The Easter Era
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
Most of us probably enjoy taking part in Easter rituals both here at church and at home. There are things we have done since we were children, and we're glad to pass them on to the next generation.
Some of these practices are deeply religious. We may have taken part in solemn Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, or greeted the Easter Sunrise with song and celebration! Some of the practices may be a little secular, but we practice them religiously as well -- breaking our Lenten fasts with a special treat, plundering the Easter basket for favorite goodies, a dinner centering around ham -- you name it, we do it.
But at the heart of all these practices is one basic assumption -- we know about Easter. We know why we celebrate. We know that Jesus is risen!
Today is Easter. The Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, referred to our faith as one unashamedly based on miracles, and called the resurrection the central miracle. His friend and fellow writer, J.R.R. Tolkien, referred to Easter as a "eucatastrophe," or good catastrophe, a radical and miraculous turn in human history.
There's no way around the resurrection in Christianity. If this were not true, it would be up to us to abandon Christianity and seek some other way to serve God. If this central fact were not the core of our confession, we would be wasting our time. Paul says pretty much the same thing, then comforts us with these words: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died" (1 Corinthians 15:20).
That's why we're here. The most incredible thing in the world happened, and we are witnesses to it. People were willing to die horribly in the early years of the faith to uphold that witness, and others, having seen the sincerity of their deaths, were willing to die as well. That tradition continues today. Some believe that more Christians have been martyred the world over in the past century than in all the Christian centuries before. Like the unlikely Apostle Paul, we all need to be ready to witness to the good news, no matter what the cost.
But in order to celebrate this day of days, we have to know about it. Some people don't even know who Jesus is. Some people in the world today have never heard the good news about Jesus Christ. They don't know about the manger, about the baptism, the temptation, the Sermon on the Mount, the triumphant entry, the upsetting of the moneychangers, the contentions in the temple, and the breaking of the bread. They know nothing of the plotting, the conniving, the betraying, the arresting, the railroading, the condemning, the torturing, the murdering, the burying -- and the raising, hallelujah, the raising. And they live in our neighborhoods!
Someone has to tell them. Someone has to get out of their tracks, get so far beyond their comfort zone that comfort takes on a whole new meaning and it has nothing to do with comfortable chairs and water beading up on the outside of a glass of iced tea and falling asleep in front of the ball game. Someone has to go and someone has to support them.
Our customs and practices are so much fun that we hate to get out of that comfort zone. We like to stay put, until someone -- usually the Holy Spirit -- makes it impossible for us to rest until we help in some great or small measure for the Word to get out there.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not exactly ancient history in today's passage from the book of Acts, but it's common knowledge -- to those who know about it. Still, God's people are quite comfortable within their own ethnic boundaries and only reluctantly push the envelope to include others from the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire stretched in those days from the western edge of Asia to the British Isles, from Northern Africa to Northern Europe. It included a large number of nationalities, languages, ethnic and racial groups, people of all economic classes -- and almost none of them knew anything about Jesus. There were no 24-hour news channels to report about the events of Judea. There was almost no news as we know it -- just stories, just rumors run rampant.
And the Holy Spirit sent Peter to preach to a centurion, a member of the hated occupying army, a sarge. Centurions were noncommissioned officers. They were in charge of around a hundred people -- hence the name. They were not nobles who were appointed on the basis of their family connections and hence higher in rank. They were commoners who worked their way up the ranks.
Chapter 10 of Acts is one of those crucial chapters where a door opens up and God's people, people of every stripe, flood through it.
This is a story about outsiders. It begins with an angelic appearance at the home of the aforementioned Cornelius, the centurion. Talk about outsiders, Cornelius was not only a Gentile; he was an officer in the hated army of occupation. He was also, however, a God-fearer, one of those Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel but either could not join the faith of God's people, or was not welcome.
The angel told him that God had heard his prayers. Salvation was about to come to his house. He was to send for Peter, who was staying with Simon, the tanner. A barrier was broken with these very words. The profession of tanner, though necessary, was considered unclean by folks who got their hands dirty in other professions. Many folks avoided associating with tanners. Perhaps this unorthodox association put Peter in a receptive mind for the marvelous vision that followed.
The same Spirit that spoke to Cornelius gave Peter a vision of food that was considered off limits to his people, according to Jewish dietary laws. He was told to eat the forbidden food anyway. When he awoke still puzzling over what he had seen in the vision, he was told by the Spirit that he would find emissaries from Cornelius at his door, and that he was to travel to the house of the centurion. And it happened!
First he invited the Gentile emissaries to stay at his home, another step toward interracial acceptance. Peter then traveled with an entourage to Cornelius. There Peter told all about his vision and proclaimed that God plays no favorites. The Spirit filled the Gentiles who heard the message. All who were present realized that there was nothing to prevent them from being baptized. Furthermore there was no requirement that these people must be circumcised first. They became Christians without having to become Jews first. The faith was cracked wide open!
In the same way, it took a long time -- centuries really -- before people realized that a person can become a Christian without first becoming European. Africans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, all of humanity, can become Christian and retain their native background and outlook.
The late missionary, Chalmer Faw, who in 1943 was serving in Garkida, Nigeria, received an invitation to preach in a town many miles away in an isolated village. He was also asked to lead a Love Feast, a three-part communion service that included feetwashing, the agape meal, along with the bread and cup. Faw agreed. Everything went as planned.
Then he wrote: "At the close of the meeting, I went around and greeted the old chief, the village elders, and many local citizens, all on hand to witness this grand occasion. The chief murmured something to me in Whona that was translated as: 'The next time that you and your people come out and hold this service, I want to be in it and I want all my village to have a part in it!'"
He continued, "I was too astounded at the time to ask what he meant by that, but on the way back to Garkida I had ample time to talk it over with my Bura Christians. What they explained to me was essentially as follows: 'The Whona chief is an old man. He can remember when the first white men came in (the British colonial officers) and sent his young men to work on the roads or forced them to fight in their wars. But this is the first time in his long life that he has seen a white man get down on his knees in the dark and wash a black man's feet! And if that is what this new religion (Christianity) means, he wants it and he wants all his people to have a part in it!'"
The old chief didn't understand a word of what was read or said in the service, but he saw all that was done and the action spoke for itself, a message he would never forget.
Acts 10 has to be one of our favorite passages in the Bible. It's all true. Even though we think of Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, it was Peter who made the first move. No. That's wrong. It was the Spirit. The Spirit who spoke to Cornelius. The Spirit who spoke to Peter. The living Spirit.
Acts 10 is still happening. Every time you read a missionary magazine and see a photograph of a missionary standing next to newly baptized converts, people who had never known there was such a thing as gospel, much less made a choice for Jesus, you are looking at the Apostle Peter, the centurion Cornelius, and the action of the Holy Spirit. You are looking at people living in the age of Acts! Which means you and I are living in the age of Acts as well.
This is the age of miracles. Though our American churches may be asleep, the African and Latin American church is alive and thriving, battling persecution, standing strong in the faith, and demonstrating, as Peter said, "... God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35).
Remember that. God is not American. God is not British. God is not Canadian or German or Italian or Irish or Nigerian or Costa Rican or Mexican or Chinese or Russian or Indian. God is God!
This is the era of the Spirit's triumph. It's important we get on board as well, and to do so we have to be prepared to get beyond that comfort zone.
When you go to the ancient Indian cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, you are warned that in order to visit one of the sites you have to be able to get down on your hands and knees and crawl through a tunnel. If you can't squeeze through the hole, you can't go. If you are too claustrophobic to try, you can't go.
On the first Easter Day, Peter and the beloved disciple had to be able to run into the tomb, an unclean place, in order to understand at last that Jesus is risen. It is not something they can discover by standing at a safe distance. You may run and come to a stop like Peter, or sprint past like John, you may puzzle over it like one, or get it immediately like the other, but the witnesses who have seen the light include all of these. There is not one safe, comfortable, ordinary category into which we can squeeze all the witnesses. Like the ruins at Mesa Verde, if you are too fastidious to squeeze through the path God has chosen for you -- you can't go to heaven.
Peter had to go to a place that was very uncomfortable to him at first -- the home of a Gentile. Before you can go into the mission field abroad, or because you can with good conscience support a missionary who is already abroad, you had better start looking at the mission field in our midst. You had better start visiting nursing homes and hospitals, and calling on people in our midst without looking down your nose at them because they don't meet your standards, standards that God knows nothing about. In our nation, the church hour remains the most segregated hour in American society -- racially, economically, philosophically. We put up all sorts of barriers to keep others out, unseen gates and doors to separate ourselves from the world, and all the time God is hollering at us to get out there, get into the ball game, and bring people in. If you don't want to bring people into the church, at least have the good grace to get out.
The resurrection is not just a trick or a wonder. It's an alteration -- to the world, to society, to us. It's either the most important thing that has ever happened, or it is time to be honest about things and do something else on Sundays.
It happened. There are witnesses.
We are transformed by God. There is no place we cannot go, no place we dare not go, to take this overwhelmingly important message. It is not something to be kept safe within these four walls. It is imperative that we get the word out! He is risen.
Witnesses are martyrs. Are you a witness? Amen.
Some of these practices are deeply religious. We may have taken part in solemn Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, or greeted the Easter Sunrise with song and celebration! Some of the practices may be a little secular, but we practice them religiously as well -- breaking our Lenten fasts with a special treat, plundering the Easter basket for favorite goodies, a dinner centering around ham -- you name it, we do it.
But at the heart of all these practices is one basic assumption -- we know about Easter. We know why we celebrate. We know that Jesus is risen!
Today is Easter. The Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, referred to our faith as one unashamedly based on miracles, and called the resurrection the central miracle. His friend and fellow writer, J.R.R. Tolkien, referred to Easter as a "eucatastrophe," or good catastrophe, a radical and miraculous turn in human history.
There's no way around the resurrection in Christianity. If this were not true, it would be up to us to abandon Christianity and seek some other way to serve God. If this central fact were not the core of our confession, we would be wasting our time. Paul says pretty much the same thing, then comforts us with these words: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died" (1 Corinthians 15:20).
That's why we're here. The most incredible thing in the world happened, and we are witnesses to it. People were willing to die horribly in the early years of the faith to uphold that witness, and others, having seen the sincerity of their deaths, were willing to die as well. That tradition continues today. Some believe that more Christians have been martyred the world over in the past century than in all the Christian centuries before. Like the unlikely Apostle Paul, we all need to be ready to witness to the good news, no matter what the cost.
But in order to celebrate this day of days, we have to know about it. Some people don't even know who Jesus is. Some people in the world today have never heard the good news about Jesus Christ. They don't know about the manger, about the baptism, the temptation, the Sermon on the Mount, the triumphant entry, the upsetting of the moneychangers, the contentions in the temple, and the breaking of the bread. They know nothing of the plotting, the conniving, the betraying, the arresting, the railroading, the condemning, the torturing, the murdering, the burying -- and the raising, hallelujah, the raising. And they live in our neighborhoods!
Someone has to tell them. Someone has to get out of their tracks, get so far beyond their comfort zone that comfort takes on a whole new meaning and it has nothing to do with comfortable chairs and water beading up on the outside of a glass of iced tea and falling asleep in front of the ball game. Someone has to go and someone has to support them.
Our customs and practices are so much fun that we hate to get out of that comfort zone. We like to stay put, until someone -- usually the Holy Spirit -- makes it impossible for us to rest until we help in some great or small measure for the Word to get out there.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not exactly ancient history in today's passage from the book of Acts, but it's common knowledge -- to those who know about it. Still, God's people are quite comfortable within their own ethnic boundaries and only reluctantly push the envelope to include others from the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire stretched in those days from the western edge of Asia to the British Isles, from Northern Africa to Northern Europe. It included a large number of nationalities, languages, ethnic and racial groups, people of all economic classes -- and almost none of them knew anything about Jesus. There were no 24-hour news channels to report about the events of Judea. There was almost no news as we know it -- just stories, just rumors run rampant.
And the Holy Spirit sent Peter to preach to a centurion, a member of the hated occupying army, a sarge. Centurions were noncommissioned officers. They were in charge of around a hundred people -- hence the name. They were not nobles who were appointed on the basis of their family connections and hence higher in rank. They were commoners who worked their way up the ranks.
Chapter 10 of Acts is one of those crucial chapters where a door opens up and God's people, people of every stripe, flood through it.
This is a story about outsiders. It begins with an angelic appearance at the home of the aforementioned Cornelius, the centurion. Talk about outsiders, Cornelius was not only a Gentile; he was an officer in the hated army of occupation. He was also, however, a God-fearer, one of those Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel but either could not join the faith of God's people, or was not welcome.
The angel told him that God had heard his prayers. Salvation was about to come to his house. He was to send for Peter, who was staying with Simon, the tanner. A barrier was broken with these very words. The profession of tanner, though necessary, was considered unclean by folks who got their hands dirty in other professions. Many folks avoided associating with tanners. Perhaps this unorthodox association put Peter in a receptive mind for the marvelous vision that followed.
The same Spirit that spoke to Cornelius gave Peter a vision of food that was considered off limits to his people, according to Jewish dietary laws. He was told to eat the forbidden food anyway. When he awoke still puzzling over what he had seen in the vision, he was told by the Spirit that he would find emissaries from Cornelius at his door, and that he was to travel to the house of the centurion. And it happened!
First he invited the Gentile emissaries to stay at his home, another step toward interracial acceptance. Peter then traveled with an entourage to Cornelius. There Peter told all about his vision and proclaimed that God plays no favorites. The Spirit filled the Gentiles who heard the message. All who were present realized that there was nothing to prevent them from being baptized. Furthermore there was no requirement that these people must be circumcised first. They became Christians without having to become Jews first. The faith was cracked wide open!
In the same way, it took a long time -- centuries really -- before people realized that a person can become a Christian without first becoming European. Africans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians, all of humanity, can become Christian and retain their native background and outlook.
The late missionary, Chalmer Faw, who in 1943 was serving in Garkida, Nigeria, received an invitation to preach in a town many miles away in an isolated village. He was also asked to lead a Love Feast, a three-part communion service that included feetwashing, the agape meal, along with the bread and cup. Faw agreed. Everything went as planned.
Then he wrote: "At the close of the meeting, I went around and greeted the old chief, the village elders, and many local citizens, all on hand to witness this grand occasion. The chief murmured something to me in Whona that was translated as: 'The next time that you and your people come out and hold this service, I want to be in it and I want all my village to have a part in it!'"
He continued, "I was too astounded at the time to ask what he meant by that, but on the way back to Garkida I had ample time to talk it over with my Bura Christians. What they explained to me was essentially as follows: 'The Whona chief is an old man. He can remember when the first white men came in (the British colonial officers) and sent his young men to work on the roads or forced them to fight in their wars. But this is the first time in his long life that he has seen a white man get down on his knees in the dark and wash a black man's feet! And if that is what this new religion (Christianity) means, he wants it and he wants all his people to have a part in it!'"
The old chief didn't understand a word of what was read or said in the service, but he saw all that was done and the action spoke for itself, a message he would never forget.
Acts 10 has to be one of our favorite passages in the Bible. It's all true. Even though we think of Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, it was Peter who made the first move. No. That's wrong. It was the Spirit. The Spirit who spoke to Cornelius. The Spirit who spoke to Peter. The living Spirit.
Acts 10 is still happening. Every time you read a missionary magazine and see a photograph of a missionary standing next to newly baptized converts, people who had never known there was such a thing as gospel, much less made a choice for Jesus, you are looking at the Apostle Peter, the centurion Cornelius, and the action of the Holy Spirit. You are looking at people living in the age of Acts! Which means you and I are living in the age of Acts as well.
This is the age of miracles. Though our American churches may be asleep, the African and Latin American church is alive and thriving, battling persecution, standing strong in the faith, and demonstrating, as Peter said, "... God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35).
Remember that. God is not American. God is not British. God is not Canadian or German or Italian or Irish or Nigerian or Costa Rican or Mexican or Chinese or Russian or Indian. God is God!
This is the era of the Spirit's triumph. It's important we get on board as well, and to do so we have to be prepared to get beyond that comfort zone.
When you go to the ancient Indian cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, you are warned that in order to visit one of the sites you have to be able to get down on your hands and knees and crawl through a tunnel. If you can't squeeze through the hole, you can't go. If you are too claustrophobic to try, you can't go.
On the first Easter Day, Peter and the beloved disciple had to be able to run into the tomb, an unclean place, in order to understand at last that Jesus is risen. It is not something they can discover by standing at a safe distance. You may run and come to a stop like Peter, or sprint past like John, you may puzzle over it like one, or get it immediately like the other, but the witnesses who have seen the light include all of these. There is not one safe, comfortable, ordinary category into which we can squeeze all the witnesses. Like the ruins at Mesa Verde, if you are too fastidious to squeeze through the path God has chosen for you -- you can't go to heaven.
Peter had to go to a place that was very uncomfortable to him at first -- the home of a Gentile. Before you can go into the mission field abroad, or because you can with good conscience support a missionary who is already abroad, you had better start looking at the mission field in our midst. You had better start visiting nursing homes and hospitals, and calling on people in our midst without looking down your nose at them because they don't meet your standards, standards that God knows nothing about. In our nation, the church hour remains the most segregated hour in American society -- racially, economically, philosophically. We put up all sorts of barriers to keep others out, unseen gates and doors to separate ourselves from the world, and all the time God is hollering at us to get out there, get into the ball game, and bring people in. If you don't want to bring people into the church, at least have the good grace to get out.
The resurrection is not just a trick or a wonder. It's an alteration -- to the world, to society, to us. It's either the most important thing that has ever happened, or it is time to be honest about things and do something else on Sundays.
It happened. There are witnesses.
We are transformed by God. There is no place we cannot go, no place we dare not go, to take this overwhelmingly important message. It is not something to be kept safe within these four walls. It is imperative that we get the word out! He is risen.
Witnesses are martyrs. Are you a witness? Amen.
