A New Story
5th Sunday After Easter Year C
Photo by: Mateus Campos Felipe
My congregation is celebrating its 125th anniversary this summer. By New England standards, we are a mere baby. Our theme for the year comes from a line of our church covenant, “God’s Spirit working through us!” This year I will preach through the gifts of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, and the book of Acts. The beauty of the book of Acts is that it forces us to see the Spirit’s work as communal work, an important antidote to any privatization of the Spirit.
As a retelling of the earliest stories of the first generation of the Christian church, the book of Acts is full of vibrant reminders that God’s Spirit is in the business of expanding the Church’s mission and ministry beyond where we think the Spirit or the Church belongs. As those of us who have been in a church in any capacity know, growth and change so often bring conflict. This story in Acts 11:1-18 is one of those moments of growth-induced conflict. Interestingly, the point of the story is not even Peter’s or Cornelius’s visions - rather it is Peter defending his work to the old-guard leaders of the Jerusalem church so that they might see that “God shows no partiality” (Rom. 2:11).
Chapter 10 already gives us the story itself, the point of the retelling in chapter 11 is the transformation that happens in the community when Peter recounts the story. Stories are powerful, aren’t they? We tell them in our sermons because we hope people will remember the stories even if they forget the exegesis! “Generally, arguments tend only to crystallize differences” but “”a story invites people across the separating chasm, making everyone the winner.”¹ Storytelling meets people where they are. Stories transform. Who among us hasn’t heard stories from our family, friends, and parishioners about how they have changed their minds on some significant issue because they knew someone else’s story? As a pastor of a Welcoming and Affirming congregation, I have heard story after story of people who became allies to the LGBTQIA+ community because they know the life story of an LGBTQIA+ person. Stories change lives.
And so, Peter told a story in response to the church’s concern that he had begun ministering to gentiles. He had begun eating in non-kosher homes. He had been preaching the Gospel to the Roman, colonizing oppressors, and the church in Jerusalem was perhaps concerned that Peter had gone off the rails. And so, Peter came before them and told them a story.
The story he tells is a story about how God changed his mind regarding who should have access to God’s redemption. Peter recounts for them a vision that God gave him while he was praying on a rooftop in Joppa, in which a sheet full of animals appeared to him and was lowered down from the heavens three times. Although God spoke to Peter and commanded him to eat the (non-kosher) animals, Peter refused all three times on the grounds that he was a man of persistent faith and would never do anything that was against his religion. Peter had probably spent his life not eating these foods. God was calling him to shift something profoundly important to his faith so that the reach of God’s love could expand beyond Peter’s faith.
Perhaps the larger problem was that Cornelius was a colonizer, he was “no underdog.”² He was an enforcer, a leader of the Roman army that had taken up residence in Israel to enforce Roman control. Cornelius was undesirable for two reasons: he didn’t follow the kosher laws and he was an oppressor. One was about faith, the other about survival. And likely it is both of these reasons that have the church leaders in Jerusalem upset about and confused by Peter’s actions. Peter was a public minister of the church, what the heck was he doing eating at Cornelius’ house? Had he given up his faith and switched allegiance to Rome?
Peter goes on to tell his critics that not only had God appeared to him, but God had also appeared to his oppressor with a message: the oppressor was to invite the oppressed over to his home and then he was to sit and listen. Not talk. Not boss around. Listen. And he did just that: Cornelius the Roman Centurion sat and listened to a Jewish man. And as he listened, the Gentile Pentecost happened when the Spirit fell on that home full of Roman citizens.
Both Peter and Cornelius were outsiders to each other. Peter’s people were oppressed by Cornelius’ people. Peter wasn’t supposed to eat with Cornelius, and Cornelius certainly wasn’t supposed to learn from Peter. But God works where God works. And God had appeared to both of them, calling them together so that something new might happen. So that they would no longer be outsiders to one another. This recognition of God at work in the world is what Peter wants the church to take from his story. What God has called clean, we cannot for the sake of our faith consider unclean. Who God has declared beloved, we cannot for the sake of our faith call unloved. Who God has called an insider, we cannot for the sake of our faith make an outsider.
The end result of Peter’s story (and a few more disputes in the early church) was that Gentiles were allowed to become Christians and join the church as Gentiles. They could get baptised. The Spirit would fall on them. They too were redeemable.
“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?” God’s redemptive work is for all people. God’s redemptive work is for Republicans and Democrats. It is for our own children and the starving children in Gaza. It is for queer and straight folks. It is for every person on every side of every divide we can imagine or create. And in the end, should we accept the vision God sends, it can transform us to listen and be changed. It can transform us to stop withholding God’s love from someone we consider other or beneath us.
Sometimes we need stories of God at work in the world to help us set aside our scruples and do the real work of faith. To help us step out with courage. And sometimes God works where we don’t expect God to work. Jon Sobrino, a Catholic liberation theologian in El Salvador, wrote that “if we accept that the Spirit of God continually acts in history and in the Church, then we should not be surprised by the idea that we are to search continually for the manifestation of God in our times.”³ Peter’s story might help us better see the new ways God is working in own world.
Some questions we might ask ourselves and our congregations this week: are we Peter or Cornelius? Are we excluding people because they are an affront to our faith? Or are we silencing people because they are beneath us? Perhaps this story invites us to identify with both Peter and Cornelius. Maybe we need to set aside religious scruples that cause us to harm others and we need to sit at the feet of those we have deemed beneath us. The good news is that Peter’s story reminds us that God appeared to both Peter and Cornelius!
Stories transform. This week perhaps Peter’s story can transform us into creating more welcoming communities where all can experience God’s transformative grace.