Easter 4B
Text: Acts 4:5-12
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
April 25, 2021

Who Sent You

It was a few years ago now that Abner Mikva died. I don’t know that a lot of people who are watching this would even know or remember who he was. He was 90 years old when he died, and he had had a long and distinguished career as a politician and as a jurist here in Chicago. He was a state rep and then for many years a U.S. Congressman; became a federal judge and then served as White House Counsel under Bill Clinton. That kind of guy.

But Abner Mikva was also a guy who was known as a raconteur of the very first order, and one of the stories he loved to tell was about how as a young man he had started in Chicago politics. The year was 1948. He was just a couple years discharged from his wartime service, and he was a law student in Chicago, going on the GI Bill. Walking home from class one evening he passed the storefront that was the local ward office; across the window it was lettered “Timothy O’Sullivan, Ward Committeeman.” And so it was that the young, the idealistic Mikva walked in and said, “I’d like to volunteer for Adlai Stevenson [who was the Democratic reform candidate running for governor] and Paul Douglas [for US Senator].”

So Timothy O’Sullivan, ward committeeman, took the cigar out of his mouth and stared at the young man in front of him. “Who sent you?,” he said. To which Mikva replied, “Well, nobody sent me.” And O’Sullivan stuck the cigar back in his mouth and waved him away in dismissal: “We don’t want nobody that nobody sent.”

In the lesson we read from the book of Acts this morning, Peter and John are dragged before the religious authorities, charged with healing a lame man AND doing it on the Sabbath AND doing it right there IN the Temple AND preaching about this guy Jesus Christ AND disrupting the worship service that day with 3,000 baptisms. You know, a lot of nice, mildly religious people had gone for worship that morning expecting the usual mildly religious worship service, and then right in the middle of it a buncha people started running around, stepping up for baptism, renouncing the devil, sealing with the Holy Spirit, and marking everything with the cross of Christ forever. You know, you go expecting a little bitta church, and baptism breaks out. Don’t you just hate when that happens? We had an older member of our church community – she’s now gone many years – who used to groan to me whenever she came to church and learned we were celebrating Baptism that day: “Oh, God, no; now we’ll never get outta here!” That’s probably the real reason they arrested ‘em, Peter and John: they made worship go over the allotted hour. Now for THAT they’ll throw you in prison!

So it is that the religious authorities demand of Peter and John, Just who in the hell do you think you are? By what authority? In whose name? To put it in the words of Timothy O’Sullivan, Ward Committeeman: Who sent you?

And Peter and John reply, you know, sir, it’s funny that you should say who in the hell, because we stand here sent by the One who did indeed go to hell, and then came back. We stand here by the authority of the One who was crucified. We stand here in the name of Jesus Christ the Lord. Who sent us? Yeah, who in the hell – THAT’S the very guy who sent us!

So you can condemn us today, sir, indeed; you can tell us to go to hell, and we’ll go!, because we follow the One who descended into hell. But know that we are the people who go to hell to renounce the devil there and all his empty promises, and then we come back. We call that part resurrection. We go to hell to renounce everything in our lives that keeps us from God, and then we come back! We go to hell to spit in the devil’s eye, and then we come roaring back, washed clean in our daily morning shower of baptism so that we can get to work in the morning, our work in our offices and classrooms and shops and backyard gardens, our work as parents and friends and citizens. You know, for that kind of work this old world doesn’t need nobody that nobody sent. We got too much nobody nonsense going on already; don’t need any more nobody, no more of that. We do our work, sir, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that everything we say, everything we do, every single thing we touch, is marked with the cross of Christ forever, marked with the cross of Christ that we bring to the task.

People of God, for the work in this old world of ours, we don’t need nobody that nobody sent. In your work, your mission, your ministry, your justice calling as a citizen of this country, this city, this community – be clear every moment about who it is who sent you. On every baseball field where you coach young ones this spring; on every Zoom call with your colleagues and co-workers and direct reports and your boss; in every nursery where you lay your toddler down, and every conversation with your teenage kid with the new driver’s license; in every commitment you’ve ever made to care for an ailing family member – in every place where God has ever called you to do holy work … you be clear every moment about who it is who sent you. One day, probably long ago, you were baptized. Every moment of your life … remember your baptism. For it is in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that *you* have been sent!