What Do We Do Now?

How many times have you asked this very question, “What do we do now?” This may be one of the most common questions in the human experience. When the hurricane comes, we say, “What do we do now?”  When the leader dies or leaves or implodes, we say, “What do we do now?” When the doctor gives you the worst possible news, you say, “What do I do now?” You can image how many times this question popped up in the biblical history. When God pushed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, she must have turned to him and ask, “OK, big guy, what do we do now?”  When the Hebrew slaves escaping Egypt ran headlong into the Red Sea with the Egyptian army hard on their heels, they must have faced Moses and said, “What do we do now?”  When the descendants gathered on the high ground east of the Promise Land and looked over that fertile land full of walled cities and armed inhabitants, they must have returned to their camps and asked, “What do we do now?” Think of the many times, the disciples must have asked themselves this question. Thousands of hungry people crowded around Jesus. “Feed them,” Jesus said. And they turned to one another and asked, “What do we do now? All we have is five loaves and two fish.”  Or when the man came to them, wanting to speak to Jesus, and said, “Have mercy on my son. He has seizures and falls into the fire or the water.”  Those hapless disciples turned to one another and said some version of this, “What should we do?”  Or later, when Joseph of Arimathea took the dead body of Jesus and placed it in a tomb. The Bible says he rolled a big stone in front of the entrance of the tomb. The women sitting and watching must have said, “Now what do we do?” This common life question is the one facing us today. What do we do now?  First, the loss of members; then, the COVID pandemic; and now, the Helena Hurricane. In between these big, public events, lots of other things, like the question from the Christian Orthodox church in town: Would you sell your sanctuary building to us? We went into a time of discernment, focused on this question, “What do we do now?” To sell or not to sell?  Or the challenge from some gay Christians to go public with our practice of inclusion: “What should we do?”  Or as we watched the homeless population coming to eat on Sunday evenings double over the course of a year or so, even before the storm, we were asking “What do we do to embrace this, sustain this, and bless this?” What do we do now? I. This is the question that Simon Peter heard after he preached his famous sermon on Pentecost. Here is the way it reads: “When the people heard this—the sermon, about the death and resurrection of Jesus—they were cut to the heart and said to Simon Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” Yes, the preacher gave a short answer, but this question must have generated intense conversation and many opinions and, finally, a course of action. Last week, I read through the list of actions that served as their answer to their own question: baptize, change directions, teach, hang out together, eat together, pray, share with those in need, gather in public spaces and private spaces, and praise God. That is my list of ten things, found in The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2, verses 37-47. When you read this narrative, your list might read a little different. But these 11 verses of holy scripture describe for us how those disciples answered their own question: What do we do now?  Here is what they did: change courses, submit to baptism, listened to the teaching, hang out together, eat together as often as possible, pray, give what they had to aid those who needed things, gather in public spaces, like the temple, and gathered in private spaces, like homes, and also praise God. These ten things did what? They created community. They fostered friendship. They mobilized a crowd of people. They brought people together toward a common end. They offered an alternative to the other ways of being a person in the world. They created community. It was a community of Jesus followers. It was a community of faith, hope, and love. It was a community of care and compassion. It was a community singing with joy and living with hope. It was a community of welcome and wonder. It was a community of grace and grit. It was a community head and heart and hands. It was a community with two commandments: love and worship God and love and help the neighbor. It was not a political community, seeking power. It was not an economic community seeking wealth. It was not a private community seeking isolation. It was not a racial community, seeking purity. It was not a scientific community seeking knowledge. It was a spiritual community, worshipping God, following Jesus, and living in the fulness of the Spirit. Here they found acceptance and affirmation, they found grace and peace, they found meaning and motivation, they found the promise of a new future. In that community, they pulled away from the oppression of Rome and the politics of the temple. It was a gathering of stability, and sanity, and safety. It was a place of peace, of prayer, and of praise in the midst of the wide struggle for power throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus warned his people of the struggle that was coming. I preached a series of sermons on those warnings just a couple months ago. “Signs of the Times”, I called it. He gave instructions and guidance on how the community of Christ could cope with the social and political turmoil around them. Thirty some years later, their country erupted into open, armed rebellion against the Roman Empire. And 60 years later, it happened again. The apostles guided their community of faith, hope, and love through that chaos. We will need our community of faith, hope, and love in the months and years ahead. There is turbulence coming. Strap on your seat belts. Put your food trays in the upright position. Straighten your seat. Or to use the language of the apostles: pray, rejoice, stay together, teach and be taught, share with those in need, and gather in public and in private; or as we say it here: sing for joy and live with hope. I listened as an 80-year-old woman described casting her ballot during early voting in Georgia yesterday. “As I entered my ballot into the machine, I started to cry. I did not realize how deeply moved I was that at last this nightmare was over. All the hell that we have been through during this campaign.” We all feel this way. These last six months and indeed, the last four years have been traumatic for the country. It has divided us, and exhausted us, and depressed us. We all want it to be over. We want a United States of America. But I am warning you: the worst is yet to come. I will cast my early ballot tomorrow, Monday, in Travelers Rest. I am glad to do this. I hope I vote for the winner, but I have some news for you: it is not over. Regardless of who wins, the future is fraught with danger and difficulty. As a country, we are in for a turbulent time that will make the last few years the calm before the storm. One candidate promises a wholesale restructuring of government in America, the release of many jailed people, and the use of the U. S. Army to move millions of residents out of the country. And if he loses the election, he has promised a wholesale uprising by his armed followers that will make January 6 look like a picnic. We will be asking one another, What do we do now? We will be distraught at the social and political conditions of our country. We will be staring into a situation not seen in our country since the 1860s.  We will be afraid for ourselves, our communities, and our nation. I am not a prophet. I have not seen a midnight vision. No angel has come to me and taken me into the third heaven. I am like you: seeing what is happening, hearing what is said, and feeling the emotions all around us. These are times that try our souls and test our resolve. And the times will get worse before they get better. II What do we do now? We need a strong spiritual community. We need to join together in singing for joy and living with hope. We need to bind our lives together and make a wave of welcome and wonder. We need to pray for strength. We need to pay attention to those in great need. We need to hang out, eat and pray together, and praise the lord. We need to give our attention to the apostles’ teaching, reminding us of God’s gracious presence around us, of God’s good purpose in the world, of God’s gentle power in us and through us and around us. Amidst the chaos of the world, the people of Jesus are giving thanks, serving the poor, and making intercession for those around us. We have survived the pandemic and the hurricane. But what is coming is stronger, more dangerous, and more demanding. What shall we do? We shall be the church of the living God; we shall be the community of Jesus; we shall be a people filled with the holy spirit. I have written you, in the newsletters, about all this. To be the church we need to be for our community, our neighborhood, we need to consecrate ourselves to gospel work. The world will depend upon it. I want you to notice how the five things I have set before you—worship, outreach, ministry, prayer, with attention to our campus—mirror so closely the ten things mentioned in The Acts of the Apostles. In gospel ministry, we give from our abundance to feed and clothe and heal the poor; in gospel outreach, we touch the lives of the lonely, the isolated, the forgotten; in gospel prayer, we call down the higher power; in gospel worship, we remind ourselves that the cable news shows do not tell the whole story, that God is at work among us and through us. In these gospel buildings that we own, we gather to teach, sing, pray, and eat, just like those early believers gathered in the temple and in their homes. We need a strong church. You need a strong spiritual community. The country needs us and hundreds like us, not carried away by political illusion or economic interest, but carried along by the presence of God. What our country is going to need, now more than ever, is the sound of people singing for joy, and living with hope. What our country is going to need is a dramatic increase in welcome and wonder. What our country is going to need is this gospel community, committed to prayer, ministry, outreach, and worship. What our country and our neighborhood is going to need is not primarily Burger King or a used car lot or even a digital newspaper, but rather a community of Jesus people doing what Jesus did long ago. What do we do now? We band together and follow Jesus. Are you ready?