Prop: you may want to bring a prop of a human brain or have people put their hands on their heads as you explain the parts of the brain
Did you ever hear people speak about the wonders of the human mind? We don’t use even a fraction of what our brains are capable of. When you think of it this way, we house in our own persons a valuable untapped resource of brain power, enough capable of solving all of the problems in the world, if only we knew how to tap into it. So say some theorists.
But we also know that, most times, solutions are best reached in gatherings of minds. That two is better than one. That’s why in science, people work together in labs. It’s why we have “thinktanks.” It’s why screen writers work in teams. And artists keep apprentices in studios or ateliers that are meant for multiple artists working together. Wonderful things happen when people think together.
[You may also want to talk about especially our untapped right brain.]
[Optional: clip of Jill Bolte Taylor, “A Stroke of Insight”: link above. If you show just the few first minutes it’s enough.]
Think of the amazing works of human brains working together –the symphonies, the art, the works of philosophy and literature, new physics. The invention of computers, bots, the internet, Siri!
Wow!
Human hearts can work together powerfully too –that part of our brain that urges us to gather together and comfort each other in the face of tragedy, against common foes, the feats of great philanthropy toward a common cause, feats of physical impossibility accomplished by a few in order to save another: cars lifted to free a toddler, firefighters rushing into burning buildings in order to save others, people taking others in when floods have leveled their homes. So much of who we are as human beings is accomplished when we bind and bond together.
Just think: if human brains and hearts gathered together can accomplish all of this, how much more can God do? How much more can the Holy Spirit accomplish and unleash when we gather together in Jesus’ Name?
We may house untapped ability in our hearts and brains, but we also house untapped vitality and power in the Church –it’s called the Holy Spirit! The Church is the most powerful energy source on earth, if only we knew how to “tap into it.”
Wait a minute! We do know how! It’s called prayer. And it’s the most powerful force on earth!
Here’s the thing: the medical community knows it! Medical schools now teach courses just on prayer! In a sense, the medical community has taken the healing power of faith to levels where the church wasn’t willing to go. The results speak for themselves in healed lives.
Imagine what God could accomplish in the world if the force of that Holy Spirit power were released and unleashed on the whole of the earth?
Gives you a chill, right?
Well, we have that power…right in our midst this morning. The Church has more untapped energy for change and healing than any other entity in the world if only we would tap into it. Because when disciples of Jesus are gathered ….just two or three at a time….in prayer and intercession, miracles happen to the glory of God!
We need to become a “Church on Tap” with the Holy Spirit!
Do you believe in miracles?
How many of you have experienced one of God’s miracles in your life?
[Give people time to share if you wish.]
The power of prayer! The apostles knew it! The early Church knew it! And through the centuries, the Church has been a powerhouse of healing and grace when its primary focus has been to be a house of prayer.
Where two or more are gathered.
As I’m looking around today in this sermon sharing time, it’s raining. Raining….not outside….not cats and dogs…..but raining grace….because as I look around I see the evidence of grace.
People healed. People smiling. People happy. People restored to relationship. People gathering together.
This is the gathering place of the Lord.
And when two or three are gathered….grace –and Jesus—reigns.
Jesus …Rain on me!
Let’s just take a moment and allow that reigning presence of Jesus to rain over you today, over your face, over your body, over your mind, over your life. Let Jesus rain His peaceful, flowing, healing rain all over you.
Do you feel that Holy Spirit power?
That’s that same power that energized and infused the first apostles to raise up the early Church, and that power can be yours too –to allow Jesus to raise up this church, to raise up these communities for Christ, to raise up lives in tune with God, because Jesus is in the business…of raising! Amen?
In our scripture today…..we have Paul and Barnabus, and they are on their mission of people and church raising in the Name of Jesus. And some bad things start to happen. And as a result, Paul is stoned, pulled by the feet by chariot and yanked over the town’s stony streets, as was done by the Romans. It was the way they made a statement to everyone watching. It was the ultimate in humiliation and assertion of power in saying, “I have killed your God!”
But we, the church, we know something about Jesus. You can’t keep God down. You can’t kill the Lord of lords, and King of kings. Jesus gets back up and keeps on coming!
And so, the disciples gathered round, and they raised Paul up! And Jesus had the final victory that day in the eyes of everyone watching!
As they gather around him in prayer…, Paul is raised….raised again for service, for mission, for proclaiming Jesus Lord!
What kind of power is that!?
Jesus told His disciples, His apostles, before He was ascended, that when they were touched by the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that they would be clothed or “endued” with power from on high, This endowment of enduement would empower them to work miracles in Jesus’ Name to the glory of God. Wherever people were in doubt or in error, they could ask that God heal, and their prayers would be answered! Paul, Timothy, Barnabas, Peter, many others –they believed, they prayed, and there WERE miracles accomplished all the time and everywhere!
Let’s be clear about this. When his companions, some other disciples, come upon him, Paul isn’t just injured. He’s roadkill! His body is badly mangled. He’s dead. Stoning was the Jewish form of capital punishment, just like crucifixion was the Roman form of capital punishment. They did not crucify you until they got tired, just as they did not stone you until they got tired. They crucified you until you were dead. They stoned you until you were dead.
Yet when that “prayer-tank of praise” gathered around him, we learn that Paul gets up. That’s right, he rises from the dead –or at least near dead. Note how he doesn’t go off to lick his wounds. He begins all the more praising God and proclaiming Jesus Lord. He has been raised to new life!!! Raised up by the power of Jesus! Jesus reigns! Can I get an amen to that?!
Lord, rain your reign on us!
Both people and churches are raised by the power of Jesus. By the power of His grace. By the power of the Holy Spirit where two are more are gathered in earnest prayer. For wherever two or three are gathered, grace and love reigns. Wherever two or three are gathered together, God’s reign rains.
There are all kinds of gathering places. Gatherings around a table. Gatherings around a fire. Gatherings around an operating table. Gatherings around a sick bed. Gatherings around a courtyard. And when one of your own –or even another—is in need of care…..we in the church gather round.
Wherever you gather…wherever two or more are gathered…Jesus is there. (Matt 18:20)
John Wesley knew this. That’s why he told his preachers to go out into the places no one else wanted to go, gather around the lonely, the lost, the hurting. Jesus is already there. He is in the midst of the wounds of the world, ready for you to do miracles in His Name.
When the people pray, the Church becomes the most powerful force on earth –a veritable tsunami of love and healing.
We as a church are not asked to do impossible things. We are merely asked to call upon God to do impossible things. And God does and will.
This week, let’s start as a church to be that gathering of praise that Jesus asked us to be in the world. It all starts with people. It all culminates in prayer.
In a bowl on the altar are cards with the names of people and places who need our prayers continually. I ask you to come to the altar, take one or more of these cards, and pray continually for these people during this week. Choose a partner in prayer and pray for that person too during this week, that your partner may be lifted up in faith and prayer. Last, pray one of the psalms. Choose your favorite psalm and say that psalm each day within your prayer time. And then let us come together next week in worship as a praying church, a praying people.
[Before receiving prayer cards for the week, you might also like to have a time when people speak/share their own stories of the miracles of healing they’ve witnessed through prayer.]
*Photo used is by Brent Lindeque at www.goodthingsguy.com in an article on praying for South Africa.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
The Healing of a Lame Man by Paul and Barnabus in the Name of Jesus (Acts 14)
Minor Text
Jacob’s Hip is Injured Wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22-32)
Psalm 80: The Son of Man is Coming
Psalm 95: Praise and Warning
Psalm 146: The Mission of the Messiah
Daniel’s Vision of the Sovereignty of Man (7)
Ezekiel’s Vision of God’s Coming Judgment and Sovereignty (1-3)
Jesus’ Healing of a Paralytic (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26)
Jesus’ Healing of a Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5)
The Healing of a Lame Man by Paul and Barnabus in the Name of Jesus and the Raising of Paul
At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed. But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the other Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers. So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders.
The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles. There was a plot afoot among both Gentiles and Jews, together with their leaders, to mistreat them and stone them. But they found out about it and fled to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country, where they continued to preach the gospel.
In Lystra there sat a man who was lame. He had been that way from birth and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, “Stand up on your feet!” At that, the man jumped up and began to walk. When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.
But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: “Friends, why are you doing this? We too are only human, like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them.
Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe. They preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.
Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust. After going through Pisidia, they came into Pamphylia, and when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. From Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. And they stayed there a long time with the disciples.
Image Exegesis: Elders, Teachers, and Healers
The Healing of the lame man by Jesus is echoed in the healing of the lame man by Paul and Barnabus. In an almost humorous tale however, the gentiles believe that the two man themselves as “gods” in the Roman sense, and begin calling them Zeus and Hermes! So, instead of inciting the crowd to turn to Jesus, they instead sacrifice with even more fervor to their Roman gods!
You can almost feel the apostles’ exasperation. Things often just don’t work well when you’re proclaiming Jesus!
Paul and his team of apostles, teachers, and healers are trying to maintain feisty churches all of new believers (precarious church plants), to raise up new ones in new unchurched areas, and to proclaim Jesus to people who often want to kill them. You gotta love these guys!
What can the church learn about being an apostle from these guys? Well, if all else fails…pray! Pray hard! Because in the midst of all of this human chaos, a lame man is healed, and Paul himself is raised! And we know that later a church will be raised here too!
Building the church is a “dangerous” mission. But prayer is the stalwart of every early church, every attempt at proclaiming Jesus, every failsafe in danger, every raising-up need!
For only Jesus can raise the Church. Only Jesus can raise people. Only Jesus can raise up anything worth raising!
We humans do a lot of razing. But it is Jesus who does the raising!
The metaphors of “poisoning” the mind, of sacrifice, of bulls and wreaths, of signs and wonders, and of rain, gate/door, and prayer/fasting.
The idea of the Romans pulling the near-dead Paul through town attached to a horse-driven chariot kind of chills the bones, but this metaphor of dragging can be set apart from the more powerful metaphor of raising! While poisoning and dragging down, killing of animals, placing of wreaths are the metaphors antithesis in the story, the metaphors of prayer, fasting, raising are powerful reminders of Jesus’ sacrifice of love on the raised-up cross, making Him the door/gateway into which new disciples enter.
Paul speaks of newcomers having a “door” opened to them. That door is the awareness of Jesus in their midst. Sight is restored, ears are opened, the door to faith that had been closed, the gate to the kingdom has been opened to those who had not known differently.
Paul’s mission to the gentiles is so passionate perhaps, because he realizes, these people know no better. Only in being fed the “good news” of Christ can this door be opened before them, and they may enter in.
What a beautiful metaphor for proclamation! And in this, Jesus “raises” up a church! Because where two or more are gathered, there Jesus will be….in His resurrection form…..in the form of the advocate the Holy Spirit, guiding people in the Way, in the Truth, and toward the Life in Him.
This story like many of the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul’s Letters witnessed shows us the danger in proclaiming Jesus among people and in places where people do not know Him, and do not want to know Him.
Although in the west, we do not personally know this experience, in eastern and southern parts of the world, Paul’s reality is a Christian reality there too. And being a Christian is a dangerous thing, particularly if you proclaim Jesus!
And yet this is what we are called to do. But as John Wesley assures us….Jesus is there, ahead of us, calling to us to keep on going. For He is with us, through the storms, through the terrors, through injury, threat, embarrassment, humiliation, and even at the point of death. Jesus is in the world of “poisonous thoughts” and “bullish behavior” raining down His grace and raising up His Church.
The question is….will yours be one of them?