How does ordinary faithfulness allow us to enjoy extraordinary glory? Acts 9:32-35 Sermon | Prescott Anglican Church
Text: Acts 9:32-35
This homily on Acts 9:32–35 centers on the truth that God often works extraordinary grace through the Church’s ordinary faithfulness. Peter’s simple journey to visit, encourage, correct, and remind scattered Christians of the gospel becomes the setting for Aeneas’s healing. The sermon emphasizes that Peter is not the source of the miracle—Jesus is—and that the physical healing ultimately points beyond restored mobility to the greater gift of new life and salvation in Christ.
It then applies this to a weary congregation: Christians are called not to be isolated, but to bear one another’s burdens through everyday acts of care—a hug, helping with a child, carrying something for someone—and, above all, continually pointing each other to Christ. The central encouragement is that our hope cannot rest on circumstances or “if only” outcomes; Christ is the lasting hope and comfort, and he can use ordinary moments of love and service to draw others to himself.
Sermon Manuscript:
Let us pray in God’s name.
Heavenly Father, Peter, your apostle, went to visit the churches throughout the region—an utterly ordinary task—and yet, in that, your people were blessed. Men and women came alive in you. We pray that you would bless our ordinary tasks, that they would not simply be ordinary, but that because you work through us by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would be glorified and we would be faithful witnesses to you to the end of the ages. Bless us. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Please be seated.
I had this wonderful preaching teacher in seminary—not college; seminary. They are both arts, so I guess I don’t know. I could go on and on about how wonderful those classes were, but one thing I remember him saying was so good: “Guys, none of you are going to be Spurgeon, or J. C. Ryle, or any of these great names in preaching. And that’s okay. Just be faithful in what you’re called to do.”
I think so often we want to do some incredible thing, and we underestimate how incredible faithfulness is—how incredible it is simply to show up and do the ordinary things God has called us to do.
There is a book called The Great Divorce, and I think it may be my favorite book by C. S. Lewis, if for no other reason than that every time I read it, I walk away reminded of how desperately I need Jesus. There is a wonderful scene in it where the narrator—presumably Lewis—sees this line of light coming down. He has a guide, and he asks, “Is that Mary?” Mary was pretty amazing. She was the Theotokos; she bore Christ, God, into the world.
And the guide says, “No. It’s someone you’ll never have heard of. Her name was Sarah Smith, and she lived at Golders Green.”
The narrator responds, “She seems to be a person of particular importance.”
And the guide says, “Aye. She is one of the great ones. You have heard that fame in this country and fame on earth are two quite different things.”
Sarah Smith is great in heaven, though she is entirely forgotten on earth. She was great because she loved people with the love Christ had shown her. That was ordinary for her, and yet everyone who met her came away changed in some way.
Our lives are full of ordinary tasks that seem insignificant. I was thinking about that in light of what I do. I get to get up and preach to you, and that is wonderful. But there are things I do not like doing. There are two books I have to fill out, and I have gotten months behind on both of them. One is the attendance log, which helps us know how things are going and whether there may be things the diocese should be concerned about. The other is the membership record. For whatever reason, I do not like administrative work. It bores me.
But both have proved a blessing lately as we have thought about what it means to make our table larger. Going through the attendance records, I realized that over nine years we have seen almost 50 percent growth. That is an encouraging number. And the membership record is amazing too. There are sad things in it, such as when someone leaves us. But there are also incredible things: when I write down the name of someone new, I know their story. I record their baptism and confirmation dates, and each one of you has an incredible story of what Christ has done in your life. Those may be numbers, but they remind me of God’s faithfulness to each of you. They are ordinary—even boring—tasks, and yet God has used them to encourage me.
This morning we shift our focus back to Peter. He is going out to visit the scattered Christians, and it is an ordinary task. His journey almost seems like an early episcopal visit. Later, Peter, Paul, and John describe these kinds of visits: encouraging the churches, correcting what needs correcting, and strengthening what is good and beautiful.
Peter is going to help the local church. He sets out to visit all the saints—to see his brothers and sisters in Christ, pray with them, teach them, encourage them, and strengthen them. This is exactly what we would expect an apostle to do. As one theologian said, it seems like a small errand, but there is no such thing as a small errand in the kingdom of God.
Even here, we are reminded that we are not meant to be islands—individualistic, closed-off people. We are meant to be a body. We are meant to have communion with one another, not only within our church, but within our diocese, province, community, and the wider world with other brothers and sisters who love Jesus. We are meant to build one another up, encourage one another, and, most importantly, preach the gospel to one another: to remind each other of what Christ has done for us, who he has made us, and that he is our only hope in this life.
That is what Peter set out to do. He was not looking for something amazing. He set out to do something ordinary: encourage the saints and strengthen them in Christ.
But then, in the narrative, there are two healings. As I prepared this week, I wondered whether we should preach both together. I never came to a firm answer, but there is an important difference. Next week we will meet Dorcas—also called Tabitha—a disciple, a believer in Christ. But Aeneas is not called a disciple. Where Dorcas is listed among the believers, Aeneas seems to be outside the covenant. Yet Christ pursued him through Peter. Christ sought him out and brought him something he could never give himself.
This man had been paralyzed for eight years. Think about that. He was an adult, which means he had not always been paralyzed. He knew what it was like to walk, to work, and to provide for his family and loved ones. Then he lost it. We do not know what tragedy caused it, but we know there was heartbreak in it.
He could no longer provide for his family. He had to depend entirely upon others. Eight years of adult life is a long time to be paralyzed—long enough to feel isolated and alone, long enough for people to forget what you are going through, long enough to wonder whether there is reason for hope.
This story is strikingly similar to the story of the paralytic lowered through the roof by his friends. Jesus is teaching, and the room is crowded. The friends cannot get through, so they climb on the roof, tear it open, and lower their friend down. Jesus heals him. It is an incredible moment, and I cannot help but think of it as we read this passage.
But first, there is an important warning. Peter does not say, “Aeneas, get up,” or, “I heal you.” He takes no credit. He says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you.” That speaks to Jesus’ power, but it also warns us: every age has people who claim to be miracle workers, who say, “Look at me. I can make you better.” Whenever a miracle worker points to himself or herself, run. Do not walk; run as fast as you can away, because they want something, and it is not good.
But Jesus can—and still does—heal the broken and the weary. He is no less powerful today than he was at the beginning, and he will be no less powerful when he returns. He is powerful yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Then Peter says, “Rise and make your bed.” The “make your bed” part is wonderful. First, Aeneas no longer needs the bed because he can get up and walk. But it also tells us how complete the healing is. We all know what it feels like to get out of bed after being sick for several days. You may feel better, but you are still achy; the last thing you want to do is make the bed. But this man is healed so completely that he can make his bed.
And then there is the word “rise.” It is a common word in Scripture, but it is also the word Christ uses in speaking of resurrection. Aeneas immediately rose. In light of the paralytic lowered through the roof, and in light of Christ’s resurrection, we see that this is more than a man being able to walk. Walking is lovely, but Aeneas goes beyond worldly hopelessness to worldly hope. He goes beyond being unable to provide for himself to being able to work again. This man meets Jesus, presented through Peter.
So often, beneath these miracles is the reality that Christ is doing something deeper. In Luke, Jesus says to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.” The scribes and Pharisees say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus answers, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he says to the paralytic—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.”
This man, like the other paralytic, is raised from suffering, but he is also raised to something far better: life in Christ. That is infinitely better than being able to walk.
Last night, Bubs was sick. We have been having some issue, and I do not really want to go into it because we do not want to talk about it much. But when we woke at about four, we were half talking, half praying, half lamenting. Sleepless nights have become altogether too regular in our lives. It would be one thing if it were only Sam, but whenever Sam seems to have a good run of nights, somebody else throws a wrench into things. It is exhausting.
We have become altogether familiar with late-night laments. Sometimes I have done them poorly. I think Julie has done better than I have. But after one year, or three years, or eight years of something debilitating, it is easy to lose hope and wonder, “How long, O Lord?”
At four in the morning, that is close enough to when I get up that my next thought becomes: What does this passage say to me today? What is it reminding me of? It points beyond the healing of this man to his salvation. In his healing, he was given something better than walking. Walking is amazing; I am not minimizing that. Losing the ability to walk is awful. But Jesus is better than the ability to walk. This man was raised to new life in Christ.
If you place your hope in anything outside Christ—if you set your happiness on some “if only”—that “if only” will disappoint you. You may get it, and it may be wonderful, but eventually it will break. Or you may never get it. This man’s healing points beyond every earthly hope to the one hope that will never disappoint: knowing God through Christ.
And it does not end there. The news spreads, and all the residents of Lydda and Sharon see the formerly paralyzed man, and they turn to the Lord. Peter set out to do an ordinary thing. He went to visit his friends, see how they were doing, encourage them, convict them, and strengthen them. And it became something amazing: a man was given new life.
There is no indication Peter set out looking to be an amazing healer. He simply set out to encourage his friends. Yet God used that ordinary task to bring new life, and the story spread through the neighboring communities. They heard about it, and they turned to the Lord. What good news.
One of the things I never thought about when I became a pastor—and then got married, in that order, which is a strange order to do it in—was how hard it would be to get children to church by yourself. It is a miracle that Julie gets here on time. She is amazing, but I have seen my children get out the door.
Last week Julie was discouraged, run down, and frustrated. I felt bad that I could not be there to help her. But as she came in, I saw something wonderful: the first person she saw gave her a big hug. I do not know whether Julie had said, “I am having a rough day,” or whether it was simply, “I am glad to see you.” But it was beautiful. It was perfect. And I thought, “That is what this is supposed to look like.”
It is not some extraordinary thing. It is a hug for a struggling mom. As we think about what it looks like to be All Saints in the next five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, this is it. It is the ordinary thing.
Someone asked me this week what the next level up from what I talked about two weeks ago might be. Two weeks ago, I asked what it would look like if the Lord called us to make room at the table for families like mine, families with special needs—to make this a place where they are not stared at when their child suddenly screams in the middle of church, because that is what Sam does.
What is the next level up? I think we are already there, but it is this: intentionally making room at the table to welcome those who have carried heavy burdens for far too long.
That may sound big and difficult, as if we have to find a paralyzed man and say, “Jesus tells you to stand up,” and hope it works. But it is not. It is the ordinary tasks we already do. It is a hug for a tired mom. It is saying to a frazzled dad, “Can I play with your kids for a few minutes?” It is seeing where people need help carrying things and helping carry them.
Most importantly, it is rooted in the gospel. It is returning one another to it week after week. It is saying, “Yes, this moment is hard, but this hardship is light compared with the incredible glory God has for you in eternity.”
None of this is based on our work. It is based on pointing beyond ourselves. Just like Peter, we say: Jesus is your hope. Jesus is my hope. We point to the only source of hope, healing, and goodness—to Christ, who is our only hope and our only comfort in life and in death.
And he will use our utterly ordinary lives, our boring moments, our boring lives, to work extraordinary things. May our lives be boring, and may he be far more extraordinary, so that others may know that he alone, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the extraordinary God.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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