I had one
of those frustrating weeks. I had the
sermon subject earlier in the week, but no illustrations ever came. I had considered, given the lack of
illustrations, that maybe I should preach on love in our Gospel lesson, but God
seemed to be giving me a hard “no.” I
was boring myself with that one, and I’m the only one among us who has done
master’s and doctoral work on the subject of love, so I knew what it would do
to you all. I even gave some thought to
Revelation and the new creation, but I was boring myself with my internal
sermons. So, I ended up sticking to a
lecture on Acts.
I should
say that I do share the process sometimes for a couple reasons. First, sermons should be the part of our
worship where we are educated, built up, and prepared intellectually and
emotionally to head back out into the world to do the work God has given each
of us to do. It is the job of any good
preacher to remind us how the selections read from the Bible are applied
today. That’s why I hate it when I have
no modern illustrations. The other
reason, of course, is for those in the congregation who need to hear from God
in another passage. I think people in
the pews tend to think sermon preparation is focused only on one reading, and
that is the Gospel passage. Granted,
more time is devoted to the reading that ends up being selected for the sermon,
but most of us, check that—let’s say better preachers-- spend time at the
beginning of the week reading, praying, and studying the other readings. If I admit my wrestlings, I find that folks
will sometimes come in later that week or the next to talk about a reading and
how they think it applies to their life.
The working out of our salvation may take place in community, but there
is an individual aspect to it as well, right?
To remind
us where we are in Acts, there are a couple things of which we need to be
reminded. First, the stories in Acts,
traditionally held, were collected and edited by Luke. Luke had the advantage of being able to
witness some of the events described or to get the perspective from the
participants in the story. In some ways,
the book of Acts is the book of the Holy Spirit. The Gospels share the ministries and
teachings of Jesus, and the book of Acts recounts the results of His
Resurrection. How did the Church come to
be? What were some of the early
difficulties? Who were the main players
the Holy Spirit was blessing? Those
questions, and many others, are answered in the book of Acts.
Our reading
today takes place at an interesting point in the history of the Church. The Jewish believers are struggling what to
make of Gentiles claiming to be followers of the Way, disciples of Jesus,
too. Word has come to them in Jerusalem
that some Gentiles in Joppa have become what you and I call Christians. They send Peter to check out the situation
and report back. Tabitha/Dorcas has been
raised, and Peter has had a vision from Jesus.
More amazingly from Peter’s perspective, some men were sent to him in
Joppa from Caesarea in obedience to the commands of an angel. Since the Holy Spirit compelled him, Peter
went to Caesarea. There he was told that
an angel had commanded the patriarch to send for Peter so that Peter can give
him a message by which he and his family can be saved. Peter begins to preach the Gospel, and the
Holy Spirit falls on all those present.
What should
be a glorious time, though, is, instead, an occasion for accusation. The remaining apostles, the saintly
superheroes of the Church, are furious with Peter. He has eaten meals with non-circumcised
Gentiles. He seems to have accepted them
as full members of the Church. What
about circumcision? What about
defilement? We can hear the
conversations in our own minds. Peter, have you lost your mind? Peter, have you taken leave of your
sense? Peter, we trusted you to check on
this for us and restore order, and you seem to be fostering chaos! That’s where we are when our story picks up.
Peter gives
his testimony in an interesting way. He
explains that while he was in Joppa praying, he was given a vision. The vision is fairly well known in both
Christian and non-Christian circles, though its meaning and significance are
often obscured. This is the vision where
Peter is taught the meaning of the dietary laws. I’ll not bore you with all the details, but
most of us gathered here today understand that the torah was given for more than one reason. We often assume, wrongly, that the torah was
solely concerned with moral categories, questions of good and evil. Setting aside for a moment the moral category
of “if God commands it, then we should do it” and the corollary “If God says
don’t, we should not,” the torah also was an instruction manual teaching God’s
people how to stand out and how to attract others. Remember from Lent, the torah was given to a
redeemed people who wanted God to teach them how to live in communion with Him.
The easiest
example would be the sabbath day, sabbath year, and the fiftieth year
celebration. Thinking economically for
just a moment, how would folks in the ANE have perceived God’s people taking a
day off every week to celebrate His redemption and still having what was needed
to live? Heck, who are we kidding, how
would the modern world perceive this if God still asked this of us? Over time, it would stand out, right? In the beginning it might seem foolish or
quirky, but as the standard of living for the faithful observer stayed the
same, people would begin to notice. Fred never works on Sunday’s, but he always
has enough to eat, for the home he lives in, and to get the necessities. Susie always seems to have what she needs,
and she takes a complete day off. Now,
imagine taking every seventh year off.
If we were God’s faithful people and were able to spend every seventh
year in leisure and thanking God, do you think the wider world would eventually
notice? Better still, every 49th
year, we’d take two years off? In a
world that values productivity, what would be the testimony of such faithful
observance? How many people would be
drawn to the worship of God? How many
people would be encouraged to trust that He can provide, even daily bread, for
two full years?
The only
modern example I can give is that of Chick-fil-A. When I was a broker and Branch Manager I used
to chuckle at the efforts by Wall Street to convince its now dead founder,
Truett, to open on Sundays. Truett would
have none of it. Sunday was a day for
worship or spending time with family or just relaxing. Analysts noticed how the productivity of
Chick-fil-A restaurants were higher than other comparable restaurants. They would argue that his intractability
regarding Sunday’s was costing his company however many millions of dollars. The CEO, to his credit, taught the analysts
that his chain’s productivity was higher versus the peer group precisely
because they observed the sabbath. He
claimed the planned day of rest and worship and time with family caused even
his non-Christian employees to be happier, to provide better service, and to be
more attuned to what was going on around them.
That is part of the reason why Chick-fil-A has never gone public. Truett was not about to give Wall Street
control over the way he ran his business.
The Jews
were commanded to be set apart, distinct, in every part of their life. Many of us know that their diet was another
area in which they were distinct and set apart.
You all know the food had to be prepared properly. It is called kosher. Certain things could be eaten and certain
things could not. Some animals were
clean and others were unclean. Part of
the problem for Peter is that he associated clean and unclean with good and
evil. We understand why. Defilement meant one had to be purified in
order to worship at the Temple or synagogue.
Though we understand the why, it does not make it right. And Jesus needs to correct this for
Peter. And, even though Peter knows his
Lord’s voice, God still needs to explain it three times to get through Peter’s
thick-headedness yet again.
God takes
Peter and us back to Genesis and creation.
Was there anything inherently evil with the animals that God created
that He later declared unclean? No! They were all good. They each had a role in the earth He
created. Eating bacon did not make a Jew
evil; sin made a Jew evil, just as it made us evil before our repentance. But there is more for Peter to share, and
it’s those other areas upon which I want us to focus today and how they apply
to our lives today.
First and
foremost, there is a myth out there in the wider Church that baptism in the
Holy Spirit produces spiritual maturity.
You and I live in a ground zero location for those fights in
Christianity. In fact, some Adventers
are refugees from those fights. There
are denominations around us, with strong Pentecostal influence, who claim that
a baptism in the Holy Spirit is necessary for one to gain spiritual maturity
and assurance of God’s favor after death.
In fact, there is a bit of a look down on other Christians who have not
had the identical experience. Putting
aside for the moment the fact that our Lord’s command was that His disciples
baptize others in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit and not to wait for baptisms in the Holy Spirit, this passage serves as
an easy rejoinder that God will do what God is going to do and that such baptisms
in the Holy Spirit do not equal spiritual maturity. How so?
First, it
is the Apostles, the saints of the early Church, who confront Peter. Those men spent three years traveling with
Jesus, learning from Jesus, exercising power in Jesus’ name, witnessed His
death, met and conversed with Jesus after His Resurrection, watched His Ascension,
received the commands of the angels to wait on the Holy Spirit, and experienced
the coming of the promised Counselor in the event we call Pentecost, and what
is their response to the rumors that Gentiles were proclaiming Jesus as
Lord? Worse, what is their response to
Peter’s willingness to fellowship with Gentile believers, as if they never
watched Jesus fellowship with Gentile or Jewish non-believers in all that time
with Him? They were the initial
recipients of the Holy Spirit baptism and they are acting like anything other
than someone spiritual mature.
The other
side of that discussion relates to Cornelius’ conversion. The Holy Spirit moves where the Holy Spirit
wills. None of us sitting here today
would likely think to claim that Cornelius and his household were on par with
the early disciples, spiritually speaking.
Yet Peter recognizes that they received the same gift during his brief
teaching that the earliest believers and disciples received at the event on
Pentecost. Peter, who is so slow to
grasp so many other teachings sees and obeys.
And, just as a reminder, he points out in his defense that six other men
witnessed this event, too. They can
testify to this event in Cornelius’ house.
This is double or triple the requirement for being accepted as true in
the Jewish courts as established by Deuteronomy. Even the most conservative Jewish Christians
will be forced to accept this testimony.
You and I, of
course, by virtue of a lot of struggles about which we read in Acts and later Church
annals, understand this differently. I
have somewhat jokingly referred to the Apostles as the early saints or the
super heroes of our faith, because that is how we often view them. But God reminds us in Scriptures that all the
heroes we admire in the Scriptures were human beings. All human beings, even us, can become saints
through faithful obedience to God. You
know this through the expression “the priesthood of all believers.” God wants you and me to be saints in the
lives of others—we are supposed to be lights in our generation or vessels of
His grace in the world around us, right?
The second
lesson to which I think God wants me to draw your attention today is the
centrality of the Gospel. The angel
commands the man to send for Peter in Joppa so that Peter will give him and his
household a message by which he and they will be saved. What is Peter’s message? The Gospel.
One can well imagine an early version of the creeds of the Church. Peter explained that Jesus was the Son of
God, who became flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, taught and healed in God’s
name, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again! After some other events, He ascended into
heaven. What is the response of the
household? They hear and believe and
receive the power of the Holy Spirit.
Put differently, the baptism is nice, but the event that triggers all of
it is the Gospel! Peter shares the
Gospel. They believe. They are anointed by the Holy Spirit.
I know we
live in a culture, even here in the Christian South and in Nashville, which
buys into the myths of pluralism. Heck,
we are Episcopalians and known more for our drinking and our disregard of the
Scriptures and whatever else God has revealed to us as evidenced yet again this
week by our skewering on the satirical site Babylon Bee. The Gospel makes us uncomfortable. If it is true, then pluralism is false. If, as our Collect today proclaims that Christ
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, then all other claims are deadend’s,
lies, and death. But we are in the season
of Easter. For these seven weeks we intentionally
remind ourselves of the truth of the Resurrection and, just as significantly,
of its importance. If Jesus was raised from
the dead, then His teachings are true. If
Jesus was raised from the dead, then He has a unique and superseding claim not
just on our own lives, but on the lives of everyone in the world! And He has entrusted us, and empowered us, to
be His witnesses! Yes, we are called to
a joyful and thanksgiving witness. We do
not want to be jerks or a-holes, but we also cannot let those whom we are
called to learn continue you along their paths by withholding the Gospel from
them. To use the image of one of the
early fathers in the Church, we withhold the directions to an oasis in the desert
every time we shrink back from testifying to others the Gospel of Christ. So the Gospel must always be central to our
lives. It must always be in our focus.
The third
point I think God had in mind for me to share with you on this passage today is
that we do not get to decide who is in and who is out in God’s kingdom. I have had a small number of Adventers argue
with me the past few years that we exclude on the basis of race around
here. I have pushed back, and in so
doing incurred the wrath of others, with the belief that we are great at
welcoming folks who are like us regardless of color or culture or upbringing. The homogeneity that exists at Advent is one
of socio-economics and maybe education rather than race. As I have read more of our parish history, I
am more and more surprised that such is our response. Our parish forebears help convince the Church
that pew taxes were unjust. Our parish
forebears helped convince our Episcopal church that God intended for blacks to
be part of the Church, and not a separate denomination. It was our parish forebears who made sure the
freed slaves would consider worshipping in our tradition by helping in the
effort to build parishes for them and to make sure other freed slaves could be
trained to lead them. I get that it was
not the way things should be today nor the way God intended—after all, He
desired One Church for all believers, but I am mindful our parish forebears
lived in a different time and different context and that they, themselves, we
impacted by sin. Were you a freed slave,
could you really worship with your former master? Were you a former master, could you give
thanks to God for the newfound deliverance of your slaves? Could any of them really see God’s redemption
in the Civil War that had just concluded?
The real
pushback against ministries around here have involved the fear of the “what if”
results. What if those women and men you free decide to come to church
here? What if those immigrants and
refugees decide to come to church here? What
if those people we serve through Body & Soul or Good Neighbors or whatever
other ministry decide to come to church here? I have news for us. They won’t.
So long as we treat them as “other” or as projects or as “feel good”
works and not as human beings created in the image of our Father in heaven,
they will choose to go elsewhere. I have
more disturbing news for some of us today, though, were God not in charge of
this effort we call salvation history, you and I would not be here 2000 years
later and 6000 miles distant giving thanks to Him for the work He has
accomplished in us through His Son Christ our Lord! Nearly all of us gathered here this morning are
of Gentile descent; nearly all of us present had no tie to His chosen people. Had the Apostles in Jerusalem had their way,
Had Peter not paid close attention to Jesus’ voice and message in the vision
and not discerned what was happening in Cornelius’ household, we would be
outside the covenant of God! That we are
here, that we are celebrating His grace and salvation and redemptive work in
our lives, I would argue, is not only a wonderful proof of the likely truth of
the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, but of the power of the Holy Spirit to
nudge and cajole God’s people in the direction God would have His people go!
Now, I know
I have more lectured than sermonized this morning, at least according to my preferred
ways. For that I am sorry. The few that came to 8am because they would
not be attending the celebration picnic this afternoon picnic offered some
suggestions. As one present suggested,
though, if it is from God, we will still get what we need. After all, somebody preached this morning
that God will do what God will do! But
brothers and sisters, partners in the spread of the love of God and fellow inviters
to the Marriage Feast, to you and I has been given the most wonderful and
heaviest responsibility in the world.
You and I have been tasked by the Creator of heaven and earth, of all
that is seen and unseen, with the sharing of His Gospel. Us.
Unremarkable and full of faults us.
No doubt, were you and I honest with ourselves and one another we would
all think ourselves unworthy or ill-equipped or ill-suited to such a grand
task. And we would be correct. Yet God Himself tasks us and promises to equip
us. And here we are. We are gathered 2000 years later, 6000 miles
distant, from the account we read this morning, giving thanks to God for His
work in us through Christ our Lord! His
crazy marketing campaign has survived Rome and countless other local oppressors
and persecutors. It has crossed a great
ocean. It has crossed however many ethnic
and cultural boundaries to reach each one of us. It has even survived death! And in a place where people are free, we
gather to celebrate that He would stoop to choose us, that He would choose not
just to save us, but to use us, each one of us, in His effort to reach the
world! I pray, that we who are so
tasked, will be made worthy of such honor and wisdom by His grace and to His
glory!
In Christ’s Peace,
Brian†
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