Sermons

“Even to the Gentiles”

Psalm 67; Acts 11:1-18 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – May 19, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might rejoice in your welcome and share it like the gift it is.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

It’s a good thing you all keep me employed. There is some chance that if you didn’t, I would be trying to make a living as a radical liturgical calendar innovator.  (I’m pretty sure that’s a job, right?)  Perhaps you’ve heard about my idea to move Christmas to December 29, so that the first Sunday of Advent is always in December.  I’ve recently discovered, however, that this does not adequately address the problem of Advent starting the same weekend as Thanksgiving, so we’re going to have to be even more aggressive and push for the 30^thinstead.  Who’s with me?

If you don’t like that idea, perhaps my other plan will be more attractive.  You’re aware that once we have Pentecost Sunday (which is June 9^ththis year, by the way, the same day as our congregational meeting!), the liturgical calendar then turns green for months and months, leading us through endless weeks of what is literally called “Ordinary Time”.  I’m not even sure you should be allowed to capitalize something like “Ordinary Time”, but there it is.  Clearly, we are in need of another liturgical holiday, sometime around September, if only to break up the monotony.  In the face of this glaring gap, allow me to present “The Festival of Clean Sheets!” It’s part picnic on the grounds, part ethnic food festival, and part linens drive.  Most importantly for us today, it’s inspired by the wonderful story of Peter and Cornelius from Acts 10, which our scripture this morning recaps as Peter tells the apostles about it in Jerusalem later.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the story one more time, so we have a clear handle on what’s going on.  Peter is in Joppa, where, as you will recall, he was staying with a tanner named Simon, after having raised Tabitha from the dead.  He falls into a trance on the roof while his lunch is being prepared and has a vision.  In the vision, a large sheet is lowered down from heaven, full of animals that Jews were not allowed to eat.  But he hears a voice from heaven telling him to “kill and eat”, despite his protests that nothing “unclean” has ever passed his lips.  But the voice insists that Peter must not call what God has made clean profane.

Now, just to be clear, the story says that sheet has four-footed animals and reptiles and birds of the air.  It says nothing whatsoever about the ostrich you see in this artistic rendering on the screens, which is clearly not a “bird of the air”. Nor does it mention monkeys, which don’t seem like “four-footed animals” to me!  I think those of us here at VLM know what’s going on with this vision; clearly the real issue here is BACON.  Bizarrely, none of the illustrations I found included pigs!  Sadly for Peter, the animals are all just a vision, so he still has to wait for lunch.  But before the meal is even served, there is a knock on the door.  It turns out that a Roman centurion over in Caesarea has also had a vision.  An angel of the Lord told him to send someone to Joppa to fetch Peter, who would come and bring “a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.”  So these men came to find Peter, and the next day they all set out for Caesarea, where Peter shares with Cornelius the centurion and his household about Jesus and they all receive the Holy Spirit and get baptized.

It’s quite a story, isn’t it?  The visions, the animals, the incredible potential for celebrating with a wide variety of foods – and yet, the reason this story needs a holiday commemorating it is not because of the food but because of what it signifies for us, and by “us” I mean the vast majority of Christians since. While it is true that Paul is generally regarded as the apostle with a special mission to the Gentiles, this story about Peter is the first major incidence of conversion of Gentiles.  The re-telling of the story to the church in Jerusalem that we read in chapter 11 is the beginning of the opening up of the gospel to the rest of the world, that is, us.  Without Peter and Cornelius’ visions and subsequent interactions, we might not be here!  Indeed, without this conversion story – in which both Cornelius and Peter were converted in one sense or the other – the church might have remained a small, obscure sect of Judaism for centuries.  It’s hard to overestimate the significance of that.

And yet somehow, we often forget all about it. Would you raise your hand if you feel like you’ve been part of this church for a long time?  Take a look around.  Now, you all keep your hands up, and those of you who’ve been a Christian for a long time, here or anywhere, raise your hands as well.  All of you with your hands in the air right now, which includes me, mind you, this sermon is for us today.  You can put your hands down, but please listen carefully.  When we’ve been in churches for most of our lives, we are in danger of taking for granted the fact that we’ve been welcomed into the family of God.  We’ve always been here; we’ve gotten used to it.  We can hardly imagine life without it.

We spend a lot of time talking about welcome at this church.  Last month, we had three different trainings in which we went over a hand-out titled “Cultivating Welcome”.  And those were important conversations.  But they were all about us welcoming other people.  In those conversations we tend to assume we are the hosts, the ones whose home is being opened to guests.  If we were to declare a new holiday, decide to celebrate the Festival of Clean Sheets, it would be precisely to remind ourselves that we are all guests in God’s home. We have all been welcomed; we are all continually being welcomed anew.  This church is not “ours” any more than it is the Governor’s.  Inasmuch as it belongs to anyone, it belongs to God.  None of us has any special claim to what is happening here; we are all here by the grace of God, the love of Jesus that couldn’t be contained, but had to burst forth throughout Judea and Samaria and even unto the ends of the earth.

This is so important to remember because, without it, we avoid the posture of humility required for true worship.  We aren’t truly worshiping God if we let ourselves think we’ve invited God into our presence.  We come to worship because we want to be guests in God’s house.  “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life,” the apostles marveled.  Even to the Gentiles.  That’s us! Can you remember being astonished at your own salvation?  Perhaps it’s been such a part of your life that there never was a moment of astonishment. But can you imagine one?  Can you think of a time when you received something you never thought you’d get, something it never occurred to you that you might qualify for?  Can you just imagine what it feels like to be astonished?  I wonder if you’d practice with me.  I wrote a little litany for us.  You just read the parts with the “P” on the screens, paying particular attention to the difference between a question mark and an exclamation mark.

“God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”  Even you! (Even me?)  Even you!  (Even me!) Yes, you!  All of us!  Astonishingly enough, we are all guests welcomed here into the house of God!  What a gift!

It occurred to me this morning that we have a really good example for learning how to do this better.  We can and should spend time learning about “Cultivating Welcome.” And certainly, most of you know better than a first-time visitor where the bathrooms are.  But our best example for cultivating the mutual welcome of fellow guests in the house of God is when we observe our Welcome Saturday guests helping one another learn the ropes of the shower list and the sandwich forms.  The privilege many of us live with makes it hard to avoid taking our blessings for granted.  We are rarely astonished at having a roof over our heads and something to eat for breakfast.  We forget to be amazed that we’re invited to be part of God’s family.  The more diverse our church becomes, the better we’ll get at remembering this, I hope.

Remembering this welcome isn’t just for the sake of feeling more special ourselves, of course.  The point of Christ’s welcome is to share it.  But we can’t neglect the internal work of cultivating astonishment – “Even me!” – because it is what helps us maintain the posture of humility and thanksgiving necessary for building true Christian community.  Would a holiday help us to this?  A holiday that one church couldn’t legitimately celebrate on its own?  What if the way the Festival of Clean Sheets was celebrated requires at least two churches of mostly different ethnic backgrounds, and preferably as many congregations as we could find?  We’d have a giant picnic, where everyone who could would bring different kinds of food that the others might not have ever tried before.  And we’d bring new sets of sheets to spread the food out on, all over a park somewhere.  And we would eat together and learn each other’s names and stories and celebrate the God’s love has come even to all of us, the Gentiles.  And then when we’re done, we’d wash all the sheets and donate them, along with any leftover food, to people who need sheets and food.  I’m pretty sure the liturgical color for the Festival of Clean Sheets is the stain of some exotic sauce on a top sheet that we tried to get out but it wouldn’t quite disappear.  And the recipient of that set of sheets knows that the stain is the sign and symbol of the many different and varied children of God coming together as the Body of Christ. I know this holiday sounds like a lot of work.  Maybe we can just try to cultivate astonishment without it.  Then again, it might be fun.  Who’s with me?

Alleluia and Amen!