Acts 14:8-20

Limitations

Dr. Larry Thorson
April 27, 2008

Scripture: Acts 14:8-20

Today we’re going to talk about something everyone of us experiences all the time: limitations. We have limitations of money, time, knowledge and health. Every morning, no matter who you are, you battle those limitations. But every morning we have access to everything we need to overcome those limitations. So we begin with a Scripture story about a man with a serious limitation.

Acts 14:8-20

8 In Lystra there sat a man who was lame. He had been that way from birth and had never walked. 9 He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed 10 and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man (did what?) jumped up and began to walk. (It doesn’t say he sat up, it doesn’t say he looked up, it doesn’t say he thought about getting up. It says he jumped up).

Realize that these folks in what is now modern day Greece hadn’t been raised Christian. They believed in Greek mythology which taught them that there were multiple gods and any day one of them could visit disguised as humans so one always needs to be on the lookout. Let’s look at their response to the healing…

11 When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 12 Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. 13 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.

Wow, I wonder how it felt to have sacrifices offered to you. People in leadership get used to people bowing down to their orders and often forget it’s mainly because of their position that they follow their orders not because of their greatness. We begin to think we’re special when it’s really our position they honor. That means when leaders retire, pastors included, we get to learn how ordinary we really are. My wife reminds me from time to time that I am not the senior pastor of our household.

14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 15 "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 heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. 16 In the past, he let all nations go their own way. 17 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." 18 Even with these words, they had difficulty keeping the crowd from sacrificing to them.

Barnabas and Paul knew that nothing is more dangerous than being someone’s god because the gods that humans create, they always eventually destroy. That’s because it’s only a matter of time before a false god disappoints us. Paul and Barnabas got so angry with people worshipping them that they tore the clothes off their backs.

Tearing clothes off was a custom in those days to show that they understood being called equal to God was wrong. I can only imagine that at first the people of Lystra just smiled. “Oh, they’re humble gods as well.”

19 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.

These Jews were the same people who had chased Paul and Barnabas out of the last few cities they were in. They started telling the truth saying, “These men really are mortals.” We can just see Paul nodding in agreement as they backed away from the crowd saying, “Yes, that’s what we’ve been claiming. We’re mortals.” But then the enthusiasm of the crowd immediately turned to anger. They dragged the missionaries out of town and threw rocks at them until everyone thought they were dead.

It’s a dramatic story, but it happens all of the time, because we mortals have been consumed with finding a way to fix our brokenness with our limitations. Like the man born lame in Lystra, some of us are crippled by broken bodies, others by broken spirits, broken dreams, relationships, and families that have broken apart.

We can’t stand the thought that we have to limp along in life as if there’s no healing. So we keep rehearsing our favorite mythology that promises someday we will find someone or something to fix us. That’s why some people start going to church. We’ll make a god of whatever looks promising: getting into college or getting out, finding a new job, settling down or moving around, finding someone to love you just right, finding the right medication or the right treatment, finding the right church. The search goes on and on and on because whenever the person or the thing we were counting on to save us fails, and we discover our life is still broken, we become so angry we could throw a stone.

We’re no different than those people in Greece in Paul’s day. We make our little gods just like Zeus and Hermes in ancient Greece. And just like the Greeks we even believe in a time when God took on human form and walked among us. But unlike Greek mythology, God didn’t just look like a human. He became human. That means he chose to live with human limitations. That would be something like Microsoft founder Bill Gates choosing to swap his bank account and his stock options for mine. Talk about limitations.

The very first thing Jesus did after his baptism, where he identified with us, was to go into the wilderness where as a human he would have huge limitations. Remember what happened to him there? He was tempted by Satan to do something about his hunger (forty days is a long time with no food), he was tempted to do something about his mortality (Satan said jump off a cliff and see if God will catch you), and he was tempted with the human yearning for more success (Satan said to bow down to him and he’d give him the whole world).

Rather than diminishing God’s power by fixing these basic human frailties, Jesus honored them as created limitations. In other words if you’re going to be a human Jesus recognized these are the limitations you’re going to have.

So just to be clear, Jesus will not fix everything that is broken in our lives any better than anyone else. We sometimes encounter healing stories in the gospels, but we have to remember that everyone Jesus healed became sick again and eventually died. So clearly, the point of these healings was not to protect people from their mortal limitations. We will always be a mortal, which means something is always broken in our lives. Something will always, always be broken in our church.

Jesus came to give us God; not to give us the nature of gods. Only God is whole and complete. It is amazing how much of our days are spent with brokenness. It is so common that you may not even think about it. Last week I mentioned that a few weeks ago Martha, Eric and I were in San Jose fixing up my mother’s house, the mid-century house I grew up in. I thought we were just going up there to paint a few rooms and put in a few fence posts. But everything we touched seemed to break in our hands. The words I repeated the most all week were “I’ve got to fix that”. The list of things to fix when we left after six hard fourteen hour days of work was so much longer than we started with. Then we got home and had more things in our own house to fix. And as you stare at the ceiling, you’re thinking that if someone could just invent one thing that doesn’t break, you would slay an ox and call that person a god.

Being a Christian doesn’t change any of that. It doesn’t keep all of the pieces of daily life together, and it doesn’t even keep the pieces of the heart together. Being a Christian just allows us to call our broken lives holy, set apart for God who will use our brokenness.

Think about this, in Jesus Christ, we have a God who entered the mess of how it is—lives that are often falling apart, hearts that break so easily, and bodies that keep breaking until they eventually fall back into dust. He sanctified it all by becoming a broken man himself. That is what the cross proclaims.

The end of the story is my favorite part.

20 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.

After everybody had thrown their stones and left Paul for dead, the other disciples came around him. Then, Paul got up! (Notice the parallel to the lame man he healed.) It doesn’t say he sat up. It doesn’t he thought about getting up. It says he had the faith to get back up. And where does the battered, old apostle head, but right back into town.

When your life is battered and broken, what is it that will get you back up on your feet? Your own tenacity and commitment? No, you don’t have enough. Your own power? No, you are not a god, and don’t have the power of gods. Your own savings? No, alone you don’t have enough.

What is it that will get you back up on your feet? The hope created by a God who goes beside you. The hope based on a track record recorded in the Bible and in the 99+ years of this church’s history that the power of God shines best through broken vessels. That hope always gets back up and goes back to its mission.

So like the man who was lame in our story, or like the apostle Paul who was left for dead, we get back up. Don’t just think about getting up. Don’t just sit up. Don’t just look up. Show God that you believe in God’s almighty power and jump up. Jump up. You have a God who has experienced your limitations and will meet you where you are. But if you just sit there and say I have this and that limitation therefore I can’t, you won’t.

But pastor we’re living on fixed incomes and we’re in an economic downturn, and we’ve got a lot of unemployed and underemployed people around us and gas and food prices are skyrocketing not to mention my medical expenses. My house is worth a third of what it was two years ago. And to make matters worse, my body aches. I’m not as young as I used to be.

To all that I say stand up on your feet and see what God will do with your limitations. Amen.

This sermon was adapted from a sermon written and delivered by Dr. M. Craig Barnes at the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh on May 6, 2007 called “Enjoying Limitations”. Used with permission.