Acts 2:1-4
There is an old
folk song called Sonny, and it makes me cry every time I hear it. It tells a
story about a man who grew up living on a farm with his mother. His father was
a sailor and never at home, so Sonny took care of the farm from a young age.
The chorus repeats his mother’s words to him:
Sonny, don’t go away; I’m here all
alone.
Your daddy’s a sailor, never comes home.
Nights are so long, silence goes on;
I’m feeling so tired and not all that strong.
Sonny hears
these words all his life and he never leaves. Even after his mother dies and Sonny
is all alone on the farm, he continues to hear his mother’s words in his dreams.
Sonny never leaves, and he becomes the one who is truly alone.
Even if his
mother would never have wanted him to live such a lonely life after she was
gone, Sonny is paralyzed by the memory of her words.
It makes me cry
every time I hear it. Such a tragic story.
Parents and
teachers want to give their children guidance to live by, but sometimes it
seems like we fail to give them permission to spread their wings. Even when
that is truly what we want for them.
And, sometimes,
children are paralyzed, like Sonny, out of a fear of disappointing the parents
or teachers.
So. Let’s take
another look at Peter.
Remember a
couple of weeks ago we spent some time with Peter, the disciple. I told you
then that Jesus saw some potential in him that was not at all apparent to me. To
my eyes, Peter acted like an impulsive kid who needed clear and strong direction
– and even then, he would go off and say or do something dumb.
But you may also
remember I said that we would see later on, in the book of Acts, that Jesus was
right about Peter. And now we are there, now we see it.
Peter is, we now
see, The rock. Before The Rock was The Rock. Peter is the rock Jesus needed to
build his church.
It began on the
day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came in like the rush of a violent wind;
tongues as of fire rested above the head of each of them, filling them with the
Spirit. Each one given the ability to speak in different tongues –
Let me stop
right here for a moment and acknowledge how weird this matter is. I mean, I get
the point that this ability to speak allowed them to communicate and share the
good news with people from all nations. Although it is confusing when the
people in the streets below, who are hearing them, exclaim that they must be
drunk. That’s confusing. Because I cannot remember a time when I saw
drunkenness improve anyone’s powers of communication.
From the people
in the streets below you almost get the impression that the apostles who have
been lit on fire by the Spirit are, maybe, actually, babbling.
Let’s remember
that the gift of tongues, as it is called in the Bible, an ability to speak in a
“Spirit” language. Which would be incomprehensible to anyone who wasn’t
empowered by the Spirit to understand, but to those who were empowered –
Whatever was said
that day, whatever was heard that day, one thing we know is that the Spirit
empowered these apostles to share the gospel and other people to hear it. Peter
was one of these men who, by the power of the Spirit, found his voice that day.
When the people
down in the streets start jabbering indignantly about the drunken fools in the
room above, Peter steps out and begins to speak.
Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this
be known to you, and listen to what I say.
And he begins to
tell the story of how God has been at work through the ages and leading up to
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. This Jesus, whom God has
lifted up, through whom God has defeated the powers of death, is Lord and
Messiah. Men of Judea, Peter says, fellow Israelites, the entire house of
Israel. People of Israel, Peter says, Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
These people in
the streets who heard his words are stricken to the heart and turn immediately to
Peter and the other apostles for guidance. Three thousand, they say, were
baptized in Jerusalem that day, the day of Pentecost.
And that is only
the beginning. Day by day thereafter the Lord added to their numbers. My
goodness – wasn’t that a time!
Read on in the
book of Acts – you know how much I love the book of Acts – read on, and you
will see what you might already suspect: these heady days of new beginning
can’t last for long. Honeymoons all have to come to an end, and this one does
too.
Eventually there
are disputes among the apostles about the details. Details like, who is the
gospel for? Who should receive the Holy Spirit? And what do they have to do?
Details, yes,
but not minor. These are actually critical matters and they grow increasingly
difficult because the church is on fire. The Spirit is moving and growing
faster than these men can keep up with it.
And we reach the
point, in Chapter 10, when Peter is confronted with the decision about a man
named Cornelius. Cornelius is a Roman centurion, so this is complicated. A
centurion was a Roman military officer who was in command of 100 Roman
soldiers. And we all know there is every reason for the followers of Jesus to
be distrustful of a Roman military office, a soldier of the Empire that
crucified their Lord.
But, we are
told, Cornelius is well-respected by all the Jews. Cornelius is a God-fearing
Gentile, which simply means that he believes in and, in the ways available to
him, worships the God of Israel. He gives alms and he prays. Although he is not
a Jew and never will be a Jew.
You see, Cornelius
is not a man of Judea, a fellow Israelite, he is not one of those whom Peter
addressed from the upper room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. He loves
the Lord, but he is not a son of Israel.
And yet he,
oddly enough, receives a vision from the Lord. Your prayers and alms have been
received, Cornelius hears, and now this is what you should do. He is instructed
to send some men to Peter. He does and they go.
And at the same
time, the ever-industrious Spirit of the Lord sets to work on Peter. Peter
receives a vision that he cannot understand, but it seems to be suggesting to
him that some of the things he has always understood to be true and good, will
not necessarily be the way forward.
Cornelius’s men
arrive at his door, Peter greets them, and he begins to see the light. They all
go back to Cornelius where this Roman centurion and his whole household is
baptized.
And for the
young church, the ground has shifted beneath their feet.
Standing in the house of
Cornelius, Peter began to speak: “I truly understand that God shows no
partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is
right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of
Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.”
It’s a beautiful
moment. And once again I say to you, it could have been so different.
Jesus taught the
disciples that God was stirring up a new thing, but no one imagined that it
would include anyone other than Jews. The apostles followed in Jesus’ path, by
going out to all the villages and towns and speaking in the synagogues, telling
the good news. Even when they went out to all the nations, they would find the
Jews who lived there and speak to them.
But that Holy
Spirit, quick as lightning, just kept getting out ahead of them. The Holy
Spirit kept showing them that God’s plans were greater than they ever imagined.
Greater even
than Jesus had told them.
When Jesus sent
out his disciples to do his ministry he said to them, “Go nowhere among the
Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans.”
Jesus, himself,
when he was approached by a Syrophoenician woman begging for healing, declined
to help. His response to her was, “I’m here for the Jews. You are not a Jew.”
If the apostles
of Jesus had been unwilling to move beyond the strict understanding of what had
been taught to them by Jesus, they would have dug in their heels and refused to
follow the Spirit.
Like Sonny,
paralyzed and unable to move on, to listen to where the Spirit was leading
them. Stagnant.
It seems like it
could so easily have stayed that way…the apostles adhering to the narrow path,
denying the cries of the rest of the world, justifying their actions with the
words of Jesus and leaving it at that.
And if it had
gone that way, you and I would not be here now.
These wonderful,
beautiful apostles had to grapple with the evidence that God was, still is, and
always will be, doing a new thing. They had to acknowledge that they would go
beyond their teacher, their Lord, in their actions on behalf of his church.
They had to realize that Jesus wasn’t giving them a set of new rules so much as
he was giving them a vision in which God is always at work in the world shining
more light, spreading more love.
And,
like those first apostles, we are called upon to recognize this too. As God
spoke through the prophet Isaiah, “Look; I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth,
do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the
desert.”
As the church of
Jesus Christ, it is incumbent on us to ask every day: How is God intending to
expand God’s love today? Who is God inviting in to God’s household today? And
how is the Spirit of God empowering us to do it?
Hear me, Church: the places we will go are not limited by what has been said and done in the past. The places we will go are yet to be revealed by the Holy Spirit of God.
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