An Ever Widening Circle

Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on Acts 10: 34-35; 44-48.  Focus on how God is breaking down every barrier that we humans would erect to exclude others.  Check out Jody Sinkway and the choir following the sermon.

What are we to do with our God? I mean one minute we are to define ourselves by what we eat, who we eat with, what we wear and don’t wear, how we worship and what we worship and the next we’re told that God is doing something so new that it makes everything else that we had been taught irrelevant.

That’s the dilemma Peter faced. Being a good Jew the idea of throwing away the laws of God in order to welcome the Gentiles into fellowship with Christ would be like being told to get rid of our profession of faith in Christ as our Lord and Savior. And yet that’s what Peter did. And he did it because something greater was speaking to him than the law.

As Peter learned from his vision God not only had come to the people of Israel, but he said, and I love that word. Sometimes I think the whole gospel swings on that word. (I was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see”). It means things can change. It means that God can still teach us something. “But,” Peter said, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean…”

Cornelius answered him, “All of us are here in the presence of God are here to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say.” So Peter began by telling them what he had just learned himself. “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.”

Peter had just said something no one on earth had authorized him to say. He had just opened the church to those it had previously shut out, people with whom he was not even supposed to associate. He hadn’t checked with his colleagues in Jerusalem. He didn’t even quote a single verse of scripture to back up his position. He just based what he said on a single revelation given to him by God.

Now Peter got into big trouble for doing this. When he arrived in Jerusalem, his Jewish brothers jumped all over him. Why had he gone to that house in the first place, they asked him? What had possessed him to eat unclean food? From their perspective Peter had sold out. He had broken the laws of God. It was the one thing that made them who they were.

But Peter told them what had happened, how God had given him a vision that included all creatures, all people. And instead of selling out his religion he had traded up and when he saw that the Holy Spirit had come to Cornelius and his household he knew God was right. As he said himself: “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ,” Peter said, “Who was I to hinder God?”

When he said that, everyone got very quiet. And what amazes me even more than Peter’s conversion is that the other eleven accepted what Peter had told them and then they too began praising God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

You have to give those early disciples a lot of credit, think what would have happened had they rejected Peter’s vision? They would have rejected Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles, which means we wouldn’t be here today.

Think about that for a moment, what would have happened to Christianity had 11 disciples said no to Peter’s vision or Paul’s conversion experience? Which raises the question, How many things do we exclude, ignore simply because the experience is beyond our current understanding and comfort level?

Our denomination is dying. It may be inevitable, beyond our control to reverse. We are the Moses generation We will not enter the promised land of the 1950’s Presbyterian Church again. The church of Jesus over took the old time religion of its day and spread like wildfire because it was willing to do a radically knew thing – they were willing to do what the old time religion did not. They saw that their market was t0 more than the one remaining tribe of Judah. It was to the whole world.

When was the last time we did a knew thing? The early church grew because they did something new. At least it was new compared to that good ole time religion of their day – Judean Judisam. Instead of talking about and debating points of law. They talked about personal relationships with Jesus and one another. Instead of limiting the leadership of this new religion to just men they also invited in women. They came together over meals. Instead of thinking about tribes. They thought about a whole world.

This new thing, this new religion would overtake its competors because they envisioned a bigger market share than their Judean brothers could see. In modern terms the Judean Jews were the Sears of their time and the early Christians were like Amazon. They saw that the market was much bigger than retail stores, think church buildings and that they could reach more people, think evanglism by moving from town to town, house to house. By being mobile and nimble.

As we come Sunday after Sunday, year after year, is anything new taking hold in us? Are we simply stuck in a never ending pattern of doing the same ole, same ole till death do us part.

In 2016, the last year I could find stats for our denomination. The Presbyterian Layman Magazine stated that we lost 89,893 members that year alone. At that rate we will be out of business in ten to 20 years. Why?

If people come they come to learn about Jesus Christ. They come to learn about his life, his teachings. People ultimately come because they find their lives are either transformed by Jesus or they are not. And the question for all of us is this: Do our lives reveal who Jesus is or not? Once we were the mainliners today we have become the sideliners.

Aren’t we supposed to be in a process of transformation, with a clear line between the old life and the new. It’s about expanding our vision and our choices. Which has huge implications for us. Christian communities that are growing are adaptive not reactive. They are seeking to grow by appealing to the next generation rather than their own. It’s not really about age but it about something new and better than the same ole, same ole.

But there is hope my friends because even as we decline, we are being pruned by God to be useful in the future. And even when we fail God. God does not fail his church. Remember it’s not death that needs to be feared. It’s how you die that is to be feared. We are called to be among the living and the doing even if our days are numbered. After all didn’t Jesus tell us that loving our neighbor was how we showed that we loved God. And didn’t God say, Go and make disciples of all nations. In other words learn, do, teach. Repeat! Learn, do, teach.

So how are we doing with that commandment and that commission? What grade would you give us? It would seem like the bringing of people from all over the world to sit at table with each other and dine in Jesus’ name would be an easy sell to Christians, but alas it is not.

Instead we truly fear new people. People whose ways are not our ways. People who look different from us. People who will do things differently from the way we did things. Death may not be such a bad thing. We believe in the resurrection to new life or so we say.

Death is God’s greatest tool and blessing. By making us mortal God limits the amount of damage we can do and the amount of suffering we must endure. It allows the next generation to see what it can do with the tools God entrusted to us.

Remember what made Sears famous? It’s cateloge. What killed it. Was the loss of its catelog and a trust in their buildings to do what the cateloge had once done. Amazon say this mistake and decided to reivent the categole that sells everything. They just put it on the internet. And the rest is history! Amen