Sermon Text: Acts 10:44-48
21 May 2006
At some time or another, at least when we were children, most of us have experienced the sense of shock of finding ourselves someplace we never expected to be. I have a vague memory, when I was about three, of leaving my mother's side while she was talking to a friend outside LaPointe's Dress Shop on Main Street in Klamath Falls, Oregon. I don't know exactly what I was pursuing, but it must have been something pretty interesting, because when I and my mother began to think about each other again I was on the other side of Main Street from her, and I was just beginning to panic, because neither the landmarks nor the people looked very familiar to me anymore.
Even as adults, many of us have such moments of disorientation, in which a once familiar and settled world, one in which we know our way, suddenly seems to shift. A couple of years ago my mother became disoriented when leaving her doctor's office and had to wander about the hallways of the clinic looking for the exit. She finally emerged on a fourth floor fire escape, where my brother-in-law spotted her.
While we may be able to look back and laugh at some of these experiences, they are usually very uncomfortable for us while we are going through them. And many times such experiences result in the transformation of our sense of the world, for good or ill. They become etched in our memories, defining moments on our life journeys. Like the children in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, who enter another world through a closet stuffed with fur coats, we may come back to our old world, but we don't come back the same.
I think Peter is in a similar situation as he delivers his sermon to the household of Cornelius. Peter has been chasing the Spirit since the early chapters of Acts, but the experience has been something like trying to pounce on a wet bar of soap. Everywhere the Spirit goes there is trouble, or things take some unexpected twist. This had to be disconcerting.
Remember that Peter probably shared popular Jewish conceptions of what God would do when the Messiah came. Peter thought he knew where God's Spirit was headed: to Jerusalem, where the kingdom would be restored to Israel. Jesus himself had told them to wait there for "the promise of the Father" (1:4). Sure enough, in Acts 1 the resurrected Christ appears to the disciples in Jerusalem. Just before Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples ask him if this is the time when Israel will be restored.
Jesus doesn't really answer that question, at least not directly, but instead tells them that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit falls upon them, and they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:6-8).
So, Peter has heard from the Risen Jesus himself that the mission will eventually go to the ends of the earth, but he and the other disciples probably continued to think about these events first of all in terms of what God was doing with Israel, with the Jewish people, just like most of us today tend to think about God's work in the world in terms of what is happening here in America, and in terms of how we look at the world. While Peter is a very faithful witness amidst all the things that happen in Jerusalem, and while he is the chief spokesman for the disciples at Pentecost and in the days that follow, his imagination of what God is doing is apparently still resolutely focused on Israel and the Jewish people. But as he continues to chase the Spirit, his path takes him and the other disciples into new, uncharted, and increasingly difficult and dangerous terrain, culminating in his somewhat reluctant visit to the house of Cornelius. Peter is still chasing the Spirit, but in this story there are signs that he is finding the journey disorienting. He has a hard time understanding, or accepting, where the Spirit is leading him.
As the story of Cornelius and Peter begins, Peter is in Joppa. Joppa was the very seacoast town where the prophet Jonah in the Old Testament was when God ordered him to go and prophesy to the people of Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian empire, the most hated enemies of the Israelites. When God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, you will recall, Jonah took the first boat from Joppa he could find that was sailing in the opposite direction, toward Tarshish.
Do you remember Peter's full name? It's Simon bar Jonah, i.e., "Son of Jonah." Maybe Peter shares some of his namesake's reluctance when he gets the call to go to the house of Cornelius, the Roman Centurion. Rome is, in Peter's day, what Nineveh was in Jonah's day -- the oppressive imperial force occupying their nation. And Peter, like the other disciples, is still looking for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel -- that is, for Israel's freedom from foreign oppressors. So, of all places, why would God send Peter to the house of Cornelius, a Roman military figure, who lives in Caesarea Maritima -- that is, "Caesar City by the Sea!?" And what is Peter to make of the fact that when he arrives in Caesartown, he finds that the same Spirit that has been haunting his own dreams with unclean animals that he is supposed to eat has also been working the other side of the street, giving Cornelius some visions of his own.
It's not hard to tell that Peter is at least a little uncomfortable in this situation, because the first thing out of his mouth when he gets to Cornelius's house is not "Hello, nice to meet you, Mr. Centurion," but a fairly caustic protest: "You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So, when I was sent for, I came without objection. Now may I ask why you sent for me?" (Acts 10:28-29). In other words, "I'm not supposed to be here. You are unclean, but God told me not to call you that. I came anyway, so what d'ya want?"
As the scene continues to unfold and Cornelius tells Peter of the angelic visions he has had, Peter admits that God indeed shows no partiality. But the sermon he proceeds to give is strikingly Jewish. Unlike Paul in Athens in Acts 17, who edits his sermon for the philosophical and rhetorical sensitivities of his Gentile audience, Peter speaks to Cornelius and his household in staunchly Jewish terms. He talks about the message God sent to the people of Israel. He repeatedly mentions Judea and Galilee and Jerusalem. He calls Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth.
He does mention that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, but in Jewish lingo this was usually understood to mean that the messiah would exercise lordship over the nations by judging them, not necessarily by saving them. Even Psalm 98, which we read today, which is a wonderful celebration of God's victory by the whole earth, mentions both God's love and steadfastness toward Israel and that God is coming to judge the earth. Peter's sermon also says that he has been commanded to "preach to the people," but it is likely that Peter has understood, at least has until this very moment, the word "people" to mean the Jewish people. So, while the sermon contains notes that suggest a wider audience than only Israel, the terms of engagement for Peter are all still distinctly Jewish.
Perhaps God gets impatient with all of this, for the Spirit abruptly interrupts the sermon and falls upon all who are listening, including the Gentile Centurion Cornelius and all of the Gentiles with him. We know it's an interruption because Luke tells us that Peter was still speaking when the Spirit moved, and Peter later tells the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem that he had only begun his sermon when the Spirit fell on all of the listeners. In fact, the Spirit is so far ahead of Peter and everyone else in the room that none of these people have a chance to repent, or to offer a proper confession of faith, or be baptized, or anything. That will have to happen later. The Spirit is way ahead. Luke tells us that Peter and his Jewish companions are utterly astonished by this turn of events, for they hear Cornelius and these other Gentiles speaking in tongues and praising God just as Peter and the disciples had at Pentecost. In fact, Peter and the others are witnessing the Gentile Pentecost -- our Pentecost.
As soon as the Spirit is poured out on Cornelius and his household, it becomes clear to Peter and his Jewish Christian companions that salvation is indeed for everyone, even the Gentiles, even the Roman occupiers, even the people of Caesar City -- and there is nothing they can do about it. So, they end up staying for dinner. In fact, they stay for a few days with Cornelius, which is what causes trouble later with the folks back in Jerusalem.
The problem is that when you stay at Cornelius's house, you eat his food at his table. There is a technical name for what Peter and his Jewish companions experience: it's called "mission in reverse," which is what happens when the missionary gets converted. That's what God's mission is really about in the end, converting and transforming all of us, even the first witnesses. That's what the folks who go on the mission trip will find out. That's what our graduates will discover if they decide to chase the Spirit while they pursue their lives and careers. God just keeps on messing with us. Yes, God loves us through troubles and opposition, but through it all God is always stretching us and surprising us. The Spirit keeps trying to drag us off to some stranger's house in Caesar City. God loves to take us to the other side of the street, and to leave us standing on the fire escape.
Think about this. What if we, in the course of chasing the Spirit through our own world, suddenly were to discover that God has poured out the Spirit of salvation not only on good American Christians like us, but on Muslims and Jews, too? What if the Spirit were poured out on homeless people, on people with AIDS, or on immigrants and insurgents? Can you imagine that? What if they invited you to stay for dinner? What if God poured out the Spirit on Republicans and Democrats, on conservatives and liberals, on gay people and straight people? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that?
Would you stay for dinner?
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