A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

Today I am at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church in Sutton, MA. The readings for this day can be found here.

Today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter. To say this another way, as you know, Easter is not one day, but a fifty-day season. And so once again we have been making our way from the empty tomb to the Feast of Pentecost, your new shared patronal feast day.

I used to know this couple that were dating: Andrew and John (the Baptizer, not the Evangelist!) Then they started getting serious. And then they got married. While I’ve been in this building many times before, this is my very first Sunday morning visit to the Church of the Holy Spirit. It’s good to be here!

Anyway, as I was saying, Easter is a story that unfolds over seven weeks. I’ve been in various places throughout this Easter season, but in all of them, alongside those gospel resurrection appearances, we’ve been hearing these vignettes from the Acts of Apostles, including today’s reading. Together they tell the tale of a first-century, Spirit-led, congregation that we might call St. Swithin’s-in-the-Fields. Or perhaps we might call it the Church of the Holy Spirit, Jerusalem. The unfolding narrative in Acts invites us to ponder the experiences of that early Christian community, a story that one New Testament scholar (Griffith-Jones) has designated succinctly as The Mission. I want to backtrack a bit and try to connect these episodes together before tackling today’s reading from the tenth chapter of Acts.

One of the most amazing things I hope you noticed a few weeks ago is how Peter is a changed man. Recall how just seven weeks ago when we read the Passion, Peter was a broken man paralyzed by his fears: “I do not know the man,” he said. Three times. The haunting sound of a crowing rooster brought the chilling reminder of the gap between Peter’s stated desire to follow Jesus and his inability to live that faith. Perhaps some of us have had our own reminders of what that’s like. But when we get to Acts, Peter is literally a new man. What is the difference? The Holy Spirit has breathed new life into Peter. The Spirit of the living God has melted him and molded him and filled him and now can use him to do the work that God has given him to do. (Acts 4:8)

Acts is all about transformation. Earlier in this Easter season, we also heard about how the Holy Spirit transformed the community’s relationship with money. The community had a radical stewardship program: the request was not a tithe of one’s wealth, but all of it.  They faced and overcame the temptation to make money their false god by letting go. And in so doing, they let God do with them infinitely more than they could ask or imagine. And so we heard how they were “of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” (Acts 4:32)

In Chapter 10 we come to one of the strangest and most important chapters in all of Scripture. Again the Spirit of the Living God is at work, not only transforming individual people’s lives but working through the community. First this man named Cornelius has a very strange dream. And then Peter has an equally strange dream. In each case the dream prepares them to imagine (and then do) something new. Gentiles and Jews didn’t eat together. Not only because one group kept kosher and avoided things like clam chowder and shrimp cocktail and pork chops, but because the religious rituals that undergirded those practices had a larger purpose than what was put on the table. These practices were meant to keep people separate; not to bring them together. Gentiles and Jews inhabited different worlds.

But both Cornelius and Peter have these strange dreams and then they trust the Spirit enough to act on those dreams. They come together to have lunch. And in that shared meal, there is once again transformation. On Easter Sunday we heard Peter eloquently expressing what he learned that day at table with Cornelius, as he connects that experience with the story of Jesus and his death and resurrection. Do you remember? Peter says:

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. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and 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 ordained by God 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. (Acts 10:34-43)

That text immediately precedes the one we heard today, to which we can now return:

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 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, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

So what do you think happens next? Cornelius has been baptized. They’ve followed the guidance of the Spirit in doing so. Now they can live happily ever after, right?

If you answered yes to my rhetorical question then perhaps you’ve not yet spent a lot of time in the Church. Good for you! We need your optimism and positive outlook. As for me, next month I’ll mark thirty years of ordained life and the last five in diocesan ministry so I’m a little bit more jaded, even if always hopeful. The truth is that the Church is made up of people. Even guided by the Holy Spirit, people sometimes resist change, especially the deep change that transforms us from the inside out and reorients our outlook on the world. Peter has risked trusting the Spirit enough to go to lunch with Cornelius. When it seems clear that the Spirit confirms that hunch as a good thing, he baptizes those who have received that very same Holy Spirit that breaks down walls that divide people. All of this seems good.

Yet if you have been around the Church for a while now, you may already sense what is coming after the warm glow of that Baptismal party wears off. Word gets back to Jerusalem. People start whispering in the parking lot. Peter is summoned home and he’s told that he’s got some explaining to do. The ripples of Cornelius’ Baptism shake the very foundations of the community and as we will be told in the fifteenth chapter, “there was no small amount of dissension among them.” Those words of course speak volumes. If I were following the lead of Eugene Peterson who wrote The Message and doing a paraphrase of Acts, I’d say simply that “all hell broke out.” The problem is that Church people crave doing things decently and in good order and sometimes even making sure that things are done “the way they’ve always been done” and Peter has definitely done something bold and new.

So they gather for General Convention. (I mean, of course, they gather for the Jerusalem Council. But in a real sense, they are not all that different.) Which is to say, the community comes together to hear the stories and to try to listen to one another by asking for the guidance of that same Spirit. (See Acts 15.) They gather to fight it out but at least to try to do that as fairly as they can, with God’s help. And as I read Acts, they don’t come to a clear resolution on this question. But they do come to a sense of reconciliation. Those two are not the same. In other words, at the end of the Jerusalem Council, not everyone is ready to sit down and eat clam chowder with Cornelius and his friends. For some it still goes against everything they believe. The issue will continue to unfold in the early Church and be a source of conflict for some time. We hear about it especially in Paul’s Letters. Here is a tip when reading Paul: whenever you hear Paul talking about circumcision, this is the very same issue he is addressing.  Both circumcision and keeping kosher are related to the big theological question: how “Jewish” does a Gentile need to become to accept Jesus as the Christ?

As I read Acts, they didn’t resolve the question because the question wasn’t yet resolvable. What they did do is continue to trust the Spirit of the Living God to melt them and mold them and fill them and use them. What they did do is continue to gather together and to pray and to break bread. What they did do is continue to focus on the mission to tell the story of God’s love for the world. They refused to be consumed by the conflict by refocusing their energies on the shared mission. This story is our story, too, of course, and I hope it doesn’t take a great leap of faith or insight to see that. It’s our story as the Body of Christ and as the Anglican Communion and as The Episcopal Church, which will in fact gather this summer for General Convention. It’s our story in this diocese and it’s the story of Andrew and John, two who have become one in order to do more together than they ever could apart.  

That same Holy Spirit that led the Mission in Acts and breathed new life into frightened disciples hiding out behind closed doors has been guiding and will continue to guide you – as individuals but also as the new thing God is doing through you. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is called “Comforter.” But that’s deceptive, in my experience, because comfort is not always the most obvious initial result. Sometimes the Spirit pushes us out of our comfort zones! When the Spirit shows up at Pentecost, She does so as a mighty wind and as tongues of fire. Those are images of power and transformation. In Acts the Spirit gives Cornelius and Peter the dreams that lead to action, and action that leads to something new, and also to conflict. Yet conflict does not destroy the community. Instead it brings new clarity about the mission. It suggests to me that conflict is simply a part of the deal in Christian community, and that the Spirit is at work in the midst of it all.

We are guided by that very same Spirit of that very same living God to this day, melting and molding and filling and using us for the sake of God’s mission. We should not expect the Church to be a placid place, but a cauldron of possibilities. Dreams and visions lead to new possibilities. Jesus said that the Spirit would lead us into all truth. This parish is evidence that this same Spirit continues to shape our life together in the risen Christ, even now and to the end of the ages. Sometimes even by leading us out of our comfort zones. Thanks be to God!