In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.
Have you ever been at a social gathering where you walked up to a group of people having a conversation in which you had no clue what was happening? That’s what today’s reading from Acts feels like. The whole of chapter 10 of Acts is, I think, one of the most compelling and informative passages in the entire New Testament, but it’s hard to understand in isolation. So before we dive into the text and consider what the Holy Spirit is saying to us today through it, let’s review the tenth chapter of Acts.
In
chapter nine of Acts, we have the story of St. Paul’s conversion. You’ll
remember that he was a fierce persecutor of the Church when he had an
experience of the Risen Lord that began his conversion process. So the mood as
we enter chapter 10 is one of shock, that Paul has gone from Christianity’s
strongest enemy to its leading messenger. His conversion certainly shows the
transformative power of the Resurrection. As chapter 10 begins, a God-fearing
man, a centurion by trade, named Cornelius had a vision in which he was told by
God to summon Peter to meet with him. He wasn’t told why, but he sent word to
Peter requesting a meeting. In doing so, he exhibited trust and faith in God.
After all, Cornelius wasn’t a Christian, nor had he been checking out church
websites. The Spirit spoke to him out of the blue, and he responded faithfully.
The next day, Peter was at prayer when he had a vision in which a sheet came down from heavens, and on the sheet where animals there were deemed to be ritually unclean according the Torah. And Peter hears a voice that tells him to “get up and eat.” Peter refuses, saying “I have never eaten anything unclean, I will not commit this sin.” But the voice replies, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times. To us, perhaps this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but this was another huge moment of conversion in Scripture. Peter’s decision to eat this non-kosher food would be as if Mitt Romney endorsed Hillary Clinton for the 2016 election, or if Michael Jordan became the head basketball coach at Duke, or if the Vatican decided to ordain women. Peter’s decision set aside hundreds of years’ worth of tradition, not to mention that it clearly went against the words of Scripture, was, indeed, a very big deal.
When this vision ends, the messengers from Cornelius arrive and tell Peter that Cornelius was told to summon him. Peter then meets with Cornelius and says “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” Peter was likely anxious and uncertain as he approached Cornelius. What sort of trouble would he be getting into? Would this meeting with a soldier lead to his literally following of Jesus’ words to “take up your cross and follow me?” Why was the Spirit leading him here? But Peter trusted that the Holy Spirit had gone on ahead of him and would continue to be present.
Cornelius then shares with Peter the story of how God told him to summon Peter to his home. Peter then preaches a sermon and begins by saying, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” Peter had just had two very powerful experiences of God’s love that conquers all, and when he reflected upon these experiences, he realized that God was even bigger than he realized. God will not be contained by a set of laws, preconceived notions, or even our imaginations. And this is where today’s reading begins. At the end of his preaching, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard his preaching and baptisms ensued. As the next chapter begins, the text tells us that “When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’” Even when the Spirit is clearly guiding us, there will always be those who have not yet had this same experience of transformation and often the response is one of opposition.
So that is the powerful and ground-breaking tenth chapter of the book of Acts. Last Sunday, I mentioned that most people would describe Christianity’s central teaching as something like “Jesus died for your sins, so believe in him and be saved.” And I said that I don’t think that’s the Good News of Jesus Christ at all. In light of this reading from Acts, and the rest of the Bible, along with our experiences over thousands of years as followers of Jesus, I would say that the Good News of Christianity is that God is transforming all of Creation through the love of Jesus. The central message of Christianity is not about sin, but rather transformation. And this is what the Resurrection is all about. The Good News is that, through Christ, hatred is transformed to love; war can become peace; fear is changed into hope; doubt turns to faith; death is resurrected into life; darkness is brightened by light; bread and wine become body and blood; the profane is converted to the sacred; sin is brought to reconciliation.
The central question in Christianity is this: do you believe in the power of the Holy Spirit or not? Is there such a thing as continuing revelation? Did God finish Creation in the book of Genesis and then leave us to run our course? Does God continue to speak to us, to push us, to call us, or not? I can tell you what I think, but that doesn’t matter. You have to answer that question for yourself. The prophet Isaiah puts it this way, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Or as the one seated on the throne in Revelation says “See, I am making all things new.” In the Creed we all say “we believe in the Holy Spirit.” We acknowledge that God is somehow active in the world. But do we trust it? Do we live our lives as if it is true?
If you say that that there is no continuing revelation, then the Bible contains all truths that we need to know. Everything about God is known as we simply have to follow the instructions. And if the Bible contains the full picture of everything, then we don’t need faith because we have all the data that we need. Tyler and I started dating in 2001, and though we’ve spent 14 years together and I know her better than I do anyone else, she can still surprise me. I think we can all acknowledge that even in the people closest to us, there are thoughts and dreams that we will never know about. And so if that is true for our human relationships, how much more true it is for God. God’s being and love are deeper than we can ever fully grasp, so we need the Spirit guiding us into fuller truths.
The way that we get glimpses into those parts of God are through revelation- revelation in nature, revelation in prayer, revelation in the wisdom and discernment of the Church. Continuing revelation is something that we’ve always struggled with as a church. Continuing revelation is a good thing. It means that God is with us, that God’s Spirit is still at work, that God is not done with us, that we can work with God to bring about the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. But there will be struggles; transformation means there will be contradictions between what we thought was right and where God is calling us to go anew. The word for transformation in Scripture is a Greek word that means “to change your mind,” so we must be ready for new understandings if we are to be transformed. I invite you to consider- do you believe in continuing revelation? And if you do, what are you going to do about it?
The vehicle for this transformation is often love. As the readings from 1 John and John today note, love is the way in which we know God and that we follow Jesus. As we know, love is a subversive and powerful force. The love of God was manifest in Jesus, and it upset those in power, it was nailed to cross, and it was Resurrected, bursting forth from the tomb. But we have to be willing to be open to love. A well-known theologian once said, “By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed.” Transformation is indeed possible, but we have to be open to the new things that God is doing through the Holy Spirit, as Cornelius and Peter were open to it.
I believe in the Holy Spirit. I hope for transformation. I yearn for reconciliation. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, for me, is clear evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit to speak to us today. In this letter he writes, “There was a time when the Church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society… Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo.”
The phrases “continuing revelation” and “Holy Spirit” are antithetical to the words “status quo.” God is up to something new. There is yet more love to be expressed and known. There are new truths that the Holy Spirit will lead us into. God’s story of loving, creating, redeeming, and sustaining is not done. And I’d like to leave with you with two relevant places in our world that need some of this loving hope that the Spirit can do new things.
This first are race relations in this country. I would list all of the incidents of racial tension that have been in the news, but the list has grown too long. Baltimore is just the latest of example of the problem that we’re facing. As a middle-class, white male, I know that I need to do more listening than I do speaking. Racism is nothing new in the history of the world, but it is a sin that America has a particular penchant for. I pray for the Holy Spirit to do something new, to change minds, to open hearts, to transform broken systems.
The Holy Spirit is speaking, and we would do well to listen and act, as did Cornelius and Peter. It will take trust and courage, but as King said, the Church has become weak. We have become weak because we have stopped listening, we have stopped noticing the movement of the Spirit, we have refused to let the power of the Resurrection convert our selfishness into a more loving community, to transform our stereotypes into new relationships. And while I hope for reconciliation because justice is important to me, I also pray that the Spirit transforms race relations in America because Salisbury could easily be the next Ferguson or Baltimore. What we’re seeing is that no city is exempt from the sin of racism. And so I really hope that we can transform the conversation through the power of the Holy Spirit with love. I will be praying for discernment and grace, and I invite you to join me in that prayer of how we can let the Spirit transform us when it comes to racial reconciliation in our communities.
And the second place where I feel the power of the Holy Spirit transforming us through love is our understanding of marriage. As you know, we’re having a discernment opportunity on Wednesday evening to listen to the way in which the Holy Spirit has been moving in your hearts and minds. In Acts, boundaries were pushed, and since that day, boundaries have continued to be pushed by the Holy Spirit. Slavery was once supported by religion and Scripture, but the Spirit showed us something new. On the basis of tradition and Scripture, women were treated as second-class citizens both in our nation and our church, but the Spirit revealed a new truth. And the Spirit’s insistence on love is pushing up against the boundary of same-sex marriage. The Bible and a sense of “the way things always have been” have, for most of history, restricted the love and covenant of marriage to be between people of different genders, but there are many people inside and outside the Church who have heard the Spirit saying, “what I have made clean, you must not all profane” and proclaiming that “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
As St. Paul famously wrote in his letter to the Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And to that I would say that neither can sin, racism, prejudice, fear or resistance to change, misplaced Biblical literalism, or homophobia separate us from the redeeming and transforming love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. I also firmly believe that discernment is a communal practice that takes time, prayer, and listening. I look forward to our holy dialogue on Wednesday night.
God is doing a new thing,
do you perceive it? Cornelius and Peter, in chapter 10 of Acts, were moved by
the Spirit to conversion. Following the Spirit into new places can be
overwhelming and frightening, so it is best if we do it together as a community
of faith. And this is something that I love so much about The Episcopal Church- that we are defined and united not by our doctrines or hierarchy, but our liturgy and our kneeling at the altar together to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. The Resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate this Eastertide, is the
Good News that there exists a power to transform all of Creation to more
closely align with God’s redeeming love. May God help us to hear the call of
the Spirit. May we have the grace and courage to respond faithfully. And may
God transform us and make us a part of the new Creation. Amen.
