Sermon Manuscript050607
Sermon Worksheet & Manuscript
Robert L. Hutcherson, Jr.
Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church
Sermon Preparation/Delivery
Acts 11:1-18
“Don’t Turn Your Nose Up”
The Rev. Karla J. Cooper, Pastor
May 6, 2007
Sermon Worksheet & Manuscript
TEXT
Acts 11:1-18
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3 saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?" 4 Then 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. 6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' 8 But I replied, 'By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.' 9 But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.' 10 This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. 11 At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. 12 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. 13 He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; 14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.' 15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 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?" 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."
NRSV
BODY
Do any of you know what it's like to have your presuppositions, your preconceived notions, shifted and changed by the experiences of life? Let's start with something obvious, like marriage, for instance. For any of you who have been married, did the experience of marriage turn out differently than what you thought it would be? Or, say, the experience of starting your career after years of schooling and training? How about the experience of parenthood? I like to think of myself as fairly realistic and fairly aware. But when it came right down to it, all three of these experiences have turned out to be far more challenging, as well as more wonderful, than I could have ever imagined. Our presuppositions about life are drawn from our imaginations, but more, from the culture that surrounds us, from our conditioning… from all we've learned and been taught through the years. What are your presuppositions about God? For many of us, our faith has undergone tremendous, sometimes painful adjustments, because God and life don't always fit into the boxes we try to shove them in. So it was for Peter. Peter is one of my favorite disciples -- impulsive, hard-headed, definitely NOT perfect, but passionate.
Peter, for all his faults, loved Jesus with all his heart. Peter was a man of courage. Yes, it’s true that his courage failed him the night of Jesus' arrest. But for Peter, as for many of us, the night of his darkest failure was transformed into new conviction and commitment and strength through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. The resurrected Savior had a new commission for Peter: "feed my sheep." "If you love me, Peter," Jesus had said, "then feed my sheep." Jesus had said of Peter, "Upon this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." After Jesus' ascension, Peter boldly took his stand alongside the other apostles and believers to build this brand new church of Jesus Christ, born of a revolutionary faith in a resurrected Savior who had changed his life forever.
In our scripture for today, Peter is reporting back to his fellow believers, “called on the carpet”, if you will, in the church in Jerusalem on the experience he had had in Joppa. Remember, the Christian church is brand new…still trying to figure out who it is and what it's about, just beginning to establish Christian theology as we know it today. I find it interesting that, through all these centuries, one aspect of church life has remained constant…criticism. The Christians at Jerusalem, or at least a group of them, apparently jumped all over Peter for his association with the Gentiles in Caesarea. So let's go back, just as Peter did in his defense, and see exactly what happened.
Peter’d been traveling for weeks, preaching and healing, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ everywhere he went. But we need to consider the context…the people Peter encountered were, for the most part, his Jewish countrymen; and his message was that their Messiah had come. Remember that Peter's strong convictions were grounded in the context of his Jewish faith. Peter's understanding, as well as the church's, was that a Gentile must become a Jew before he or she could become a Christian. They had not yet dealt with the Gentile question.
But on the other hand, Peter's images of Jesus -- with the outcasts, with the Samaritan woman, memories of Jesus' compassion, Jesus' final words, "Go ye into all the world;" and Peter's firsthand knowledge of the revolutionary, radical, counter-cultural man Jesus Christ really was – had to have already raised the question in Peter's mind. From what we read in Scripture, Peter was already stepping outside the lines a bit: he was staying in the home of Simon, a tanner, a man who worked with dead animals, a person whose occupation was considered unclean in the Jewish law. Association with such a person was strictly forbidden for an orthodox Jew. Yet Simon the tanner was a Christian believer, and Peter was staying in his home.
As Peter began to pray, he got very sleepy. Peter fell into a sort of trance and he had a vision. And like many of us who fall asleep when we’re hungry, he had a vision about food! Out of heaven descended a large sheet filled with all kinds of animals. Peter is told to slaughter the animals and eat. Peter's response was typically impulsive, even to a directive from God. He answered indignantly, "No, never! Never have I eaten anything that is unclean!" so ingrained was his understanding of the Levitical dietary laws in the observance of his Jewish religion. I'm not sure it's even possible for us to understand the power of this vision in Peter's mind, for the dietary laws of Judaism have to do with much more than just food. They have to do with the identity and the survival of a race of people. In the covenant established between God and Abraham, the Jews were to be kept completely separate from the Gentiles, pure, undefiled and untouched by the heathen nations of the world. It was an understanding basic to the Jewish way of thinking and serving God, filtered through the Old Testament laws and even into the foods that were allowed to be eaten. That was the Law. And Peter knew it, inside and out. No matter how hungry he was, he would never partake of unclean foods. Peter's response to God was immediate and confident. If this was some sort of a test, Peter knew he'd gotten the answer right.
But then, Peter got the shock of a lifetime when the voice of God said to him, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." WHAT?!?! "What God hath cleansed, don't you call common, or unclean." Can you imagine how radical, how scandalous, that statement must have been?! Our best clue is that Peter had to have it repeated two more times before it seems to have even registered at all.
In the meantime, God was also talking with a Roman officer in Caesarea named Cornelius – a God-fearing man, a Gentile. God instructed him to send for Peter, and without a question, without hesitation, Cornelius obeyed. The dispatch arrived in Joppa with the message for Peter just as he was shaking his head over the vision he had received from God. When he awoke, there were men sent to him from Cornelius. A Gentile, a member of the very army which now so terribly oppressed and occupied Israel. And the Spirit of God spoke to him again, and said: "Go on and talk to them. I am the one who has sent them to you." So Peter went, met Cornelius, still surprised to learn that the Risen Christ Jesus had sent him there. He baptized Cornelius. He ate with Cornelius. Peter finally got it…that the vision and the voice were not so much about unclean food as about unclean people. "Don't call anything I have created 'unclean,'" said the voice of God…”Don’t turn your nose up.”
Is it possible that Peter already translated the symbolism of the unclean animals to address his question of the Gentile mission and the Gospel message? We have no way of knowing. But we see a man courageously willing to follow the Spirit's leading, even when the Spirit was leading into forbidden, if not repulsive territory. Peter invited the Gentiles into Simon's home, gave them a hearing, and offered them lodging for the night. The following day, he set out, with six of his Jewish colleagues, to go to the house of Cornelius. Nevertheless, Peter set out on the journey.
What was he thinking as he walked that road from Joppa to Caesarea? Was he scared…scared of crossing a line so formidable, so sacred, in his mind and in his heart; scared, if nothing else, of what the others in Jerusalem were going to do with him when he told them? There is evidence that he continued to struggle with this issue, as the early church certainly did, for a long time to come. But if Peter was hesitant, then who are we to be surprised? It's been said that the story of the church is a long story of how the church has been dragged, kicking and screaming, out of its safe, secure homogeneity…its’ “Holy Huddle…us four…no more”… into the surprising work of God by the Holy Spirit. All we know is that Peter went, against the most basic tenets to his understanding of his faith, walking toward the house of Cornelius, the Gentile.
Maybe as he made the journey, side by side, with those Gentile servants that the
meaning of God's vision finally sunk into Peter's reportedly thick skull. "that God has no favorites. God has shown me not to call any man, any person, common or unclean." To not turn my nose up. In other words, let go of my prior understanding to make room for God's Spirit to work in a new and surprising way. Peter went on to preach to Cornelius and a house full of family and friends, and the Spirit fell on these new converts with a power and affirmation that even Peter could not deny. And with that, the whole wide world was opened up to receive the Gospel of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Back at the business meeting in Jerusalem, Peter reported his actions and defended them with this final statement: "If God therefore gave to them the same gift he gave to us [the Spirit] after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?" Even though I don't understand it, even though it scares me, even though it crosses the line, who am I that I can stand in the way of God? It was a question that silenced his critics, at least for awhile. Now we believe in the necessity of proper distinctions, proper boundaries. We can't just say anything people want us to say and mean anything people want us to mean and still be God’s church. Proper distinctions must be made. And yet, here's this story of Peter's vision. Sometimes we’re a lot like those apostles in the church in Jerusalem who asked Peter, "What were you doing going to those unclean Gentiles? Who gave you the right to eat with them, to baptize them?" Such intermingling was not Peter’s idea. It was an idea so bold, so disruptive, so unsettling, that it could only come straight from God. Peter told them that through the vision he had learned that what God had given to them as Jews in Christ, God had also given even to the Gentiles. Some have said that Peter's finest moment was his sermon at Pentecost. Yet the courage of this particular moment outstrips all his others. In spite of all he knew and all he'd been taught, in spite of all the grief he would face for doing it, he carried the Gospel to the Gentile world.
How could he do this? It was possible because of the intimate way Peter knew his Savior. He knew and remembered Christ's openness, Christ's compassion, Christ's message for everyone he encountered. It was his memory of how his Lord (and ours) suffered and died and yet rose again that made him extremely sensitive to the Spirit's leadership and remarkably open himself, willing to follow a brand new revelation in brand new territory. A momentous act of faith.
Great story, isn't it? But what, if anything, does this great story have to do with us, here, today? Well, I guess you have to answer that for yourself. This Scripture asks us a profound question; and it asks it of us both as individuals and as a community of faith. That question is: where do we draw the line on the limits of God's love? That's a question we can't hear very well in the late twentieth century. Most of us are quick to answer that there are no limits to the love of God. Yet often our lives don't reflect that belief. So let me try a different question: what preconceptions, what prejudices, what pre-conditioning or prior experiences do you hold that restrict your willingness to extend God's grace openly and freely to one and all?
If God were to come to you in a vision and lower a large sheet filled with people you consider unclean, what faces would you find looking back at you? Who are the people you dislike, or look down on, or despise, or do not, cannot, or will not, love? Are they people of a different race, or a different class, or a different sexual orientation? Are they people who have hurt you, betrayed you or someone you love? Are they people who have committed crimes and are receiving their "just punishment"? Could they be people of a different theological interpretation or even a different style of worship? Who are the insiders, and who are the outsiders? Where do YOU “turn your nose up”? Do we, like Peter, as individuals or as a church, operate on an underlying assumption of God's partiality? And if we do, are we open enough to hear Peter's astonishing revelation: "God is not one to show partiality." God does not have favorites. And if we do hear it, what are we going to do about it? How will it make our lives and our church community here at Quinn different?
Will we allow the Holy Spirit to move us today, to give us a vision, to drag us, as it dragged our apostolic forefathers before us, kicking and screaming, all the way toward the wideness of God's mercy? Or will we hunker down right here with folk just like us? Safe. Secure. Boundaries firmly fixed. For Peter, it made all the difference. It was in Joppa that Peter began to understand that Jesus Christ has come for us all, transforming Christianity from a small sect within Judaism to an international movement that would develop into a world religion. "God is not one to show partiality." For Peter, and, consequently, for you and for me, it made all the difference in the world. Our God is still in the business of new and surprising and unsettling revelations. The question that comes to us as believers, and as the Church is how open are we to receive God's revelations, and how willing are we to act on them? Here at Quinn, we ask the questions about God's future for this church. Where is God's Spirit leading us? What is God's agenda for the identity of this church and for the missions and ministries to which we will commit ourselves in the days, months and years to come?
God is always preparing a next step for all of us – calling us to be more than we have been, more than all our presuppositions, more than we can even imagine. If God provides us with a new insight, a new understanding or calling, God will also provide us with opportunities to act on what we've learned. Peter's opportunity to act apparently came within minutes of his vision from God. When will mine come? And when will yours? This week? Next? Will we be open to receive it? Will we be willing to act? Let us pray for the openness and the willingness of a hard-headed disciple named Peter, not perfect, but passionate…to perceive God's surprising grace at work, and to extend it, even beyond all our self-imposed limits.
CHILDREN’S LESSON
Order of Worship
Sunday May 6, 2007
11:00 A.M.
Opening Hymn……………………” God of Grace and God of Glory”, Hymn 62
Doxology………………………………………………..All
Call to Worship……………………………….Bro. Robert Hutcherson
Hymn…………………………………“Sing Them Over Again To Me”, Hymn 207
Prayer…………………………………………..Bro. Robert Hutcherson
Prayer Response………………………………….Give Us This Day”
Scripture Reading……………………………..Bro. Robert Hutcherson
Decalogue………………………………………Bro. Robert Hutcherson
Gloria Patri………………………………………….Congregation
Sermon…………………………………………Bro. Robert Hutcherson
Invitation to Christian Discipleship..”The Blood That Jesus Shed For Me”, Hymn 137
Altar Call/Offertory………………………………………All
Offertory Response……………………………”All Things Come Of Thee”
Affirmation of Faith…………………………………Congregation
Benediction……………………………………..Bro. Robert Hutcherson