Love Is the Answer, No Matter the Question

Acts 8:4-8

If what Luke describes here about Philip’s pastoral ministry, then church has gotten a lot duller over the centuries. I haven’t had a demon shrieking release during a service since I did that infant baptism fifteen years ago! But here we find Philip sending demons home, making paralyzed folks move, raising the lame to walk, and preaching good, solid, doctrinal sermons on Jesus as the Messiah. 

Wow.

That must have been some Sunday morning!

Most of my Sundays are a bit more mundane. We sing the hymns, we offer our prayers, I preach what I hope will be a sermon that informs and calls us into a deeper understanding of what we are to do and be as we seek to follow Jesus, and then we go out to lunch. 

I do not think my experience is all that different from that of any of my Presbyterian colleagues in ministry. It is the way we are and what we do.

It is also profound in its own way. Our worship begins with something not noted in the bulletin--we gather together in connective conversation somewhere between 10:45 and 11:00 AM. Folks check on folks, share the latest news, say their “Hello’s,” check the bulletin calendar for what they will participate in during the week, and generally get formed as a congregation for worship.

That formation is more important than anything else that will happen.

Christ preached connection. As we read of his ministry, we find over and over that his main work was enfolding people into the shelter of the community of God. When Jesus confronted the demoniac named Legion, he healed him so he could reconnect with his community. When he met the woman at the well, he gave her the word she needed to become once again a full participant in her community, for she was profoundly alone when she met Christ. When he healed the man born blind, he did so so the man could go from not being able to see anyone to realizing they were there, but “trees walking,” to the final resolution where he could see and be seen by the community. As Jesus called the Twelve together, he did so with the intent of forming them as a working congregation--small, but effective--even sending them out in pairs to fly solo. His most scathing critiques of the religious groups around him were when they separated people from one another, creating divisions that were purely human, having nothing to do with God’s own welcome of every human soul as a beloved child. 

So, when our congregation forms as a community, we are engaged in the most important work of proclamation, worship, and teaching we will ever do. The rest is superfluous unless it deepens our focus as a body of love and trains our eyes to see how we can live that love found in our gathering when we are out in the real world. 

But what about all the fireworks Luke describes surrounding Philip’s work? Where is the flash-and-surprise?

Look again at what Philip actually does.

Yes, Luke shows some pretty spectacular works of ministry, but note that, for Luke, the Church’s life is a meticulous parallel to Jesus’ own ministry. The ministry of the Church simply is a re-enactment of Jesus’ ministry. So, as Jesus preached, healed, exorcised, and emptied himself, so does the Church following him. It is really all about love. It is all about connection. All those folks Philip touched, like those whom Jesus touched, are brought back into the fold of love. That is what matters, first and last.

So, our work may look different from that described in Acts, but, at heart, it is no different. The same miracle occurs each time we gather--folks are enfolded by love, able to be loved and to love others. They, then, are charged to take that with them into the world as they do, just as Philip took the charge to become an embodiment of the love he experienced while one of the Twelve. 

Love one another, and God shines in and through us.

That is ministry.