Bowling Green First Presbyterian Church

Please join us for the Second Sunday in Advent. https://vimeo.com/channels/1616110

12/5 The Lesson of the Healing (Acts 3-4). On their way to the temple to pray Peter and John encountered a crippled beggar, asking for alms (Acts 3:1-3). Peter told him he had no money, but he would give him what he had: a command to stand up and walk, in the name of Jesus (3:6). The man's legs and ankles became strong, and he entered the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. It caused quite a stir (3:7-10). Peter explained to the gathered crowd that it was not ...because he and John had any special power or piety that the miracle happened; instead, it had been done by Jesus, the Servant of the Lord a phrase that hearkens back to Isaiah 42. Although Jesus, the righteous one, had been rejected by the people, God had raised him from the dead; and it was his name that had healed the man (3:11-16). The application for our lives, Peter informs us, is not the let's-bring-more-crippled-people-to-get-healed that we might have expected, but rather that we need repentance: we need to turn to God so that our sins may be wiped away, and so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (3:19-20). There is a time of universal restoration coming, that God announced long ago through his holy prophets (3:21); and in the meantime, God's intention in Jesus is this: to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways (3:26). That's hard to hear. I've always liked my wicked ways (that's why I've stuck with them for so long). Why can't I just have more healing miracles, which (a) are spectacular to see, and (b) don't require me to respond in holiness and devotion. But the blessing that God proposes is not to show me lots of physical miracles, but to make me into a spiritual miracle: a saint, filled with holiness given by God. * * * * * Teach me repentance, O Lord: teach me to yield my heart to you, promptly and sincerely, so that I might see the miracle of your light shining upon my heart, and of your grace turning me away from my own selfishness, and toward your holiness.

12/4 What You Can Know, What You Can Do (Acts 1-2). [Robinson proposes a date of '62+' for Acts.] So Luke decided to write Volume II, he told Theophilus, to follow up on what he had written about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning (Acts 1:1). He recounts that after his resurrection Jesus presented himself alive to his disciples with many convincing proofs over a period of forty days (1:3). And he told them to wait in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spiri...t to come to them (1:4-5). But the disciples had a question they wanted to ask, regarding whether the time had come when Jesus would restore the kingdom to Israel (1:6) would he now kick out the Romans and let Israel function as an independent kingdom again. His response is instructive: It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (1:7-8). There are two parts to his response. First, there are things that we as disciples would like to know: but just because we want to know something doesn't mean we're going to get an answer. As it turns out, there are certain things that are not for you to know. And second, there is something that we as disciples are specifically commissioned to do: bear witness to all the nations about Jesus, empowered by the Spirit. Alas, much of the time we get this exactly backwards. First, we presume to know what we cannot know: we set dates for the second coming, we judge who is saved and who is lost, we claim our limited biblical knowledge as an absolute. Second, we avoid doing what we have been told to do: we are afraid to testify about how the gospel has changed our lives, we ignore the power of the Spirit, we watch TV instead of helping the poor. We need humility, when it comes to discussions of doctrine; and we need obedience, when it comes to living the Christian life. * * * * * Teach us, Lord, that some knowledge is too wonderful for us: and where you have said we cannot know it, teach us that it is all right for us not to know it. And grant us, by the power of your Spirit, to have the boldness and the articulation to tell and live the truth of your gospel, right where we are, day by day.

12/3 Clear Eyewitness Testimony (II Peter, Jude). [Robinson dates these two books '61-62'.] For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from he...aven, while we were with him on the holy mountain (II Peter 1:16-18). That’s how Peter emphasized the importance of the eyewitness character of his testimony. We were there. We saw the transfiguration of Jesus. We heard the voice of the Father (Matthew 17:5). And so that's the basis on which we told you about Jesus: we declared to you what we knew to be true, rather than any fable or fairy tale that someone made up. This tells us two important things. First, the words we read in the gospels come with this conviction that it is important to pay attention to eyewitness testimony. We may well recognize that eyewitnesses do sometimes see things a little differently, from their particular vantage point (this is probably the explanation for the minor differences in how the gospels tell the stories they hold in common). Yet even so, the message comes with this deliberate insistence: this is eyewitness testimony. We were there. This is what we saw. Second, some of the most effective testimony we can offer will speak of how we, too, have seen the power of Jesus manifested. We want to speak out with the words of scripture; but we also want to share the reality that we’ve seen the truth of the gospel established in contemporary human experience. We’ve been there when Jesus calmed the storm individuals were experiencing. We’ve watched as broken hearts were healed by the power of his love. We’ve seen Jesus transform people’s lives. And we can tell the truth about these things. * * * * * You are the beloved Son, full of the Father’s glory: we were not there to see your transfiguration on the mountain, but we have read the testimony of those who did see, and have come to believe the word they have given. And we have indeed seen your power to transfigure the hearts of your disciples, including ourselves. We offer you all our worship, blessed Savior!

12/2 You Are Witnesses of These Things (Luke 23-24). Luke’s resurrection story starts out closely parallel to Mark and Matthew, with the women going to the grave to anoint the body of Jesus on Sunday morning and finding the tomb empty and hearing the angelic announcement of the resurrection (Luke 24:1-12). Luke then includes quite a bit of material that the other gospels lack. The most obvious example is the famous walk to Emmaus passage (24:13-35). Most of us are fairl...y familiar with the at the tomb and walk to Emmause texts. What we might not know quite so well is the conversation that Luke reports between Jesus and his disciples after this. He started by chiding them for their fears and doubts, and encouraged them that it was really him by showing them his feet and hands, and eating a piece of broiled fish (24:36-43). Then he reiterated the importance of knowing the testimony of the law and the prophets about him, and opened their minds to understand the scriptures (24:44-45). Here is the summary of the gospel: Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (24:46-47). And then comes our commissioning in just a few words: You are witnesses of these things (24:48) and it’s even shorter in Luke’s original Greek, only three words, . You are witnesses of these things. A witness is someone who has seen something, and tells about it. It was the original apostles who would be the witnesses at that moment, but we are the ones who are the witnesses in the present moment. We have seen the power of forgiveness. We have seen the proclamation of Jesus making a difference in people’s lives. We have seen Jesus touching people’s hearts. We have seen that. And we can say so. * * * * * Help us, Lord, to recognize even in the midst of our own fears and doubts that we have indeed seen you in action. We are witnesses of your resurrection power: for we have seen, and we can speak. Grant us the boldness to bear glad witness, as your gospel reaches to all the world.

The Lord’s Supper (Luke 21-22). Jesus told his disciples that he had yearned to share Passover with them before he suffered (Luke 22:15), and then instituted what we now call the Lord's Supper. But Luke reports that Jesus did it differently from how we do it: first cup, then bread, and then cup again (22:17-20). Wait, what? The manuscript record is actually quite confusing right here. There are a number of early manuscripts do not include the second mention of the cup,... thereby giving us the sequence first cup, then bread. Apparently some of the copyists were uncertain about the text they were copying, and tried to fix what they thought must be a previous scribe's copying mistake. Scholarly opinion differs as to whether the fix was to add in or subtract out the second mention of the cup. Moreover, the Words of Institution are different in the other synoptic gospels (Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24), and different again in Paul (I Corinthians 11:23-26), and John has a last supper without any Words of Institution at all (John 13:1-17), and he puts his theology of the Sacrament not at the last supper but after the feeding of the multitude (John 6:52-58). The variety of ways the New Testament writers report all this makes it useless to claim that we must do the Lord’s Supper the way Jesus did it. It's very clear in all the witnesses that a significant theology and practice of the Lord's Supper was present from the beginning of the Christian church, and the content of the sacrament is the same in all the texts. But clearly the early church was not concerned to make sure the words or the actions were exactly the same every time, as if there were some magic formula which must be repeated perfectly in order for the thing to work. Instead, we come to the Table and share in the bread and cup, not because we know we've got it right (while those others have it wrong), but because we trust in Jesus, who gave us this sacramental reality: This is my body given for you (Luke 22:19). * * * * * Just as we cannot live without food and drink, so we cannot live without you, O Lord. Sustain us with your broken body, with your blood poured out: for without you we will surely die.