Community Church Sermons
Year B
May 17, 2009
Sixth
Sunday of Easter
Psalm 98
Acts 10:44-48
Rev. Martin C. Singley, III
We are so very pleased today to celebrate with those who are graduating from High School and College. Among our church members, we have many families where children, grandchildren and other loved ones are stepping out into the future after completing their studies, and it is good for all of us to join the celebration and to give thanks not only for the graduates and their accomplishments, but also for the wonderful gift of education and learning!
It amazes me, whenever I have a conversation with school-aged kids, to realize that they know a whole lot more than I knew at their age. What I learned in junior high, they seem to be getting nowadays in elementary school. And it’s a humbling experience to realize not only how much smarter they are than we were at that age, but they seem to be smarter than we ARE right now. I was talking with one of our church members a while ago. He was having a problem with sending email on his computer. I asked him what he was going to do about it. He said, “My granddaughter is coming next week!”
And I understand. If it wasn’t for my grandson Ryan the clock in my car would never get changed because I sure can’t figure the dang thing out!
We are living in an amazing world where human knowledge is exploding by the minute. Francisco Sagasti tells us that it took from the time of Christ until the mid-eighteenth century for the amount of “written” knowledge or information to double. It doubled again in 150 years, and then again in only 50 years. Today, the amount of information doubles every four or five years. More new information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000 years!
And this explosion of human knowledge has changed everything, including career development. According to an Australian study, 65 percent of the kids who are in preschool today will work in jobs or careers that don’t yet even exist!
So as we today honor the graduates in our families, we should also consider the wonderful gifts of knowledge and learning.
And as Christian people, we should embrace knowledge and learning as the gifts of God!
You know, many people today look at Christians and the Church and dismiss us as irrelevant. If you wonder why your children and grandchildren and other people of the younger generations have little to do with the Church, one of the reasons – not the only one, but one of the reasons - is that we no longer speak to them in ways that matter. They are living their lives in the sweep of a world that is always changing – bringing them into new knowledge, new life experiences, new relationships. We religious people, on the other hand – and that includes Christians, Muslims, Jews and others - are often trying to hold onto a world that no longer exists.
And we do it because we think we are being faithful!
One of the most interesting weddings I ever performed was for a young woman whose religious background was Armenian Orthodox. The young man with whom she had fallen in love and wanted to marry was a Shia Muslim. Her family was appalled! His family was appalled! Her priest was appalled! His Imam was appalled! So they came to me!
The interesting thing was that both the bride and the groom wanted to be married before God. They did not want to have a civil ceremony before a justice of the peace. God was important to them and a central part of what they wanted their marriage to be. Strangely, all the religious people involved would have preferred – if there was going to be a wedding - a civil ceremony! Go figure!
So we created a wedding service that honored both religious traditions and centered itself on marriage being a relationship established by God and sustained by love. While both families sat there growling at each other, the groom kissed the bride and off they went into what became a wonderful marriage that was later blessed with two beautiful children.
Now let me ask you…which of all these people in these two families do you think was truly being faithful? The parents who essentially disowned their children? The religious institutions that essentially ex-communicated them? Or the young couple themselves who made vows before God and kept them, and today continue to raise their children in a loving God-centered home?
To be faithful is not to hold onto the past. To be faithful is to dare engage the future where we learn that there is more to God, and to ourselves, and to others than we thought we knew.
That’s the gist of today’s reading from Acts 10. The verses that were read for us sum up a beautiful story told in the preceding verses. It is a story of new learning and of how even the great apostle Peter had to let go of the past to embrace the future. Peter grew up believing with every fiber of his being that his Jewish race was more favored by God than any other. Salvation was given to the Jews and to no one else! Only through the Jews could anyone be saved. Jesus came to save the Jews, not Gentiles. Gentiles had no standing before God except through the Jews. And most importantly, the Bible taught that Jews should have nothing to do with Gentiles.
Well, one day Peter got hungry. He called Dominos and ordered up some pizza, and while he was waiting for the order to arrive, he went up onto the roof of the house and fell asleep. He described it later as a trance in which he had a vision. A great big picnic blanket was lowered from the sky, and it was full of all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds. Some of these creatures – according to the Bible - were clean, and others unclean. Then a voice spoke, “Peter, get up! Kill and eat! Dinner is served!” But Peter objected. “Never in my life have I disobeyed what is written about eating anything unclean, and I’m not about to start now!” And then the voice said, “Who are you to call ‘unclean’ things that God has made clean?” This happened three times before Peter woke up.
And just about then, there was a knock at the door. It was not the Dominos guy. There was a bunch of Gentiles standing there, representing a Roman army officer named Cornelius. They were looking for Peter! Despite everything he believed about Gentiles, despite the disgust he held toward Roman soldiers, a voice whispered in Peter’s heart. “Go with them.” So he did. They took him to Cornelius’ house.
It turns out that Cornelius was a God-fearing man who took care of the poor, and in his prayers God had told him to send for Peter. So Cornelius told Peter his story. And Peter remembered what had happened in the vision and how God had said, “Don’t call ‘unclean’ things that I have made clean.” Then he spoke to all these Gentile people who were gathered at the house. It may have been the first time in his life that he spoke to Gentiles. And this is what Peter said:
“You are all well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any person clean or unclean.”
You see, Peter had to let go of what he thought he knew in order to embrace what God was teaching him. He had to let go of the past in order to claim the future! Then Peter said:
“I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”
Peter learned that God loves and saves even people outside his religion.
How I wish my young married friends’ families knew this - about how even Peter had to learn to live in a world that is much bigger than what he realized.
This is the power of faith – the ability to walk with God into the always unfolding reality of a changing world. And its hard to do because sometimes it means giving up long held beliefs that are shown to be no longer relevant or true.
Peter even had to give up some parts of the Bible! The Bible does teach that Jews cannot associate with Gentiles or visit in their homes…but Acts 10 shows us that rule is wrong.
The Bible in some places teaches that slavery is a God-ordained institution. But St. Paul discovers that in Jesus Christ we have all been set free and there is no longer any distinction between Jew and Greek, free or slave, male and female. So as the Bible continues, new discoveries are made about equality.
And speaking of gender equality, the Bible contains some teaching that females are the weaker sex and should be submissive to males. But Rachel Alexandra shot THAT one out of the water, didn’t she?
You see, the problem Christians have with the Bible is that we often see it as a book of static rules and regulations to be kept inviolate instead of as a living story in which people walk with God into all the struggles of life and along the way LEARN what it is to be human and what it is to be faithful. Sure, the Bible contains stories about people who think it is God’s will to kill their enemies, but then it evolves into a teaching by Jesus that we should love our enemies and pray for those who hate us. How does an idea like that change? Well, it changes as faithful people take up the important questions of life, and trusting in God to lead them to the truth, they step into the future and LEARN!
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is a real-life story about LEARNING, GROWING, CHANGING and BECOMING. And for me, the real miracle of the Bible takes place when Jesus says, “You know all those commandments, rules, and regulations you were taught? Well let me distill them into just one: love God with everything you’ve got, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s the whole Bible in a nutshell.”
So how can you and I learn and grow?
Well, the first thing would be to frame your life around that great commandment. When you are dealing in your life with questions about how to live and act and relate to others, the first and foremost guideline to use is Jesus’ rule of love.
My heart breaks when I see parents going off to prison because they have neglected or beaten their children, or when children die because parents won’t allow their children medical care. And what these parents often say is that they did what they did to obey some obscure Bible passage. But the great tragedy is that, to be faithful to that verse, they have had to bypass the most important passage of all!
My belief is that the one Bible passage by which all others should be judged is the command to love. If it doesn’t look like love, sound like love or produce the results of love…let it go.
One of the most powerful steps a Christian can ever take in the process of learning will be to put the great commandment at the forefront of your life. When you start loving as Jesus loved us, you will start learning things you never knew before!
Just as importantly. You will learn and grow when you put Jesus at the center of your life. If it doesn’t look like Jesus, sound like Jesus, or produce results like Jesus…don’t buy into it.
When I was a little boy, I believed that God was hiding behind every bush, just waiting to catch me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. And my best friend Dennis Astrella and I did a LOT of things we shouldn’t be doing. I grew up with a faith that believed that bad things happen to people because they did bad things and God was punishing them. I grew up in a Christian culture that taught that salvation is all about staying out of hell which is the place God will send everyone unless we love God and believe in him. God’s message to me – the central teaching of my little boy’s faith - was, “Love me, or I’ll kill you!”
It never occurred to me how sick that was…
…until I heard about Jesus.
Christianity teaches that Jesus is God. Another way to say it is that, if you want to see what God is like, look at Jesus.
As I look at Jesus today, I have learned some things about God. I’ve learned that my childhood faith was mostly wrong. Yes, God may be hiding behind every bush, but not to catch me in sin. No, God is waiting to catch me when I fall down, and to pick me up when I stumble, and to carry me along when I don’t have the strength to make it on my own. That’s how Jesus was with people. He LOVED them – he HELPED them – he ENCOURAGED them – and he PROTECTED them from the kind of religion that is all about what’s wrong with people and the world. Jesus brought people the GOSPEL which means “Good News” – the Good news of God’s love for everyone!
So test your faith. Does it look like the faith of Jesus? If it doesn’t…let it go!
And finally, one of the best ways to learn and grow is by making friends.
Christians have a lot to learn from people of other religions, and they have a lot to learn from us. Blacks and whites need to learn about each other, as do northerners and southerners, females and males, Republicans and Democrats, young and old. Do you know why your grandkids like the music they listen to? Do they know why you DON’T?
When you get to know people, you learn so much about how rich and varied and beautiful the world is. You also learn how painful life can be, and how people struggle with it. And you begin to learn that we are in this together, and that we need each other in order to make the world what God intends it to be.
So make a friend this week. Visit the Tellico Joe Café and find someone you don’t know. Look for someone with a Guest nametag and get to know them. Seek out a person from another church, another religion, another race, another life-experience and strike up a conversation.
You will begin to learn, and to grow into the person God created you to be!
So congratulations to the graduates! But remember, the learning is not over!
Not for any of us!