Iron Man -- FPC sermon excerpt
I’m a big fan of Iron Man, the superhero played by Robert Downey, Jr. As far as I know, he’s the only action hero played by a middle aged man.
I have to find some hope somewhere.
The original Iron Man film was released two years ago, and a sequel opens this Friday. Downey plays a billionaire inventor and arms dealer named Tony Stark, who is captured in the Middle East and held captive, when one of his own bombs is used against him. While a prisoner, he creates a suit of armor and escapes. Later, he upgrades the technology and becomes Iron Man, with a mission of fighting evil and making the world a better place.
In the new movie, he will face pressure to share his Iron Man technology with the government. But he resists, fearing that it will fall into the wrong hands.
The attractive thing about Tony Stark is that he is a vulnerable human being who makes discoveries and allows himself to change. He starts the first movie as an arms dealer, but sees the error of his ways — he witnesses young Americans being killed by the very weapons he created to defend and protect them. Stark is a true Iron Man because he is willing to learn and grow, not because he is covered in a suit of armor.
He kind of reminds me of the apostle Peter. Both Tony Stark and Peter have some serious character defects, and they wouldn’t be comfortable with anyone calling them superheroes. But they are Iron Men in the face of criticism, and are willing to bend in new directions as they make discoveries about what is true.
Back in the first century, there was conflict between the Christians in Jerusalem and the residents of the Greek world known as Gentiles. The Christians in Jerusalem had grown up Jewish, and they had been taught never to associate with uncircumcised, unclean people like the Gentiles. After the apostle Peter allows a number of Gentiles to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, he finds himself on the hot seat in Jerusalem.
“Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ask the Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 11:3). It is unthinkable for a good Jewish Christian to break God’s purity laws and sit down to share a meal with an unclean Gentile. But Peter stands up to them like an Iron Man and reports to them that he had received a vision from God. In this vision the Lord said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (v. 9). Peter understood this to mean that God was doing a new thing, and making the unclean clean. He was like Tony Stark, suddenly seeing that his old approach to life — making weapons — was doing more evil than good.
By making this change, God was enabling the Gentiles to hear the gospel and join the church — something that Jewish purity laws had previously prohibited. Peter tells his fellow Christians that he was hit by the full significance of this shift when three Gentiles arrived at the place he was staying, and invited him to visit a centurion named Cornelius. The Holy Spirit told Peter to go with them, and not to make a distinction between Gentiles and Jews. Then, when Peter met face to face with Cornelius, he saw the Holy Spirit fall on the Gentiles, just as it had fallen on the apostles. Peter concludes his report to the Christians in Jerusalem by asking the question, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (v. 17).
That’s a great question. Religious purity is the main business of the Christians in Jerusalem, but Iron Man Peter sees that it is doing more evil than good. We have to ask ourselves: If God wants us to change and do a new thing, who are we to hinder God?
I have to find some hope somewhere.
The original Iron Man film was released two years ago, and a sequel opens this Friday. Downey plays a billionaire inventor and arms dealer named Tony Stark, who is captured in the Middle East and held captive, when one of his own bombs is used against him. While a prisoner, he creates a suit of armor and escapes. Later, he upgrades the technology and becomes Iron Man, with a mission of fighting evil and making the world a better place.
In the new movie, he will face pressure to share his Iron Man technology with the government. But he resists, fearing that it will fall into the wrong hands.
The attractive thing about Tony Stark is that he is a vulnerable human being who makes discoveries and allows himself to change. He starts the first movie as an arms dealer, but sees the error of his ways — he witnesses young Americans being killed by the very weapons he created to defend and protect them. Stark is a true Iron Man because he is willing to learn and grow, not because he is covered in a suit of armor.
He kind of reminds me of the apostle Peter. Both Tony Stark and Peter have some serious character defects, and they wouldn’t be comfortable with anyone calling them superheroes. But they are Iron Men in the face of criticism, and are willing to bend in new directions as they make discoveries about what is true.
Back in the first century, there was conflict between the Christians in Jerusalem and the residents of the Greek world known as Gentiles. The Christians in Jerusalem had grown up Jewish, and they had been taught never to associate with uncircumcised, unclean people like the Gentiles. After the apostle Peter allows a number of Gentiles to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, he finds himself on the hot seat in Jerusalem.
“Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ask the Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 11:3). It is unthinkable for a good Jewish Christian to break God’s purity laws and sit down to share a meal with an unclean Gentile. But Peter stands up to them like an Iron Man and reports to them that he had received a vision from God. In this vision the Lord said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (v. 9). Peter understood this to mean that God was doing a new thing, and making the unclean clean. He was like Tony Stark, suddenly seeing that his old approach to life — making weapons — was doing more evil than good.
By making this change, God was enabling the Gentiles to hear the gospel and join the church — something that Jewish purity laws had previously prohibited. Peter tells his fellow Christians that he was hit by the full significance of this shift when three Gentiles arrived at the place he was staying, and invited him to visit a centurion named Cornelius. The Holy Spirit told Peter to go with them, and not to make a distinction between Gentiles and Jews. Then, when Peter met face to face with Cornelius, he saw the Holy Spirit fall on the Gentiles, just as it had fallen on the apostles. Peter concludes his report to the Christians in Jerusalem by asking the question, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (v. 17).
That’s a great question. Religious purity is the main business of the Christians in Jerusalem, but Iron Man Peter sees that it is doing more evil than good. We have to ask ourselves: If God wants us to change and do a new thing, who are we to hinder God?
posted by Henry Brinton | 4:49 PM
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