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ON BEING MISTAKEN FOR A MANNEQUIN |
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A "Sermon on the Net" by Henk Frijters
Acts 2:1-21
The sign on the stage proclaimed, “The Motionless Man:
Make Him Laugh. Win $100.” The temptation was irresistible.
For three hours boys and girls, men and women performed
every antic and told every joke they could dream up. But
Bill Fuqua, the Motionless Man, stood perfectly still.
Luis Palau in his book HEALTHY HABITS FOR SPIRITUAL GROWTH
tells about Fuqua, the GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS
champion at doing nothing. Fuqua, says Palau, appears
so motionless during his routines at shopping malls and
amusement parks that he’s sometimes mistaken for
a mannequin.
Fuqua discovered his unique talent at the age of fourteen
while standing motionless in front of a Christmas tree
as a joke. A woman touched him and exclaimed, “Oh,
I thought it was a real person.”
Doing nothing is really impossible—even for the
Motionless Man. Fuqua attributes his feigned paralysis
to hyper elastic skin, an extremely low pulse rate, and
intense concentration. He may not laugh at your jokes,
but he readily admits that he still has to breathe and
blink—occasionally.
(Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishing, 1994)
I read about Bill Fuqua, the motionless man, and I thought
about so many churches. So many congregations have mastered
the art of doing nothing.
TEXT
We read about the church on the Day of Pentecost—the
flames of fire, the sound of a mighty wind, the strange
excitement that catches the attention of passers by. This
is not the church as we know it! The church on the Day
of Pentecost was a church that was chaotic and yet caring,
tightly joined as a group, yet reaching out with extraordinary
vigor. It was a church ablaze with the Holy Spirit.
There was a news item sometime back about a man, Gail L. Boller,
age twenty-seven, of Mankato, Minnesota, who was fined
for trying to set fire to an evangelist while he was
preaching. (John Kohut and Roland Sweet, COUNTDOWN TO
THE MILLENNIUM, (New York: A Signet Book, 1994), p.
70.)
I don’t know the background of this news item, but my guess
is that there are a lot of evangelists, pastors and
lay people who need to be set on fire in a figurative
and positive sense. The church on the Day of Pentecost
was afire with enthusiasm and excitement. What was there
about this particular church that made them susceptible
to this kind of outbreak of Christian fervour?
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NOTICE, FIRST OF ALL, THAT THE CHURCH AT PENTECOST WAS A CHURCH
OF INTENSE FELLOWSHIP.
They loved one another. They enjoyed being with one another.
They had strong bonds of care and concern.
v. 1 And when the day of Pentecost was come, they
were all together in one place.
42 And they kept their attention fixed on the Apostles’
teaching and were united together in the taking of broken
bread and in prayer.
44 And all those who were of the faith kept together,
and had all things in common;
45 And exchanging their goods and property for money,
they made division of it among them all, as they had need.
46 And day by day, going in agreement together regularly
to the Temple and, taking broken bread together in their
houses, they took their food with joy and with true hearts,
Years ago a man named Halford E. Luccock said that there
are many kinds of churches. One is preoccupied with the
mechanics of the organization. Activities loom larger
than love. He calls such a church “the Church of
the Holy Fidgets.” Marked by busyness, it never
gets down to the real reason for its existence.
He described a church in Chicago that is another kind
of church. Named St. Stephens, it is called “the
Church at the End of the Road.” Luccock concluded
that “the end of the road” is a fitting location
for a church. There are so many people at the end of life’s
road whose strength and hope are gone; it is there the
church needs to be. ( Halford E. Luccock, MORE PREACHING
VALUES IN THE EPISTLES OF PAUL, Vol. II, (New York: Harper
and Brothers Publishers, 1961), p. 217.)
Halford Luccock was describing the church at its best—a
caring church, a church where love is experienced. Jesus
said that the world would know his disciples by their
love for one another—and that was certainly true
of the church on the Day of Pentecost. They ate together,
sang together, and worshipped together. They even had
their possessions in common. They drew their strength
from their powerful sense of unity.
Someone has drawn a helpful analogy about the importance
of unity in the church to the life of a honey bee. As
I understand it, honey bees cannot live in isolation.
You always keep bees (plural), you never keep a single
bee. If you isolate a bee, you can give it the most favourable
temperature, you can give it plenty of water and plenty
of food . . . but the bee will die within two to three
days. There is something about the community of bees that
keeps individual bees alive. You can keep bees, but you
cannot keep a bee.
In a sense that is also true of the church. One of the
chief sources of our strength is our unity. If we are
not as vital in our witness as we might be, it is probably
because our bonds of love are not as strong as they might
be. The church at Pentecost had an intense fellowship.
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NOTICE IN THE SECOND PLACE THAT THE CHURCH AT PENTECOST WAS A
PRAYING CHURCH.
We read in the 42nd verse of Acts 2 that they devoted themselves
to “the breaking of bread and prayers.” Prayer
fuelled their vitality.
42 And they kept their attention fixed on the Apostles’
teaching and were united together in the taking of broken
bread and in prayer.
I read about a new kind of occupational hazard that afflicts
a certain segment of our population. Someone has dubbed
it “Anglican knees.” You’ve heard of
tennis elbow, but I’ll bet you’ve never heard
of Anglican knees. Researchers in England last summer
revealed that people who kneel a lot have a greater risk
of developing arthritis than those who don’t. A
study of 2,000 people showed that folks in the kneeling
professions—carpet fitters, construction workers,
as well as vicars, priests and nuns—often end up
with bad knees. Apparently kneeling for long periods puts
the kneecap under strain and wears away protective cartilage,
promoting arthritis. (THE OBSERVER, September 1994, p.
9.)
I don’t want to sound too cynical, but I doubt if
too many Christians nowadays have to worry very much about
the wear and tear on their knees from too much praying.
And it is sad. Where there is no prayer there is no power.
Irvin Jacob Goodwin tells of spending the Christmas season,
in 1944, in a place called Ankang in what is now the People’s
Republic of China. Goodwin was an aircraft welder. Along
with four other soldiers he had been sent from their base
near Calcutta, India, to salvage two damaged B 29s at
a fighter strip in Ankang.
One Sunday these five soldiers crossed the river and went
into a small village. At a little open shop there was
a large copper kettle over a charcoal fire. The soldiers
started drinking rice wine from the kettle and singing
American songs. They drank too much, and by afternoon
only one of them was in condition to return to the base.
In the street they met a missionary who took them to his
house outside the town. In the missionary’s home
a fire was roaring in a large potbellied stove. His wife
handed out hymn books, then played the piano while they
sang Christmas carols. Goodwin remembers that he cried.
The missionaries gave the soldiers supper and put them
to bed in an outer building. The next morning they fed
them breakfast and took them down to the river. The soldiers
got onto a sampan and went back to their base.
Goodwin says that God used the Christian hospitality of
this missionary couple and their concern for them to prepare
his heart to accept Christ as his Saviour.
About five years ago Goodwin began an effort to find this
missionary couple. His efforts failed until August 1993,
when he heard that the Lutheran Free Church of Norway
had a mission in Ankang during 1944. He wrote a letter
to the denomination in Oslo and found that the missionary
couple in Ankang had been the Reverend and Mrs. Johan
Tidemana Johansen. Rev. Johansen was dead, but on September
21, 1993, Goodwin phoned Johansen’s widow, Margaret,
then 93 years old. She had already received his letter
from the mission office.
About three weeks after their phone conversation Mrs.
Johansen sent him a letter that included notes from her
diary from 1944. Entered on December 17 and 18 was the
record of their stay in the Johansens’ home. He
read carefully these words for the night of December 17,
1944: “We fixed places for those soldiers to stay
overnight and we prayed much for them.” (“The
Visit,” as told to John T. Newton, Jr., DECISION,
December 1994, p. 8. )
Here is the secret to extraordinary power. Prayer.
No matter how much activity we carry on in the
church, we will never be what God has called us to be,
until we are united in prayer.
That was the second characteristic of the church on the
Day of Pentecost. They had an intense fellowship and they
were a praying church.
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FINALLY, THE CHURCH AT PENTECOST WAS A CHURCH THAT REACHED OUT.
This was a church that was unashamedly
evangelistic in its focus. It is no surprise that thousands
were added to this tiny church in a short period of time.
They saw that as their primary reason for existence.
44 And all those who were of the faith kept together,
and had all things in common;
45 And exchanging their goods and property for money,
they made division of it among them all, as they had need.
46 And day by day, going in agreement together regularly
to the Temple and, taking broken bread together in their
houses, they took their food with joy and with truehearts,
47 Giving praise to God, and having the approval of all
the people; and every day the number of those who had
salvation was increased by the Lord.
I know. Not everyone in the church gets excited about
outreach. A report in a Rochester, Pennsylvania, church
bulletin read like this: “The outreach committee
has enlisted 25 visitors to make calls on people who are
not afflicted with any church.” I trust that this
was a typo.
It’s interesting that in today’s world only
the church is embarrassed to reach out to people.
Political parties reach out; we’ve had phonecalls
of particular parties in order to solicite votes.
Civic Clubs reach out, I’ve been approached several
times to join Kiwanis or Rotary
Certainly businesses reach out, even under false pretenses.
“Could you answer some questions about allergies
and help us in our research --- the upshot being a Vacuum
Cleaner Salesman.
At the end of World War II, Robert Woodruff, president
of Coca Cola declared, “In my generation it is my
desire that everyone in the world have a taste of Coca
Cola.” Today Coca Cola is sold from the deserts
of Africa to the interior of China. Why? Because Woodruff
motivated his colleagues to reach their generation around
the world for Coke. When I was up in Alert, near the north
pole, in the ice-fields away from everyone and everything,
I found a Coke can in the ice fields!
Any healthy organization reaches out. If it did not, it
would die. Why are we in the church satisfied to outdo
Bill Fuqua in our commitment to remain motionless?
Mark Sutton compares us to a kindly old lady who was watching
as a pair of golfers sliced their drives deep into the
rough. The golfers went in search of their errant golf
balls. The grass was high, the trees were thick, and tempers
flared as they looked in vain through the underbrush.
The elderly lady observed all this from the front porch
of her house. After the search had lasted nearly half
an hour, she finally called out to them, “I don’t
want to bother you men,” she said, “but will
it be cheating if I tell you where the golf balls are?”
“As we look around us, we see people searching
for lost values, for real meaning in life, and for hope.We
know where it is to be found, Do we want to have the little
old Lady syndrome. Just watch them searching and never
telling them where to find that what they so desperately
are looking for ? We must not, we can not, keep silent.”
Fulfilling the Great Commission means sharing Jesus Christ
with those around. It means speaking up and guiding them
to forgiveness of sins and salvation.” (Publication
Source Unknown )
Leighton Ford puts it like this: “There are too
many churches with impeccable credentials for orthodox
theology whose outreach is almost nil. They are sound,
but they are sound asleep . . . It is far too easy for
the Church to become a sort of religious clique where
Christians retreat from the world,” says Ford. (
Leighton Ford, THE CHRISTIAN PERSUADER (New York: Harper
& Row, 1966) )
The church on the Day of Pentecost understood that its
primary mission was to reach out to the world. The unity
that they experienced and the prayers that they offered
were only to help them more ably fulfill the task that
Christ had given them to make disciples of all persons.
They existed not for their own benefit, but for the world’s.
There is a legend that at the entrance to Heaven, two
questions will be asked of everyone who comes seeking
admittance. The first question is this: “Did you
come alone?” And if—tragically—your
answer is “Yes,” the second question follows.
“How could you?”
I don’t want the church to be mistaken for a mannequin,
a motionless mannequin, do you?
The answer is really quite easy:
a commitment to fellowship,
a commitment to support
a commitment to prayer,
a commitment to outreach.
That’s what Pentecost is all about. That’s
what TRUE Pentecost is all about.
Pentecost can happen again, but it will only happen when
the four attributes of the early church are present: Fellowship,
Support, Prayer and outreach by every-one involved.
Henk Frijters is involved in several websites and ministries
that promote Christian growth. You can get more information
and subscribe to the free newsletter, "Sermons on
the Net", at http://folsom.sk.ca/gohere.html |
Scripture taken from the
Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.Copyright ©
1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights
reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International
Bible Society.
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered
trademarks of International Bible Society. Use of either
trademark for the offering of goods or services requires
the prior written consent of International Bible Society.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy
Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996. Used
by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton,
IL 60189, USA. All rights reserved.
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