“Save Yourselves”

Acts 2:32-41

Acts 2:37-41 (The Message): Cut to the quick, those who were listening asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers! Brothers! So now what do we do?” Peter said, “Change your life, turn to God and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is targeted to you and your children, but also to all who are far away – whomever, in fact, our Master God invites” He went on in this vein for a long time, urging them over and over, “Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture!” That day about three thousand took him at his word, were baptized and were signed up.”

Theodore P. Ferris: When a generation is branded as a crooked one, it does not mean that everything in it is crooked, nor does it mean that every person in it is a crook. What it means is that the direction of that generation is crooked, and that in general it is moving toward death and not toward life.”

John H. Snow and Victor P. Furnish (writing in the ‘70’s): It is becoming more and more apparent to more and more people that they must save themselves from this crooked generation in order to love it more redemptively. Only to the extent that communities of Christians believe themselves to be quite separate from the main stream of American culture can they conceive themselves as being saved, and only as a people saved by Jesus Christ can they minister to this crooked generation and truly care for its salvation. How can we as communities of Christians without self-righteousness make ourselves accessible to those of this crooked generation is the great evangelistic task set before us. Christendom no longer exists, only Christ and Christianity. The situation which faced Peter is the situation which faces us as Christians.”

[prayer]

In First Peter 2:9 the apostle reminds his readers that they are, among other things, a chosen race and God’s own people, people who have been called out of darkness. Implicit in all that is the reality that God’s people must, by their beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes, set themselves apart from the rest of their culture.

Several years ago Will Willimon and Stan Hauerwas addressed that reality in their book Resident Aliens. If we are to be effective witnesses to Jesus Christ in this present generation, we must live as resident aliens: living in the world without being of the world. That doesn’t mean doing the Amish thing and essentially isolating ourselves from the world around us. It means taking seriously Paul’s words to the Romans about living lives that are not conformed to the world, or as The Message puts it, “[Not becoming] so well adjusted to [our] culture that [we] fit into it without even thinking.”

Within the context of Peter’s Pentecost sermon that moved 3,000 people to accept Christ the corrupt or crooked generation to whom he consisted of the religious and other leaders of Judea who had demanded that Jesus be crucified. One could save oneself from this particularly sick and stupid generation only by accepting Jesus Christ for whom and what he was: the Messiah sent and anointed by God who died on a cross and was raised from the dead.

Odds are that a goodly number of those 3,000 converts had been among those calling for the crucifixion of Jesus. They had themselves been part of that crooked generation from which Peter advised them to save themselves. Trusting Jesus as Lord and Savior involved repenting of the roles they had played in his crucifixion. One sign of such repentance was a repudiation of the accepted religious culture – that generation who had accepted neither Jesus’ true identity nor his teachings.

Peter’s sermon cut those 3,000 listeners to the quick. They were brokenhearted in their grief over having participated in the death of Jesus. They wanted to know what they could do. Peter told them to repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus, and receive the Holy Spirit. Then he called upon them to further demonstrate their faithfulness by separating themselves from the dominant culture of that time and place. He called them to become resident aliens, people who by the power of the Holy Spirit lived in the midst of that culture without being conformed to it.

I think that we can all agree that, regardless of our political or theological perceptions, that our present day American culture is quite sick and stupid. Not everything about it is crooked. Not everyone in it is a crook. But there are multiple signs that it is a culture moving more in the direction of death than life.

The abortion business is booming, pornography is extremely profitable, human trafficking is part and parcel of our culture’s rotten underbelly, and drugs are being openly bought and sold. The wages of sin, even the most disgusting and despicable forms of sin like child pornography, are quite high.

Our whole society is being defined more and more by coarseness, incivility, and vulgarity. Kids are being stabbed to death on their way home from school. Parents are drowning their children in bathtubs. Incidences of physical assault and verbal abuse are increasing. Reasonable, intelligent, and informed theological and political debate and discussion are almost impossible in this time of right wing, left wing polarization. The American political process has become a tiptoe through not the tulips, but that smelly substance with which we fertilize them.

How do will live as God’s people in such a culture? How are we to go about being in it without being of it? How do we save ourselves from it while still being able to minister to it? How do we work to transform society without being corrupted by it? How do we define ourselves as people delivered from the darkness into the light of God’s gracious love as we seek to share the Good News of Jesus with those still imprisoned in darkness? How do we speak God’s prophetic Word loudly enough to be heard by those being seduced by profitable sinfulness?

We do not stand self-righteously outside culture, smugly letting people know that we’re holy and they’re not. We admit that we too are constantly tempted by our culture’s seductive call. We confess that sometimes we surrender to those seductions. We remember that this culture isn’t their culture; it is our culture. We cannot totally separate ourselves from it. Nor can we cleanly divide it into categories of them versus us. We who follow Jesus, forgiven and redeemed though we may be, are still sinners, whose sins contribute to the sickness and stupidity of this culture.

Though we do so sadly and reluctantly, we must admit that there really is no such thing as a Christian nation, culture, or society. And that even the best political and economic systems are still corrupted by human sinfulness. And that, sins of social injustice are just as real and horrible as sins of the flesh.

Come Judgment Day those who have not made an intentional and conscientious effort to respond to the least of these in our world in a Christlike manner will be judged just as harshly as are the adulterers, addicts, pornographers, thieves, and murderers. One may possess morals that are above reproach, a theology that is the epitome of orthodoxy, and a lifestyle that is as pure as the driven snow and still end up in hell. Piety alone won’t get us to heaven.

Regardless of the intentions of those who founded this nation, we do not presently live in a Christian society. American society is essentially secular. Our culture is quickly devolving into a paganism in which self-fulfillment is our god. More and more our social religion is one of a self-centered and hedonistic consumerism on which our economy is almost totally dependent.

In such an atmosphere our society all too often bears a frightening resemblance to those to which the Prophets Amos, Isaiah, and Micah addressed God’s Word of judgment. The poor are often trampled on. The needy are often pushed aside when they seek justice. Our neighbors have become objects by and through whom we serve our own selfish lusts and desires.

It is to such a culture that we are called to evangelize. It is into such a world that our Lord sends us to be his ambassadors. It is to such a society that we are to proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. The question is not, how can we do this? It is how dare we not? Upheld by God’s Word and empowered by the Holy Spirit we are called to proclaim the crucified and risen Jesus to people who often don’t have the faintest idea about whom and what we speak. We may not ultimately be able to stop our culture’s slow but sure descent into hell. We can – we must - invite others to join us to save themselves from it. We must say to them what Peter said on Pentecost, “Change your life. Turn to God and be baptized, each of you in the name of Jesus Christ, so your sins are forgiven. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit… Get out while you can; get out of this sick and stupid culture!” Amen.