By Rev. Dr. Charles J.
Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist
Partnership
4nd Sunday After
Pentecost, June 21th, 2015
The voice said to him again, a second time,
"What God has made clean, you must not call profane." (Act
10:15 NRS)
“Where
there is no vision, the people perish….” (Prov. 29: 18).
That’s a quote from a very memorable
Old Testament text. During my early
college years, I was preparing to preach my first sermon from this popular text. I sought out a senior student to give me some
advice. I I took the word ‘vision’ to
mean having a view of how things should look in the future. But my friend shocked me when he explained
how I had gotten meaning of ‘vision’ in this text wrong. Here, “vision” does not mean having a view
of the future, but it refers to obeying God’s law so that you can have
a future. The New Living
Translation captures this nuance: “When people do not accept divine guidance,
they run wild… (Pro 29:18 NLT).
What do you do when someone tells
you you’ve got it all wrong? My wife
will tell you that I don’t like to be told that I’m wrong. I can get defensive. I like to get it right. I
pride myself in trying to do things right.
While it’s good to want to do right, it’s not good when won’t admit you
could be wrong and learn something new.
In today’s text, Peter has a vision
(10:3) and gets it wrong—at least he does at first. He needed to understand and accept the new
thing God was doing, but he keeps resisting it. If Peter wants to live in the past, he could
be right, but hope will die. But if Peter
is willing to live toward the future, to trust God, take risks, and move with
God into that future; he must learn to let himself be wrong before he can get
it right.
In this vision, three different
times God commands Peter to do something he’s has never done before: “Get
up Peter, “kill and eat!” (10:13). It’s all very strange. New vision can be that way. What God is commanding him to eat has been
considered forbidden foods---foods that God himself had called ‘unclean’ in God’s own written law. Now, however, for a reason unknown to Peter,
but known to God, God is asking Peter to move beyond that Law. Can you see how strange, and even how risky
and dangerous this might seem? In this
‘vision’ God wants to take Peter and the Church in a whole new direction, but Peter
doesn’t want to go there. “By no means Lord, for I have never eaten
anything that is profane or unclean” (10:14).
If it’s hard to imagine God going
against his own Law, can you dare also imagine
somebody saying “no” to God, not once, but as Peter does, saying “no” three
times (10:16). But don’t we sometimes do this too? Don’t we sometimes hear or sense God calling
us to do something, but we keep putting it off, or worst, we directly say no to
God? “The 7 last words of the church is (before
it dies): “We’ve never done it like this
before!” That’s the same as a ‘no’. It’s not easy to think about doing something
differently, having a brand new life-or to have a life-changing vision. It is natural for any of us, at least at first, to say, “No, we’ve not
done it that way before!” Think how
hard it is for anyone to change their beliefs, to change their daily routines,
or to change their own points of view, especially their core religious viewpoint. Most
of us, like Peter, will resist because we wouldn’t dare believe God could do
something different today than God did yesterday.
If you have ever been confused change
or facing the newness of the unknown, this is exactly where Peter is. Haven’t
we all be there, at least in some way?
So, what does God do when Peter struggles and resists this new vision? God
backs off. He lets Peter stay
confused and puzzled for a while, so
he can gain the time and experience he needs to figure it out. By casting this new vision, God plants the
seed of change and newness in Peter’s mind, but Peter will be allowed to figure
it out for himself. What and How Peter figures out what this vision means, is what I want to talk
to you about today.
GOD
GETS BIGGER
The very first thing in this story that
confronts Peter and us is that our God is the God who can and will something
new. “I am about to do a “new” thing”
(Isa. 43.19). The word ‘new’ is written all over the Bible
(Jer. 31.31; 1 Cor. 11.25, Rev 21.5), so why do we still tend to get set in our
ways? Do you see Peter’s own puzzlement
and resistant? He is completely shocked
that the God in whom he trusts, in whom he believes, and who he is trying to
obey, is asking him do something different than God has done in the past. Besides, Peter has been with Jesus and Jesus
never ate pork! How could this voice be
God’s voice if it suggests something Jesus never did? Could he dare try to improve upon Jesus?
Well those of us who call Jesus
“Lord” know this is a daring, risky suggestion, but didn’t Jesus himself saying
that “greater things you will do
than I have done” (Jn. 14:12)! Could
it be that this just might be one of those ‘greater things’? How does Peter (or we) determine whether or
not the voice that is getting into our heads lately is really God’s voice,
especially when it tells us something we’ve never seen or heard before? Before
we try to clarify whether or not God might be speaking new things to us, especially
when it seems to go against the
past, let’s get back to the most basic point Peter must learn, which we too must
also learn again and again. That point is this: If we let God be truly God, then God must always greater and bigger than we
can ever know.
To understand that we are not God
and that we must let God be God, is the most important truth any human can ever
learn. And isn’t this part of what it
means to discover the truth of God when we stop being ‘god’ over our own lives
or stop thinking we have the ‘corner-market’ explanation of God? Isn’t this exactly the most important part
of the knowledge of God that saves us? Because
we can’t save ourselves by ourselves, we need a God who speaks beyond us. Besides, as Paul once put it, salvation only comes when we “let God be true” and, let everyone else be a liar’ (Rom. 3.4)? Paul’s point was not everyone is a liar, but
that only God’s truth endures, and this truth is God’s truth that always transcends
our own, no matter how smart we are.
Recently, I watched a documentary
about Henry Ford, the great automaker.
While you can appreciate Henry Ford for his individuality, his
ingenuity, and even for his work ethic and how he put so many Americans to
work, Henry Ford also got things many things wrong. He criticized his own son too much. He was hard to be around and he bullied those
who worked for him and looked up to him.
He also hated and blamed Jews for the problems of American society,
which made him agree with Hitler ( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/henryford-introduction/ ).
My point is not to judge Henry Ford,
but to remind us that we have all been wrong about some things, even
while we’ve been right. Being human
means we are always limited in our understanding and are always in need of
learning more. This is also true of our
understanding of God. Even our best
grasp of God’s goodness, grace and love still comes up short of knowing
everything about God, or even knowing all about where God might lead us. When
the prophet said ‘his ways are not our ways and (his) thoughts
are not (our) thoughts” (Isaiah 55.9), this means that even the truth we
now know about God remains mysterious
even when it is fully revealed or disclosed.
This is why we call the true way to practice of religion, faith—a faith we must practice with humility
and not arrogance. This is why the Jews did not dare to even
write down God’s name. This is why Moses discovered that God is holy
and that no one can see God and live.
When you come to know the true God, you also must realize that you never
fully find all if God as much as you finally let God have all of you.
Let me show what letting God be bigger
and greater means, even with the most important belief we have about Jesus. While we can say firmly that God has been ‘fully’ revealed in Jesus Christ, we must
not say that God has been ‘finally’
revealed in Jesus. While we should say with confidence that Jesus
is the way, truth and life, because we
have come to personally experience the
loving, forgiving and graceful God revealed fully in Jesus Christ, there is
still more to learn from Jesus or know in Jesus. If God had revealed everything we needed to
know in Jesus, then why did Jesus say the Holy Spirit would reveal even ‘greater things’ (Jn. 14. 12-18) or that the Spirit would come
to guide us into all truth (16: 13)? Once
I heard someone explain the difference between what God reveals in Jesus and
what God has yet to reveal this way: In Jesus, God gave us one piece of the pie
that explains God and that piece of pie takes us all the way to the center
of who God is and what God’s truth is, but
it is still only one piece of whole pie.
Since God is an ‘eternal pie’ there is always more pie to come. God never runs out of pie. Would
let God pass you another piece of pie?
What Peter is having trouble with in
this text is this next piece of the ‘pie’.
Peter is having trouble with what we too might have trouble with,
especially when something new is taking place. To move this example from culinary language
and put it into farming language, with this new vision God is
asking Peter to ‘plow new ground’. When you are plowing new ground, even when
you are plowing it with God, if you go too fast, something is going to
break. You must go slowly and you must
work together, and you must keep moving forward, moving with care and caution step
by step. It’s find to take it slow, but
what you mustn’t do when God is at work,
is either lag too far behind or move too far ahead. Either way could get you into trouble.
But how do you do that? How do you stay with each other and stay
with God when you are moving into ‘new’, unfamiliar territory? This brings us to the next thing we must
learn from Peter’s vision. We need to see
what helped Peter say ‘yes’ to get to the new place God was leading him.
THE
WORLD GETS SMALLER
Notice how reluctant Peter is to say
yes to the new thing God is doing, until the ‘world’ comes knocking at his door. Do you see this? Look closely.
Peter has awakened and the next thing he hears is a knock at the
door.
“Knock,
Knock!”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Cornelius!”
“Cornelius
who?”
“ It’s Cornelius the first believing
Gentile who’s invites the Jewish Church to open the door their heart to get to
know people outside of their comfort zone.”
What do you do when the world knocks at your door, but is not the world
nor the people you’ve always known? Knock, Knock! Are you still there? Do you
want to open your door?
When Pastor Fred Craddock was
pastoring a church in East Tennessee, near Oak Ridge, the nuclear energy
changed the landscape of the surrounding community where his church was
located. New people were moving into
mobile units everywhere. He told the
Church Leaders, “We’ve got to get out
there and visit these folks”? But his
church leaders said they wouldn’t fit it and decided to change the bylaws so
newcomers had to own land before they could join the church. This
ruled out most of these new people who had not been there long enough have
land. Pastor Craddock never got them to
them to change their minds or to open their hearts. They did not reach out.
Years later, after Pastor Craddock
became professor Craddock, he was traveling in the area with his wife and they
decide to drive by and see how they little church was doing. When they drove through the community, there
were cars all around, the little church building was filled with people, but
the sign on the door said “Barbeque Restaurant”. Now, the little church building was filled
with all kinds of people---all these people the church wouldn’t invite, but now
it this was no longer a church.
I’m glad the church in Jerusalem
didn’t become another Kosher Restaurant, aren’t you? I’m glad that Peter obeyed the Spirit, even
when he didn’t know what to do next, and opened the gate and let those folks in. I’m glad the church continued to move, stay
alive, and thrive, but it only did this because it was willing say yes to the
new vision the Spirit revealed and to go where the Spirit was leading---in a
new direction, out the church door, beyond the temple, to visit and invite and to
dare to disciple strangers, beginning with this stranger named Cornelius. And do you see what happened, when Peter
obeyed? The Spirit gives him a discovery about God and
the world: “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 (vs 34-35). As Peter allows God to get bigger, the world appears
much smaller, and people are more alike than they are different.
YOU
COULD BE AMAZED
As the Church says ‘yes’ to God’s
Spirit, new surprises begin to take place.
While Peter is preaching about Jesus to Cornelius and his friends we are
told that the Holy Spirit ‘…fell upon
everyone who heard the word.” Then, we
are told those “believers who had come with Peter were
astounded (or amazed, ESV) that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out
even on the Gentiles, (Act 10:45 NRS).
How can we be part of a church that doesn’t
just sing about amazing grace, but that still experiences realities of God’s
amazing grace? Would you follow a new vision just to see where
and who it leads you too, or would you rather stay behind in a church that
remains uninteresting, un-exciting, or
un-amazing? What’s the difference? The difference depends on letting God be big enough to lead us to those places
where we can meet people we haven’t met
so we can also learn to accept the people God already loves. You will something as amazing as this when
are willing to let the Spirit ‘amaze’ and ‘astound’ you.
Martin Thielen tells about a young
college student named Bill. Bill had
wild hair, spiked with vivid colors, and wore a nose ring. Bill always wore a T-shirt with holes in it,
blue jeans and no shoes. Bill, a
brilliant young man, became a Christian while attending college. He attended a Christian organization on
campus, but he also wanted to find a church. Across the street from Ken's college was a
well-dressed, conservative, very traditional church.
One Sunday Bill decided to visit
that church. He walked into the sanctuary with his nose ring, no shoes, jeans
and a T-shirt, and wild hair. The service had already started, so Bill walked
down the aisle looking for a seat. But the church was packed, and he could not
find a seat anywhere. By now, people were uncomfortable, but no one said
anything. Bill got closer to the front of the church. When he realized there
were no seats left, he squatted down and sat in the aisle. Although this was perfectly acceptable
behavior at his college fellowship group—trust me—this had never happened
before in this church!
The tension in the congregation was
palpable. The preacher didn't know what to do so he stood there in silence. About
that time, an elderly man, one of the old patriarchs of that church, slowly
made his way down the aisle toward Bill. The man was in his eighties, had silver-gray
hair, and always wore a three-piece suit. He was a godly man, very elegant, dignified,
traditional, and conservative. As he
started walking toward this boy, everyone was saying to themselves—you can't
blame him for what he's going to do.
How can you expect a man of his age
and of his background to understand some college kid with a nose ring, wild
hair, T-shirt and jeans and no shoes, sitting on the church floor? The old man
walked with a cane, so it took a long time for him to reach the boy. The church
was utterly silent except for the clicking of the old man's cane. All eyes were focused on him. Finally, the old
man reached the boy. He paused a moment, then dropped his cane on the floor.
With great difficulty, the old man lowered himself and sat down next to the
boy. He shook the boy's hand and welcomed him to the church.
Would you like to be a church that
not only sings about amazing grace but still experiences it? Well,
are you willing to see new and amazing visions?
Do you have a God whose love is still
big enough to amaze you? Would you take
some actual steps outside the church to get out and meet some of those amazing people
whose love for God might also ‘amaze’ you? Could you be just as amazed at God’s love for a
stranger as your are about God’s love for you?
The truth is, if we want to be a church in the Spirit, we don’t have options,
we only have decisions to make. And the only
decision we have is whether or not we will obey and go with the Spirit where
God is leading his church. Besides, it’s
not our church, nor is it our vision, but it’s God’s church and God’s vision. When we see this, and I mean really see
this, we join Peter, as we stop saying ‘no’
and we start saying ‘yes’ and we become part of the church that still can astound
and be amazed. Amen.
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