Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’
This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
Revelation 21:1-5a
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals.He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
John 13:31-35
When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
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So I have to admit something. As much as I love the ELCA and who we are as a denomination and how we participate in the global Lutheran church, I get a little jealous sometimes of the United Church of Christ. Because the ELCA’s tagline, our motto, if you will, that shows up on the ELCA website and in publications and on t-shirts is, “God’s Work, Our Hands.” It’s lovely, sure. But I’m jealous of the UCC because their tagline is “God is still speaking.” And there are lots of big commas that show up on their website and publications and t-shirts, as a reminder that God’s voice hasn’t come to the end of a sentence, but that God’s word for the world is active, that neither the canon of Bible nor human tradition are the be-all end-all to how we know God in this world.
Our Acts reading today is one of the most important stories we have in the Bible that illuminates precisely this point that God is still speaking, through the Spirit, and speaking beyond everything we think we know about how God works.
In today’s reading, Peter is recounting something amazing and troubling that has just happened. It’s part of a bigger story that starts in Acts chapter 10, a story that begins with a man named Cornelius. He is a Gentile who is described as a “God-fearer,” meaning that he has sympathies with the Jewish practice of faith and who prays and does acts of devotion even though he isn’t a Jewish convert. The Holy Spirit comes to Cornelius in a vision, and says to him (in so many words), “Cornelius, your prayers have found favor with God. Go find this man Peter, and he’ll change your life!” And, despite knowing little to nothing about what is going on, Cornelius sends his men to go find Peter.
In the meantime, Peter is in Joppa, and it’s noon, and he goes up to the roof to pray, and he’s hungry. While he’s praying, he sees a vision of a large sheet being lowered down from heaven, filled with animals. And not just any animals. Filled with only animals that, according to Jewish law, you were not allowed to eat. Three times the sheet comes down from heaven. Three times the voice of God, speaking to hungry Peter, says, “Peter, kill and eat!” And three times Peter says, “But God, you know that these animals are unclean and profane…in fact, God, it is by your law that these animals are unclean and profane.”
And then, the voice of God says something baffling. Unexpected. Troubling. The voice of God says, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
Just like that, God overturns the rules. Just like that, God changes the plan. Just like that, God uses this sheet filled with formerly unclean animals to send the message to Peter that God’s salvation is about to spill over the boundaries of the old covenant, and that, just as no animals are off-limits for Peter to eat, no human beings are off-limits for Peter to eat with and share faith with.
Poor Peter, sitting there. God has just gone and decided to do a new thing, and I imagine that it is confusing and overwhelming, but Peter has no time to worry about it because he is interrupted by the same Holy Spirit that meddled with Cornelius, and this Spirit says, “Pssst…Peter! Go downstairs! There are some men here, and they are looking for you, and you need to go where they take you.”
So Peter goes with them, and he meets Cornelius, and they swap stories about the Holy Spirit, and then Cornelius says to Peter “we are gathered here in the presence of God to hear all that you have to say.” Well, Peter is never one to pass up an opportunity to give a grand sermon, and so he shares with these Gentiles the good news of Jesus - how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he loved and healed others, and how he died and then rose again.
And just like at Pentecost, while Peter was still speaking, the Spirit fell on Cornelius and all who were listening, and the Jews who were traveling with Peter were amazed that the Spirit would fall upon Gentiles, but Peter says, “If they have received the Holy Spirit just like we have, who are we to deny them baptism?” And so Peter crosses a huge boundary and does this crazy new thing: baptizing Gentiles to be a part of God’s new, expanded covenant, which no longer is just for the inner circle of chosen people, but for all.
Now, of course, no good deed goes unpunished. Word spreads to Jerusalem that Peter has started baptizing - and even eating with - Gentiles. The believers there in the inner circle chastise him: “Why were you eating and hanging out with these outsiders?” they ask.
So Peter retells the story from the beginning,about his vision, about meeting Cornelius, about seeing the Spirit fall upon people who had, up until this point, been outside the covenant. And then he says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” At that, Peter’s opponents are silenced. And when they do speak again, they praise God for giving even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.
The book of Acts makes it clear that all who come to belief in Jesus do so because of the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. The book of Acts begins with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and it is the Spirit that turns people’s hearts to faith. It is also the Spirit that leads Peter and Paul and the apostles to those who are being stirred to faith. In the book of Acts, the Spirit always gets there first, and the apostles hurry to play catch-up.
The story of Cornelius and Peter shows us that when the Spirit goes ahead of us, stirring up hearts and meddling in our world for the sake of salvation, the Spirit often goes to places and to people outside the boundaries. And the Holy Spirit drags us along into these new places, sometimes kicking and screaming, because the Spirit is just as likely to drag us to places where we were sure that God couldn’t be working, places where we were sure God had told us not to go. Because, as it turns out, God is a big fan of doing new things and making new creations and giving people new hearts and new spirits. God is still speaking. And the Spirit is still on the move.
The Spirit crashes through even the best, most faithful boundaries that we try to put around God’s work. We have lots of things that I would label as our “Old Commandments.” We have the ancient law handed down for us in our Old Testament, we have centuries of work done by faithful theologians and teachers and believers. We have our Lutheran Confessions, and we have the rubrics of our liturgy. We have church constitutions. We have tradition and memory. And all of these things have value. They help us understand the foundation and core of our faith. They keep us organized. But I call all of this stuff “Old Commandments” because in John, Jesus gives the disciples and us a new commandment. And it is a commandment that bursts through all of the barriers that our Old Commandments try to put up.
Jesus says, “A new commandment I give you: that you love one another as I have loved you.”
A new commandment. That you love as I have loved you.
Love, and by this I mean sacrificial, self-giving love - love is what lets us jump the fences in order to follow the Holy Spirit to the new, uncharted, sometimes truly uncomfortable places where God goes to do a new thing. Christ-like, self-giving love crashes through boundaries. Self-sacrificial love is different than “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Self-sacrificial love is different than loving people and serving them and providing their basic needs with the ulterior motive of trying to convert them. Self-sacrificial love means loving our next door neighbors, and not secretly thinking that we would love them better if they were Lutherans, not Methodists, or Lutherans, not Buddhists, or Lutherans, not atheists. Self-sacrificial love means sacrificing our need to micromanage the work of the Holy Spirit, and instead, to love and to serve as the Spirit calls us, without pretense, without anxiety, without worrying about whose toes we might step on when we color outside the lines at the pull of the Spirit.
The Spirit has worked outside the lines in history to dismantle slavery, to bring greater equality to men and women, to open doors to the ordination of women and of GLBTQ persons, to redefine “stewardship of creation” in terms of creation-care rather than creation-domination, to open hearts to interfaith dialogue and respect. We’ve been chasing the Spirit a long way thus far. But the Spirit is still moving, and we still have plenty of catching up to do, and plenty of boundaries to cross in love, whether it be affirming the challenges and gifts of loved ones suffering with mental illness, or speaking out against sexual abuse, or seeking justice for transgender brothers and sisters, or dismantling systems of racism that still plague our nation, or affirming love and respect and protection for our Muslim sisters and brothers, or refugees, or immigrants.
Friends, the Spirit doesn’t sit still.
Because the Spirit is moving toward the fulfillment of God’s kingdom, as described for us in Revelation: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God; and the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” God isn’t just patching up our world. God is making our world new.
This is what Easter what and Christ’s resurrection are all about. They give us the confidence that God promises new life for us and for our world. They assure us that if God can do a new thing, we can trust and follow and do new things, too. They give us courage to overflow with love, and to trust that our breathless chasing of the Holy Spirit will cause both our world and our hearts to transform into something new and beautiful.
So, my friends, where is it that the Spirit is trying to lead you that makes you nervous or uncomfortable? Where is it that the Spirit is leading First Lutheran Church that makes us anxious or fearful? Where is the Spirit calling us to listen for God’s voice in places where we never thought to look?
“I am about to do a new thing,” God says in the book of Isaiah, “now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
May God grant us resurrection eyes and loving hearts, that we might perceive all the new things that God is doing and calling us toward, as we live together in the hope of God’s new heaven and new earth, for us, for all, and for this whole creation.
Amen.
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