This is Paul's sermon from Blackford and Wedmore on 4th October

First Century Acts for Twenty First Century Disciples

Sermon Three (Holy Trinity and St Mary’s) – Peter’s dream (Acts 11v1-18)

As the story of the early church unfolds, as we read through Acts, it faces quite a few challenges. Challenges about leadership and challenges from persecution. Probably not unexpected for the beginnings of a new community that was proving quite controversial to the established order of the day.

But one of the great challenges it faced was that of, what we might call today, ‘inclusivity’. Who’s ‘in’ (and on what terms should they be ‘in’) and who’s ‘out’? Questions not just about membership of the organisation but, much more importantly, salvation itself.

The short passage we have heard this morning retells the story of Cornelius’ conversion that has already featured in some detail in the previous chapter.

Peter, now back in Jerusalem, is being called to account by his fellow believers for his actions in baptising Cornelius and his household. Cornelius was a good man. He had been searching for and even praying to God. He had been generous to the poor. But that wasn’t really the point.

Cornelius was a Gentile, who remained firmly outside of the Jewish faith. Not only that, he was a military commander of the hated Roman army of occupation.

The question to Peter, now back in the centre of the church, back in Jerusalem, from his fellow apostles and believers was straight to the heart of the matter: ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’

‘Justify to us, the sort of people with whom you are prepared to sit down and share table fellowship.’ ‘With whom are you prepared to break bread?’

It is easy to criticise Peter’s questioners as being over legalistic. Too concerned about keeping the correct dietary codes. But we should remember that Peter, himself, was originally hesitant about his encounter with Cornelius. Their concerns may spring from, not from wanting to exclude as such but, a desire to hold together the fragile infant community.

We can see many echoes of this in our own times, with a desire to be very cautious, on issues such as women’s ministry and sexuality, for fear that our communion, our community may fracture. Our relationships with our fellow Christian denominations and inter-faith partners will grow colder.

With whom are we prepared to break bread? Or maybe the question should be: ‘who is capable of salvation?’ Peter’s encounter with Cornelius gives us some startling insights to that question. Let’s just pick up on a few of them.

‘The Spirit told me….not to make a distinction between them and us’. Peter is referring back to the amazing dream he had. As he recalls earlier: ‘God has shown me I should not call anyone profane or unclean’. Peter seems a bit surprised that God’s call to him, to be part of God’s saving work, should take him in this particular direction – to the home of the ‘unclean’.

But Peter shouldn’t have been surprised. God hadn’t just changed his mind. As far back as Abraham, God was saying, about him, Abraham, and his descendants, ‘in you all the families of the earth will be blessed’.

Peter, and his fellow apostles, seem to have got wrapped up in a sort of religious parochialism seeing the world as split between the ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’. God’s purpose in this story is to get his church ‘on side’. To tune in and be part of his work of salvation.

That can be a ‘messy’ and longwinded process. This requires us, that is ‘us’ as a community, to be open and listening to God. And that may take some considerable time – God’s time, not our desire for neat instant certainty. It’s that unfolding process of ‘visions’ or ‘dreams’, prayer, reflection, listening to others, experiencing the hospitality of the ‘other’ through which the Spirit leads Peter on to this unexpected course.

Just think, in Church history, how long it took us from believing slavery was part of God’s ordained order for mankind, supported by Scripture, to knowing the opposite.

It is also interesting to note that Peter only turns to Scripture after he has been guided by his many experiences. That’s not to deny the centrality of Scripture ‘in tuning’ into God purpose but really to question a total reliance on a literal reading without giving room to our experiences.

Peter speaks of Cornelius’ household: ‘If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us’… and here he is referring to having witnessed the gift of the Holy Spirit being poured out in them through their ‘speaking in tongues and extolling God’…’who was I [he said] that I could hinder God?’ And so he did not withhold the waters of baptism.

We see this often in Acts, the will of God being seen in the form of something quite wonderful -experienced rather than understood direct from a Biblical text. We could say that we are being asked to read Scripture in the light of God’s prompting in often ‘messy’ and unexpected events and the people we meet.

So often it is issues of inclusivity – who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ – who are the ‘saved’ and who are the ‘damned’ – that are judged on a very narrow and literal view of Biblical text. That’s not the way the Word is working through the events of Acts.

Peter seems to sum everything up in a few remarkable words spoken after his experiences in the household of Cornelius. They are words that have inspired me ever since I first heard them and helped me on a journey back to faith. ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality’ [10.34].

It is so incredibly easy to fall into the trap of thinking as the ‘Chosen ones’ – God’s elect. And by extension to consider those who fall outside our framework of beliefs and doctrines, or even lifestyles and customs, are not of the ‘chosen’. There are many labels by which the excluded have been given over the years – ‘conservative’, ‘liberal’, heathen’, ‘Jew’, ‘gay’ or ‘divorced’.

Sometimes it is spoken aloud, sometimes it may be so subtle that even those within the ‘chosen’ do not even acknowledge or realise it. But it’s still there. This all too human desire to exclude the ‘other’.

Peter’s, great revelation as a result of his experiences, is that it is Jesus alone, and no other, who is ordained by God as ‘judge of the living and the dead’ [10.42]. To believe or act otherwise, directly or implicitly, to become a ‘judge’ of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ is a great blasphemy and a great sin.

Reading through the whole Book of Acts, or just reflecting on the examples of Lydia, whom we encountered last week, and Cornelius this week, it is amazing the great rainbow diversity of people whom God calls to be among His people. Have we, the church of today, lived up to that openness to embrace the Gospel’s radical message of inclusivity?

Paul Kingdom 4 October 2015