Mp3 here
A few weeks ago, I posted a question on my facebook. I’m going to repeat it here, and I promise you this is going somewhere.
“Why is it that movies usually include kissing and seldom include pooping?”
You can always count on me for important philosophical questions. This led to a lively exchange. Some of my some of my friend’s felt is was important to remind me of famous pooping scenes from various films. But my favorite response was by a man of many talents. Ray, the guy who probably gave you your nametag, wrote:
Apparently, he is not just an accomplished grant writer and a Mexican wrestler…he’s also a poet.
It can be summarized in one word. “Selection.”[1] Story telling is by its very nature selective. Take, for example, the recent film 500 days of Summer. It was 95 minutes long. That means 
that they left out 719,905 minutes of the story. If you have to make those kinds of cuts, sleeping and bathroom time are the first to go. But you can bet they include the first kiss, because it is important to the story.[2]
On the whole, this is good and helpful. No one is clamoring for more bathroom scenes in films. But, you have to understand the nature of selective story telling when you read the narrative books of the Bible, like, say, the book of Acts. Think about it, the book of Acts took 30 years to happen and only takes a couple hours to read. This is, on the whole, a good thing because, let’s face it, the Bible is a relatively longish book with a fair number of nap inducing sections as it is. But the selective nature of Biblical narrative can also be problematic. We can be left with the idea that normative Christianity is a string of miracles, cataclysmic break throughs and harrowing adventures.
When we read the Book of Acts we remember the miracle at the pool, Peter’s great sermon, Paul’s conversion…the dramatic moments. And then, when we compare them to our relatively normal lives, we can feel diminished…disappointed in ourselves and underwhelmed by the acts of God in our generation. There appears to be an empirical disconnect between the dynamic works of God on the pages of Scripture and the repetitive monotony of our daily lives.
In two weeks we are going to start our ‘big questions’ series and I am going to lead off with the #1 vote getter by any metric. The Problem of Uninspiring Christianity. But one of the issues with looking out over contemporary Christianity and finding it uninspiring in comparison to the Biblical story, is that you are comparing real life, which is unfolding in real time with all of the proverbial ‘bathroom scenes’ to a highlight reel. Do you wish that your life was more exciting, that you heard from God more, that you saw more miracles like the people in the Bible…well, you know what, so did they.
What Biblical narrative necessarily omits is the tedium. So you have to read the ‘white space.’ You have to read it with your eyes open for the uneventful MONTHS that Paul spent on the road between Antioch and Ephesus. You have to feel the lonely hours of chasing elusive sleep on some cold bumpy surface as Paul and his companions shivered the night away on a creaky ship navigating uneven seas.[3]
Between Paul’s conversion in Acts 9 and the account of Barnabas seeking him out to help with the church in Antioch 18 unremarkable years pass where Paul presumably stays put and does nothing worth recording. But this is hardly surprising. Remember Moses spent 40 years tending’s sheep before God used him for a couple years to lead his people. Shoot, the God of the universe spent 30 years working as a carpenter before a 3 year ministry.
In a sense, the last three weeks (my talk on Acts 17 at the end of last quarter, Adam on Acts 19 two weeks ago and me again on Acts 20 last week) have been, in a sense, a mini-series within our larger series on the book of Acts. In each of these passages, Adam and I mined the methods and message of Paul to find some principles that could inform our attempts to serve Jesus in this place. But the truth is, for most of us Paul is hard to indentify with precisely for the same reason that he makes such a good story. His passion and discipleship are normative and worth modeling…but his life and calling were peculiar to him.
Even in Acts, we see that the strength of the church was not in a few all stars, but in many quiet individuals making unnoticed contributions, undocumented sacrifices and understated adventures. Paul’s life makes good story precisely because it is NOT normative Christianity. Some of you may be called to those kinds of crazy adventures, but most of you will be called to contentment in the midst of raising children for Jesus, being faithful in a marriage a job and a ministry, stinging together several dozen quiet but strong years of love and service.[4] Instead of enduring ship wrecks and snake attacks you will be called to open your home to your co-workers and mentor the youth in your community.
But the truth is, that careful reading of Biblical narrative, yields compelling stories of people living ‘normal’ Christian lives well. So I just want to spend the rest of my time to relate two stories that Luke tells about guys not named Peter or Paul…stories that mostly reside in the white space of your Bible. I like to call them two stories with high coolness to ink ratio.[5] Two underrated stories in Acts, compelling in their ordinariness. Acts for the rest of us, if you will.
Philip’s Second Adventure: The Daddy Years
But Philip is the most interesting human character in the book of Acts, as far as I am concerned.
But his story hardly seems like it should count as one of the underrated stories of Acts. We have already had a whole talk about him. In the fall Kevin told us Philip’s story from Acts 8.
He was a multi-cultural pioneer.[6] He was young, adventurous, brash, spiritually sensitive, and slightly impetuous. Acts 8 describes him performing miracles, preaching and healing the sick in Samaria without regard to the bitter racial hatred that should have kept him far away from ‘those people.’ He baptized an African man chapters before the rest of the church realized that Christianity was more than just a Jewish sect. He lived exciting months as a gospel pioneer from city to city; going on adventures and living daily the power of God. But the last we hear from him in Acts 8:40 is in Caesarea.
Acts 8:40 “Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.”
After that he simply disappears from the story. Most people extrapolate from his early adventures and figure he spent his life doing crazy stuff for God in lands so distant that the stories simply didn’t make it back to Luke, due to their shear remoteness.
But that is not what happened.
We meet up with Philip one more time 20 years after his adventures. Paul stops in Ceserea between Miletus (where he met the Ephesian Elders in last week’s passage) on his way to Jerusalem (Acts 21[7]). Verse 8:
Acts 21:8 "Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven.[8] 9He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. "
Paul finds Philip just where we left him, in Ceserea. The English text says he had 4 unmarried daughters but the Greek word is woman of marriageable age, meaning that for the youngest to be of marriageable age, the oldest would have to have been 18 or 19…in other words, his oldest child was born shortly after his arrival in Caesarea 20 years ago in Acts 8. FF Bruce essentially says, ‘Do the math…Philip met a girl in Caesarea and it put an end to his missional gallivanting.’
The shockingly normal story told in the white space of the text is that the fiery young Philip almost certainly met a girl when he reached Caesarea and live 20 faithful years as a generous, committed, active servant to his local church and community…and as an exceptional father. Some of the earliest church historians describe these daughters as key figures in the second generation of Christianity. According to these accounts, one of them went on to become a physician tending almost exclusively to the poor and destitute. God had a second adventure for Philip…as a daddy.
Philip spent 18 years elapsed between his brief adventure (in Acts 6) and hosting Paul (in Acts 21) changing diapers, whipping spit up, getting out of bed every morning and going to work, dealing with the drama of drama teenage girls. Yet Luke still esteems him ‘Philip the evangelist’. These are good strong years for Philip…the kind of years that the kingdom of God is built out of…the kind of years he should be proud of…the kind of years we could be proud of…but not the kind of years that ‘make the Bible.’ And, this is what is so widely misunderstood. The fact that we don’t hear the story of these years is evidence that they are more, not less, normative
Some of you may go to Uganda or Italy this summer or any of a range of wild adventures. Like Barnabas or Paul, you might decide that long term cross cultural ministry is for you. You really should go totally open to the idea. God might call you to a different sort of adventure, of having a family and raising kids to serve God in our broken culture.[9]
There is a subtle warning of the story of Philip is that the desire for adventure and significance can be an idol.[10] It can be unspiritual pride. If you are doing the Jesus thing for the adventure or for feelings of significance and not for Jesus himself, something is wrong. God could ask you to a sacrificial itinerant life like Paul or, like Philip, after some early adventures he could ask you to the sacrifice of parenthood and contentment serving Jesus in a community and a local church.
John Mark’s Second Chance: Failure is Never Final
The second story, shocking in its normalness, is the story of John Mark. In Acts 13 Mark accompanies his cousin Barnabas and Paul on their first trip. But, after they have a mildly terrifying encounter with a sorcerer at their first stop, Mark decides it is not for him. He goes home instead of continuing on with the team. Luke scarcely mentions it:
Acts13:13 “From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga in Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem.”
But this decision led to one of the ugliest stories in the book of Acts…starting in chapter 15 verse 
36 (printed on your handout):
Acts 15:36“Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing." 37Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, 38but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. 39They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, 40but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.”
I’ve said this before in our series on Acts, but this is a really messy story. If Luke was simply interested in painting the best possible picture of the early days of Christianity he would have conveniently omitted stuff like this.[11]
But what we see again and again in the Scriptures that it is the grit and mess of life that is often the most fertile ground for redemption.[12]
The point of the story of John Mark is that, if you belong to Jesus, failure is never final.[13]
Years later, Paul writes a letter to the Church in Colosse and in the boring list of names at the end of that letter, we find this gem.
Colossians 4:10 “My fellow prisoner Aristarchus sends you his greetings, as does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas.[14] (just to make sure they are clear which Mark he is talking about) (You have received instructions about him; if he comes to you, welcome him.)[15]”
Colossians finds Mark, once again, in Paul’s small inner circle of trusted traveling companions. Paul tells the church, forget what you might have heard about me and Mark, we’re good. Mark gets another chance because, in Jesus, failure is never final.
Think for a minute about the implications of this principle: failure is never final. Think of how
freeing that story is. The application is, try stuff, take risks…because even if it flops, in Jesus, failure is never final. If we were to take this seriously, the church could be the most innovative place on earth, full of daring new ideas, because it is the only place where failure is never final.
Rock Band and Relay for Life Illustration
At some point in your life, you will be John Mark. You will try something and it will go catastrophically poorly. Count on it. The question you need to ask yourself, is are you going to let it take you out, or will you recover, and try something else.
There is another side to this idea, however. At some other point in your life, someone you care about will let you down. They will disappoint you. Think about Paul in this story. It is easy to see how he could have harbored bitterness towards Mark. Mark not only disappointed him but was the catalyst of an ugly confrontation and a deep rift in his closest friendship. But if failure is never final in Jesus, the people who let you down, they get another chance.
So, what I wanted to do with my last talk in this great book was to try to demonstrate that it is not just a story about a few special people like Peter and Paul. It is a story about a lot of normal people like you and me. Don’t be intimidated by the Biblical highlight reel. Live for Jesus today. Live for Jesus tomorrow. And when you look back on your complete story, you will have a pretty remarkable highlight reel of your own…but more importantly, you will have many faithful days lived for him.
_________
[1] I planned to show a great clip here from Sports Night (season 1 episode 2) where Jeremy is in charge of making a 30 second highlight clip of a baseball clip and is unable to get it under 8 minutes.
[2] There is one exception to this…24…but even in 24 there are several stories going on at once and Keifer Southerland can somehow mysteriously make it across LA at rush hour in 15 minutes.
[3] I mean, it is highly likely, that Paul got sea sick and booted over the side of a boat often…but it doesn’t make the Bible.
[4]Here is what I find annoying about Acts. Believe it or not, I don’t particularly like Paul. I find him abrasive and a little annoying. I don’t think he and I would be close friends. As a side note, I think this augments rather than diminishes his qualifications to be used by the Holy Spirit to author Scripture. One of the outstanding things about the scriptures is that God used personalities as diverse as Paul and John to write it. Far from undermining its message, it shows that the Christian story is not only for a single temperament and that ministry is not pigeon holed by personality type. I don’t have to enjoy Paul to esteem him.
[5] Sometimes the best stories only get a few words, and are only yielded to the careful reader.
[6] He was the first to realize that the gospel was for the Gentiles. He baptized an African guy chapters before the rest of the church felt comfortable extending the faith outside of the Jewish community.
[7] on his way back from his meeting with the Ephesian Elders
[8] Luke adds this to assure us that this is, in fact, the same Philip from Acts 8.
[9] But you will notice, Philip jumps at the opportunity to host Paul, he never looses interest in the global mission of the gospel.
[10] If this idea is new or intriguing to you, I highly recommend my brother, Nic’s, excellent talk “Anatomy of a Sellout” – mp3 here
[11] I looked in vein for art illustrating this passage. Once again, it seems only the skeptics like this passage.
[12] Fruit grows best out of s***. Failure is the metaphorical Nitrogen of the Kingdom.
[13] We usually read this passage as Mark’s failure but as I already implied in an earlier note, I often wonder if it wasn’t extremely difficult to serve with Paul. For all his dedication and intellect and reckless passion, he may have overwhelmed more sensitive personalities. I wonder if the Collosians text isn’t a mea culpa.
[14] Notice, again, the care taken to make sure we know he is talking about the same Mark.
[15] Ancient traditions credit the young man with authorship of the second gospel.
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