Day 195 - On the Road Again

A sermon delivered Sunday June 23, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN

subtitle: Once you open a can of worms, it always takes a bigger can to put them all back.

references: Ezekiel 44:5-9; Acts 10:44- 11:18

While I was thinking about the experience of Peter and Cornelius (see Acts 14:1-43), I came across an e-mail from a group that sends out reflections on religious issues and the church in general (Church of the Savior, Washington, DC "Inward/Outward"June 22 issue). This particular reflection claims that we tend to make the church and spiritual life much more complicated today than Jesus said.

We have developed procedures, creeds, interpretations and rules that protect and define membership in the institutions of our churches beginning with these experiences in Acts.  Unlike them, we tend to think we live in the world and attend church, when in fact we should be living in the church and attending the world because we know from Acts that the Apostles and Paul did not found “Churches,” they nurtured communities of Christian believers.

How do we decide someone is a Christian? Let’s look at the story of Peter and how Cornelius’ conversion came about to see what I mean. Cornelius was a gentile Roman soldier, one of the occupiers but he was a religious person who prayed constantly to God.

Peter had a dream in which a divine visitation challenged two of his more deeply held Jewish religious beliefs, the rules concerning eating “unclean” food and priests associating with non-Jews.  Not only did he have this dream, he also claimed that when three men met him the Holy Spirit told him to go with them and treat them as if they were one of his Jewish Christian brothers.

When Peter got to Cornelius’ house where the men wanted him to go, he realizes Cornelius is a gentile and tells him he will talk to him because his dream told him to, even though it is unlawful to talk to a gentile. Cornelius proceeds to tell Peter about his dream that a man in dazzling white clothes told him to send men to find Peter.

With his own dream in mind Peter reluctantly shares the Gospel with Cornelius. He tells Cornelius, (Acts10:34-35): “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, and in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” As Peter begins to explain the Good News the Holy Spirit overcomes Cornelius and friends, and they begin speaking in tongues and praising God.  Peter can only say, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

Peter’s religious belief that gentiles are unclean must come from Ezekiel 44:6-9 and the rabbinic interpretations that developed. Ezekiel said it was an abomination that profaned God’s sanctuary to admit uncircumcised foreigners who were not converted Jews into his sanctuary.  You have to look hard to find a prohibition like this; it is a major deviation from the fair and compassionate care for aliens and foreigners called for in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Ezekiel objects that the priests have let gentiles into the temple as quasi-priests. Peter had to let go of his deeply held religious belief to baptize Cornelius and accept him in the congregation of the faithful.

As momentous as this is, another very important character of conversion itself bears on this subject.

Notice in the passage I read that the Holy Spirit, or God if you will, is the main actor. The Holy Spirit instructs them as to what to do while Peter and Cornelius are passive actors. Peter is told to eat the food gentiles eat though he resists three times. He meets three men and is told to follow them and does. Cornelius has a dream also and is told to send people to find Peter at a certain location and bring him back, which he does. Peter and Cornelius are almost “one-dimensional.” The “star” in this drama is the Holy Spirit. It seizes and converts Cornelius and friends while Peter explains the Gospel. And then. poor Peter must travel back to Jerusalem and justify his actions that the Holy Spirit was at work to some angry Apostles - in spite of their objections.

There is something very important, difficult and contradictory about these conversions happening as a consequence of violating religious purity laws.

As we know, proclamation, the Holy Spirit and personal affirmation are essential for conversion.  The power of the Holy Spirit looms large in the conversion of Cornelius and the Ethiopian met by Philip. The Holy Spirit called them to Christian service. They had a willingness to hear, but the Holy sprit did all the work.

Look at what happened with the Ethiopian who was the queen’s treasurer.  The Holy Spirit told Philip to travel down a desolate desert road. When he met this Ethiopian officer of the Queen’s court, the Holy Spirit told Philip to approach the Ethiopian and interpret Isaiah that the Ethiopian was reading. Philip explained how Isaiah foretells the Gospel and connected it to the Good News.  Then the Ethiopian sees a body of water stops his chariot and asked Philip, “why not baptize me here?” and Philip did. 

This isn’t a special one-time event. The same thing happened with Saul on the road to Damascus. He had no receptivity to conversion, only a persecuting intent. Jesus appears in a bright light that blinds Saul, tells Saul to go to a certain place and stay and he is healed.  Saul (Paul) says hardly a word.

The unity in these conversions is the action of the Lord who calls the disciples to the people and brings to faith the people who listened. It was all the Holy Spirit’s work. We see conversion is a very personal experience of the external force of the Holy Spirit. Never convince yourself you willfully embraced conversion by your self. Jesus did it all. The only thing Paul, the Ethiopian and Cornelius did on their own was participate publically affirm their faith by being baptized.

The contradiction is that Christianity is a very communal experience. It posed difficulty for the Apostles in Jerusalem who thought they were the gatekeepers to decide if a conversion was true, but what basis do they have to do so? None of the Apostles or any of us today have a way to look into a person’s heart and judge that they believe other than observing and supporting the willingness of the converts to participate in the life of the congregation.

Scripture says the only ticket to salvation is to be called to join the congregation and its activity in the world as our new life. This is what living in the church and attending to the world means.

The irony is that over the last 2,000 years we have built up rules, procedures, processes, practices and creeds originally meant to teach the faith to new believers but they have become litmus tests or a gates to membership in the congregational life.

Now, do not get me wrong, every creed of the church is a faithful attempt to interpret scripture in the context of the current world. The Apostle’s Creed seeks to capture the essential tenet of faith - Jesus’ only criterion for salvation of the Christian, “I am the way, the truth and the light, no one comes to the Father except through me,” and “He that believes in me shall not perish but have everlasting life.” But Emperor Constantine ordered it revised (Nicene Creed) to solve a controversy by affirming the means of his birth, his crucifixion and the nature of the Trinity.  Its formal statement of the Trinity was ordered to stop the destructive arguments between bishops of the congregations of the Eastern and Western Christian congregations.

We have Scriptural basis in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that tells of Jesus’ birth, but in each Gospel Jesus states the only criterion for salvation is faith in our resurrection through the resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God.

Slowly we add requirements, interpretations, duties and tasks in our Christian congregational and denominational practice, almost always for the noble and constructive defense of the faith, like Peter and the Apostles. In politics and war we call this expansion “mission creep.” These additions slowly take on a life as requirements and we begin thinking about our Christianity in terms of our rules and creeds. They define a denominationalism, not Christianity and lose the freedom of the Spirit in Christ’s words quoted from the John’s Gospel. Why do we do this?

We do it for same good reasons the Apostles in Jerusalem did. We want to be sure the people whom we welcome into our congregation as believers have a good sense of that belief. At the same time we have to admit defeat because we cannot peer into a person’s heart to measure one’s faith and understanding. We can only rely on their participation in our fellowship and let God be the judge. If the person is a Christian, God has sent the person to us as his vocation. 

I am reminded of a friend who recently died. He had a view of Christian practice to which I did not fully ascribe. I thought it a little too individualistic. There were other significant issues about his situation where he had abused trust of people and some folks wondered where he was situated spiritually after he died. My only thought was what I said above; we cannot peer into a person’s heart to measure one’s faith and understanding. We can only rely on their participation in our fellowship and let God be the judge.

What is important though is how we bring people into our congregations. I caution we need to be very careful about placing many prerequisites on people for congregational membership. More importantly, we have to be very careful to listen to those who say they have been called to our fellowship even if they challenge long-held beliefs because we may be entertaining Angels.

We may feel some parts of our creeds are as sacrosanct as Peter thought the prohibition of associating with gentiles and eating impure food was. We ought to always be aware we form creeds by interpreting and applying scripture. If getting to a creed or interpretation causes conflict it can be healthy if it leads to a robust and healthy unity in faith open to the Holy Spirit rather than affirming our inner opinions or bias. At the same time, if that conflict drives a wedge in a congregation or denomination between brothers and sisters who hold faithfully to the same basic Christian faith that Jesus voiced in the gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the light, no one comes to the Father except through me,” or “He that believes in me shall not perish but have everlasting life,” then the conflict is the work of the world, or worse, not the work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul, the Ethiopian (see Acts 8:26-40) and Cornelius show conversion has many faces. Paul (see Acts 9:1-22) was a hostile Jew persecuting Christians who had to have a dramatic personal encounter with Jesus to turn him into the persecuted apostle. Cornelius had a religious devotion to God, and the Ethiopian had an open, inquisitive mind that made them both receptive to God. We see three different ways God called people to faith - a blinding revelation, a religious devotion and an inquiring mind. The devotional I read concluded that Jesus was a simple person whose only desire in life was to glorify God by doing God’s bidding, be part of God and enjoy God’s grace among God’s children. 

Can we demand anyone to aspire to any thing more?  If we demand more are we putting a stumbling block in the way? AMEN.