“Let Freedom Sing”

A Sermon Based Upon Galatians 1: 1-5, NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.   

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Pentecost 6, July 5^th, 2015

Yesterday we celebrated 239 of American freedom.   Interestingly, the same year Flat Rock constituted as a church (1783) was the very year American independence was recognized by Great Britain.   After the decisive siege of Yorktown by the Continentals, militia, and French regulars, under the leadership of General George Washington, General Cornwallis surrendered and America was free. 

But our American experience of freedom began even before winning our independence from England.   Most of us remember learning in grade school how the Mayflower set sail for the new world and landed at Plymouth Rock in November of 1620.  It was there that those English dissenters established the Plymouth Bay Colony in Massachusetts.    While the leadership of that historic new colony was seeking religious freedom, the majority of those who came to establish the first permanent settlement of Jamestown were seeking gold, not God (See “American Gospel” by Jon Meachham, p. 41).

Most Americans cherish freedom, but we cherish it in different ways.   Some cherish   individual freedom, which allows us to live any way we choose.   Others greatly cherish the political freedom we have to vote and to choose our own leaders.   Baptists have historically been at the forefront of the struggle for religious liberty, believing that the greatest freedom we have is to be able to worship God in a free country, a free state, and a free church.  

As Christians, we believe that all human freedom, secular and religious, has its true source in the God who liberated Israel from Egypt and who also redeemed us in this Jesus who said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8.32).   The ‘truth’  Jesus clarified is the truth about himself: “If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed”(Jn. 8.36).   However you  look at it, ‘freedom,’  individual and religious, is a core value of our Christian faith.

This is why Paul’s letter to the Galatians should be important to us.   Galatians is the New Testament book that has been nicked-named ‘the Magna Carta of Christian Liberty’.    As Paul himself expressed it:  “It is for freedom that Christ has set you free.  So, stand firm.”  (Gal. 5.1).   For the next several weeks we are going to consider how we should continue to ‘stand firm’ in this freedom that finds both its center and its source our Lord Jesus Christ.  

FREEDOM:  OUT OF THIS WORLD

Notice how Paul introduces us to his letter about Christian freedom with a very unique beginning.   He reminds his readers and us that he is ‘an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities’  (1:1).   Already, we have our first important clue to help us define what Christian freedom means.   It is a freedom that is from beyond our human capability---it is a gift that only comes ‘through Jesus Christ, and God the Father….” (1.1b). 

Most of you have send or heard of the recent release of the Academy Award Winning movie,  “12 Years a slave.”   It is the true story of a Freeman, Solomon Northup, who  in 1853 was kidnapped from a free state in the North and then made to endure the suffering of being a slave in the deep south until he was able to prove his rights as a free man.    While most of us have not known what it is like to be ‘enslaved’ like African Americans have, we all need to understand that it our human tendency to hurt and to enslave each other.   You can read the story of bondage all the way back to the opening pages of the Bible, when Adam submitted to the bondage of sin,  or when Israel was overcome by the bondage of Egypt.    The ‘supernatural’ not the natural message from God through Moses was,  and still is,  “Let my people go….”

What Paul wants us to know is that this is the source and the reason for the gospel of Jesus Christ,  to help people become ‘free’ from those things in life that can capture us, hook us, entangle us, and enslave us.   No matter which way you define the gospel, you must finally understand that the gospel is a ‘liberating’ work of God, not liberating us to be free to destroy ourselves or others, nor to live in any way we want, but it is a liberating gospel that is sent from God to help us ‘get free’ from the forces of human life that can hurt and hinder us from living out our God-given potential.

Again, as we begin reading this letter, we must see that it is purposely ‘not’ a message like other human messages we hear all the time.   In advertisements we hear salesmen and sales women trying to get us to buy a certain product, so we have a better life, but often they get the better life because we buy their product.   This same kind of ‘false promise’ happens over and over in our world as people go after the kinds of ‘freedom’ that are only mirages.   The freedom that is ‘not of human origin’ is not another ‘get free’ product.   The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ that has been established on earth by God, when Jesus was ‘raised from the dead’ (1.1).   We are not talking about things that are ‘humanly possible’, but we are talking about something that is humanly hoped  for and desperately needed.   It is our human hope, but this is a hope of freedom that comes from God, and is not from humans.  

On the day before spring, a story on the news was told about a young, less than 2 year-old boy in Pennsylvania, who fell into a cold creek and should have drowned.  For 101 minutes medical personnel worked to try to get his breathing and heart re-started.  Some call it a miracle that the boy not only survived, but he came back to life in a very normal way.  The news media said that ‘thanks to the training of the medical team….”.   Of course, they were like Paul,  sent, called, and trained to do a job to save a life,  but many times that training doesn’t work out.  This time it did.  One news person on ABC, pointed up to heaven acknowledging that this indeed was a miracle that could only be explained as a miracle from God in heaven.   I don’t think you have to figure out a miracle, but you can be thankful for it,  learn from it, and give God the glory for life that is always a gift.  

Paul wants us to know that our ‘freedom’ is a gift that is just like this.   There is a human side to freedom, especially in how it comes to us, but ultimately the gift of freedom is a gift that is ‘not from human beings nor through human authorities….   Freedom is a gift from the very God who in Christ ‘died to make us free’,  as the Battle hymn of the Republic so beautifully puts it.   Our freedom has many faces, but the ultimate source is not from us, but it is for us, because it is a gift from beyond.

A GIFT OF GRACE AND PEACE

Paul also describes the nature of this gift of freedom, as ultimately a gift of  ‘grace and peace’ which comes from “God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ”.    Paul’s common greeting reflects ‘uncommon grace’ and much too ‘uncommon peace’.   Grace and Peace is Paul’s wish for the churches, because it is God’s wish and dream for the world,  to be a world that finds freedom through ‘grace and peace’.   Is there any other way to find it?

When we sing,  “Let Freedom Ring”,  we really mean,  “Let Grace and Peace” reign,  because without peace there is no true freedom and without grace---that is, without receiving God’s gift of grace and extending that grace to other people around us, there is no lasting, real, genuine peace.    If we want freedom, or if we want our freedom to continue, we must also be a people of ‘grace’ and a people of ‘peace’.

Where does such ‘grace and peace’ come from?    Doesn’t it come through the message of the gospel?   The message of good news is that because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, by forgiving us of our sins, and by extending God’s grace, not just to Israel who keeps the law, but also to any who will receive God’s love by faith, through grace.    Now that God has made ‘peace’ with us,   through Jesus Christ, we can God’s peace as a ‘gift’ of ‘grace’ which we can give to others.   It this way, our own freedom---that is the freedom God gives to us, comes to us as we receive grace and make peace.    This is how the wonderful gospel is received by us as we receive it and then pass it along.    It is this kind of new reality, which begins in our hearts, that makes freedom possible, not only in us, but around us, and it makes freedom ring out in a world where freedom is still under threat.

In our world today, one of the greatest threats to grace and peace is the radical Islamic nation of Isis.   We all have watched their bloody rampage across the world and how innocent people continue to be killed, how human culture and civility is being threatened and destroyed.   The question comes to us, as Christians and as Americans,  in regard to how we can wish ‘grace and peace’ in a fallen world when evil is still alive and well.   How can we follow and live the Sermon on the Mount, which calls us to love our enemies?   How can we give grace and make peace, when we have come to believe the only way to stop this evil is to ‘make war’?

This is not a new question.   It was the same kind of question that was put before the human race during the rise of Nazism, Communism, or many other kinds of extremely radical evil threats the world has known.    How do we ‘let freedom ring’,  when we know that there are threats to freedom that constantly raise up their heads,  like radical Islam is doing today?   How do we attempt to uphold justice, while extending our hand in goodness, righteousness, fairness and peace?   Isn’t this still the most pressing question for Christians, for Americans, and for the world?  

I don’t want to make this a political sermon about what our government should or shouldn’t do, but I want to keep with the biblical discussion that is before us in Paul.  But any discussion of liberty will, should and does affect how we live free as Christians in this free country, and how we support the values that God has set loose in the world---through Jesus Christ.   How can we wish ‘grace and peace’ even when we there comes a time or a historical moment, we may have to keep peace by deciding to ‘make war’?

When I go back to the original American Revolution, which was fought on the very good ground of ‘liberty and justice for all’, I think we can find a way to understand  that sometimes, even to live out the God’s dream of ‘grace and peace’ sometimes may require us to put up a ‘fight’.    But what kind of fight, is the question, isn’t it?    There is all kinds of imagery in the Bible about ‘putting on armor’ that is more spiritual than militaristic.   There is also powerful words from Paul about ‘fighting the good fight’  which not at all the same as fighting the way the world fights.    Is there a place for fighting ‘a good fight’ that puts on the ‘armor of humanity’ rather than the ‘armor of God?    How do we keep our freedom secure?    While we can never justify war, or killing, or violence, on any grounds, are their times we must seek justice, righteousness, and goodness ‘through strength’ because we know that we also live in a fallen world?  

FREE FROM THIS EVIL AGE

For me, at least,  the answer to how to wish ‘grace, peace’ and ‘freedom’ in a fallen world comes in what Paul says next, when he reminds us that ‘the Lord Jesus Christ….gave himself for OUR SINS,  that he might DELIEVER US FROM THIS PRESENT EVIL AGE….”  Paul reminds us that there is no lasting ‘freedom’ without being ‘delivered’ or made ‘free’ from ‘this present evil age’, which we are all subjected under.   In other words,  even if we, or our government, decides that we too must take up arms to fight,  we can only fight with the full understanding that it’s not just ‘them’ who are the sinners, but it is us too.

My recent studies about the Muslim world seem to verify this.   While there is no excuse for the violent acts of radical Islam, there are reasons.  Part of the reasons radical Islam is able to attract followers is because, as Western nations of power and influence must admit, the radicalization in the Middle East today is feeding off the mistakes and the misdeeds of our own western governments in the past.   There is just no way around the truth that before we can receive the ‘good news’ of the gospel, and before we can take the ‘good news’ of ‘grace and peace’ to the world,  we must also be willing to receive the bad news about ourselves.   The gospel that brings freedom must always be a gospel that includes ‘OUR SINS’ as the reason for Jesus’ death.   It is never as simple as ‘us’ against ‘them.   Even if we decide to fight the enemy, we must remember and never forget, that the enemy is also inside of us.

I believe that Jesus and Paul are right to understand that the source of freedom is the freedom that begins in each of our own hearts.   Until we find ‘freedom’ within ourselves, we can’t understand the full importance of freedom, nor can we take the wonderful of message of freedom to the world.   And we have to take this message to the world, don’t we?  We can’t wait until the whole world comes to us seeking the freedom we have.  We have to go out there and take the message, so that they can have what we have.   But do we even realize what we have?   Do we remember how freedom rings, not just in our ears, but also in our hearts?

Not long ago, I was getting a haircut and my barber reminded me of a story I once told about freedom.  It was a story about siblings, a brother and sister, who spent the summer together at grandma’s.   One day, the little boy was skipping rocks on the farm pond and accidently hit and killed one of grandma’s prize winning ducks.  He did not go to tell Grandma, but his sister was hanging up clothes nearby and saw the whole thing.   After supper the sister asked her brother to help her wash dishes.   He didn’t want to until she made him, because she would tell grandma about the duck.   Then,  she got him to do other things,  on top of his own chores of taking care of the farm animals.   As time went by,  he was doing as much of her chores as he was his own.  

Finally,  the boy decided he would not being enslaved by his sister’s wishes any longer.  He went to his grandma to tell her the truth.   To his surprise, grandmother told him that  she had also seen him kill the duck, and she had also watched him live in slavery to his sister’s wishes and wondered how long it would take him to come and tell the truth.   All he had to do to be forgiven and free, would have been to come and tell Grandma the truth.   If only he had loved the freedom of being forgiven as much as he loved the freedom of hiding the truth.   But now, he has learned, and he is free, so he can enjoy the rest of the summer.

If only we could understand what kind of ‘freedom’ we could ALL have if we would let freedom ring, not just in our ears, but also 'sing' in our hearts.   Isn’t this where all freedom begins?   It begins within as we let our lives be free in God’s amazing, redeeming grace.  Let freedom Sing!, then is will always ring!  Amen.

“What's In a Name?”

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 11: 19-30

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.   

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

4^nd Sunday After Pentecost, June 28^th, 2015

“….and it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called "Christians." (Act 11:26 NRS)

Today we conclude these messages from Acts.  My hope has been to start a serious conversation about what it means to be ‘a Church in the Spirit’.   Hopefully, the conversation will not end, but has only begun.   Next week, we will begin our summer series of messages from the book of Galatians, entitled, “Got Freedom?  How the gospel of Jesus Christ helps us get and stay free. ”

Now let’s get back to today’s message.    As we started out 11 weeks ago, Jesus left the building, but then, the Spirit came to empower the church for its work in the world.  But this empowerment came only as the church of Jesus Christ followed and obeyed the new leadings of the Spirit.  Thus, the church only came alive and continued to thrive because it was a church in the Spirit.

Our final message comes at the place where the church made its first, big, very important move:  It has moved from being a stationary church located only in Jerusalem, to becoming a mission-oriented church in Antioch of Syria.   This new location puts the church on the edge of the world, ready to launch out as it preaches, teaches and prepares to take the good news out into the world where it can be heard, seen, accepted or refused.   It’s risky business being a missional church in the Spirit, but this risk is necessary for the church’s future life.   It’s the good kind of risk that enables the church to take Christ’s mission of hope, faith, love into the world so that the world can be saved.    

DISCOVERY: BEING CHURCH ON MISSION

What I want us to especially focus upon how the followers of Jesus, who make up the church, finally get their name as CHRISTIANS.   It wasn’t until moved out from its home base, moving from Jerusalem to Antioch, “… that the disciples were first called "Christians." (Act 11:26 NRS)

Do you find this a little peculiar?   Isn’t it rather strange that no one knew what to call the new baby until it left home?  The parents couldn’t name it.  The other siblings didn’t know what to call it.   How do you name a baby anyway?   Well, if you do it right, you always put some thought into what you should or shouldn’t name the baby.   I’ve heard that some people don’t have the baby named until they get home from the hospital, but waiting until the baby grows up and leaves home,  now that’s a little weird, don’t you think? 

In some countries of the world, you have to get the babies name out of a book of suggestions.  They  won’t let you name the baby just anything.  You couldn’t name your baby Zebra or even Nelson unless that name was in the government’s book.   Of course, that kind of government regulation sounds oppressive to us, but you shouldn’t name your baby anything you want, now should you?   If you do whatever you like, as we sometimes do here in America,  you can get some mighty strange, weird, sounding names.   Ok, you asked for it, how about naming the baby, Zzyzx (pronounced Zay-zix).   This baby was born, of course, in California and is actually named that after town on a road with the same name, aka,  ‘the last place on earth’   . http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/bizarre-baby/story?id=23439916.   If you give your baby a name like Zay-zix, or as ABCDE, pronounced, ABseeDee, of course I won’t call it strange, but don’t expect me say is correctly.   Whatever you name your baby, I hope you’ll pick a name that fits.

In the book of Acts, the name ‘Christian’ did not come all at once.   Early on these followers of Jesus were given some other names.  They were called part of the ‘apostle’s fellowship’ (2. 42), those who preached the ‘message about this life’ (3.15), ‘people who belonged to the way’  (Acts 9.2).  Those were all good names, but they didn’t stick.   Luke didn’t even call them ‘church’ until Acts 5:11,  after it proved itself to be ‘honest with money as a ‘community of truthfulness’ (Willimon, p. 53).   Interestingly, the church did not know what to call its members until it went out on the road, away from home, moving out to answer its true calling and purpose.  

Maybe this isn’t an accident.   Maybe this is how the church really does make a name for itself.    Only when the church moves out its own little world does it really make a difference or get attention.   The name the church got was was  “Christian¨,  which means ‘little Christs’.   Here, we see the church being defined, not by the people within it, but by those who were on the outside, looking in.  

The church that gets its true name, has to be a church that leaves its own Jerusalem, either figuratively or physically, and it must become a mission station in the world,  launching follow the Spirit on mission in the world.  The church that follows the Spirit does not get its name based on location, but based upon it´s mission.    Have you noticed what´s been happening with new church names lately?      If you compare the names of churches that want to be on mission today,  many of them have dared to give themselves names that define their mission, like Collide, Revolution, Elevation, Restoration, Sanctuary, or Journey.  What you notice is that these churches are defining themselves to the culture why they exist and what they want to do---be on mission for Jesus Christ.   While I don’t think the actual name of a church matters that much the living church must be on the move, always learning, always experimenting, always reaching out, and always being a church that is launching its mission.  

DISCIPLESHIP: BECOMING THE CHURCH

But how do we launch, and keep on launching?   Who is it that we ‘become’ or want to help others to become?    What is the core purpose or mission we have be handed to be the a church made up of people who are called Christians?   

Maybe the answer resides in the very text we’re focusing upon.   Notice again that “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called "Christians" (Act 11:26 NRS).   Is it  not simply this word ‘Christian’ nor the name ‘Church’ that gives us our true name, but it is that we focus on our main mission—a mission that is nothing more and nothing less than the great commission where Jesus told his very first disciples to ‘go, and make disciples….(28.19)   Remember that this was not just any commission, nor was it a mere suggestion, but it was also a commandment of Jesus that his disciples are to receive Christ’s power and authority---through the life he lived, the death that he died, and through the resurrection power was given and now gives, so that we too are commanded to go out into the world, not just to teach polite people, nice lessons about God and life, but that we are to “Go,  making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

OF course, there are many ways the church of Jesus Christ can catch on to the seriousness of this great commission.    This is a commission that right along with ‘great-commandment’ to ‘love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, as to love our neighbor as ourselves, but it is also a great commission that is also a commandment too.  The early church took disciple-making so seriously, that it did not understand its mission to just to win converts, nor to get members to fill up churches or Sunday School classes, but the church went into the world as people who had been made into ‘disciples’  who also had the commission to ‘make disciples’.   Unfortunately, many churches today may not survive unless they become more intentional about making disciples as the main part of being church.

How do become the church by ‘making disciples?  ´Part of the answer comes right here in our text.  Our text gives insight into the disciple-making process when it tells us:  “Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul,  and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for an entire year they met with the church and taught a great many people  (11: 25-26), 

Think about this?  How long would the church have survived or how far would the church have gone into the world, if it had not made a disciple out of Saul, who was later named Paul?   Here, in this brief description, we can see the two most important things we could ever learn about what discipleship means:  Discipleship is a process that takes time (here is it about a year), and it is a process that is about people (not programs) making people into life-long followers of Jesus.  It is not about keeping or maintaining buildings or programs (that is secondary), but it is about a personal ‘teaching’ and a personal ‘learning’ process where people are intentionally made into disciples who learn to follow Jesus, as opposed to people who simply come to a church to learn about following Jesus.   While discipleship can happen in many ways, it must come down to at least this one way; it must be intentional, personal and relational just like it is here, with a person teaching and a person learning, sometimes even teaching and learning from each other, about who, about why, and how one actually follows Jesus Christ as a way of faith and a way of life. 

Years ago, I went through a process of discipleship called “MasterLife” which Southern Baptists put together.  I had to become certified in that program to become a missionary.  It was a good program, but it was still only a ‘program’.   A year or so in our churches, we went through another good program of discipleship, which the Methodist church put together, called, “Disciple.”  It’s a good program too, but it’s still just a program.   Such ‘programs’ are good for passing information, but don’t seem to be personal nor intentional enough to make disciples by themselves.    At times the church has done a good job of being and teaching others to become Christian,  but because the world is less impacted by our faith today,  even becoming more hostile toward faith,  we must become even more intentional, get more personal, become more relational, be more serious, and have more intentionality and accountability built into the process of making disciples.   Whatever we must not do, is reduce being Christian to ‘getting people to come to church’.  If we want to be a church in the Spirit---which is the only kind of church that has a future,  then we must learn from Antioch that making-disciples is the greatest calling and command for the future of the church. 

DEPENDANCE: BELONGING TO CHURCH

Finally, what might this actually look like when the church makes a disciple?   Jesus himself said it will look like a tree bearing good fruit:   “You will know them by their fruits. (Mat 7:16 NRS).  While discipleship can be accomplished in many ways, the only true test of a disciple making church is whether or not people actually become “doers of the word and not hearers only”(Matt, 7,22 & James 1.22).   Can we define what it means to be a ‘doer’ of the word? 

What happens at Antioch helps us.   When prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them predicted that a severe famine would soon take place, the ‘disciples’ at Antioch then become concerned that they wanted to ‘send relief to believers living in Judea” (11.29).  Because they were true disciples of Jesus, and because these were their fellow brothers and sisters,  they could not imagine following Jesus without helping letting others know how much they belonged and depended upon each other.   As someone has rightly said,  “There are NO lone ranger Christians”.  That pretty well sums up what it means to be Christian: to belong to Jesus in a way that we know we belong to each other.

In a book about the Hope for the Church, Church consultant Eddie Hammet tells about  a social experiment he did with his Sunday School class in Hendersonville, N.C.  They sent out people to ask “why” they didn’t come to church.   Do you know what one overwhelming answer was?  “Those people in the church don’t believe in the church either!”  It’s interesting to realize that the one thing that convinces the world that we are really who we say we are is not how much we care for the building,  nor it is how much we care for ourselves, but it following Jesus means that we care and believe in each other---that Christ is in us, and wants us to care for each other as he cares for us. 

Wanda Kidd, a Baptist minister of youth in North Carolina tells of working on her project for her Doctor of Ministry degree.  She was doing the project how to do evangelism in a world where the majority of people, even believers that are living around us, don’t have a clue what church means.   She gathered several youth in a study group that went on for several weeks and took them through a discussion-study group where the young people listened as other told stories of how the gospel had impacted their lives.   One young woman was struggling and suffering through the process.  She sat in the corner all balled up, in a fetal position.  She was often detached, and disinterested, but still wanted to continue with the group.  In the final session, another young man saw her pain and her inability to tell her own story, and then he basically said to her, in front of all the others: 

 “You know, I was bad in English grammar and sometimes my life is like sentence fragments that don’t make sense.   But what does make sense in this whole gospel thing,  is that I see in your pain you are looking for Jesus and Jesus is looking for you and that one of these days the both of you are going to find each other.”  With that word of compassion the woman got out of her chair, went to him and embraced him saying,  “thank you Charlie”.  Do you know what that boy gave her,  he gave her hope.  Isn’t that what it means to be a Christian---that we give each other hope?  Amen.

Whose Vision Is It?

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 10: 9-16; 24-28; 44-48

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.   

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

4^nd Sunday After Pentecost,  June 21^th, 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.

(http://www.gettingreadyforsunday.com/articles/HospitalityStories.htm).

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.