Acts 11:1-18

Intro

The genesis of this morning’s passage begins not long after the verses from last week reading conclude. Last week, the final verse was this strange addendum-like note that Peter “stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a Tanner.” It is in the next chapter where this reference comes into play and this point is reiterated in chapter 11.

In chapter 10 we hear of a man named Cornelius who was a Roman centurion stationed in Caesarea, a city just to the north of Joppa, on the Mediterranean coastline. He is defined as “a devout man who feared God.” This state is exemplified through generous alms giving and consistent prayer to God. This description means that he followed the Jewish religion but had not converted. Therefore, he was still a gentile. Cornelius receives a vision to send for Peter and then listen to what he has to say once Peter is in his presence. Cornelius sends some men to Joppa so that this conversation might be able to occur.

As these men are enroot to find Peter, Peter finds himself up on the roof of the home of that certain Simon so that he might pray. He becomes hungry but before food can be retrieved for him, he too receives a vision that we will hear in a few moments that revolves around Peter eating meat that the Jewish law deems to be unclean or profane. However, God has made them clean. This vision becomes the precursor of the events that occur while Peter meets with Cornelius’ household because while he is speaking the Holy Spirit comes upon these gentiles and Peter realizes that they have been made clean by God. Cornelius and his household are considered to be the first gentile converts to Christianity. Our passage this morning finds Peter back in Jerusalem trying to explain why this has taken place.

What I would like you to think about is this: has there ever been a time when you didn’t think that even God could help you? Basically, you felt that there were limitations on the way that God was able to move in your world. The scripture reads this way.

Acts 11:1-18

11 Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ² So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³ saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴ Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵ “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. ⁶ As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷ I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.

¹¹ At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹² The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³ He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴ he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶ And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷ 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?” ¹⁸ When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

John 13:31-35

Intro

Our second passage shows us that the message that Peter received through his vision was not something completely foreign to the people who were called to follow Jesus. In fact, it was fundamental. Isn’t it amazing how something foundational to your beliefs can become misunderstood to the point that it means something completely different then what it was supposed to mean? At the end of this passage Jesus says that they will know that people are his disciples, “because they have love for one another.” Some of the early leaders of the church, including Peter, tried to put limits on how broad this love might be. As we have just heard, when it comes to God, the limits are removed. Hear these words, and be open to the many ways that God is still speaking. The scripture reads this way.

John 13:31-35

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³² If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³ Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

“You Want Fries With That?

A quick question for you: what were you doing at this time, …one month ago? Many of us might be thinking, “I can’t remember what I was doing two days ago, and you’re asking me to remember what I was doing on April 2^nd?” Most days, I would agree with you.

But this year, I’m actually able to answer the question definitively: one month ago, my family was moving in. In some ways, it only feels like yesterday. In others, my family has been looking around at each other wondering if it was really that long ago. One of the places where we have really felt this connection is in regards to how the boys are settling into the neighborhood. Let me try and explain by talking about where we used to live.

To begin with, we also lived in the parsonage up in New York state. However, in the case of St. John’s, that meant that the house was 30 steps from the church, literally. The church was our closest neighbors. Our next closest neighbors, while very quiet, really weren’t all that fun to play with. This is due to the fact that our next closest neighbors resided six feet under the ground, …in the cemetery. Other than that, the neighbors were few and far between. As a parent, and I’m still relatively new at this whole parenting thing, that’s what I was used to for the kids.

So, we move down here on the 2^nd of April, and my brother and sister-in-law, take the boys over to the playground at the elementary school. A few hours later, the boys come back and are talking a mile a minute about all the fun they had, and people they met, and in Jim’s case, the kids he was playing with. I’m looking at Jen and saying, “well, this is different. People. They’re everywhere! And they talk!”

This level of comfortableness has only increased as the boys are now looking out the windows of the house to see if anyone is outside to go play with. And I know they’re comfortable, because of the fact that when they are out playing with the other kids, you can hear them for about a three-mile radius. They’re boys: they like to be loud. It’s wonderful, but at the same time, we want our kids to behave themselves, so when the volume starts to get too loud, there is the reaction of wanting to head on over and remind them to quiet down, and be polite. I’ve actually gotten to that point several times over the past few weeks, and I’ll start heading out, when all of a sudden it quiets down. One of the great things about this neighborhood is not only do the kids play with one another, but the various parents of the various kids know that its okay, appropriate, and at times necessary to say, ‘enough’. All of the kids respect that parental role and honor (at least for a few minutes) the guidance that is being provided. Discipline is not a bad thing. It helps us to walk together, as families, as neighbors and communities, as families of faith.

However, as we all know, discipline is not just a thing that is meant for children, its for adults as well. This is what Peter found out in this morning’s passage. Although it is tough to pick up, because the context can be so foreign, the meeting that Peter had with the apostles and believers in Jerusalem, was not a “so what’s been up with you” conversation. The church in Jerusalem has heard about the events in Caesarea and they are not pleased. They believe that a grievous error has occurred and that Peter may need to be punished, or at the very least, brought back into line with what was thought to be orthodoxy, what was thought to be right thinking. Discipline is about to take place.

The reason that they believe that such a mistake has been made is because of the fact that up until this time, the Church was not much more than a sect within Judaism. I would even say that most members of the early Church saw themselves as the correct form of Judaism rather than a whole new religion.

For example, the apostles had not gone out into the gentile world and started to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ in those particular circles. They had kept everything in house, as it were, and had grown by having Jews come to their particular line of thinking.

This was not what Peter had done in regards to Cornelius and his household. In his case, Peter was stepping outside the norm, the regular, the correct, and was welcoming someone into the fold who had not been received before. So what does Peter have to do in order to avoid this disciplining that seems poised to come upon him? He tells his story of how it came to be that his action was deemed to be acceptable.

He describes how while on the roof, praying, he falls into a trance and sees a vision of a sheet being lowered by its four corners from heaven. On that sheet are animals of all sorts, reptiles, birds, beasts of prey. He then tells how he hears a voice that tells him to “get up, kill, and eat”. His response is the same as what any good Jewish individual would say, “by no means for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth”. But the voice comes back with the retort, “what God has made clean, you must not call profane”.

Peter continues on by saying that after the vision he went with the gentile men to meet with Cornelius and while he was there talking to him it was as if he saw the Holy Spirit descend upon those considered to be “profane” and “unclean” in bodily form, not all that different then on that first Pentecost. This is the story that Peter rolls out in order to defend himself from the discipline that appears to be forthcoming.

Now take a step back and answer the question: if this was the story that was put before you and you had felt that Peter had done something terribly wrong by welcoming into the family of faith these gentiles, would you believe him? Could you believe him, or would it be like so many of those moments when your children had done something wrong and in order to get out of being disciplined they concoct this amazing story to explain how they were just an innocent bystander in the whole event. Is Peter creating his own version of my dog ate the homework? I would wager that many of us would be in this camp and I’m sure that was what was starring at Peter as he explained his tale.

However, Peter is not quite done yet because he then takes his story and puts it into context. “And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 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?” Modern vernacular: “Look, I couldn’t believe it either but then I remembered what Jesus told us, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” and I thought if God wants to do this, whom am I, a sinner in need of grace as much as anyone, whom am I to put God in a box and say what He can and can’t do?”

I believe it is the context of the story that ultimately turns the sentiment in the room and causes all of the voices of discontent to be silenced. In Peter’s setting of the context we hear a proclamation of truth that Jesus provided to them, but so many of them clearly did not understand, and it has as much validity today as it did back then and it is this: God is not some commodity that we can buy and sell as if we were in control. God is not something that we whip out whenever we need it so as to fit our mentality of the moment. God is not something that we can just add on like fries to go along with a sandwich. (“Heh, you want God with that?”)

Instead, God is there to shake us up so that we might be able to realize that our lives and the world have changed. God is not here to follow us. Not at all. Instead, we are here to follow and support God so that the Almighty’s kingdom might be able to reign.

Think about the ministries here at the church. We need to ask the question of everything that we do, who’s in charge? Is it us, or is it God? If the answer is God, then the ways that we are able to serve never become static: ministries will grow and diminish as the Lord leads. This also means that we need to be open and receptive to whomever God may lead to this community so that they too have the opportunity to put into practice the recognition that a life of faith is more than just Sunday morning worship. The only way that happens is when we are willing to subjugate our very human tendency to find a comfortable place and then preserve it so that it works for our wants (and that was what Peter was bumping into in our reading this morning), and instead follow the Divine, wherever that may lead.

Peter and then the apostles in Jerusalem learned that they could not put God in a box, that God was not a commodity that could be used at humanities discretion. Jesus shared that message with his disciples (love one another), but, as we all know, and as with all of us in different ways, it is so very easy to fall back into our sinful ways and understand that command so that it makes it easy for us. It showed up in the response to Peter’s actions, and we have seen it in our own lives as well.

So, as you walk your journey of faith be sure to remember that the God whom You worship is greater than all of Your limitations and expectations. God walks with us to broaden our understanding of who we are, individually and collectively. God walks with us to broaden our understanding how the world works and who our neighbor truly is. Open that door and let us, all of us, follow that God together.

After Sermon Prayer

God, You are not most definitely not controlled by us. We do not have authority to pull You out whenever we want or put You in a box that declares what You can and can’t do. No, God we were created to follow You, to worship You, to sacrifice our will so that Your will might be done. God, help us to get the order straight, that You came first and that what You deem to be right and holy, is right and Holy. Help us to understand that fact and guide us so that we might be able to accept Your truths. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.