Is it time we stopped talking about things that have "changed the world"?

Hardly a day goes by that we don't run into something that promises to transform our planet.

"What will change the world," boasts Internet columnist Guy Kewney, "will be things like Microsoft's Passport, offering greater Internet security." Passport is a "roamable" Internet identity that promises to make e-commerce easier, safer, and more popular. "It will change the world," Kewney predicts. (Guy Kewney, "Intel's powerful processors," AnchorDeskUK, April 25, 2001, www.anchordesk.co.uk/anchordesk/kewney/0,2415,7109501-2,00.html)

Sure, Microsoft Passport sounds like good technology. But is it accurate to say that it's a WORLD-CHANGER?

I don't think so.

Book reviewer Jonathan Yardley recently plugged the words "Changed the World" into Amazon.com, and his search produced 309 items. Among them: The codfish, the Fender bass, radar, clocks, the U.S. women's soccer team, photographs, the Model T Ford, canned food, coast-to-coast auto races of the early 1900s, Christopher Columbus, glass, flowers, the Bible, banana pie, 12 lesbian superstars, Max Factor, Scotland, Princess Di, pop music and -- but of course -- Amazon.com.

No surprise there, given that it was an Amazon search.

Amid all this hype about world-changing innovations, Yardley did find one item that seemed to qualify for the distinction. He found it in Amir Aczel's book The Riddle of the Compass, an uncommonly good book about an invention that -- there's just no getting around it -- changed the world.
Certainly as much as the U.S. women's soccer team.
Amir Aczel traces the compass back to its origins in China and describes its adoption by the great Italian maritime powers of the Middle Ages. We can conclude that the Chinese invented the magnetic compass before the year 1040, Aczel writes, "nearly 150 years earlier than the first known reference to a magnetic compass in use in Europe." Precisely how this happened and to what uses the Chinese put their invention are unclear; it is certain, however, that once the compass found its way to the West, its Asian origins were conveniently overlooked. Overlooked, that is, by those Westerners eager to take credit for it.

Before the arrival of the compass in the Mediterranean, sailors used sounding lines to measure water depth and prevent accidental groundings, and they made extensive use of celestial navigation to orient themselves. The arrival of the compass somewhere around 1200 changed all that. The compass, according to Aczel, became "the most important technological invention since the wheel." Its contribution to navigation allowed goods to be transported efficiently and reliably across the seas, and it opened up the world for the first time to maritime exploration. (The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention That Changed the World, by Amir D. Aczel, reviewed by Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post, August 23, 2001)

Was the magnetic compass a world-changer? No doubt about it.

The sixth and seventh chapters of the Book of Acts reveal so clearly how the world of RELIGION was changed by the compass of Jesus Christ. These passages do not contain the stories of the life of Jesus, of course, but they illustrate, with bold and blazing color, just how transformative his example and guidance proved to be in the lives of the first Christians. What we see in Acts is a picture of a completely new way of life -- one based entirely on the direction provided by Jesus Christ.

The changes begin in chapter six, with the selection of seven souls to serve as deacons. The church is experiencing growing pains, and the attention being given to the increasing number of disciples is causing some widows in the community to be overlooked in the daily distribution of food (6:1). So the twelve apostles call a meeting, and ask the group to select "seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom" (v. 3), to do the work of waiting on tables. The community chooses Stephen and six others, and the apostles ordain them to this ministry.

There's nothing demeaning about this. In fact, such work is completely consistent with the guidance of Jesus, the one who said, "I am among you as one who serves" (Luke 22:27). If anything, this ministry contains a power that can seriously shake the status quo, a truth that Stephen quickly discovers when he plots his new course with the compass of Christ. Like the first mariners equipped with a magnetic compass, Stephen suddenly finds himself plowing into unexplored, uncharted and unsafe waters.

Acts tells us that Stephen hits the streets "full of grace and power," and he does "great wonders and signs among the people" (v. 8). But this winsome wonder-working is not well-received by a particular group of Jews, and so they stir up the elders, scribes, and people against Stephen, and they bring him before the council. Hitting him with a truckload of false charges, they try to break his spirit, but he stands before them with what's described as "the face of an angel" (v. 15).

Then he speaks. Beginning with the story of Abraham, he gives a full account of the troubles faced by God's appointed leaders, and then Stephen ends his speech with a stunning indictment of the religious bosses of the day. "You stiff-necked people," he cries, "you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do" (7:51). Stephen is speaking the raw, naked truth here, not trying to win friends or influence people. "They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One," he continues, "and now you have become his betrayers and murderers" (v. 52).

As you can imagine, he doesn't get much love from the council. In fact, they become enraged and grind their teeth, and as they do this Stephen looks serenely into heaven, seeing not only the glory of God, but Jesus himself standing at the right hand of God. Unable to take it, the people pounce on him, drag him out of the city, and begin to stone him. With the rocks raining down, Stephen prays, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And then, with his last breath, he cries out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them" (vv. 54-60). And then he dies.

Stephen becomes the protomartyr -- the first martyr of the Christian church. And, as such, he is a prototype for each of us.

But hold on a second. Am I saying that our Christian mission is to brace ourselves for a brutal death by stoning? Not at all. I'm suggesting that our primary challenge is to navigate by the compass of Christ, and to see Jesus as the directional signal that we follow in life and in death. It means:

- To act as a servant leader, working diligently for the welfare of others.

- To speak boldly about our faith, and to tell the story of God's loving embrace of the human race. - To look serenely to heaven, especially when the world is roaring with rage.

- To trust our Lord to hold us close, in even the most desperate of situations. - To try to offer forgiveness to those who hurt us, as Jesus did on the cross.

That's what it means to follow the Christ-compass. That's what it means to be a world-changer.

A little over a century after Stephen was killed, a man named Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born in Carthage, North Africa, the city considered second in importance only to Rome in his time. His father was the captain of a Roman legion and provided Tertullian with the education and training to become a lawyer. The future looked very promising for this child of privilege in the great Roman Empire.

But then, when he was about 40, the unexpected happened. Tertullian was converted to Christianity. He exuberantly embraced the gospel and ably used his legal skills to defend Christianity from pagan attackers.

Tertullian's world was changed by the Christian faith, and he used his new perspective and spiritual power to change the world around him. He also made an observation that must have been a total shock and scandal to his old Roman friends. Tertullian saw that the persecution of the church by the Roman authorities had a surprising outcome -- this persecution actually strengthened the Church of Christ. "It is bait that wins men for (our) school," he said. "The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow: the blood of Christians is [the] seed [of the church]."

There is nothing more powerful that the sight of someone willing to die for his beliefs. Nothing more convincing than a person willing to make the supreme sacrifice for what she holds in her heart to be true. But we're not talking suicide bombers, here. Killing innocent people to make a political point is evil and absurd.

LIVING for your faith -- that's what's heroic. Holding fast to your convictions, whether people cheer you or crucify you -- that's impressive. Looking for a promised land beyond the limitations of this world -- that's inspiring. That's what grows the church.

Living for your faith means: Going out into one of the driest and poorest rural regions of Brazil, as I saw Brazilian missionaries doing last month. This team of pastors and laypeople is committed to starting new churches and working to alleviate the problems of family disintegration, illiteracy, alcoholism, domestic violence, child prostitution, and rampant despair.

It means taking in foster children, as members of our church have done, and providing them with healing and hope in a stable and loving environment. Foster parents know that there is no quick fix for a child from a broken or chaotic home, but what a gift it is to provide a new compass for a child who is wandering in the wilderness, in danger of being lost forever.

Living for your faith means being part of a congregation that is mission-minded, seeing itself as a community that is being sent by God on a mission to the world. The word "mission," I've learned, comes from the Latin word "missio," meaning "to send." Jesus was sent by God, sent by God on a mission to the world, and he turned around and sent his followers on this very same mission. This idea of being sent in mission is fundamental to our identity as Christian, and we need to hold on to it, embrace it, and allow it to guide us. It is the key to our vitality as people of God, and the secret to our success as changers of the world around us. This congregation at FPC has certainly seen itself as a mission-minded community for much of its history, and the reclaiming of this identity is, I believe, the key to its vitality and growth and influence in the years to come.

We don't have to DIE to change the world, you see. We simply have to live in a particular way, and move in a distinctive direction, on a mission from God.

With Christ as our compass. Amen.