Even the Gentiles?!

Acts 10:34-48, Sermon 5-13-12

The spiritual revelation at the heart of Acts is that God breaks down the religious system of exclusion, of insiders and outsiders, by including the Gentiles in salvation. But to get there we need to travel to a town called Caesarea, to another town named Joppa, and then back to Caesarea again. So let me tell you a story. Earlier in the chapter, chapter ten, a man named Cornelius has a vision. Cornelius is a Roman imperial centurion, which means he is a man of considerable social status—he commands a large group of anywhere from 60-80 men in the Roman army. He lives in a port town that Herod the Great built named Caesarea.  He’s a Gentile—the text suggests he might be from Italy—but he also worships the God of the Jews. As far as Gentiles go, Cornelius is very devout: he fears God with his household, he gives alms to poor people and he prays constantly. But as a Gentile Cornelius can’t fully worship the Jewish God, because he is unable to offer sacrifices with the Jews in the Jerusalem Temple.  One afternoon, he has a vision. An angel of God appears to him and calls out his name: “Cornelius.” And the angel tells him that God has received his prayers and his alms—as if they were sacrifices from the Temple itself—his prayers and alms have gone up to God like incense. And then the angel tells Cornelius to send a few of his men to go visit this other man named Simon Peter who’s temporarily staying in the town of Joppa. So Cornelius explains his vision to a couple of his men and sends them off.

The next afternoon, Simon Peter goes to his roof to pray. We know Simon Peter. He is the follower of Jesus that always seems to miss the point, and never more so than when he denied Jesus three times as Jesus was being arrested and beaten by the Roman soldiers. But the resurrection and the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost turned Peter into a different person. He is filled with confidence and power and walks around healing people like Jesus did. And this day, on this roof in Joppa, Peter, like Cornelius, has a vision from the Spirit. It’s a weird vision. He sees something resembling a large sheet being lowered to the ground by its four corners, and inside the sheet are all kinds of animals. They are not separated according to Jewish dietary laws.[1] The unclean animals are all mixed with the clean ones, which potentially contaminated them. Despite this potential contimination Peter hears a voice saying “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” Now, Peter is a good Jew. Like Jesus and the first disciples, he keeps kosher and so he thinks the heavenly voice must be giving him a trick question—it’s a test. So he says, “I will not eat that Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” But the heavenly voice is persistent; it tells him three times to eat—and with the memory of denying Jesus three times in the Jerusalem courtyard fresh in his heart—Peter says three times “I will not eat that.” You can hear his desire to get this one right—he denied Jesus, but he knows what the Jewish dietary laws say, and he is going to stand firm.

But at that moment, Cornelius’s men come to the house where Peter is staying. Peter must have been terrified—imperial soldiers coming to his house would have reminded him of the imperial soldiers that hung Jesus on a cross. Maybe Cornelius was even a commander of some of those very soldiers. Are they coming for Peter to? But the soldiers explain that an angel appeared to their leader Cornelius, a God-fearing Gentile, and so Peter invites them in to stay the night. He doesn’t sleep much that night—He half suspects that they’re going to cart him away to jail. And he can’t get the vision out of his mind. What does it mean? He’s planning on sending the soldiers on their way in the morning, but he has this distinct feeling in his gut that he better go with them. So at the last minute he joins them on their 30 mile trek to Caesarea. And he must have continued his wrestling on the overnight journey. Mulling the vision over in his mind. What could God be communicating? By the time he gets there, his mind is made up. Cornelius has gathered his entire household, some of his soldiers, his slaves, and even some friends in anticipation of Peter’s coming. And when Peter arrives he tells the group: “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” That’s when Peter launches into the sermon that we read in today’s Scripture: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” But before Peter is even finished talking, the Spirit interrupts his sermon with proof of this astonishing message—the Gentiles that are gathered start speaking ecstatically in tongues, just like the Jewish disciples did on Pentecost. The writer of Acts says, “The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.

Even on the Gentiles. None of us would be here in this church today if it weren’t for this moment with Peter and Cornelius, and the Spirit pouring out even on the Gentiles. God reveals to these devout Jews and Gentiles that the reconciling work of Christ transcends religious and ethnic boundaries. People who are not Jewish can worship God too through Christ. In other words, the presence of the Spirit cannot be contained by one people or one religion—this Spirit is always doing something new; this Spirit bursts forth, breaks boundaries, eradicates barriers that keep some people in and some people out.

Today, it is Christianity itself that has all too often erected exclusive boundaries that keep people out. We so frequently forget about this radical universalizing impulse at the heart of our faith. The Spirit is always reaching out to those who are on the outside. That’s why I think it’s so significant that this week President Obama claimed his faith influenced his decision to support gay marriage publically. He said, “I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally.” (See Obama Gay Marriage ABC Interview) Regardless of whether you are Republican or Democrat, it’s a statement in line with how the Spirit moves in Acts. Because in Acts the Spirit demonstrates that God is always bigger, always more hospitable, always more inclusive and surprising than our system or group recognizes.

Who are the metaphorical Gentiles today for you? Are they gays and lesbians? Are they immigrants or people of a different ethnicity? Are they poor people or rich people? Are they people from other religions? Is it your neighbor down the street—or even that church member that gets under your skin? Our Scripture suggests that God’s Spirit is moving to break down walls that divide “us from them” and to see one another as one body. One body of Christ. As the UCC-ers say, “God is still speaking.” The Spirit is still moving—even amongst the Gentiles.

[1] http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm; also see Ben Witherington's Acts of the Apostles for very helpful background information. 

Evangelism: Participating in God’s Hospitality

Sermon 5/6/12, Scripture: Acts 8:26-40

Acts is that great book demonstrating the “E-word.” Evangelism. Many of us shudder when we hear this word. But as the lectionary moves into the book of Acts, there’s no getting away from this concept of evangelism, sharing with others the good news of God’s love through Christ. Acts is all about evangelism. At the very beginning of Acts, right before Jesus ascends into heaven, he tells the disciples the Holy Spirit will come upon them, and he says “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This chapter, chapter 8, is one of the early instances of Christ’s message spreading geographically—in the first half of the chapter Philip is in Samaria, and then in our passage today he’s talking with an Ethiopian—who presumably would carry the message to Africa, which was a start towards the ends of the earth.

The “E word.” Sometimes we cringe when we hear the word evangelism. And rightly so—from the Roman Empire right on down through colonialism, sharing the good news of faith has all too often been combined with power and violence, leaving behind a trail of baptized but oppressed people. Evangelism can also be like religious marketing—selling religious consumer goods. I’m sure we’ve all seen the televangelists—instead of the home shopping network it’s the Jesus shopping network. “Call in your donation now—1-800 Jesus.” Jesus all to often becomes the brand Christians sell rather than the love Christians share. Many of us rightly resist such distortions of evangelism. Evangelism can also be like an extreme form of extroversion—which is horrifying to folks on the more introverted side of things like myself.  When I was a teen and in my early twenties I was impacted by a view of evangelism that thought all people who weren’t Christians were going to hell, and so it was our job to tell them about Jesus so they wouldn’t suffer in eternity! That’s a lot of responsibility for a 14 year old kid! And so whenever I was with strangers, sitting by someone on the train or bus, I would feel this overwhelming pressure to talk to them about Jesus. Sometimes I did talk to those strangers, but I was horrible at it—I didn’t lead anyone to Jesus! Whenever they would register any discomfort I would bury my nose in the book I was carrying.

I see our passage today giving us two clues about the nature of evangelism. The first has to do with hospitality. True evangelism is radically hospitable; it can’t help but share the good news of God’s love across boundaries, with people who are different from us, even people who’ve been excluded from the social or religious systems in some way. Acts gives us a picture of this. The eunuch is a sexual minority. A eunuch was someone who was castrated and served in a royal court. Usually they would serve in charge of the king’s harems or they would have responsibilities dealing with the queen. And because they were castrated jealous and violent kings didn’t have to worry about them. A eunuch in those days was categorically excluded from becoming Jewish because he would not have been able to be circumcised. So that’s one layer of exclusion and difference. But the eunuch in the passage is also an Ethiopian eunuch, which makes him even more different from the normal first century Jewish context. He’s a black man from Africa. He’s ethnically different. Now, we can’t make too much of this, because from what I can gather, there was not widespread prejudice against people of color in the ancient Near East like there has been in America’s history. But there was no question that he would have stood out, and he would not have been able to worship in the Jewish temple. And yet Acts has half of a chapter devoted to Philip sharing the message of God’s love with him. How are we doing at welcoming others? As a church, are we choosing to be in relationship with people who are different from us? Or is there some habitual stuckness of spending time with the same people, or doing the same activities that we’ve always done? How could we share the good news of God’s love with different people in our community in even bolder and creative ways?

The second clue this passage shows us about the nature of evangelism is this: true evangelism is participating in what God is already doing. This is a crucial point—we are not the primary actors in evangelism. God is. That changes things. We need to rid ourselves of the idea that we possess the truth, that God is on our side, and not already working and present in other people-even other religions. Philip is ready for anything—he follows where the Spirit leads, he talks with whomever the Spirit suggests. An angel says to him, “Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza,” and he goes. The Ethiopian eunuch at that moment is passing by in his chariot, and since he was the chief financial officer of the royal court, he could afford a scroll of Isaiah, and he’s reading that scroll to himself. The Spirit says to Philip, “Go join that chariot!” And he does. You can see why folks on the more evangelical spectrum of things would see the need for extroversion—it’s like Philip is walking in downtown New York and the Spirit says get in that cab and talk to that man. And the conversation that ensues with the eunuch leads them to stop the chariot so Philip can baptize the eunuch on the spot. What a moment of inspiration! But for the more introverted folks among us—let’s remember that Philip is not the primary actor in the narrative—The Spirit is. It is Philip’s attunement to what the Spirit is doing that causes him to act. Philip isn’t pushy or overbearing; he doesn’t pass out an evangelism tract to the man—the eunuch is already reading the scroll. And Philip listens for how the Spirit might use him.

I’m very excited because in a few weeks we’ll be starting our Sanctuary Art gallery, which will feature local artists starting with Bonnie White, and I think this endeavor captures a bit of this spirit of evangelism that is so needed. We’ll offer hospitality to folks from the community to see art and have conversation; we’ll participate with the Spirit’s presence among us through honoring the many artistic gifts that folks in our area have. How is God calling you to share God’s message of love? How might we welcome those who are different, and how might we participate in what the Spirit is already doing? Amen.  

Easter 2012: Passing Over from Death to Life

Sermon: 4-8-12

Scripture: John 20:1-18

On the morning of the first Easter, things looked grim. There were no Easter egg hunts or exchanging of Hallmark cards on the morning of the first Easter. I doubt the first Easter weekend would even have been rated PG-13. Jesus of Nazareth had been brutally killed. This religious teacher, this healer, this prophet, this one who people thought would usher in a realm of peace and justice—this Jesus was dead. The event of his death traumatized his followers. And crucifixion, let us remember, was a particularly traumatizing punishment. The Roman soldiers strung up his tortured body to a wooden cross, and nailed him to it until he died. Jesus was by no means the only man crucified that year or that weekend. Crucifixion was what the Roman Empire did to those who dared challenge its rule; they made a bloody and prolonged spectacle of the victims, mostly from the lower classes, hanging them in public places, where their bodies could be seen from a long way off.[1] A message to would-be prophets and troublemakers. Jesus received a proper burial, but usually the victims of crucifixion weren’t even given that—they hung there until the crows and the wild dogs came and ate their remains.  

For Mary Magdalene, things looked grim on the morning of the first Easter. She had stood there at the cross, watching her friend and teacher Jesus die this humiliating and excruciating death. The loss crushed her spirit. She couldn’t stop weeping. She stood there at the empty tomb, face to face with angels, and all she could do was weep. And the empty tomb was not initially good news—it was terrible news. She responded to the empty tomb in a logical manner in which we would probably respond—“someone stole the body.” And in fact, many people from the first century to our day have gone with the “stolen body” theory. Jesus couldn’t have been raised from the dead. It’s too impossible; there must have been a conspiracy! Mary went into a panic and thought someone had carried the body away—she asked a strange man standing in the tomb, who looked like a gardener—“what have you done with the body?” We can hear the desperation in her voice. It took Jesus himself saying her name directly to her—“Mary!”—for her eyes to be cleared from blinding grief, for her to be restored to life and hope, for her to see Jesus’ Risen presence.

What does the resurrection mean? It’s the central event of Christian faith, and yet many of us, if we’re honest, feel unsettled by this story. What does it mean? Was Jesus body actually raised after death? Does that make me less of a Christian if I don’t believe that? And even if it did happen, what on earth does it have to do with our lives? There are all sorts of debates about whether the resurrection is a “historical” event or not. If you were there, could you have videotaped it and put it up on Youtube? Folks on the more evangelical side of things tend to say unequivocally “Yes”; folks on the more liberal end of things tend to shrug their shoulders and say, “How am I supposed to know?!” Personally I’m not too hung up on this point, because what does seem to be clear is that the experience of the resurrection radically changed Jesus’ followers. After the resurrection, they saw themselves participating in the divine reality in a different way. Jesus’ death and resurrection became the pattern of spiritual renewal that followers of Christ were to experience in their own lives. (Anyone looking for an intellectual account of what theologians Clayton and Knapp call the participation theory of the resurrection can check out The Predicament of Belief). In the early church, the happenings of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter were celebrated as one continuous event. They called this movement of Jesus’ death and resurrection the “paschal mystery.” The word “paschal” comes from the Hebrew word pasch, which means passover. And of course, our Jewish brothers and sisters have just celebrated their yearly Passover. The word Passover refers broadly to the Israelite journey out of slavery and oppression in Egypt. And in particular, passover refers to the tenth and most brutal plague that God brought on the Egyptian oppressors, the night when the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites but killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. And so passover commemorated a passing over from death into life.[2] (Not so much for the Egyptians, but that’s too much to get into today). The paschal mystery. Passing over from death into life.

The pattern of Jesus’ death and resurrection reveals the journey of dying and rising that we all must take. Here’s a modern example. In the early 20^th century, things looked grim for a man named Bill Wilson.[3] You see, as a young soldier in Massachusetts in the early 20^th century, he was introduced to his first drink. It made him less shy and socially awkward, and he had a great night that first night drinking. Even though he passed out repeatedly, he had several great nights. He called the drink—maybe it was whiskey, maybe it was gin— “the elixir of life.” And like many alcoholics before and after him, that elixir started to control and ruin his life. On his law school graduation day, he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. His marriage was suffering. He lost his high-profile Wall Street job and turned himself into a hospital to treat his addiction. And he battled his addiction, going back and forth from sobriety to relapse, but eventually he surrendered to God, he surrendered to his own powerlessness, and he formed a group called Alcoholics Anonymous. You may have heard of this group. He started following 12 distinct steps toward sobriety. Step 1: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” Step 2: “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” From around 100 members in the late 1930s, AA now has about 2 million members in almost 150 countries. Hundreds of thousands of people through this program have seen a new reality take shape in their lives. They may or may not use the language of Christ, but I’m convinced 12 Step Groups are one of the places where the gospel is most alive and real in our world today, because these scores of people have passed over from death into life. They have stared at what they thought was a darkened tomb of hopelessness and grief and pain—and they have seen the risen transformation of their own lives.

Most of us are like Mary; the Living Christ is standing right beside us, and we don’t recognize him.  We’re so stuck in our pain, our grief, our anxieties, our habitual ways of thinking that we have a hard time imagining any other reality. It takes the voice of God calling to us through the inevitable stuck places in our lives:  “Over here! I’m alive—you can be too!” In what ways are we spiritually deadened? In what ways are we stuck, numb, complacent or terrified? The spiritual truth of the gospel is that it is precisely these places in our lives that are, in fact, empty tombs. These are the places where the Risen Christ is waiting for us to be recognized. Let us ask God to open our eyes to see this new life, to pass over into this new life that is resurrection.  Amen.

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[1] See John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, chapter 6 “The Dogs Beneath the Cross.”

[2] See Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, page 105.

[3] Info on Bill W.’s story from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_W. 

Jesus Beyond Nationalism: Palm Sunday 2012

Sermon: 4/1/12

Scripture: John 12:12-16

“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” These are nationalistic shouts of support. The people are ready to crown Jesus the Jewish King. They’ve seen him raise a dead man named Lazarus, and they are certain that he is the one they’ve been waiting for. He’s the one to lead the people to overthrow the Romans, to usher in a new era of freedom and flourishing.

There is no separation between religion and politics in ancient Israel, so we need to hear the cry of the crowd as it was: a cry welcoming their political liberator, their new Jewish president.  To the crowd, this was the inauguration party. They shouted “hosanna” which meant “save or help” and was a common greeting for kings. They even laid palm branches on the ground, and all across the world today people are waving palm branches in churches, but what most of us don’t realize is that palm branches were associated with the revolutionary victories of a set of brothers named Maccabeus. You see, in 164 BC there was another so-called triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and this one involved the violent overthrow of the Greek Seleucid rule. After the battle, the revolutionary leader named Simon Maccabeus led his followers through the Jerusalem gates. As they rode on their horses into the city, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to God, they even “cleansed the temple” by removing foreign altars, all while carrying “beautiful branches and fronds of palm (2 Maccabees 10:7). As if the palm reference wasn’t obvious enough to John’s audience, John also uses a noteworthy Greek word when he says the crowd “went out to meet” Jesus. The word in Greek is eis hyptantesin, which according to biblical scholar Raymond Brown was an “expression used to describe the joyful reception of Hellenistic sovereigns into a city.”[1] In other words, when the king came to the city, it was a big deal, and the people went out to meet him, just like the people went out to meet Jesus waving palms, shouting Hosanna. Make no mistake, the crowd expected Jesus to be the liberating leader of the Jews, sent by God to conquer the Romans and lead the people out from under oppressive rule.

The crowd in Jerusalem certainly wasn’t the only group to misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ authority. The shouts of support for Jesus as a national political leader echo across the ages. In the history of Christianity, there are many instances of political power being wed to religious belief. And when this takes the form of using one’s religious beliefs to justify one’s national—and often ethnic—superiority over other countries or peoples, we call this nationalism. For example, the system of apartheid in South Africa was justified by the Dutch Reformed Church. The white Afrikaaners read the Scriptures and believed that just like Israel, they were chosen by God for a special mission in the wilderness. That wilderness was to their minds the “dark and heathen” lands of Africa. The first Prime Minister of the Afrikaaner National Party wrote this: “The Church believes that God in his wisdom so disposed it that the first White men and women who settled at the foot of the black continent were...imbued with a very real zeal to bring the light of the gospel to the heathen nations of Africa.”[2] That’s the prime minister, not a pastor, not a theologian. And the Afrikaaners used this belief in their religious superiority to create the legal superiority of white people through the system of apartheid. In 1970 South Africa, you couldn’t vote if you were black. You had to go to separate and underfinanced schools; you received a lesser quality of health care; you had to go swimming on different beaches.[3] We might think, well, that happened in South Africa, but we’re different, we’re Americans. That would never have happened in our great democratic country. But we would do well to remember that the Europeans who came over from England to the New World—both the Spanish and the English— also saw themselves on an errand in the wilderness, the New Israel bringing light to the heathen nations. Their view of religious superiority combined with racial and military superiority brought death and destruction to the Native Americans. We even set up our own system of apartheid—we called it slavery.  

How did Jesus respond to these shouts of the crowd? Jesus’ subverts the nationalistic cries of “Hosanna!” He refuses to be the national king that everyone wanted him to be. His power is of a different order. So instead of just claiming God’s salvation for his own people, in chapter 4 of John’s gospel he tells the Samaritan woman at the well that there will come a time when we all worship God in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4:23). Or instead of overthrowing the empire, he teaches an even more radical form of resistance: “Love your enemies.” Instead of riding a revolutionary horse or chariot, he rides a lowly donkey. Instead of a victorious kingly anointing, right before today’s passage, Jesus is anointed by Mary for death. She takes a pound of costly perfume and wipes it all over his feet with her hair. Instead of the golden crown of a king, the soldiers at the cross will put a crown of thorns on his head, and they will dress him up in a purple robe. Instead of the crowd’s cries of Hosanna, they will spit in his face and they mock him by saying, “Hail, King of the Jews.” Jesus’ power, Jesus’ kingdom is of an entirely different order.[4]

It wasn’t long ago when it was a common cultural assumption that to be American meant you were a Christian. In the 1950s, with our big churches, our Sabbath laws, the ear of the government turned towards our church leaders—we could fool ourselves into thinking we were a Christian nation. Now we’re acknowledging that there’s always been religious diversity in our country—we just either didn’t pay attention to it, or we persecuted those who we didn’t agree with. Massachusetts started with Christianity as the state religion during the days of the Puritans, but a man named Roger Williams got fed up with their intolerance and--- inspired by his Christian faith—started the first state to separate from an established religion—Rhode Island. All the so-called heretics of the time gathered there—the Quakers, the Jews, the Baptists. There are still regressive movements that try to “Take America Back” to that golden age when we were all Christian, but more and more people are discovering that that golden age never really existed, and even if there was a time when most of America was Christian—that time has now passed. In Columbia County we now share the spiritual landscape with Buddhists, Sufis, Jews, Quakers, spiritual but not religious folks, and atheists. There are now more Muslims in America than Episcopalians, Jews, or Presbyterians. In this time of disestablishment of American Christianity, when we can no longer assume that everyone shares the same beliefs as we do—when our faith is by necessity separated from our nationality—we have a remarkable opportunity to discover the gospel afresh, the Jesus of the gospels who rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, the Jesus who models a way beyond exclusion, beyond violence, beyond nationalism, the Jesus refuses to claim that God has a preference for just “our people.”  This is the Jesus beyond nationalism.  May we all follow the humble way of this subversive king. Amen.

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[1] Raymond Brown, Gospel According to John, 462.

[2] Quoted in Journal of Hate Studies, http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/againsthate/journal2/GHS104.PDF

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid_in_South_Africa