Who Am I to Stand in God's Way? (Acts 11: 1-18) 4/28/13

           

When one of my daughters told me that she was going to Africa for a year through a  youth mission program, I thought that was a little “out there,” but nice.  I was proud of her. She was going to spend a year on another continent helping others in the name of God. That’s great. When she came back home a year later and took six months to get over the anti-malaria drugs, I thought: oh well, now that’s over and she survived. So I was glad when she settled down nearby to teaching again.

That “settling down” didn’t last long. About eighteen months later, my daughter announced one day that she was looking into returning to Africa. Not long after, she was in the airport about to board a plane to Kenya to look at a job she had been offered, when she got another call. It was a headmaster she had met before. He was starting a school in Rwanda and wanted her to join the faculty he was assembling.  She cancelled the flight to Kenya, came home, packed a couple bags, said her goodbyes and ten days later got on a plane to Rwanda.

I know she was a grownup. But after all, I was her father. I had carried her back and forth to college and hauled her bags up and down those dormitory stairs. Cindy and I had helped her nurse herself back to health after Kenya. I was her mentor or so I fancied myself. You would think I might have had a vote in her decision, that I might have been consulted rather than informed. You would think that if she wanted to change the world, at least she could have started in Kenya, a place she had been, rather than some new country.

Well, I wasn’t asked. I don’t remember being consulted at all. I was just informed. She was going to a new job in a new country with a new boss and no friends on a continent with an ocean in between us. She took a job on the phone, changed her life just that fast and ten days later, she was gone. Four years later, she is still gone. In many ways, she is as African as she is American. I am her earthly father, but she answers to a higher voice than mine.

I wanted to stop her. I still want to stop her. I miss her and I worry about her health and all that she is missing. But who am I that I could stand in God’s way? For it was God’s call she answered, not the call of a headmaster. He was only the messenger.

Peter left his comfort zone in Jerusalem and traveled to Lydda, where he healed Aeneas, a paralytic. He was called to Joppa and he prayed for the life of Dorcas and she was raised from the dead. He stayed in Joppa for a time at the home of a tanner, where he had three successive visions. They involved abandonment of the ritual purity laws with which he had grown up. Peter was Jewish and observed these laws as a man of faith. But then he had these visions and he struggled to see what God was telling him. “What God has made clean, do not call common.” What did it all mean? Was it about food or was it about something much bigger?

Meanwhile, up the coast a little ways in Caesarea, Cornelius, the Gentile Centurion, has a vision of his own. He is told to send men to Joppa to fetch Simon called Peter from the house of Simon the tanner. Cornelius is nothing if not a man used to giving and following orders. He sends two servants and a devout soldier to Joppa for Peter. Thus, the stage is set for one of the great revelations of all time. The tongues of fire of Pentecost and Jerusalem are taking wing on the coast of the Mediterranean, and the definition of who are “God’s people “ is about to be expanded.

“What God has made clean, do not call common,” said the voice in Peter’s vision, and no sooner does it end than there comes a knock at the door. It is the three men from Cornelius. Peter tells the Jerusalem Christians that the Spirit told him to go with them. So he went. Six men accompanied him. There is good reason for this. Egyptian law, well known to the Jews, required seven witnesses to prove a case. Roman law required seven seals to authenticate a document. So when Peter took those six brothers along with him, he was making his case as he went. Nothing would be in dispute, for the seven witnesses proved the facts.

So Peter and his men arrive in Caesarea at the house of Cornelius the Centurion. We know that Cornelius is already a devout man, offering up tithes to God for himself and his household. But Cornelius is a Gentile. He is on the outside looking in. Even in the days of the early church, it would seem that the Gospel was for the Jews, God’s “chosen people.” And yet, here is Peter in the house of a Gentile. He is already engaging in highly questionable behavior by his very presence in the home of Cornelius.

Peter’s story to the circumcision party gets very tender here.  He says that he began to speak, and that as he did, the Holy Spirit fell on the people assembled in the home of Cornelius. The way Peter describes it, it is apparent that what he is describing is something that he saw. Peter is almost at a loss for words. He says it’s just like the way it was “on us (meaning the disciples) at the beginning.”

Then Peter says that he remembered the word of the Lord. He remembered his Savior saying these words: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Peter saw that Holy Spirit come upon those gathered there. No matter that it was the house of a Gentile, a Roman soldier. Peter saw it and it was just the same as he had seen before. Peter then states the only conclusion he can draw: If God gave the same gift to the Gentiles as he did to the disciples, then who was Peter to stand in God’s way?”

What is really happening? The prime mover here is not Peter or Cornelius or the circumcision party or the Jews or even the church. They are all bit players on God’s grand stage. The star of the show is the Trinity: God the Father speaking the message of God the Son through God the Holy Spirit. And the message is that God’s world and God’s love are big enough for all. Peter says the Gentiles received the same gift as did the disciples “when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Witnessing the scene, Peter humbly realizes the power of God and will not, can not, stand in God’s way. It is Peter’s privilege to be the messenger, but the news is all about God.

Theologian William Barclay reminds us of the importance of this story in the history of the church. Luke is laboriously writing on a scroll of papyrus, the forerunner of paper. There was no printing in those days. A papyrus roll was about thirty five feet long, a cumbersome affair at best, and coincidently just about exactly the size needed for the Book of Acts. Imagine yourself as the writer in those times. You know that you need to consolidate your information in such a way that it will fit on one scroll. Knowing that, you are going to be very choosy about the material that makes it onto the scroll. And yet, when it comes to this story of Peter and Cornelius, Luke practically tells the story twice. Chapter Ten—all 48 verses—is devoted to this story of the Holy Spirit coming to the Gentiles in the home of Cornelius. And then Luke spends 18 more verses in Chapter Eleven to retell the story as Peter presented it to the church leaders and the circumcision party in Jerusalem. That’s a lot of copy, as they say in the newspaper business.

It is a lot of copy and for a very good reason. God has introduced this theme through Jesus on several occasions, and now he uses Peter and Cornelius to make it known that the membership of God’s church will be defined not by culture, not by ethnicity, not by observation of rules, but by “belief in the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 17). The church has no borders, no boundaries, no conditions of admission save one: Do you believe in Jesus? This was news so revolutionary that Peter could barely believe his own words.

And yet, he had seen. He had heard. The Holy Spirit came to Caesarea and to Gentiles as surely as it had come to Jerusalem and the disciples. Peter says: “Who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” Peter realized that it was God’s message. It was God who was calling the Gentiles. Who was Peter to stand in the way of God’s call? And those present that heard Peter fell silent. Then they, too, glorified God for granting the life giving power of repentance to the Gentiles.

Throughout history we continue to stand in God’s way. From the beginning, God has had to keep moving those of us too stubborn to see, too deaf to hear, out of his way. God continues to reveal himself to all who would hear, to save all who would believe. But we are stubborn. We segregate ourselves by religion. We separate our churches by denomination.  We mark our territories, whether they be neighborhoods or lunchrooms or church pews. And like he did with Peter, God comes and gives us visions of togetherness. He still sends the Holy Spirit to dwell not only within us, but among us. He calls us to him in the midst of our stubbornness.

We have so much available to us with which to be illumined. We are invited to feast at His table. Will we dare to separate those whom God has no intention of separating? Will we stand in God’s way or will we help clear the path for him? Although he does not need our help, he wants it.

Instead of asking what one’s credentials might be, let us ask instead if they might worship with us. Instead of invoking rules like the circumcision party of the early church, let us instead show up at the houses of strangers. Let us invite them into our midst and praise God that he might use us to make himself known to them. Let us do as Peter. Let us ask always: Who are we that we could ever think to stand…in God’s way!

Dorcas Rising (Acts 9: 36-43) 4/21/13

          The Book of Acts focuses on the early Church, and the last few weeks, we have been looking at Chapters 6-9. Stephen is martyred. Saul is arresting Christians. There is Saul’s Damascus Road experience and his conversion to Christianity. Halfway through Chapter 9, the emphasis shifts away from Paul and back to Peter. That’s one way of looking at it. But if we look at these stories in another way, the emphasis never shifts at all. Instead, it weaves a tale just like its title. It is telling us about the Acts of the Apostles.

          At the end of Chapter 9 after Paul has been converted and escaped from both Damascus and Jerusalem, the Apostle Peter takes center stage once again. This time he is involved in two miracles. In Lydda, Peter heals Aeneas, a paralytic for some eight years. Meanwhile, in the neighboring town of Joppa, a prominent Christian woman becomes ill and dies. Her name was Tabitha. The Greek translation would be Dorcas.

          Apparently, some disciples were in Joppa. Joppa was a coastal town on the Mediterranean, lying in the fertile coastal plain district of Sharon. It was the seaport most used by those from Jerusalem. The word of Peter’s healing of Aeneas probably spread quickly from Lydda to Joppa, as Lydda was on the route from Jerusalem to Joppa and only ten miles away. One might have stopped in that crossroads town to “gas up” on the way to the coast and Joppa.

          At any rate, Peter got the word that this disciple Dorcas had died. Luke characterizes her as full of good works and charity. As was the custom, her body was washed. She was laid in an upper room. Luke does not tell us that her body had been prepared for burial. Since the custom was to have a burial the same day as death, things were moving along very quickly. Two men were dispatched by the disciples to fetch Peter, who came at once. We can assume he got there fairly quickly, as he wasn’t far away.

 What a time in history this must have been! The Apostles were empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. They were out in the cities and towns, up and down the roads of the Decapolis. North, South, East and West they spread, bringing the Gospel to everyone they met and doing miracles from God to demonstrate the healing power of Christ. Luke tells us that after Aeneas was healed of his paralysis, “all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to God.” This was the time of miracles, and Peter was on the road to Joppa and another miracle.

We marvel at what Peter did in those days. The blind were healed, the lame could walk, the sick were made well. We marvel at the miraculous and mighty acts of the Apostles performed in the name of God. And yet, we think little of the everyday miracles performed by doctors and nurses and first responders. Hearts and livers and corneas are transplanted routinely. We have a polio vaccine, a shingles vaccine, a pneumonia vaccine. We are perfecting cures to disease, and many diseases no longer hold power over us. And yet, because God has allowed us to discover these solutions to health instead of sending someone to heal us in the same way as Peter did, we discount the miracle value. Because some of these everyday miracles are done by atheists and non-Christians, we do not see them as miracles. But aren’t they? Aren’t these modern day miracles from God as well?

Can’t you just almost hear God chuckling at us? Were it not for God, we would have no knowledge, no technology, no modern miracles. Because of God’s permissive will, we have scientific and medical breakthroughs as a matter of custom. And just to remind us periodically that God is and always will be part of the equation, we all have stories of answers to prayer. We all have been witness to that person who was healed and the doctor who had no medical or scientific explanation. Invariably, that person was the subject of hundreds of prayers lifted up in his or her name by faithful Christians. Surprise, surprise!  God acts in our lives and he is faithful to us. We have no idea the power of which we are capable, if only we would tap into the Holy Spirit residing within us.

So Peter arrives in sunny downtown Joppa and is ushered to the upper room where the body of poor Dorcas lies still. The room was full of widows, all witnessing to her kindness and generosity, holding up things she had made for them. It was a wonderful testimony, but Peter had other things on his mind. God was calling.

Peter thanked the women for their great show of affection and asked them to please leave. He wanted to be alone with Dorcas…and Jesus. He wanted to see what God wanted to do that day. Peter knelt down and prayed.

Peter did not know Dorcas. In the short time he was in the house, he had heard testimonies from those who knew and loved her. On the way from Lydda, he might have heard from the men sent by the disciples. But Peter had never met Dorcas. She was a good woman from Joppa who had fallen ill and died. Why would Peter come from Lydda to the house of this woman? And why, seeing her lifeless body, would he pray for her life?

One way we have to understand this behavior might be to look to the city of Boston this past week. In the aftermath of the bombings at the Boston Marathon, Cappy’s Pizza filled orders from donors for over 100 pizzas to be delivered to Mass General Hospital. Gifts of flowers-daisies-showed up for patients at Tufts Medical Center. And at the Starbucks in the Governmental Center, a lady from Newtown, Connecticut donated $100 to customers in line there…because someone had done it for her and others in the midst of the Sandy Hook shootings. Everywhere in Boston, random acts of kindness are on display to total strangers. The signature of the citizens on this act of terrorism is that mankind is bigger than its violence, nobler than its meanness, kinder than its dark side would have us believe. As it was in New York on 9/11, we say again in lockstep that we are all citizens of Boston. This week, we are Boston strong and our Christianity is showing in our acts of kindness and humanity.

Why would Peter pray for the life of Dorcas? Because he had seen his resurrected Savior. Because he had seen Jesus ascend to heaven. Because ever since Pentecost, he had felt the fire of that gospel in his belly and life for Peter was one long opportunity to spread that gospel. Because Peter was learning that God’s power was without bounds, and Peter was praying in faith for God to act. And because just like the random acts of kindness witnessed all over Boston this week, he was called to a task, a task for his Lord. Peter was learning to show up, to do the praying and let God do the rest. He had seen his Savior do it. He had the faith to trust God. And so he prayed. He knelt down and he prayed. Then he turned to Dorcus’s body and said: “Arise.”

          It is so simple. Trust God. Act for his glory. Expect miracles. In spite of all the evidence, we still dance the dance of doubt. Are we good enough? Do we know enough? Have we exhausted all our choices? Perhaps instead we should ask whether we really have the faith necessary for God to act? He is big enough, but have we the spiritual muscle to call upon his name?

          Peter said: “Dorcas, arise,” and she opened her eyes. When she saw Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and she got up. How simple. One person has the fullness of trust and faith to ask, and another is delivered. That God can send us miracles is not news to Christians. In a very real sense, the miracle is that one person can have that depth of faith and trust that God finds acceptable.

          Peter got on his knees and prayed. He said two words, and he witnessed a miracle. Dorcas rose from her deathbed and was presented by Peter alive to the saints and widows waiting there. Luke tells us that the event echoed throughout all Joppa; that many believed in the Lord. Peter had gone out of his comfort zone of Jerusalem to Lydda and Joppa. These cities were only 25 and 35 miles away, but they represented a great reach for Peter. He had gone into the homes of strangers and had called upon God for healing. God answered with two miracles. Though Peter’s acts were probably done for Jews, God was preparing him for something even bigger, for Peter would soon have three visions from God that would find him in the house of Cornelius, the Centurion. Peter was about to open the door of the Gospel to the Gentiles.

          If Peter were here today, CNN would have his face plastered on every TV screen in the land. The cell phone video of the miracle would go virile, and Peter would be offered a book deal. Peter would be dumbfounded. The fisherman turned fisher of men most likely would just look in the camera and say two more words: Praise God!

That’s the lesson. Peter came. Peter prayed. Dorcas rose. Praise God. It still works that way. We come. We pray. God moves among us. Praise God!

Cataracts (Acts 9:1-19( 4/14/13

For a couple years, I had noticed that my vision was deteriorating. During a beach vacation a couple summers ago, I realized that when I looked at someone in bright sunlight, I could see nothing but a silhouette if the person was between me and the sun. I thought I was just hyper sensitive to glare. But it kept getting worse. So did my driving. It finally occurred to me that I might have a problem.

I went to an optometrist, who pronounced that I had not one, but two, dense cataracts on the lenses of my eyes. Over the next several months, both cataracts were removed and I received artificial lenses. Now I see like an eagle. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. Before, my vision was impaired. Now, I can see clearly.

I hope I never forget the day my bandage was removed from my first cataract surgery. It was late spring. I walked outside the hospital to an explosion of definition…and color! I remember that the grass and the leaves on the trees were so much greener than I had noticed in years. And they were even different colors of green. Everything was vivid and full of detail. It was as though I was being re-introduced to sight. I was amazed. I felt like a child, with so many new things to discover. As Cindy drove me home from the hospital, she had to listen to me constantly exclaiming over everything I saw. Even road signs fascinated me. I felt as though I had been blind, and now through a modern medical miracle, I could see again.

The apostle Paul had a similar problem. He had a really bad case of cataracts…only his cataracts were spiritual instead of physical. They blinded his heart from seeing the gospel of Jesus. When Stephen became the first martyr to Christianity, the stoning witnesses laid their garments as Saul’s feet.  Saul later testified in Acts and in his epistles to having been instrumental in that execution. He began to ravage the church. Acts 8 tells us that he “dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”

Not content with his actions in Jerusalem, Saul petitioned for, and got, letters from the chief priests giving him permission to go to Damascus and do the same thing to the Christians there. Luke tells us that he was “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Paul was a man in a hurry. He was so busy doing the work of a zealous, legalistic Pharisee that he had no time to hear that still, small voice of God inside him. So Saul was not only blind, but also deaf, to the gospel.

Theologian Robert Maddox, Jr. speculates that Saul’s spirit was very restless. He couldn’t be still. He had to be on the move. Maddox wonders if Saul wasn’t about to explode from the inner pressure of doing what must have on some level felt completely wrong to him. All those innocent, kind faces, beginning with Stephen. All those people not fighting back. Maybe it was beginning to have an effect on Saul.

Can you identify with Paul? Paul, then Saul, was so on fire with what he was about that he had little time or little inclination to stop and ask God if he was headed in the right direction.  Perhaps the most notable characteristic of the Pharisees was their devotion to prayer, and Saul was the Pharisee of Pharisees. Yet for all that prayer, he must have been doing a lot more talking than listening. Sound familiar? Sometimes it’s tough to wait for the answer to prayer. It’s tempting for us to inform God what we’re about and figure he will stop us if we are going the wrong way. Our impatience and our desire to make our own decisions get in the way of our faith.

You know, when Jesus wants our attention, he is most certainly going to get it. Saul was no exception. Jesus got his attention on the road to Damascus. There was this incredible light, then the voice and then…blindness. Luke describes the event in Acts 9: “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.” He fell to the ground. He heard a voice, saying “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Saul said “Who are you, Lord?”, but I’m thinking he knew perfectly well whose voice it was. He was trying to figure out if he was in a vision or a dream or a close encounter of the Jesus kind. Jesus identified himself and then told Saul to get up and that he would be told what to do.

So Saul gets to his feet. He opens his eyes and sees nothing. How ironic. For the first time, Saul is seeing consistent with his mind. All this time, he has been exposed to people martyring themselves and suffering for the gospel, and he has looked right through them and their witness, seeing nothing. Now he sees nothing for real. He is now physically aligned with his spiritual blindness.

I can remember clearly when my cataracts were removed from my eyes. Although my eyes were sedated, I can remember the room being bathed with much more light. The scales which had covered my lenses from normal sight were gone and the light could once again penetrate my line of vision. I knew even before the surgery was complete that something very significant had happened to me.

I’m thinking that as Saul was led by the hand by his fellow travelers, he too was aware that something very significant had happened to him. He was undergoing spiritual surgery and he was never going to be the same. For three days not only could he not see; he also neither ate nor drank. Saul was being emptied.

Enter Ananias. Ananias is a God-fearing Christian who is minding his own business when God decides to use him. God speaks to him in a vision and the next thing he knows, he has been commissioned to go to the murderer of Christians. God tells Ananias that Saul is his chosen instrument to carry his name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. Guided by a vision from God, Ananias plucks up his courage and goes to Saul as he is ordered.

So…let’s try to follow this. In a series of ironic twists, the man who cannot see Jesus comes face to face with the risen Christ. The person who sees only his own will loses all sight in order to see God’s will. The leader of the Jewish opposition to Christianity becomes God’s agent to the Gentiles, even though he is not himself a Gentile. A humble disciple who fears for his own life is called to lay hands upon the blind Saul in order to restore his physical sight. And he finds his subject where? On a street called Straight in Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the history of the world.

The result is predictable. After three days of listening, prayer and an epiphany supplied by God, Saul is ready. He has become weak enough to find his strength in God. He has, in his inability to see anything, become ready to see the truth. Paul’s sight is restored. He is baptized. He is ready to see, not only physically, but spiritually. He has been emptied in order to be filled…filled with the Holy Spirit and the revelation that comes with it. His path from here on will be like the street upon which his sight is restored. For him, the way is now Straight.

I have thought many times since my cataract surgeries that I got a new lease on life with my eyesight. But that experience reminded me that real vision takes not only my eyes, but all my other faculties as well. I have the lesson of Saul to remind me that seeing is only part of vision. There is so much more.

It is no accident that we can read so much symbolism in this story of Saul on the Damascus Road. Like Saul, we all need to meet with God’s disciples on the Straight Street of life. Like Saul, we all need the laying on of the hands of our fellow disciples. And we all need to do what Saul was told by God to do: to rise and enter and wait until we are told what to do. Saul waited only three days. I’m sure it seemed like an eternity to him at the time. But look at what God was able to do with him once he got Saul to see. He became Paul, the thirteenth Apostle.

God can do that for you and me too. We just need to rise and enter that Straight Street…and wait…until he tells us what to do. Ananias will come to us too, or we may find ourselves playing the role of Ananias for a time. He may be named Officer Jones or Uncle Bob or Aunt Sarah, or he or she may be you on God’s errand. He may just be that still, small voice in our heart. But he will come, and give us the vision that we were meant to see…if we rise…and wait…until we are told what God wants us to do.