Sermon: Wisdom and Trinity

First Presbyterian Church

June 15, 2025, Trinity C

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5

 

Wisdom and Trinity

 

It's an almost stereotypical image, one found in comic strips or editorial cartoons or any number of other visual media. In it you see a lone sojourner, or maybe a pair, hiking or even climbing their way up a mountainside or cliff. When they get to the top, they find a lone figure, typically an elderly man, probably seated with legs crossed, appearing as a guru or sage of some sort prepared to dispense wisdom. 

The scene is often used for comic effect, but it trades on something of a traditional image of a seeker of wisdom as being one who is cut off from society, engaged in solitary contemplation in that withdrawn setting. The writer of today's reading from Proverbs would not necessarily agree with this image of withdrawal in search of wisdom.

Today's reading is part of a more extended rhapsody (my word) on wisdom, briefly touched on in chapter 7 and then taking up most of chapters 8 and 9. It follows a discourse on a different character, one who would lead astray (in many different ways) the young student to which Proverbs is directed. In this rhapsody Wisdom is personified; most of chapters 8 and 9 are depicted as wisdom speaking to that young student. 

Let's go ahead and make this clear: yes, Wisdom really is personified in this rhapsody as a woman. Take that, guys. In context, the character in the previous discourse who would lead the young student astray is also a woman, so the passage works as a clever literary device to present the two different paths set before the young student. Still, Wisdom (divine wisdom, clearly, as the rest of the discourse makes clear) is personified as female. Right out of the Bible, folks.

The opening four verses of the chapter set forth the character (sometimes called Woman Wisdom in the scholarly literature), and our author's depiction of Wisdom at work doesn't quite square up with the mountaintop guru of comic-strip notoriety. Far from having to be sought out in some isolated place, Wisdom is out in the world, calling to anyone who would listen:

At the highest point along the way, where the paths meet she takes her stand; beside the gates leading into the city, at the entrance, she cries aloud...

 

This isn't wisdom in hiding or in secret. She's out there, calling out for all to hear. 

"All fine and good," you may say, while either being excited or offended to see something of the divine being portrayed as a woman. "All fine and good," you may say, "but what does any of this have to do with Trinity Sunday? Why aren't you preaching on something more obvious like that reading from Romans where all the persons of the Trinity are mentioned? Why is this Proverbs bit in the readings for today?" That's where verses 22-31 come in. 

That section opens with Wisdom's declaration that "The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old." It may surprise you to hear that this description was the subject of heated debate at no less than the Council of Nicaea, the first meeting of which took place way back in the year 325, and which was the initiator of that statement of faith we know as the Nicene Creed (we tend to say it in worship on Sundays when the Lord's Supper happens). In their extensive and often testy debates over the nature of the Trinity, this passage, with its confusing Hebrew about being "created" or is it being "begotten" or "made" or "born" became a shorthand for discussing whether the second Person of the Trinity - the one we call God the Son, or Jesus - was "created" or "begotten" or "made" or "born" in John 1. Indeed, for some years, this character of Wisdom was sometimes discussed as a foreshadowing of the Son of God (notwithstanding Wisdom being personified as a woman here!) and of that Son's being "in the beginning with God," as John 1 says, or being one through whom "all things were made" as the Nicene Creed ends up saying.

If that's how the second Person of the Trinity is involved here, the largest part of the reading names the first Person of the Trinity as the great Creator of all. Most of the text describes Woman Wisdom's bearing witness as God engages in the various acts of creation and even being God's "delight, rejoicing before Him always" and also "delighting in the human race." 

While the third Person of the Trinity is less directly invoked here, it has not escaped notice that the way Wisdom is described in this rhapsody looks and sounds a lot like the way the Holy Spirit gets described in various other corners of scripture. All that business about not being hidden off on some mountaintop but being out in the streets and at the gates of the city is awfully similar to the doings of the Spirit, after Pentecost in particular.

None of this should be taken as a "proof" of anything. Obviously, this was written many, many years before the Nativity or Pentecost. What this quite exuberant passage does show us is that God's people have been, literally for centuries, even millenia, seeking ways to understand and comprehend how God moves in God's world. We aren't the first to struggle with it. The Council of Nicaea wasn't the first to struggle with it. And no doubt even the writer of Proverbs wasn't the first either. Outside of the more dramatic interventions revealed in scripture - say, the Exodus, or Pentecost, or the very life of Jesus - God's people have been challenged by the work of putting together all that we have been shown and instructed in order, not to have God completely figured out, but at least not to get God egregiously and harmfully wrong. 

In the end, perhaps such words as "wonder," or even the "delight" that Wisdom herself invokes in today's reading, might be at the last the best place to end up in such pursuits. To borrow the Apostle Paul's words from 1 Corinthians, we are still in that place where we see "in a mirror, dimly"; the time when we "will see face to face" is not yet here. Would that this age of contemplation would be, rather than a source of dispute and anger over the nature of God, be a source of delight, perhaps with the help of good old Woman Wisdom.

For wisdom and her delight, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #1, Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty; #8, Eternal Father, Strong to Save; #2, Come, Thou Almighty King

For those who miss the non-heretical kittens...

acts 2

we couldn’t understand anybody 

we were alone in the city

this great big city by itself 

but now

with so many visitors 

from so many nations 

speaking so many languages 

we truly couldn’t understand anybody 

we were alone

when we tried to speak the local language 

nobody could understand us either

we would try to find food 

or a shelter 

and people would look at us 

like we were aliens

which I guess we were to them

but still

we kept getting lost

and were alone and hungry

and we didn’t know how to find the festival 

even with all the crowds 

or maybe because of them 

there was some commotion 

in a building 

maybe a house

off to one side

a lot of voices

many people crowded around 

we came closer

there were people speaking 

a lot of different languages 

but amazingly 

as clear as could be 

we heard a voice speaking our language 

we stood gaping

at this new word we could hear and 

understand

then

one of them stepped forward to speak 

to say they weren’t drunk at 9 a.m.

and then to quote a prophet 

and to talk about 

a Spirit being poured out on everybody

and then to talk more about someone 

named Jesus

others came through the crowd 

to help us 

one of them asked us 

not in our language 

if we needed anything 

I said 

as best as I could in their language 

we were hungry 

and somehow she understood 

and took us in

and gave us food to eat 

so we were fed twice that morning 

we knew then

that we would not be returning to 

our homeland alone

even if 

we would be traveling 

by ourselves

Sermon: The Spirit Poured Out

First Presbyterian Church

June 8, 2025, Pentecost C

Acts 2:1-21

 

The Spirit Poured Out

 

 

Here we are again, at one of those passages of scripture that we may not hear very often, but we do hear it at least once every year. It's the kind of scripture reading that we recognize almost immediately upon hearing, but that, if we're honest with ourselves, we don't really know all that well.

We know the basic beats of the story:

ü All of Jesus's followers, gathered in a room, waiting for...who knows?

ü The sound of a great wind, "divided tongues as of fire", suddenly speaking languages they'd never learned or known before;

ü The great crowd, in Jerusalem but from everywhere (a detailed list follows, representing the entire known world); that crowd hearing all the commotion and wondering what was going on up there;

ü Some terminally clever oaf in the crowd cracking wise about their being drunk;

ü Peter responding that it's only nine o'clock in the morning, and that nobody's drunk, but here's what's happening; and then quoting some spooky stuff from the prophet Joel, launching into a sermon from there (that we only get part of in today's reading).

Sometimes those familiar phrases, though, can get a little bit dull from repetition, so familiar that we don't really hear them. We might just slip into the thought, "oh, yeah, the Pentecost story" and go on autopilot, not really hearing.

For example: what does it suggest when Peter, following Joel 2:28-32 pretty directly, quotes God as saying "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh"? Does that strike up any particular image in your mind? Or has it become so familiar that it doesn't really strike up anything? 

Sometimes when I find myself in this rut I turn to the Cotton Patch Gospel, the work of biblical scholar Clarence Jordan, who not only translated much of the New Testament but created a version set in the Georgia of his day, namely the late 1950s. Jerusalem became Atlanta, the baby Jesus was born in Gainesville (Georgia, not Florida), and so forth. Being born and raised in Georgia, this naturally got my attention. Jordan's colorful and evocative language can be at times illuminating. It's not a substitute for a more straightforward translation, but it can be an interesting supplement at times.

And for this passage, Clarence Jordan offers "I will share my spirit with all mankind." OK, there's the dated language "mankind," as if women weren't included, but the main verb is "share." It's an effective enough verb, to be sure, and it's definitely accurate enough in this context, but for those who respond to imagery and vividness of language, it perhaps doesn't offer as much help. 

Another, much more recent reading of the scriptures in a different cultural context is First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament, published only four years ago. This work, produced by a council of Native religious leaders and teachers and scholars, sought to perform a task not unlike Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospel, but not exactly the same; the setting is not changed, but the names of places and persons are given in a Native idiom and the style of the account is rendered as much as possible in the style of a storyteller in the oral tradition of the many nations and tribes of North America. 

In this reading, after the "sound of a great windstorm" and "flames of fire" have come and the crowd is hearing in their many languages, Peter's reading of Joel is rendered as "'In the last days,' says Creator, 'I will rain down my Spirit upon all human beings...'."

Now there's something. 

The thing about something being poured out is that if you're not directly under whatever is being poured from, you might well miss it. Rain, on the other hand, is not so easy to escape. If you're outside when it starts to rain, you get wet. There's no sidestepping the rain or jumping out of the way of it. You get wet. 

Maybe this helps drive home the fact of the Spirit being poured out on everyone. No one is left out. Everyone gets wet. 

This doesn't go down well for a lot of people. It's been true in every age and it's most definitely true now; too much of the church wants this pouring out of the Spirit to be for just us, or maybe more specifically not them. We're the "special" ones, they insist; we're God's chosen, God's favorites. Not those people who don't look like us, who don't sound like us, who don't flatter us or cozy up to us or make us feel important. Not them. The Spirit doesn't pour down on them. That's how an awful lot of people want it to be.

But when we think of the Spirit raining down? As the old verse says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. It doesn't miss anybody. There's no getting left out, there's no Great Replacement anything, there's no "for me but not for thee," none of that. The Spirit rains down on everyone, whether we like it or not. Everybody gets wet.

Does everybody respond to the Spirit the same way? No, they don't. Think again about the rain; your first impulse is to seek shelter, yes? Or perhaps pull out an umbrella? For some people, the Spirit is a disruption, maybe even a threat. You never know what's going to happen when the Holy Spirit gets loose. Life might get uncomfortable. We might be led places we're not comfortable going. Best get out of the rain before you get too wet. But then there are those lovely souls who, when the rain comes down, will take it all in and maybe skip about and kick around a few puddles when they form. The Spirit truly soaks them with all that it is.

This is one rainstorm from which we don't need to take shelter. The Holy Spirit, raining down on all humanity? In the dried-up wilderness that is increasingly the world in which we live, that raining down is nothing less than life itself. The church, big or small, local or global, dare not try to shelter against this rain, not if we want to live up to the label "Christian," or (even better) terms like "Christlike," or "follower of Christ." 

One more thing: the Holy Spirit didn't go away after Pentecost. It keeps raining all through the book of Acts (we've taken in a couple of such passages back in the month of May). Even more, that same Spirit is still raining down on all human beings. The Holy Spirit - third person of the Trinity, remember; in other words, God - continues to rain down upon humanity, seeking to wash us and renew us and fill us with what we need to do Christlike things in a decidedly non-Christlike world.

This is one rain from which you don't want to seek shelter or pop up an umbrella.

It's time to let it rain. 

It's time to get wet.

For the raining down of the Holy Spirit, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #289, On Pentecost They Gathered; #286, Breathe on Me, Breath of God; #285, Like the Murmur of the Dove's Song

 

 

References:

 

Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospel, the Complete Collection. Macon: Smith & Helwys Publishing, 2012.

 

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021. 

Sermon: What Are You Looking At?

First Presbyterian Church

June 1, 2025, Ascension C

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23;

       Luke 24:44-53

 

What Are You Looking At?

 

“What are you looking at?”

You can hear that in the voice of someone trying to keep something a secret, annoyed at being caught in the act; maybe in the voice of a stereotypical tough-guy movie or TV character (though a Robert DeNiro or Joe Pesci character might turn it around to say “you lookin’ at me?”); or a more casual, “hey, what are you looking at?” It’s a pretty flexible phrase. 

You don’t expect to hear it as angelic proclamation, though. 

But the end of the Acts account here features “two men in white robes” who suddenly appear beside the disciples (that’s a pretty characteristic way of the gospels describing angelic appearances) uttering a much more formal query: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” But really, they’re asking “What are you looking at?” Seriously, you have to wonder if one of the disciples was fighting the urge to turn on the two men in white and exclaim “are you kidding me? Did you not just see what happened here? People don’t just pick up and float off into the sky, you know…”

If one of the disciples did that (my money would have been on Thomas, with his contrarian attitude), Luke did not record it. Instead, the men in white issue a promise; the Jesus they just saw lifting up into the sky would, and will, return one day in the same fashion. Something to hold on to, I guess, in the now-inarguable absence of Jesus from his followers. 

Already Jesus had left this little band with plenty of instruction, and also a reprimand in the bargain. Luke’s account of the Ascension here at the beginning of Acts is a bit more expansive than that at the end of the gospel that bears his name, and there’s at least one really logical possible explanation for that: Luke learned more in the meantime. At the beginning of the gospel we call Luke the author admits very frankly that the gospel is not an eyewitness account. He advises his recipient, “most excellent Theophilus,” that he has set out to gather the best information he could to pass on an “orderly account” of the evens of Jesus’s life. The end of Luke’s gospel sounds frankly a lot like the end of Matthew, with an account of the Ascension thrown in. 

But by the time Luke started into the book we call Acts, he has a few things to add to the Ascension story. For one thing, we learn he was around for forty days, which the Luke account doesn’t really suggest. For another, there is more instruction included here. The disciples aren’t to rush off, but to return to Jerusalem and wait for the “promise of the Father,” wait to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit” before too many days have gone by. It turned out to be ten days until the event called Pentecost lit a fire in the disciples (almost literally) and initiated the work of the church on earth in a way that, quite frankly, none of the disciples could have anticipated.

As for the rebuke, one of the disciples (this could have been Thomas too) had to ask, as Jesus drew his remarks to a close, the most oblivious possible question in the context: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Even at the very end somebody is trying to press Jesus about when he’s going to Make Israel Great Again.

Jesus answers with one of the most ignored (and outright violated) scriptures in the whole book: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” For all these so-called ministers or biblical authorities spitting directly in the face of Jesus trying to work out some code or clue that tells them exactly when Jesus is gonna come back: it’s written right here, in Jesus’s own words: THAT’S NOT YOUR JOB. That’s not your place.

Your job is this: 

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

 

That’s the disciples’ job; wait for the Holy Spirit and then go! Go all over the world, says Jesus. And the church, in fits and starts, sometimes ruinously and sometimes beautifully, has been doing that ever since.

But what about the Ascension itself? What’s the point of this story with Jesus lifting off like a slow-moving rocket and being taken from the disciples’ sight? One of the best explanations in scripture is actually found in this passage from the letter to the church at Ephesus. Towards the end of today’s reading we get the rundown of why Christ’s ascension matters; the same Jesus who walked the earth with his followers now is at God’s side above – “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion,” not just now but for all time, with all authority over the church, and everything else under his feet. To be short about it, we have no business – at all – giving our allegiance to any authority but Christ. None. (For all we talk about wanting to be followers of Jesus, we sure do skip over a lot that scripture instructs us to do to be about that very business. Seriously, Christ’s church isn’t nearly radical enough.)

Still, though, you have to feel for the disciples, at least for those ten days. They’ve been told to go back to Jerusalem and … wait. What do you do when you wait for the Holy Spirit to overtake you (whatever that means)? 

You have to figure there was some remembering what Jesus said and did, maybe some arguments about those things, some impatience to be sure. You have to wonder if they gathered around a table for a meal at times (they needed to eat, after all) and were reminded again, and again, and again of that last meal with Jesus, the bread and the cup; or the encounter on the Emmaus Road, or back in Jerusalem; you have to wonder if picking up that loaf and that cup could possibly have ever been the same for them, especially now, with their Teacher and Lord physically gone for good.

This meal is handed to us even today, to remember; to take to heart and to remember the words and deeds of Jesus in our very beings. With the church in every age, from Ascension to now, we take this bread and this cup and show to the world the Lord’s saving death until, like the men in white promised, he returns that very same way, to be with us and us with him for all time.

For Jesus who departed, and will return, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #260, Alleluia! Sing to Jesus!; #---, When Jesus knew his time had come; #262; Since Our Great High Priest, Christ Jesus

Sermon: Macedonia

 First Presbyterian Church

May 25, 2025, Easter 6C

Acts 16:6-15

 

Macedonia

 

“Macedonia” is the name applied generally to a region of southeastern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. That more general region includes two current political entities with the same name: a region in northern Greece, and an independent nation once a part of Yugoslavia. Historically, Macedonia was perhaps most famous as the home and kingdom of Alexander the Great, from whence he set out to conquer the world. In later years the region was a significant province in the Roman Empire.

One of the important cities in that Roman district was Philippi. First founded by one of Alexander’s successors, the city was re-established during the Roman Empire. It was the site of the climactic battle of Marc Anthony and Octavian, successors of Julius Caesar, against his assassins Cassius and Brutus. Under Octavian (later known as Augustus) Philippi became a city for retired soldiers and was slightly modified by the addition of a Roman-style forum and the division of land among the soldier-colonists, becoming in effect a “miniature Rome.”

It was into this territory and this city that Paul and his fellow travelers were more or less forced by the Holy Spirit in today’s reading, an event which marked the first known foray of early Christian proclaimers of the Gospel into what we now define as “Europe” – a fact much more interesting to us today than to Paul and his co-workers. For us, a church like most Presbyterian churches made up of mostly white European stock, it’s an origin story. To them it was all Roman Empire, but Philippi, due to its unique origins, might have been just a little more Roman than other places on their journey.

To say that Paul and his company (which now included Silas and also Timothy, who had joined the group earlier in this chapter) were “forced” into Macedonia isn’t really a stretch. When the party had sought to move towards Asia (not the continent we know today, but another Roman province occupying what we would call western Turkey), Paul had been “forbidden by the Holy Spirit” from proclaiming the Gospel there. They tried to go to another region “but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” 

What does that even mean? Luke doesn’t give us any details here, but don’t you wish he had?? Whatever form these divine roadblocks took, Paul and Silas and the whole traveling group were stuck in a place called Troas, wondering what to do next. 

Think about this. They were prevented from moving forward. They were “forbidden,” they were “not allowed” to go. Those are very strong words. We modern Christians have this perhaps overly catchy phrase about how “when God closes a door, God opens a window” – maybe you’ve heard it? We tend to forget about the door-closing part of that phrase in our eagerness to get to the open window, but we do need to pay attention. If Paul and Silas – the great missionary team of the book of Acts, and most prolific proclaimers of the good news – had doors divinely slammed in their faces, we need not think we can just make up our minds and charge off in whatever direction looks good to us. Whatever path this church or any church seeks to discern for itself and for its future, that particular church needs to be ready for some doors being shut in our faces. (Apropos of nothing, this can also apply to pastors seeking a call.)

At this point comes the dream, or if you prefer, the open window. A “man of Macedonia” (you know how in a dream you just know who someone is, even if you have no reason to?) appears calling the group to come to that region and “help us.” It’s a fairly meager dream as Luke describes it, but given all the preventing and forbidding that has been going on so far it sounds like a great positive, and Paul and his party undertake the voyage. This was no short journey. The trip involved several ports of call and a couple of days’ sailing, before a short overland journey to Philippi, that leading Roman city and old soldiers’ home.

And once they got there … “we remained in the city some days.”

Again with the delay. Really, one might be excused for wondering if God is really with these folks or just messing with them.

Up to this point Paul’s usual practice had been to seek out a synagogue when arriving in a town to speak first to the members of that synagogue. Frequently many would be receptive to their word, but others would reject it, and sometimes violently. In Philippi, though, it doesn’t appear that Paul and Silas and company found one, hence they “remained in the city” for those several days. Finally, somehow, they got wind of a gathering, outside of the city gate and down by a river, that might be what they were looking for.

Well, sort of. What they found was a group of women led by Lydia, a wealthy woman (a dealer of purple cloth was inevitably wealthy) described as a “worshipper of God,” a term sometimes used to describe persons who were not part of the synagogue of the time but took an interest and directed their worship towards the God represented in the synagogue (similar to the centurion Cornelius from last Sunday's reading). So where was the man of Macedonia from the vision? Anyway, Lydia received the gospel with her whole household, and then pretty much took over, prevailing upon Paul and Silas and the whole party to stay in her home for the duration of their stay in Philippi. You know the folks who can do that kind of thing? They won’t take any of that nonsense about you staying in a hotel, we’re going to put you right up in the guest rooms and let’s make sure you’ve got everything you need while we’re at it? That was Lydia. Real Presbyterian Women energy.

So Paul and his party intended to go into Asia, perhaps cover some familiar territory with the familiar territory of the synagogue in doing the work of the gospel. Instead, they ended up in an entirely new place, much more in the heart of the Roman Empire, working without their usual safety net, and in the care of an independent woman of means. So much for best-laid plans. 

And yet, if we truly want to seek God’s vision for the church – this individual church or the church universal – we’d better be ready for something similar to happen. 

The hymn we will sing in a few moments, “Be Thou My Vision,” is rather dangerous if you actually pay attention to it. You know how it starts, right?

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that thou art...

 

 "Naught," (that is, nothing else) matters but God. If we’re truly going to give ourselves, our prayers, our time, our gifts, our energies, our very being to God’s vision, we run the risk of ending up in unfamiliar places, among people who are unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable for us, doing a work we could not possibly have expected. If we’re truly going to be about God’s vision, we have no idea where we will end up. And really, that’s as it has to be. We follow Christ, after all. Christ doesn’t follow us.

This week's lesson really is a lot like last week's account of Peter and Cornelius, but more so; Peter was after all still on that far end of the Mediterranean Sea, close to home, even if he was sent to receive Gentiles. Paul, in today's story, is being not-so-gently prodded to go to an explicitly Roman city, a place he never imagined going, with no safety net, and his group's well-being ended up in the hands of this group of previously unknown women. 

The Spirit gives us absolutely no assurance that our church in five or fifteen or fifty years will look anything like it did five or fifteen or fifty years ago. That’s not the point. The point is to be faithful, and to follow. The church doesn’t get to “go back to” anything. Our call is to be faithful and to follow, even if we end up in places we couldn’t have possibly imagined. We end up at tables with God’s children we’ve never met or never imagined, not necessarily comfortable for us but absolutely who God calls us to serve and love.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, 

Still be my vision, O Lord of us all.

 

For the vision that drives us forward, even when we have no idea where we are going, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal) #375, Shall We Gather at the River; #450, Be Thou My Vision; #757, Today We All Are Called to Be Disciples

 

Sermon: **Those** People

First Presbyterian Church

May 18, 2025, Easter 5C

Acts 11:1-18

 

Those People

 

First of all, let’s make sure we get one thing straight: that’s not a typo in your bulletin. The sermon title is exactly as I instructed Alberta to enter it, so don’t go fussing at her (as I know some of you do). Leave her alone.

It’s printed this way because you need to read it this way. It’s not “those people,” it’s “those people.” You know how the conversation goes: “…oh, one of those people.” The inflection has a world of meaning.

And that world of meaning, and how it gets broken down and exposed, is what you need to understand about this story, a story of Peter making a leap he never expected, in today’s lesson from Acts.

The part we heard a few moments ago is basically Peter’s defense speech, given when he is summoned (a much more sinister-sounding word than merely “called”) before the council of the church in Jerusalem to account for his actions regarding a certain Gentile named Cornelius, whom he had first encountered while staying in Joppa in the days after the raising of Tabitha, (also known as Dorcas) from the dead.

While staying at the home of a tanner named Simon, Peter gets hungry one day. In this case, though, getting hungry becomes the occasion for the Holy Spirit to visit and show a vision to Peter, a vision which called upon Peter to take a step that he could never have imagined taking, one that, literally, charged Peter to do something that went against the way he had been raised and against everything he had ever been taught about scripture.

In the vision, which is recorded directly in chapter 10, Peter sees something like a great sheet being lowered from heaven, containing animals of every kind, including all the creeping things and bottom-feeders you could imagine, and hears the divine voice – at least that’s clearly how Peter hears it, as his reply makes clear in one of the few times in Acts that Peter falls into his "speak first, think later" pattern that happens so often in the gospels: “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” This time, though, the voice of the Lord says virtually the most shocking thing possible: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” 

Let’s not try to soften things here. Peter is not wrong or just making stuff up. You can, if you’re so inspired, look to Leviticus 11 or Deuteronomy 14 for a starting point in surveying the amazing and very particular detail on dietary law in the Torah. And this wasn’t minor stuff in Jewish thought of the time. Peter’s response might have been heated, but it was also virtually a reflex – “we don’t do that.” And yet here God is telling him to do exactly that and getting in Peter’s face about it just a little bit – “must not” is never wishy-washy language in scripture, and that’s what Peter has just been hit with.

As if all this wasn’t shocking and destabilizing enough, Peter sees this vision a total of three times. If you remember Peter’s story, you remember that he has a bad history of things happening three times.

Finally, the visions are done, no more sheets full of unkosher food descending from heaven. Peter is left trying to sort out just what he has seen and just what it means. Little does he know that the Holy Spirit has already been at work well before this set of visions. The messengers who come from Cornelius, the Roman – and very Gentile – centurion, are there because the Holy Spirit has already been at work responding to the earnest prayers of a God-worshiper.

Apparently, Cornelius was a Gentile who nonetheless claimed allegiance to the God worshiped in the synagogue community but had not become a Jew. The extent of such dedication was that he was a generous giver and was constantly in prayer, and that “the whole Jewish nation” spoke well of him, according to 10:22. Those prayers got a dramatic answer when Cornelius – at least a day before Peter’s vision – received instructions to send for Peter. Of course, his messengers arrive as Peter is trying to sort through his own vision, one that must have seemed far more nightmarish to him than Cornelius’s to him.

For all his confusion and distress, Peter at least seems to get that his vision must have something to do with these visitors. That doesn’t mean he’s immediately comfortable with what he’s being asked to do; even if the spirit tells him to go with these visitors “without hesitation” that doesn’t mean he’s going with comprehension or ease. Nonetheless he does something quite remarkable, giving them lodging for the night before making the trip with them the next day to Caesarea, a seat of Roman power and a thoroughly Roman city.

Why is all this so remarkable? Well, Peter is associating with those people. The regulations in the Torah about associating with Gentiles and purity are as precise and fixed as the ones about food and purity. You didn’t just have Gentiles in your home, and you certainly didn’t go into their homes and share meals and things like that. Torah was quite clear that one was not to be cruel to Gentiles, and that one was not to abuse them if they were travelers in their land, and that one was to live in peace with them. But there were limits, and Peter, if still a bit uncomfortable as he makes clear in 10:28, was about to do all those proscribed things and more. 

And it was this choice that had caused Peter to be brought before the church leaders in Jerusalem, which is where his account is given that is recorded in Acts 11. Notice how in verse 3 of that chapter, the leaders in Jerusalem had thoroughly failed to understand what has happened; all that they can think about is not that Gentiles have received the word of God, but that Peter ate with Gentiles. As you might have noticed, we today live in a world, and in a church, where God’s work is too often and too easily ignored in favor of humans taking offense.

So Peter has to relate his experience to them. In the end, what finally gets through to the church authorities is that the story is not really about Peter, as much as he is the one telling it. The actions that matter here are not Peter’s, but God’s.

It was God who answered Cornelius’s prayers and instructed him to send for Peter. It was God who gave Peter that strange and disturbing vision. It was God who told Peter directly to go with those messengers from Cornelius. 

And it was God the Holy Spirit who came upon Cornelius and his household, right in front of Peter. Peter was at Pentecost; he knew what it looked like. He knew exactly what was happening. And it happened at the Spirit’s own initiative, without waiting for any cues. The Spirit came upon them while Peter was still speaking, giving what might have been his more-or-less standard introductory sermon. Other unexpected converts had received the Holy Spirit upon being baptized, but not Cornelius and his household; the Spirit didn’t wait. Peter called for their baptism, because after what the Holy Spirit had just done, how could he not?

We moderns really aren’t always any quicker than Peter to catch on to what the Spirit is doing in the world. We are more prone to seek comfort and familiarity rather than be open to those among whom the Spirit is moving. To put it rather bluntly: when was the last time you invited someone to this church who was in some demonstrable way – in race or ethnic background, or class, or orientation, or national origin, or (shudder) even political party – different from you? Clearly we do not reject persons of different races or backgrounds; we have welcomed, we do welcome, we will welcome – but do we invite? Do we take the initiative to reach out? 

The silos in which we live in society can be composed of very nearly anything, not just the classifiers noted above, and we in our homes, our workplaces, our social circles (and most certainly our churches) can fall into the trap of sticking with what’s comfortable, what’s familiar, instead of practicing the welcome of Christ, or following the initiative of the Holy Spirit. But we can’t do that, and not just because – not even primarily because – the church dies if we don’t follow. We’ve got to open ourselves to where the Spirit will lead us because that’s how we follow. That’s how we submit to the Lordship of Christ, not by memorizing rules, but by being active followers of Christ and seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit always.

We worship a God who does a new thing. We worship a God who makes clean. What God has made clean, we dare not - must not - call unclean.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #234, Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain; #---, The Holy Spirit fell; #282, Come Down, O Love Divine

acts 11 1-18

if the same story appears 

in some fashion 

three different times 

in the same book of scripture 

we should probably consider 

that it is a

very important story 

acts 10

narrates the original event 

peter will refer to that event 

one more time 

in acts 15

acts 11 is the defense when peter gets summoned 

(not merely called or invited)

to appear before the council 

of church leaders 

in jerusalem 

they are apparently 

bent out of shape 

over peter’s eating with gentiles 

so what does peter do but

tell the story 

more specifically 

tell the story of what God did

right down to 

the Holy Spirit tripping out

on cornelius and his household 

after all

you have to figure some of them 

had been at pentecost 

there was silence

and then there was praise 

that what God had done for them

God had now done for gentiles too

sadly though 

I can’t shake the feeling 

that even through the silence 

and then the praise 

some of those council members 

were still trying to figure out 

a way to get peter in trouble 

for eating with gentiles