Sermon:
October 20, 2002
Sunday Night Alive!  

Scripture:
Acts 11:1-18

Think of a time you experienced something that changed the way you saw the world. Something that changed the questions you were asking about life. Changed the meaning of reality and challenged how you understood what you saw. 

For me, one of those times was seeing the movie Dead Poets Society. It showed the struggles of a few young men as they were challenged to find their own voice in a world where reward came from their conformity. It changed me because it presented not only the ideal of discovering one’s own path— everyone wants to do that at some point—but it also showed the cost. Life was not always practicing soccer to Handel’s “Water Music,” nor would it be winning the game with Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” mysteriously filling the air. Life was not always up. There was a cost to stepping out of line. Whether you were one of the students taking that step for the first time, or Robin William’s character encouraging others to seek their own path—there was a cost. It’s sometimes great, or it’s sometimes insignificant. But there is always a cost. 

In our reading this evening, the apostle Peter is experiencing that reality. An event has occurred that changes his whole outlook on life, something so dramatic that his understanding of who God is, offers relationship to, and what that relationship looks like, is transformed. He’s left to figure out what it all means and, as he’s doing so, to defend what God has revealed to him. 

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “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. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times, then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment, three men sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were. 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. 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; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 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?” 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.”  (Acts 11:1-18) 

This all sounds very strange to us today. We’d like to believe we’ve been raised in a world that says:

It’s not by the color of a person’s skin,
It’s not by our language or national origin,
It’s not by where we live or how we dress,

It’s by what we are seeing God doing in our lives that matters. 

We have grown up in a post-Peter world. For something short of 2000 years, we have had the benefit of Peter’s experience.   But prior to what God accomplished through him, it was very different. Devout Jews—those who earnestly sought to be faithful—were taught from a young age that their God had no use for those who were not Jewish. And the original followers of Jesus were first and foremost Jews, then followers of Christ. 

Imagine not talking to your neighbor because they don’t go to the same church you do…not stepping into their yard because you’d have to wash…not buying from their flower shop because the flowers were touched by “those God had no use for.” It’s hard to understand now, but those kinds of separations were simply expected. They were part of the cultural norms. It was a different time. 

I hesitate to share a story because it’s politically incorrect, but the struggle is greater to understand how we can paint over life, ignore the truth and pretend it never happened. So know that the story is true. It happened. I’m not proud of it, but he was from another time. My grandfather pulled me aside one day while we were chopping wood, getting ready for winter —probably a day like today. I could tell that, in his mind, he felt it was his time to give me some grandfatherly advice. Almost with tears in his eyes, he told me to always be careful in this world—that I could never trust Italians, blacks or Hispanics, and not to have anything to do with them.    

I didn’t understand. As an eight-year-old boy, we lived right next door to a Hispanic family—they brought us tamales as a housewarming gift. My best friend was Italian—his dad didn’t like to share his grapes, but that didn’t make him a terrible person. I had friends in school who were black—and they seemed just like everybody else. Even as a little boy, it was hard to understand the world my grandfather was talking about. It was not my world.

And so it is hard for us tonight to understand why what Peter is talking about is so important. Our struggle is with the world seen through the eyes of a first-century Palestinian Jew, a world filled with separations and distinctions, a world which is no longer our world. 

But it was a pivotal time in the life of the church. Luke (the author of Acts) records that Peter has returned to Jerusalem and is being confronted by his fellow Christians. “You were in the house of a Gentile?” “You ate their food?”  

We’ve heard that before, haven’t we? “It’s the temple club.” They said the same thing about Jesus. When tax collectors and sinners were gathering around him, the Pharisees and teachers of the law started saying: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them?” The faces and names may have changed, but the social expectations stayed right where they had always been. The church of Jesus Christ was little more than the old temple with a new high priest. 

And then Peter has this encounter with God.    Isn’t that just like God? Right when we think we’ve got it all worked out…right when we think we know who’s on the inside and who’s on the out…

who’s good and who’s bad…who God is smiling on, and who God has no use for…right when we have the answers…God breaks through, turns all we thought we knew on its head and says: “Listen for a moment, will you!” 

God got Peter’s attention. For those who are big fans of Scooby-Doo, the whole idea of a picnic—God lowering a blanket filled with food to get Peter’s attention—should really make sense. It’s filled with all those things that he’s learned, by his cultural upbringing, are unclean. And yet God tells him: “I made it, how can you say it’s no good?” Then he sees God’s Spirit working in the midst of the kind of people he’d always been told God didn’t care about. And Peter’s small box of understanding is blown apart. He is changed. 

It’s always hard when God breaks through our neat and ordered world, challenging us to grow, to move beyond what those around us would think is safe and respectable. It’s hard sometimes to hear God’s voice, as we listen in the midst of so many voices telling us what we should hear. 

It took Peter three times to get the message. So I’d like to invite us this evening to pause, to rest in stillness, listening. What is it about being a follower of Jesus that has become very comfortable? What have we always taken for granted? What keeps you from seeing those around you as your brothers and sisters? How is God calling all of us to see what He is doing? 

(Pause in silence) 

For centuries, people heard God saying: “Stay away from pork.” Then, in the span of one afternoon, Peter hears him say: “Anyone for ribs?” It’s not an easy road to walk. But God is always doing a new thing, and when God breaks in, we’re never the same. I give thanks for that. 

Amen.