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There are really two Pentecost events in
the book of Acts. We are familiar with the first one, found
in Acts 2. We celebrated it two weeks ago with birthday cake
and the color red. “When the day of Pentecost has come,
they were all with one accord in one place, and a rush of
mighty wind, tongues of fire resting on each of them.”
But the second is less well known. A
second time the Holy Spirit moves, people sense the fire,
they hear the gospel for the first time in their own
language and speak it out of their own experience, with
their own tongues. This one you might call the “Gentile
Pentecost.” On the first Pentecost, the Jewish believers
gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival…hence the
name. This time, the Jesus movement breaks out of the circle
of the Jewish tradition and into the Gentile world.
The significance of the story can be seen
in the length of the narrative. Luke goes into great
detail—really more detail than the first Pentecost
narrative—in telling the story.
The lead character is Cornelius.
He was a Roman centurion. He was called a
“god-fearer.” That is, he was a Gentile who had attached
himself to the synagogue. Centurions were people who
believed there was one God and prayed to that God, even
though they didn’t follow all the traditions or keep the
Jewish law. Maybe today, in the lingo of the contemporary
church, we would call him a “seeker:” a vague believer in
the divine with a limited understanding of the content of
faith, but a desire to know more. Maybe he was like the
multitudes of Americans who say they believe in God, but
have little clarity about who, or what, or why. Maybe he was
one of the questioning, the searching, the doubting, with an
openness to God, if only someone would point the way. Maybe
he was one of those who are close to accepting Christ, if
only someone would open the door.
Peter is the preacher.
It’s the same Peter who had been through
his own struggles with doubt and denial, the same Peter whom
Jesus has called “The Rock,” the same Peter who preached the
first Pentecost day sermon in Jerusalem when three thousand
were converted.
The place is Caesarea and Joppa.
They were cosmopolitan, seaport cities,
where the diverse worlds of the Jews and the Romans and the
Greeks and immigrants from all over the Mediterranean melded
together into one great cacophony of cultures and tongues
and races.
And Luke gives us one little note, which
probably passes our awareness all together. It seems
inconsequential to us, but I am sure it would have stopped
Luke’s readers dead in their tracks: Peter was staying in
the house of Simon, the tanner. (Acts 10:6)
Simon the tanner! Every upright,
kosher-keeping, law-abiding Jew of Peter’s day knew that a
tanner was, by his very work, unclean—unclean for life
because he worked with dead animals. He was considered, once
and forever, permanently unclean, untouchable. If you came
into contact with a tanner, someone who worked with all
those dead animals, you couldn’t pray in the synagogue
without a lengthy ritual bath and cleansing. By Levitical
law, Simon the tanner had to live at least fifty cubits
outside the city, out on the seaside, away from the clean
folks. All those dead animals and hides. No self-respecting
Jew would accept hospitality from a tanner…
…any more than would any Gentile, really.
The whole of the Gentile population,
those “other” folks and other races, those who were outside
the traditions and the faith, all of them were like so many
hides and carcasses at the tanner’s house: untouchable,
un-kosher, unclean.
We don’t know why Peter was staying there.
It seems so out of character for Peter,
deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition and context of the
Christian movement. But there he was. Maybe it was the
setting, all those boiling vats, the drying hides, which
prompted the dream. Or maybe it was his mixed feelings about
staying in the home of Simon the tanner. Or maybe he was
just hungry. So while waiting for his lunch, he took a nap
and he had a dream. Luke says:
…and he saw the heavens opened, and
something descending, like a great sheet, let down by four
corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and
reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice
saying, “Peter, rise and kill and eat.”
Peter was shocked…all those unclean
animals. I mean, the scripture was clear, wasn’t it? It says
right here in Leviticus what to eat and what not to eat, who
to talk to and who not to touch, clean and unclean. Peter
said, “No Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is
common or unclean.” And the voice came a second time,
saying, “What God has cleansed, you must not call unclean.”
(Acts 10:9-15)
The dream came three times. But still,
bull-headed Peter didn’t get it until a knock came at the
door and there were three men, sent by Cornelius, calling
for Peter.
And in that moment…Peter gets religion!
Peter gets it. Or it gets him. He
understands the dream and he realizes, as Lloyd Olgivie
says, “The Lord had in mind not the foods Peter should eat,
but the people Peter should love.” (Drumbeat of Love,
page 139)
-
Love even Simon, the
unclean tanner
-
Love even Cornelius,
the Gentile Centurion
-
Love even the
Gentiles, the Greeks, the Romans, the Africans, the
immigrants, the masses who filled the streets of
Caesarea and Joppa
Peter
got religion!
And when Peter finally got it,
he opened his mouth and said:
You know, it is against the law for a Jew
to have contact with one of another race. But God has shown
me not to call any man common or unclean. In truth, I have
come to understand that God has no favorites; but that in
every nation those who fear him and act righteously are
accepted by Him. (Acts 10:28)
Or, as
the Eugene Peterson version translates it:
It’s God’s own truth, nothing could be
plainer. God plays no favorites. It makes no difference who
you are or where you are from—if you want God and are ready
to do as he says, the door is open.
And as
a result, Luke records:
While saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard
the word. And they were amazed because the gift of the Holy
Spirit had been poured out, even on the Gentiles. For they
heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God…and they
were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. (Acts 10:44)
The
lesson of the vision and the text is so obvious, it hardly
bears repeating. But I am a preacher, so I’ll repeat it
anyway:
1. God has no favorites.
God’s grace is extended to all. The
message is for everyone. The Gospel is for the whole world.
You see, the problem for the religious Jews of Peter’s day
was the assumption that they were “chosen,” and they would
be blessed and set apart because they were special. But in
fact, the original call came to Abraham “so that through
them the whole world would be blessed.” They were chosen so
that the world, through them, might be blessed.
And it’s easy for those of us in the
Christian church in America who have been so blessed to
assume that we are somehow more valuable, more lovable, more
special, and to miss the fact that:
-
we are saved in order
to save
-
we have been blessed
in order to bless
-
we have been given
the Gospel in order to give it with others
God
plays no favorites. God loves us all the same.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son…”
For God so loved humanity, in all of its
diversity and complexity—for God so loved Jews, Gentiles,
Greeks, Romans, the lepers, the blind, the widows, even
Centurions and tanners—for God so loved them all that he
gave his Son, so whosoever believes in him shall not perish
but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
I just love that word, don’t you? It’s a
word we seldom use, but there it is in the King James
version of the verse: “Whosoever.”
Whosoever believes in him will have
eternal life.
Whosoever includes you and me.
When Peter got religion, or when it got
him, he discovered that God has no favorites. And he
discovered that…
2. God breaks down the barriers.
For Peter it was the Levitical code, the
kosher laws dividing everything, even other human beings,
clean and unclean. For us, it might be more subtle:
-
the barriers which
block us
-
the prejudices which
haunt us
-
the divisions which
separate us
-
the politics which
divide us
-
black and white,
Hispanic and Anglo, red and blue, rich and poor, city
and suburb, Michigan and Michigan State, Seaholm and
Groves
You
name it. God is in the business of breaking down the
barriers.
If you read David Crumm’s article in
yesterday’s Free Press, he shared a wonderful
interview with Ralph Williams. Ralph is a fascinating
person, outstanding lecturer, annually recognized by
students as one of the favorite teachers at U of M. His
courses on religion are always over- registered. He brings
together literature, faith and culture in wonderful ways.
David describes Williams lecturing on Shakespeare’s
Othello, the story of a black African nobleman and his
white Venetian wife, and Williams invites his students to
ponder “…how 400 years ago, Shakespeare could portray the
dangers of bigotry so powerfully, yet the problem lingers
with us today.” (Detroit Free Press, June 16, 2007,
page 5C)
And I would invite you to ponder why,
when almost two thousand years ago, Peter confronted the
dangers of bigotry so powerfully, why does the problem still
linger with us today?
I hope many of you saw the movie
Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce and his
fight against slavery in the British Empire. As you may
know, John Wesley was a supporter and friend of Wilberforce.
In fact, the last letter Wesley wrote before his death was
to Wilberforce:
Unless God has raised you up for this
very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men
and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? O
be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in
the power of his might, till even American slavery (the
vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
The letter is dated February 24, 1791.
Wesley would die eight days later, but it would be another
eight years before Wilberforce would get his act through
Parliament. It would be almost a hundred years before
Lincoln would sign the Emancipation Proclamation. And over
two hundred years later, we are still dealing with the
lingering issues growing out of those dark years. We are
still trying to get Peter’s religion, still trying to learn
the lesson of Peter’s vision: God has no favorites. God is
in the business of breaking down the barriers.
3. And when we “get religion”…or when it gets us…then God
will pour out his spirit.
The first day of Pentecost happened, Luke
says, when “they were all of one accord and in one place.”
Before the Spirit could come, the disciples had to get it
together, get over their anxiety about the
crucifixion, the resurrection, and their fear of the future,
uncertain about what was in store. Above all, they had to
come together, in one accord, in one place…break down the
barriers and get their heads and hearts together. Then,
“suddenly, a sound came from heaven, like the rush of a
mighty wind and filled the house where they were sitting.”
Luke says the second day of Pentecost
happened when they opened their hearts and minds to the
Gentiles. Before the Spirit could come, Peter had to catch
the vision, the door had to be opened to Cornelius and his
friends, and God’s dream of an inclusive church needed to be
planted. Then, Luke says, “while Peter was speaking (right
in the middle of the sermon, no less!), the Holy Spirit fell
on all who heard the word.”
And it’s still true. It is only when
God’s people open their hearts to each other, when God’s
people open their minds to the fresh wind of the Spirit,
when God’s people open their doors to those who are
different (Get it? “Open hearts, open minds, open
doors”?), when we catch the vision God has for his
church as the fully inclusive body of Christ, then the
Spirit can move, the wind blows and fire comes.
Well, all week this has been a sermon in
search of a conclusion. I’ve tried to find just the right
little story or illustration to pull it all together. Even
last night, I was still trying to find a way to end this
sermon. Finally I decided to end it with some simple
questions:
What vision motivates us?
What kind of a church do we really
want to be?
What is our dream for the global
church of Jesus Christ?
When
we, like Peter, catch a dream and “get religion,” then, the
Spirit comes and sets us on fire!
O Holy Ghost, revival comes from thee,
send a revival, start the work in me.
Thy word declares thou wilt supply our
need.
For
filling, now, O Lord, we humbly plead |
