Omnipotence
could have erased her pain as automatically as stony ground lets wither its
weeds? Updike’s
strange preacher has a point. If we assume God sometimes chooses to intervene
in human life with wonders, signs and miracles, then when God decides not to
intervene in the face of gross human suffering, isn’t this cruel and perhaps
even criminal? What kind of God is this? There
is a passage in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew in which
Jesus is quoted as saying that God causes the sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and that God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matthew
5: 45) God is not selective, Jesus is saying, but has put into place
processes that are consistent. The
universe operates by laws and principles. We all live under the same
circumstances with the same possibility of being blessed and the same
vulnerability to suffering and pain. And, the amazing thing that Jesus says
about this in Matthew 5 is that this consistence is evidence of God’s love,
and models the way that we ought to love one another. And yet
the Bible itself is full of wonders, signs and miracles. What are we to make
of them? Should we reject them as the primitive thinking of a pre-scientific
people? And
what about the signs and wonders and miracles that happen in our world today
and in our lives? Fred Buechner writes a paragraph in one of his books I
identify with: “I
happen to believe in God,” he writes, “because here and there over the years
certain things happened. No one particularly untoward thing happened, just
certain things. To be more accurate,” he continues,” the things that happened
never really were quite certain and hence, I suppose, their [uncanny] power.”[2] I can
echo Buechner: It is not that there is one big inexplicable miracle in my
life that I cannot explain except by crediting the hand of God; it is instead
a sense that the events of my life are not purely random and arbitrary, but
there is a perplexing hint of a thread of meaning that I may not always fully
discern or understand but perceive to be there in a profound way. Even
the failings and foolishness and the defeats and the times I have chosen
cowardice over faithfulness, somehow it all adds together with the instances
of courage and competence to have some sort of meaning, as though I am
fulfilling some sort of possibility that is larger than my own little life.
You know? Don’t you sometimes sense this? So how
do we understand wonders, signs and miracles?
Are they figments of our imagination? Are they intentional divine
interventions in the natural world? If so, how can we possibly understand it when
the Divine does not intervene in the face of great pain, suffering and
injustice? I do
not want to over-promise by pretending I can provide a clear answer this
question which people of faith have been wrestling with for centuries. I think
things happen in our world that we are never going to fully understand. But I
want to suggest that putting the question of wonders and signs and miracles
within the context of discipleship may help. We have
been talking during September and October about discipleship as it is
described in the second chapter of the Book of Acts. This is an emphasis of
our Being a
disciple means that these five things are part of our lives. Being a disciple
of Jesus Christ means we participate in these five activities in some way or
another. Acts 2
congregations – our bishop says – organize our lives together on the five
components of discipleship: education, koinonia, worship, mission, and
evangelism. Acts 2
congregations bear fruit. Look at the idealized description of the church in
Acts 2 and you will see that Acts 2 congregations reach new people, Acts 2
congregations help their members grow in maturity and faith, Acts 2
congregations feed and care for people in need, Acts 2 congregations win the
respect of the world around them. And
another fruit of Acts 2 discipleship is wonders and signs. When Acts 2
disciples are faithful in study, koinonia,
worship, mission and evangelism, an extra dimension of ministry manifests
itself – and this is what Acts 2 and Hebrews 2 call wonders, signs and
miracles. Let me
tell you one way I understand this. Robert E. Quinn is a social scientist,
the professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the
Graduate School of Business at the Quinn
has been studying organizations that make dramatic changes toward improved
performance – businesses, non-profits, branches of the military. He’s written
two books about what he has learned, one entitled Deep Change and another entitled Building the Bridge as You Walk on It. In most
of the organizations he has studied where there has been what he calls deep change, the change has happened,
he says, because of a deep change within the life of a leader in the
organization. Here’s
how he describes it: Most of the time we live in a state of normalcy. We are
comfort-centered; we are externally-driven (we do what we need to do to
please others because we get our sense of self-worth from others’ opinion of
us); we are self-focused (putting our own personal interest above the
interest of the collective); we are internally-closed (we stay in our comfort
zones resisting change).[3] In
organizations where there has been deep
change, Quinn says, it often has happened because an individual within
the organization left the state of normalcy and entered what he calls “the
fundamental state of leadership.” In the
fundamental state of leadership, leaders become less comfort-centered and
more purpose-centered. They stop asking “What do I want?” and start asking “What result do I want to create?” They
become less externally-driven and more internally-directed, more concerned
about their inner values than the opinion of others. They
become less self-focused and more other-focused. They
become less internally-closed and more externally-open (open to change and
experimentation). Often
these leaders move from normalcy to the fundamental state of leadership
either because of a crisis in their lives or because they are inspired by
another leader. When
people make this shift, Quinn’s research suggests, almost miraculous things
happen in organizations and in people’s lives. When people give up their
insecurity, selfishness, and lack of courage, he says “seemingly impossible
accomplishments [begin] to happen in an almost effortless way.”[4] He
calls it “becoming aligned with the dynamic universe.”[5] I think
that what Quinn calls “the fundamental state of leadership” is what Acts 2 would
call “the fundamental state of discipleship.” When
disciples of Jesus Christ give up being comfort-centered to become purpose-
centered; when we give up being driven by the opinion of other to being
driven by inner values; when we give up being focused on self and become
other-focused; when we give up being internally-shut down to being open to
change; then we become aligned with something dynamic within the universe, what
Acts 2 would call the Holy Spirit, then wonders, signs and miracles happen. Unexpected
things begin to happen. “Seemingly impossible accomplishments begin to happen
in an almost effortless way,” Quinn says. It is a God thing, but not a God thing in
the sense that God intervenes and manipulates reality but that God moves
through disciples who have been set free from their insecurity,
self-centeredness, and lack of courage to turn the world upside down. Quinn
says, “No one remains in the fundamental state of leadership continuously,
but it is possible to learn how to enter it more and more frequently.”[6] None of
us remain in the fundamental state of discipleship continuously, but it is
possible to learn how to enter it more and more frequently. This is
what learning, koinonia, worship do for us – they help us enter the fundamental
state of discipleship more and more frequently, and then, when we take the
risk of engaging in mission and evangelism, we will see wonders, signs and
miracles happen. We become aligned with the dynamic Holy Spirit. This is the
God thing – when God does through us more than we could ever imagine
ourselves doing. One of
the people Robert Quinn writes about is General Eric Shinseki, former chief
of staff of the army. Listen to what he says: “Shinseki’s
vision for the transformation of the army was one of the most ambitious
undertakings of any chief of staff since General Gorge Marshall. The vision
called for a dramatic shift to a lighter and faster army. Although
Shinseki had a vision, he did not have a map telling him how to negotiate his
way through all the required changes. The early years…were very difficult.
Shinseki did what he had to do. He pushed on, taking one step at a time. Shinseki’s
role became punishing. He experienced many dark nights of the soul. With each
big, symbolic move, he came under intense criticism. He was privately
criticized by those on the inside and publicly attacked by the media. What
was particularly remarkable about Shinseki was that he never displayed any
ego needs. Shinseki was fearless. He was not concerned about looking good. [Eventually]
commitment spread from [Shinseki] to [a small group of people who worked with
him] and then to larger and larger groups, including some of the people who
were initially very resistant. Eventually
the army transformation reached a point of “irreversible momentum.’ Quinn
says this about leaders like Shinseki: “Since
they are taking the organization where no one has been before, no one knows
how to get there. No one has the necessary expertise. Furthermore…[in these
situations] the traditional principles of good management no longer work.
Since there is no safe path, no way to be in control, they are forced to move
forward one blond step at a time. They then experience exponential learning
about self, others, and the organization.” Exponential
learning. Exponential things happen. Wonders, signs and miracles. We are
the church. We are the ones, above all, called to walk by faith not by sight.
We are the ones who have been entrusted with the vision of eternity. Why are
we so timid? Why are we so scared? If we get out there where God is, where
there are no road maps, exponential things – God things – will happen. www.foundryumc.org |
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