"Don't Blame Me, It's a God-Thing!"    2010

Acts 11:1-18          Galatians 3:23-29

 

Acts 11:1-18 (NRSV)            Peter’s Report to the Church at Jerusalem

11Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. 2So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ 4Then 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. 6As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” 8But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” 9But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” 10This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. 11At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. 12The 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. 13He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; 14he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” 15And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” 17If 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?’ 18When 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.’

 

Galatians 3:23-29 (NRSV)

23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring,* heirs according to the promise.

 

When I was a little boy playing Little League,

            I could ride my  bike along either of two routes to my games,

                                       that were about the same distance

                                                between our house and the ball field.

 

After I hit a homerun and played a great game one time,    after that,

            I always took the same route that I had used that day …

                                    … as if the route that I traveled getting to a game

                                      really made a difference

                                                in how well or poorly I could play baseball.<>

 

A man fell down into a well shaft, and he couldn't get out of it.

            So he hollered and shouted,

                        but there wasn't anyone nearby to hear him.

 

So finally, though not a religious man, in desperation he prayed.

            "Lord, if you can hear me,

                        if you will get me out of this well and save me,

                                    then I will devote the rest of my life

                                                to trying to help other people    come to faith."

            Amazingly enough, right after his prayer, he was rescued.

 

And so true to his word, the man did spend the rest of his life …

                        … trying to push other people   down into well shafts,

                             so that they too would come to faith.<>

 

Jesus and the earliest Christians had all been Jewish.

            So after Jesus ascended into heaven

                        the disciples and other Christians left behind

                                    assumed it was necessary to follow that same route,

                                                to first be Jewish, and then become a Christian;

                                                                        and that to become a follower of Christ,

                                                                                    everyone had to do it the same way.<>

 

One time when Peter was in Joppa,

            he went up onto the roof to pray before dinner,

                        and God spoke to him through a teaching vision.

 

In this vision, Peter saw a large sheet come down from heaven

            that was filled with a variety of animals, unclean by Jewish law,  

                        all were foods that Jewish people were not permitted to eat…

            …and he heard a voice saying,   "Peter, Kill and eat."

 

Peter refused saying, "No, I can't eat those things,

            I've never eaten any of those non-Kosher food items", and Peterŕ

                        wouldn't violate what he had always known to be God's rules.

 

And God said to Peter, vs. 9

                        “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

 

When this same scene happened three times in a row,

            Peter knew that it must be        a God-thing,

                        … then the Lord revealed to Peter what to do next.  vs. 11-12

 

As Peter tells it,   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.

 

No righteous-religious Jew would willingly associate with non-Jews

            or even consider entering a gentile's home,

                        for fear of corruption and contamination.   

By Jewish thinking…

            to be holy was to be separated from that which was not.

                Yet as directed by God, Peter went them and entered their home.

 

When Peter shared the gospel message with them, they believed,

            and were visibly filled with the Holy Spirit …

                        … just as the disciples had been filled at Pentecost;

                                                - except that these believers weren't even Jewish,

                                                 and yet God clearly has chosen them.

 

This was unimaginable and impossible ---

            for all through Jewish history, the religion of Judaism survived

                        by being distinct and separate from their gentile neighbors

            ŕ the Jewish people did not mix with their gentile neighbors…

                                    … for they knew themselves to be set apart by God,

                                                a special people distinct from the gentile world.

 

From a   1st century Jewish religious perspective,

            for a gentile to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,

                        was as radically impossible, as unexpectedly distressing,

                                                   as its would be to me,   if one day, Kathy's poodle

                                                            were to start reading out loud to me   in Greek.

            The coming of Holy Spirit absolutely

                        turned their world upside down from a Jewish perspective.

 

And God's radical message to Peter and to the early Christians

            was that salvation, having an authentic relationship with God,

               or to be accepted by God   was not about being Jewish or gentile,

                        but solely a matter of God's gracious love and invitation…

     … therefore the old categories of people   were no longer in effect.

 

*  Here is the difficult truth that we too struggle to live out:

            Salvation is entirely God's grace and responding to God's call,

                   and not that we earn or deserve   any part   of our salvation.

 

And seeing the visible evidence of God's grace, Peter realized, vs. 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?

 

So Peter accepted the gentiles, sat down and shared meals with them,

            & stayed a few days with them teaching them the Christian faith,

                                                as equal brothers and sisters in the Lord,

                                                 just as loved and precious to God, as he.

 

Meanwhile back in Jerusalem,

            the other leaders of the church were stunned and horrified.

                             How could Peter so disregard their Jewish traditions?

 

            If these gentile believers were accepted              into the faith,

                        then they would be sisters and brothers    by faith,

                                    which would dissolve the division of Jewish-ness,

                                                changing everything about what it meant to be holy.

 

If gentiles really were as acceptable to God as followers of Christ,

            that meant a huge change in how they were seen by others of faith,

                        requiring that  Jewish Christians had to actually love them,

                                    and do the unthinkable,

                                                of having table fellowship with these gentiles…

                                                    … an absolute anathema to any religious Jew.

 

So when he returned to Jerusalem,

            the church leaders met and called Peter in to explain himself,

                        and he simply told the story, step by step what had happened;

                                    that it wasn't anything that Peter had initiated…

     … basically saying: "Don't blame me, it was entirely  a God-thing."

 

To their credit, once they had heard the whole story,

            they accepted it as God's will, a God thing,   vs. 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.’

 

But actually that wasn't it,

            this issue of gentiles coming into a church largely Jewish

                        continued to be a huge controversy,

                              and it was a conflict with which even Paul had to contend.

 

One of the earliest churches founded by the Apostle Paul

            was the one in Galatia.

                        And when he moved on to do evangelism elsewhere,

                                    other missionaries from Jerusalem came along,

                                                teaching that Paul's gospel was deficient…

 

            … and that to be better Christians, to be their friend on Face-book,

                        they needed to follow the rules and rituals of Judaism,

                              to be more Jewish   like the earliest Christians had been.

 

Paul reacted strongly against these folks pushing Jewish tradition

            because  prejudice practiced as purity is a denial of the gospel,

                        because it refuses to simply accept   the grace of salvation

                                    as totally and entirely   a gift –   freely given by God.

 

Paul recognized that as soon as you add more requirements, more rules

            you are denying the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Jesus,

                        because that says that you need something more than grace…

 

            … and either we are saved by grace alone, or we are not,  

                        in which case, if you're saying it requires something else,

                          that means   the sacrifice of Jesus really wasn't enough.

 

*   Grace plus anything   --- is no longer grace, but has become works.

 

We humans like to think that somehow we are better, more acceptable,

            and that our ways & beliefs  are more loveable to God than others.

We assume that God likes our taste and our preferences best,

            and those other folks would be better, if they were more like us…

                   … and such walls we build   are an offense against the gospel.

 

It's not that we can't have our preferences or keep our traditions,

          as long as we own them as ours,

                   and don't use them as walls to fence others out;

 

            or claim that the familiar things that feel comfortable to us,

                        that our choices   are somehow more sacred and holy to God,

                             or that our preferences are all God-ordained standards.

          We cannot impose a wall of separation,  and then blame it on God.       

 

The Lord is absolutely clear in speaking through Paul, vs. 26~29

            for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  … There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

 

The wall are torn down, and so   God's transforming grace abounds …

 

          … in France during World War II, some soldiers brought the body of a dead comrade to a cemetery to have him buried. The priest gently asked whether their friend had been a baptized Catholic. The soldiers did not know. The priest sadly informed them that in that case, he could not permit burial in the church yard.

 

          So the soldiers dug a grave just outside the cemetery fence. And they laid their comrade to rest. The next day the soldiers came back to add some flowers — only to discover that the grave was nowhere to be found.

          Bewildered, they were about to leave when the priest came up to speak to them.

 

          It seems that he could not sleep the night before, so troubled was he by his refusal to bury the soldier in the parish cemetery.

          So early in the morning he left his bed, and with his own hands, he moved the fence — in order to include the body of the soldier who had died for France.

 

Through Jesus Christ, the Lord has removed all the fences,

            and at the Lord's Table we celebrate that God has made us one,

                        and so we look ahead to when that will be fully realized,

                                    when we all gather in the coming Kingdom of the Lord…

 

… as Jesus described it in Luke's gospel:

            Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’ (Luke 13:29-30 (NRSV))