Click to hear this sermon  sermon100822

  Ernie was miserable. His wife of over forty years had died in the past year. His son had
pretty much abandoned him.

Behind the Face of an Angel - Acts 6: 8-15 - August 22, 2010 - Cicero United Methodist Church
- Everett J. Bassett

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            Ernie was miserable. His wife of over forty years had died in the past year. His son had pretty much abandoned him. Ernie was a lifelong smoker, and was paying for it now with emphysema that made every breath a hard, hard struggle. Now he was in the hospital, and probably heading for a nursing home for the waning days of his life. I visited Ernie one or two
times a week, and we had a good relationship. He wouldn't call himself a praying man, but
always sat quietly while I asked God for Ernie's healing. Ernie was miserable.

            Then one day, everything changed. I could see it the moment I walked into his room.

Normally, I braced myself spiritually for what I knew would be a difficult visit, sitting with him as he endured the pain of his existence. But this time was different. He was smiling, peaceful,
eager to see me. He told me something wonderful had happened. He had been sitting out in
the hallway in his wheelchair. It was a day like any other. Then, suddenly, a woman was
kneeling down in front of him. Her face was very close to his. Ernie said she told him that he
should not be afraid. Jesus loved him very much, and someday he would be in heaven, and he
would be breathing free and clear, and everything would be beautiful. She told him to keep
believing, and to love the Lord. And then she was gone. Now, as he told me about it, tears of
joy rolled down his face, and he could just barely get the last words out. I finally figured out
what he was saying. It was, 'She had the face of an angel.'

            I have some idea who it was that paid Ernie that momentary visit, someone who had a
wonderful ministry of visitation in the hospital. Those few seconds she spent encouraging Ernie
did more for him than twenty visits from me. She was, indeed, an angel in many peoples' lives.
And I think of Ernie's words when I read the description of Stephen in today's scripture lesson;
Acts 6: 15 says that " ... gazing at (Stephen) all who sat in the council saw that his face was like
the face of an angel." I try to imagine just what that means - just what those people saw. Was
it like Moses' face when he came down from the mountain - a face they said was shining? Was
it like Jesus' face when he was transfigured on the mountaintop, where it said that 'his face
shone like the sun?' Or was it like the face that Ernie saw, full of love and compassion and
Good News from God? Do you know someone who represents the face of an angel to you?

            The story of Stephen gives us an opportunity to imagine what that would look like. But more importantly, it gives us an opportunity to ask what is behind the face of an angel. Our faces are, after all, windows to our souls. And in this episode from the Bible, we see some of the words
that describe Stephen's soul. For example, verse 8 says that Stephen was 'full of grace.'
"Grace', of course, is a much-used word with many shades of meaning. But I think that when
you say someone is full of grace, it means that they have an attitude of favor toward others.
There is something unconditional in their love; kindness comes naturally. In the hospital
hallway, dozens of people walked by Ernie every day, and paid him no mind. But one woman
stopped. She didn't know Ernie; she didn't need to like him or judge him, or assume anything
about his life. She was full of grace, and she took a few moments to share that grace. It was
just what she did. And it made all the difference in the world to another human being.

            There are so many human transactions in the course of a day that are conditional. The
server in the restaurant better fulfill our expectations. The motorist in the next car better do
right by us, or feel our rage. The stranger in the elevator not get in our space. Even our closest
relationships are often conducted under specific rules, often unspoken, often prescribed by
society's definition of what constitutes a normal friendship, or a normal marriage. We live in a
critical society, and we are making judgments about people all the time. Grace is something
that moves beyond that. It doesn't rise and fall with the actions of others. It doesn't follow the
rules for normalcy. It breaks the rules for the sake of love. It reflects the kind of love God has-
a love that is constant even in the face of human sin. I heard someone say once that some
Christians act as if they had been baptized in vinegar, they are so sour toward others. Grace is
the opposite of that; it is what angels are made of. And that showed on Stephen's face.

            Acts 1: 8 also says that Stephen was full of power. I suppose that word brings to mind many images, having to do with great forces of nature, or overwhelming physical strength. But this power of Stephen's was much more personal than that. It's about being empowered to live
with purpose and passion, and to exercise the most powerful force in the world - the force of
God's love. It's the power to be motivated from a deep core within, and to determine who you
will be, and how you will act, rather than letting yourself be determined by others.

            Stephen, following right in the footsteps of Christ, was a supreme example of that kind of
personal power. Think about it. Some people didn't like his faith-witness, so they challenged
him. Acts 6: 9-10 says (I'll skip the big names): " ... some of those who belonged to the
synagogue of the Freedmen (and some others - we don't know who these people were, and
probably they were normally rival synagogues against each other - but they came together to
oppose this new Christian teaching) arose and disputed with Stephen. But they could not
withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke." So far, no crime. There was a
disagreement, a discussion, and Stephen held his own in the debate.

            But then his foes go further: " ...they secretly instigated men, who said, 'We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.' And they stirred up the people and the
elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the
council, and set up false witnesses who said, (and now listen to the exaggerations) 'This man
never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that
this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses
delivered to us." I am so glad that we no longer live in a time where the words of our leaders
get exaggerated and twisted around by their opponents, and where one side accuses the other
of threatening what is holy, and perverting what the founding fathers intended, and changing
the customs we hold dear. And, if you're not catching it, of course I'm being facetious. The
Bible is painful to read sometimes because it is so familiar. The same stuff is still going on.

            And you might expect to read that Stephen denied the charges, or debated again with his
foes, or that his countenance changed to righteous anger. But instead, it is here that we read
that "gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel."

That was possible because behind that face was power. Stephen simply wasn't going to lose
the core of his faith and his love and his grace because of the actions of others.

            It's no accident that the story of Stephen sounds so much like the story of Jesus - how he
treated others, how he responded to unfair treatment, how he calmly addressed his arresters
and accusers, how he forgave even those that put him to death as the first Christian martyr
after Jesus. Of course, Jesus was the Son of God, far beyond our hope of imitation. We can
never attain His glory. Except Jesus Himself, and the Bible in general, seem to spend a lot of
time telling us just the opposite. We're not perfect like Jesus, but Jesus wanted us to know that
through the work of the Holy Spirit, you and I can walk through this life with the same grace
and the same power that Jesus had. Stephen was one of the first great examples of that.

That's what shone on his face that day. And what shows on ours, when we are truly in line with
Christ's love.

            As many of you know, Sharon and I had an amazing opportunity to travel these last few
weeks, including some wonderful days with some great people from our church. (And as an
aside, I just want to say that video cameras should no longer be allowed on church trips. But
that's another story.) Sharon and I planned to spend a day in Zurich, Switzerland, and what we
didn't know was that that day in Zurich is the wildest day of the year. It is the day of their
street parade, where millions of people come from all over and just act crazy. I've never been
to the Mardi Gras, but it must be something like this. And I rolled with the party for a while - it
was interesting and fun as it could be, with Sharon and me not knowing the language, and not
coming prepared with wild costumes.

            But after a while, we got kind of bored. So Sharon was doing some shopping, and I decided to sit down and read some in my book. I did that for about ten minutes, and then it dawned on me that men who had dyed their whole bodies purple or blue or bright pink and were walking around in diapers, and women who wore chains and butterfly wings and little else, and six-foot-four men with full beards dressed up as Heidi - were looking at me reading my book as if I was just weird. So I put the book away and walked around for awhile, and just reflected on the jarring contrasts of that day.

            The first stop that day had been the Kunsthaus, one of the great art museums in the world.

And in the serenity of that place, we had walked around and tried to take in the great spiritual
vision of Monet and Van Gogh and Picasso. Then the second stop was the Grossmunster, the
largest church in Zurich, where the great Protestant reformer Ulrich Zwingli had preached his
vision of the pure Word of God, preached without visual distractions like icons or statues. And
again, it was a place of quiet and reflective peace. And then next thing we know we're at this
street party, where every outrageous and erotic costume and idea imaginable is acted out with
unbelievable noise levels, and without inhibition. And I thought, How in the world do you put
these pieces together? What would God be saying in such a day of contrasts?

            Sharon saw the answer first. It was a group of people wearing yellow T-shirts, and handing out yellow balloons that had a simple message on them (and I won't do well with this German):

Jesu lieber dich - Jesus loves you. Here and there in that wild crowd, you could see these
balloons, or spot those T-shirts. For anything I saw, these folks weren't swept up in the
raucousness of the party. But neither were they apart from it. They were there; they were
having fun; they weren't judging anyone, or putting anybody down; they didn't look like they
were baptized in vinegar; and they weren't obnoxious or aggressive. They were simply a
presence of grace and power in a crazy place. For me, and I bet for many others, they were the
face of an angel.

            I believe that God loves to show up in crazy or lonely or searching or hurting places. One
time he did it on a painful and brutal cross; another time it was in the radiance of an empty
tomb; yet another time it looked like tongues of fire, and made people speak in strange
tongues. But more often than that, I believe, it's through angels - not the little winged cherubs
we see in paintings - but people like you. People with shining faces, reflecting the grace and
love and personal power that lies behind them. People who come with a simple message -
'Jesus loves you' - and put it into action.

            I've seen that message transform Ernie and scores like him; I've felt the power of angels
showing up in the least expected places. I find it here in this place day after day. And I have no
doubt that God is sending that message out to one day change this world from darkness to
light. We're part of that. So let's cultivate that deep, deep joy in Christ that has no choice but
to show up on our faces.