“Can ‘Those People’ Really Be In God's Plan?”
Original sermon given May 15, 2022, written and delivered by Pastor Doug Groll at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church
Watch the sermon live here
“Can ‘Those People’ Really Be In God’s Plan?”
(Acts 11:1-18)
I think it is relatively safe to say that the human being likes things “clean”…..clear cut…..easy to discern.. It certainly seems that way today… Have you noticed that as you read the newspaper, watch or listen to the news we constantly hear everyone saying how “Polarized” the nation is?....as though we could neatly put half the country on one side of the fence…and half on the other….Poles apart? We feel more comfortable when we can move with and talk to “people like us” ….as opposed to “those people”. And it is easier if we can put the others neatly on the other side…as if there were only two sides without any nuancing in between. And we get a little bit uncomfortable when we are in the presence of or talking to someone who might seem or be just a little bit different than ourselves…or see things differently. Recently I took a ride with a young relative on his four wheeler on the wooded area behind his property in rural Michigan. Now you have to realize that I have never shot a real weapon in my life…I could probably be a poster child for a repeal of the 2nd amendment movement…. and as we rode around he was showing me the deer blind and the shooting range in the woods….. I naively asked, “Do you use this?” Oh yes…..Here we shoot with the 3006..and then the 9 milimeter Glock…etc…etc… and the 38 pistol…. And this man is as gentle as they get….What have I missed here? That conversation did not fit my desire or expectation.
And that is nothing new. Life is messy….doesn’t fit categories easily ….never has…never will and we see that in today’s lesson from Acts. And if there is one thing we should glean from this is that even within the church….things get messy …confused and cannot sort themselves out by themselves…but that the saving, loving, sacrificing God empowers ministry in our messy world.
CHAPTER ONE
Really there are three chapters to this message this morning. The first one we find in the initial telling of the story of Peter and his interaction with the Roman centurion Cornelius in Chapter 10. And here again…if we really look at the context and the text of the chapter we get an idea of a non neat world. Israel in that first century A.D. (probably around the year 39 or 40 A.D.)is a cosmopolitan world….nothing parochial about it. We have a Roman centurion based in the Roman city of Ceasarea on the coast of the Mediterranean…..Peter is 30 miles away in Joppa…a key port for commerce around that sea at that time…..multi economic….lmulti ethnic…. And we are told that this Gentile leader of an occupying force is told by God to send some emissaries to a man called Peter and to bring him to him. At the same time Peter….a onetime Jewish fanatic is still following Jewish dietary restrictions…..(the early church was not binary where one day it was like this and the next day it was like that)..and suddenly he has a vision of a sheet full of all sorts of creepy animals that practicing Jews were simply not supposed to eat…and
Looking at it closely I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘No, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has cleansed you must not call common.’ This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven.
And then the emissaries arrive who basically say, “Peterl…our boss wants you…and Peter says….OK! and the next day Peter goes with them back to Ceasarea together with some of the other Christians there with him….and he meets with Cornelius in his house….and that is important….in his house and we are told……
Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.” Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.
So ends the first chapter. This is what happened.
CHAPTER TWO
Now comes the sticky part. Peter goes up to Jerusalem some time later and we are told that there are those who really want Peter to explain himself. Here again, we have to remember that everything was not neat. There were Christians….and Luke is careful here in not condemning these early Jewish Christians who were though confessing Christ as Savior were still culturally Jews….Jewish ceremonial laws…circumcision……dietary laws and definitely not entering the house of a Gentile. “Clear this up for us now, Peter!” “How could you do this?” You enter the house……you probably ate something with them……Is there anything that could be more powerful than our religious beliefs and our cultural baggage……this is what we have always believed, taught and confessed….Tell us….Explain yourself!
So, Peter, instead of using is authority as a prime disciple and follower….simply told the story…..told of God’s action in calling Cornelius and his family….Told of the Spirit coming upon them…….as it had at Pentecost….told of their joy…..told of their baptism…. This was not a treatise on saving…but a recounting of God’s action in human lives…..bringing a message of forgiveness and acceptance by God of even a Roman centurion and his family…of their baptism and joy…..and here it comes….
As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” When they heard this they were silenced. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life.”
GOD GAVE THE SAME GIFT! THIS BECAME THE GENTILE PENTECOST….. What had happened in Jerusalem 50 days after the resurrection was now happening to the Gentile world…..God’s good news of forgiveness and new life was crossing cultures…..not making the Gentile world only recipients….passive…..but rather empowered by the Same Spirit to go out and around….And so they did.
CHAPTER THREE
And that then brings this message to us in our world…..
First of all….. where is our world like that of Peter’s? If we look through the New Testament, while there is the injunction to reach out to the world….the New Testament writers don’t seem to see the threat to the Gospel strictly from the secular or non believing world but so many times from within the community of believers…… Peter is convinced that the dietary laws have served him well and he would just as leave stay there, “thank you” and those who would insist that you had to be circumcised to be a Christian male…..they were sure….they could control God with their beliefs and customs….God could be predicable under those rules….
And here the Spirit breaks through through telling the story and rejoicing in God’s love….allowing the Spirit to empower the cross cultural power of joy in God’s love to be contagious to the world around them.
That is both a challenge and a comfort to the believing churh today. On the one hand the challenge comes in the midst of some of our deepest cultural and religious anchors….as the world continues to be as messy now as it was then…and we try to find our nitche….. think again.. The Creator of all things visible and invisible challenges us to look beyond what is ours and to just possibly see the Spirit moving with a message of forgiveness through the Jesus of history on the cross for the forgiveness and new life of love. And…..comfort….if we don’t get it right…..as those of the circumcision group in Jerusalem…..listened….understood and ultimately rejoiced that even “those kind of people” could hear….believe and even go out and serve. Amen
Acts 11:1-18