Changing
Course in Mid-Sentence
Acts 10:34-44 Easter
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Before
I can really get underway with this sermon, I really need to say a word or two
about the scripture passage for the day, especially on a day when we might have
thought we would be hearing about tombs and frightened disciples and stones
rolled away and Jesus’ missing body, and Mary standing, weeping asking the
gardener in the cemetery where they had taken Jesus. Of course, there have
been, and there will be, other Easters for the reading of those passages. Inasmuch
as this is likely to be my last Easter in this pulpit with you, I thought I’d
choose for today a lesson that concerns one of the outcomes of those first
sightings of the resurrected Jesus, as the disciples began to make their way
into the world with the word about his resurrection and all that it promised.
The very first disciple to move beyond the Jewish
people with this new saving word about salvation through the risen Christ was Peter,
who found himself drawn to a Roman centurion’s house, a man named Cornelius. He
wasn’t sure why he was going but he felt called to go, and once there, he was
welcomed and he began to preach to them. Then Luke tells us,
While Peter was still speaking,
the Holy
Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.
I just love this verse from Acts. It was a moment in
which everything about our faith was made new, and made available for the whole
world. Any preacher who thinks he or she is in charge of worship, or in charge
of much of anything in any ultimate kind of sense, is always taken aback by the
Spirit that came storming in “While Peter was still speaking...” I imagine
Peter, in mid-sentence, Peter who had delivered a 500 word sermon earlier in
Acts about the living Christ, Peter was only getting warmed up here in this
story from his visit to Cornelius’ house, Cornelius: the first non-Jew to be
converted to Christianity. He didn’t even get to deliver any clever sermon
illustrations. He had no more than started to speak, when WHAM! the Holy Spirit took over, and what could he do but step
aside?
This kind of work of God, which interrupts us in
mid-sentence, brings on the surprising news that is really new, not the tired old stuff of human invention. I once read a headline
on the front page of our Presbytery’s newsletter that declared boldly,
“Presbytery Approves Discovering God.” Now, where was the controversy in that decision? Was it a split vote? But
when I read on, I discovered that the story had to do with an upcoming design
for the Presbytery’s work, called “Discovering God’s Call.” Oh. Well, that’s
not quite as funny. I am always in hopes that God’s surprising word will
intervene in the mundane places in our lives with a sort of newness that
interrupts us mid-sentence, especially if the sentence was about to say some
bland and predictable thing about a God who is author of something completely
unbland and non-predictable, like resurrection of the dead, something we don’t
just see every day.
Late in the life and ministry of one of those folks
who was sometimes called a “preachers’ preacher,” Pastor Edmund Steimle was
working up a sermon on one of the scripture passages for Holy Saturday, the day
before Easter. He read from Lamentations chapter 3, which declares: “God’s
mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” As he worked his way
through the passage Dr. Steimle thought to himself, “At my age, this promise of
newness every morning is at best a mixed blessing. I have come to the point in
life when I really don’t want anything
new in the morning. I want my slippers right beneath my bed where I left them
the night before. I want my orange juice and bran flakes for breakfast, as
normal. In my advanced years, I can do without a lot of newness, especially in
the morning.”[1]
Maybe he would have sounded like an old crank to some
of us, but to others of us, he declares the sort of thing we may have said just
this morning. And, of course, Easter is the ultimate in total morning newness.
How can we cope with it? We may think we have something to say about it, but
just as we begin to speak, the Spirit may intervene with the kind of new thing
that saves a day we thought could never be saved.
One fact of Easter that is inescapable is that God is
forever demonstrating something new God has in mind, something that it is
likely we did not expect. When it was created, did the earth expect dinosaurs,
orangutans, poison oak, Boeing 737s, $5.00 cups of coffee at Starbucks or that
there had once been water on its next-door neighbor planet? With God, as
Roseanne Rosanadana used to say, it’s always something. We might like to be in
our accustomed place, slippers on the floor next to the bed right where we left
them. We Presbyterians like to have votes and debates about whether we should
approve discovering God, if only God would stay put where we could get a bead
on him. We might have preferred sameness, we like things to stay where we put
them, we like to think we have the world under control, but things have a way
of getting rearranged by a God who, at the very least, seems to have a unique
sense of inventiveness if not humor.
Roman guards dozing beside Jesus’ tomb expected a
dead body to stay where it had been deposited, and their slippers to be right
where they left them the night before. Peter, who grew up in an orthodox
household, expected non-Jews always to be where they belonged in his
thought-world, on a lower rung in the kingdom of God than those who were
children of Abraham. But then along comes this shake-it-up God, and BAM! Even a
pagan Roman officer of the occupying army receives the very Spirit of God,
along with everyone in his unclean, non-kosher household.
I imagine Peter, standing slack-jawed, mid-sentence,
when, as the scripture said, he “was still speaking,” and “the Holy Spirit fell
upon all who heard the word.” All.
All as in every single person, Jew, Gentile, clean, unclean, tall, short, fat,
skinny, the one who just passed the bar exam on her first try and the one who
can’t pass a bar. God seemed to be making no distinction, showing no partiality
as Peter had begun to understand when he started his little speech about Jesus,
who was crucified and then rose from the dead to call forth disciples in his
name.
Isn’t it just like God, when we have no sooner found
our slippers and stocked up on orange juice and bran flakes, to pull the
breakfast rug out from under us and declare a new thing? Here are two poems, both by a modern English poet, Steve
Turner, who, as is generally the task of poets, takes us to a place where we
may receive fresh views on seemingly tired subjects and make them new every
morning. First, this take on Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion:
The Nail Man[2]
by Steve Turner
Which
one was it
that
held the nails
and
then hammered them
into
place?
Did
he hit them
out
of anger,
or
a simple
sense
of duty?
Was
it a job
that
had to be done,
or
a good day's work
in
the open air?
And
when they
clawed
past bone
and
bit into wood,
was
it like all the others,
or
did history
shudder
a little
beneath
the head
of
that hammer?
Was
he still there,
packing
away his tools,
when
‘It is finished’
was
uttered to the throng,
or
was he at home
washing
his hands
and
getting ready
for
the night?
Will
he be
among
the forgiven
on
that Day of Days,
his
sin having been slain
by his own savage spike?
Secondly, Steve Turner’s take on Easter Day, the Day
of resurrection:
Poem for Easter[3]
by Steve Turner
What
came first
Easter
or the egg?
Crucifixion
or daffodils?
Three
days in a tomb or four days
in
Paris? (returning
Bank
Holiday Monday).
When
is a door
not
a door?
When
it is rolled away.
When
is a body
not
a body?
When
it is risen.
Question.
Why
was it the Saviour
rode
on the cross?
Answer.
To
get us
to
the other side.
Behold
I stand.
Behold
I stand and what?
Behold
I stand at the door and
knock
knock.
Can
you even resist wanting to call out “Who’s there”? And the instant you say it,
even in your mind, you know the answer: “Jesus.” Ever new, ever alive, ever
willing to save the nail-driver who filled his body with pain as readily as
saintly people who feed the poor in a soup kitchen. All. Christ will have all.
God shows no partiality, that’s what Peter said he was beginning to realize. We
can realize it too. It’s a good Easter Sunday realization.
The
account of Peter’s visit to a Gentile soldier’s home in Caesarea is filled to
the brim with newness, it has the newness of grace for all, fairly bursting
from the page as we read it. Especially in this day as we see the resurgence of
tribalism and clanism in places like Iraq and American politics, Peter’s very
first words in Cornelius’ house are startling. An impartial God? I don’t know,
I might like to find my slippers right where I left them.
Then
again, I might like being found even more.
