"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
How Jesus invites people of all nations and creeds into His Kingdon
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Chris Miller
Sunday, May 13, 2001
Text: Acts 11:1-18
If we had had the time this morning, I would have had the scripture reading start in the previous chapter, Acts Chapter 10, and finish at Chapter 11, Verse 18, where we finished this morning.
There are some 66 verses in all containing a very vivid story, the story of Cornelius, and ending with Peter's speech to some of his associates in Jerusalem.
It's the longest narrative in Acts. If we were to judge solely on the basis of the amount of space that the author, Luke, gives to the story, we would know that we are dealing here with something very important and very crucial. It's really, as William Willeman states it, a crucial concern in Acts.
It's a pivot for the entire book, a turning point in the drama of redemption: the story of Cornelius, a captain of the Italian Guard, stationed in Caesarea, and Peter, a fisherman, staying at the home of Simon the Tanner, in the town of Joppa. It sounds so human, doesn't it? Here are two individuals, two players in this great drama: Peter - impulsive, hard-headed, passionate, devout and even courageous at times.
Here Peter tries to describe an experience that has so stretched, in fact even shattered, his ingrained beliefs and understandings of who God is and how God operates - beliefs and understandings that he has so strongly held ever since childhood. It's not an easy story to tell, especially when you are all alone in the experience. “Will they believe me?” I can just imagine Peter saying “Will they believe me, or just think that I am out of my mind?”
I remember reading in one of Keith Miller's little devotional books, a story that he related of one day when he was off to work. Keith would often drive his motorcycle to work. (I think he had one of these little Hondas.) He was on the highway, this particular day, when he spotted a little turtle in the middle of the road. As he didn't want the turtle to get run over, he stopped his motorcycle and picked it up. He tucked it away in his bag and then headed off to work.
When he got to work, he suddenly reached in his bag and remembered that he had this little turtle. He took out the turtle and put it on his desk. All day, this little turtle was in a little cubicle on his desk. Well, everybody came around wanting to see the little turtle - all the secretaries, all the executives. This became a very pampered turtle. He was even given a name - Alexander. So Alexander, from the morning through the afternoon, was given cake, ice cream, cookies. He was petted and given all the water he wanted. What a great day in Alexander's life!
Then the end of the day came. Keith put the turtle back in his bag and headed off on his Honda. He got close to the place where he had picked him up. He stopped and took the turtle over to the other side of the road. He put him by the side of the road and then headed off.
I have often wondered if animals can speak, and I wondered, if little Alexander could have talked about his experience that day, what he would have done.
He'd have gone home and burrowed there. He'd have seen all of his other little friends and he would have said: “Guess what happened to me today? I got picked up by this tall giant, and I got driven to this incredible tree-house. I got fed this incredible food: ice cream, and cake, and cookies, and they petted my back. It felt so good.”
I wondered what they would have said to him. I wondered if they would have thought he had drunk the wrong kind of water that day, or eaten something different. Would they have believed him? Would they believe Peter?
Now, the news of what happened to Peter travelled fast, even if he didn't have any e-mail. When he returned to Jerusalem, Peter found himself, as we all do from time to time, on the carpet, because Peter had behaved as he ought not to have done. He had behaved in a manner that was without precedent in Jewish life. He had, as one translation puts it, rubbed shoulders with that crowd: with Gentiles, with outsiders, the wrong crowd. They were on the other side of the track. In Peter's time, they were the uncircumcised men.
He had eaten with them. He had eaten even what was prohibited, and, for some in Jerusalem, this meant: “He has ruined our good name.”
“How could this have happened?”
“Why did you, Peter, a leader among us, why did you do this? How could you go to these Gentiles, these uncircumcised men, these outsiders, and have table fellowship with them? How could you eat with them?”
These questions are really critical. They are not merely laws for the sake of having laws to be followed.
I am old enough to remember that there was a time, at least in the Christian community in which I grew up, when I had to be careful about not dancing, about not smoking, about not drinking, even about not going to movies. Prior to that, I am told, they could not even go to the bowling alley. I don't know whether our young people today have any such rules, but we have to tell them about those anyway.
These questions, relating to Peter's actions, are not critical like that. They are critical because the real difference is that they strike at the very heart of the identity, even the very survival, of the Jewish people.
You see, they were an occupied people, if you remember. They were occupied by the Romans. They were a minority within a majority. The keeping of these sacred dietary laws of what is clean and unclean, of what can and can't be eaten, whether to intermarry or not (they ought not to, obviously), and even sitting down at the same table and eating with those who themselves eat what is unclean, these very things are a matter, not just of cultural taste, but of survival and identity in the midst of a culture that desires to assimilate them, and desires to make them like everyone else.
Yet, can it be that, tucked away in Peter's mind and heart and spirit, through all the time he's been with Jesus, can it be that these laws are really being supplanted by some other basis, an even deeper basis, for survival and for identity? Peter knows he's got some explaining to do. He starts from the beginning and recounts his story for them.
When you look through Acts Chapters 10 and 11, the story gets repeated at least three times. That tells us that this is an important story. It is significant in the whole canon of Acts, and it's right in the middle. From then on the faith takes on new dimensions.
So he recounts for them, step by step, this incredible vision, on the rooftop of Simon the Tanner, of a sheet that comes down filled with every kind of unclean animal, unclean reptile and bird, every imaginable one you can think of.
Then he recounts his meeting with the good captain, Cornelius, the Gentile, who had himself, remember, experienced a vision from God, telling him to go and find Peter and listen to what he had to say. He even recounted the story of the Holy Spirit falling on these Gentile visitors, just as the Spirit had fallen on them. Then Peter, finally remembering Jesus' words about baptizing with water and with the Spirit, baptized Cornelius and his friends with water.
What a story. Peter's life is forever changed. His identity is forever altered, his relationships forever transformed. But equally, if not more importantly, the direction of the then-new faith is also forever altered. No longer will there be insiders and outsiders, if there really every were in God's economy. No longer will the faith be just for some, and not for others, if that ever was the case.
This is really the kernel, the nub, the significance of the story, because we, as Christians today, are no longer outsiders. You see, we are now part of a family, a community in which there is meant to be, in fact, no division: There is no Jew, no Gentile. There is no male, no female. There is no free person, no slave. We are as we are because of this vision in Joppa a long time ago. Everyone is welcome to dinner, to the table of fellowship, because God plays no favourites.
Blaise Pascal was one of the leading scientists and mathematicians in the mid-1600s. He did some amazing work, from which we benefit even today. His work on the vacuum, on the mathematics of the cycloid and on conic sections, led him to the solution of problems on which the best minds of his time were engaged. Furthermore, he was an incredible inventor, very practical. He gave the world the calculating machine and also devised the first public bus service (I think we should invite him to Toronto, don't you agree?), the first syringe and the first wristwatch.
But the defining moment for Pascal, the central moment of his life, was not that in which he proved the existence of the vacuum. It was his vision, of two hours' duration, on the night of November 23, 1654. Ever afterwards, Pascal carried the record he wrote down of that vision on a parchment tucked around his neck. This is what he wrote:
The Year of Grace 1654, Monday, 23rd November; Feast of St. Clement, Pope and Martyr, and of others in the Martyrology; Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, Martyr, and others; from about 10.30 in the evening until 12.30, fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and savants; certitude, feeling, joy, peace; God of Jesus Christ, my God and thy God: Thy God shall be my God. Forgetfulness of the world and everything except God. He is to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel. Grandeur of the human soul. Righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I have fallen from Him. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. My God, wilt Thou forsake me? May I not fall from him forever. This is life eternal that I might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. I have fallen away, I have fled from him, denied him, crucified him. May I not fall from him forever. We hold him only by the ways taught in the Gospel: renunciation, total and sweet; total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director. Eternally in joy for a day's exercise on earth, I will not forget Thy word. Amen.
… in a parchment around his neck, so that he would never forget: I can imagine that often, on the most difficult of days, he held it close to his heart.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world, according to John Ruskin, the British writer and art critic, is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk, for one who can think; but thousands can think, for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.
Peter saw clearly. Cornelius saw clearly. The other Gentiles saw clearly. The Jewish believers saw clearly. We see clearly, not by our own efforts or insight, but because of the Holy Spirit.
When you go home and re-read this whole episode, you will notice something quite remarkable: this theme that God orchestrated every move. It was God's spirit that spoke to Cornelius in the beginning. It was that same God's spirit that spoke to Peter, that motivated him to act. It was that same God's spirit that convinced Peter of a startling, new, unnerving disclosure. It was God's spirit that fell upon those Gentile believers, confirming their conversion.
I like the way William Willeman describes it: “The real hero of the story, the star of the drama, is not Peter nor Cornelius, but the gracious and prodding one, the one who makes bold promises and keeps them, who finds a way, even in the midst of human distinctions and partiality between persons.”
Dr. Fred Craddock, who spoke here in last summer's preaching series, tells a wonderful story about a vacation that he had with his wife, one summer, in Tennessee.
As preachers are wont to do from time to time, they wanted to find a quiet, little restaurant, where they could have a private meal together. He found just such a place. While they were waiting for their food, they noticed this distinguished-looking, white-haired gentleman moving from table to table. He was visiting with the guests. Craddock leaned over and whispered to his wife: “I really hope he doesn't come here.” He didn't want anyone intruding on his privacy.
Sure enough, that man came over and he said: “Where are you folks from?”
“Oklahoma,” Craddock answered.
“Splendid state, although I've never been there,” the stranger said. “What do you do for a living?”
“Well, I teach homiletics,” said Craddock “at the Graduate Seminary at Phillips University.”
“Oh, so you teach preachers how to preach, do you? Well, I've got a story to tell you.” (I don't know if that's the bane of preachers, because everybody has a story to tell us. But that's all right.)
With that, the gentleman pulled up a chair and he sat down at the table with Dr. Craddock and his wife. Can't you just hear the groan? “Oh no. Here comes another one.” (It seems everybody has at least one.)
So the man stuck out his hand and said: “I am Ben Hooper. I was born not far from here, just across the mountains. My mother wasn't married when I was born, so I had a pretty hard time as a child. When I started school, my classmates had a name for me and it wasn't very nice. I used to go off by myself at recess, and at lunch, because the things that they said to me cut so deep. What was worse, was going to town on Saturday afternoons and feeling like every eye was burning a hole through me, wondering just who my father was.
“Well, when I was about 12 years old, a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early; but, one day, the preacher said the benediction so fast that I got caught, and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in the church on me - at least, it seemed that way.
“Just about the time I got to the door, I felt this big hand on my shoulder. I looked up, and the preacher was looking right into my eyes. ”˜Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?'
“I felt this big weight coming down on me. I felt like a black cloud was coming around me again. Even the preacher was putting me down; but, as he looked at me and studied my face, he began to smile this big smile of recognition.
”˜Wait a minute,' he said, ”˜I know who you are. I see the family resemblance now. You are a child of God.' And with that, he slapped me across the rump, and he said: ”˜Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Now go and claim it.' ”
The old man looked across the table at Fred Craddock and said: “Those were the most important words that anybody ever said to me and I have never forgotten them.”
Craddock, who knew something about Tennessee, remembered that there were at least two governors in the state who were born from single mothers, and the name of one of them was Ben Hooper.
In the last verse of our text this morning, it says: “When they heard this, they had no further objections and they praised God saying: ”˜So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.'”
“It has really happened,” says another translation, “God has broken through to the other nations. He has opened them up to life.” And it is God's doing, on God's terms, on God's agenda, at God's table of fellowship.
And so, this morning and each and every day, you and I, our families, our friends, our enemies, even the whole world, are invited to dinner. As the stained glass window behind me, and in front of you, reminds us so vividly, from the Revelation of John: “Listen,” Jesus said, “I am standing and knocking at your door. If you hear my voice and you open the door,” (you see the latch is only on the inside, not on the outside) “I will come in and we will eat together.” Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.