2018.05.06 - Sermon

Acts 10:44-48 (The Message)
44-46 No sooner were these words out of Peter’s mouth than the Holy Spirit came on the listeners. The believing Jews who had come with Peter couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on “outsider” non-Jews, but there it was—they heard them speaking in tongues, heard them praising God.
46-48 Then Peter said, “Do I hear any objections to baptizing these friends with water? They’ve received the Holy Spirit exactly as we did.” Hearing no objections, he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
Then they asked Peter to stay on for a few days.

Sermon

What happens when the Holy Spirit’s agenda is not the same as our agenda?

When we lived in Haverhill, Ben and I did a lot of small group ministry out of our home. Often two or three nights a week, we had people gather around our dining room table to share a meal before diving into some activity together in the living room - studying a passage of scripture, talking about ways to serve our community, praying for one another, or some other faith formation experience. One favorite of ours was a question Bible Study, where we read a passage together, and then everyone would write down questions they had about the passage on strips of paper and then we’d organize the questions and talk about the text from there.

One particular evening, we had gathered in our living room with a mix of folks; there was Ken, the middle-aged, middle class business man, there was Patrick, the chronically anxious guy with severe depression who sweated bullets every time he mustered up enough courage to speak, there was Jennifer, a woman in recovery who also suffered short-term memory loss due to a brain injury and who worked overnights at a group home, there was Adam and his fiance Sarah, both of whom wrestled with health and weight issues and struggled to keep consistent employment. We had Bob - another guy in recovery who had just gotten out of jail and was working at the Salvation Army, and his friend John, another ex-felon in recovery who was struggling to find his way. We also had Jared and Cameron, friends who were baristas, in their twenties, trying to figure out life and taking their first steps into adulthood.

We were doing our question Bible study. I don’t remember the passage. I don’t remember if it was Ben or me who was leading that night. But we had gathered all the strips of paper with the questions on them and started reading them aloud, one after the other. And one question was clearly not like the others, so much so that it was tempting to ignore it -- because this was a Bible Study night, and this was not a Bible Study question. But whoever had put the question in would know that their question hadn’t been read aloud, and so the words came out.

The question was this: Why does my life suck so much?

Given the life circumstances of the people in that room, with everything they were dealing with in their lives, that question could have belonged to anybody. But as if on cue, all the heads in the room, at the same time, turned toward Adam, who was sitting on the couch, his head hanging low. It was Adam’s second or third time with us, but in that moment, he shared with his depression, his strained relationship with his daughter’s mother, and a whole host of other issues he was dealing with.

So instead of proceeding with what we had planned, instead of running off of that “good Bible study script” that we were trained how to do, we stopped - as a group - to be with Adam -- to listen to him, to pray for and with him - to honor his struggling and wrestling… to offer him the group’s support and love. The Holy Spirit had a different plan for that evening - and in that moment, we were able to notice enough of what was going to follow the Spirit’s lead and to put aside what we thought was supposed to happen.

When the Spirit acts, we pay attention, and that’s what we have in this passage from the book of Acts this morning. To give you the context of what is going on, we have to back up the story a bit. It starts with a man named Cornelius, a Gentile - a Roman centurion - who lives in Caesarea, who is a God-fearer. One day he sees an angel of the Lord, who tells him to call for Simon Peter, and so he sends some men to fetch Peter from Joppa which is about 30 miles away from Caesarea.  

While the men are on their way, the scene shifts and we have Peter going up to the roof to pray around lunchtime and he sees this sheet descend from heaven with all kinds of four-footed creatures and birds and reptiles on it. He hears a voice saying, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” Peter protests, and the voice insists, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happens three times and Peter is pretty bewildered by what has happened.

In the meantime, these messengers arrive from Cornelius, and Peter goes with them, along with some of the faithful from Joppa. When they get to Cornelius’s house, Peter starts to put two and two together - the sheet, the unclean animals, the Gentile household, and realizes that something bigger than himself is going on here; that God might be trying to tell him that the Gentiles - who were considered by Jews to be unclean - were not actually profane or unclean...and, in fact, God might actually be including them in this new way of life in Christ. He launches into a sermon to that effect, about how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power -- and right in the middle of his speech, the Holy Spirit descends and we have these Gentiles speaking in tongues, praising God. The Jewish believers who came with Peter can’t believe it, but neither do they have any problem when Peter asked  “Do I hear any objections to baptizing these friends with water? They’ve received the Holy Spirit exactly as we did.”

The Holy Spirit cannot be contained or controlled, and has a tendency to move in ways we haven’t thought possible….and even move out in the world, out beyond the bounds of the church.

We got an inkling of that last week - where the Holy Spirit was working in an Ethiopian eunuch, a man who was clearly an outsider because of his status as a eunuch, and the spirit connected him with Philip and led him to desire the waters of baptism and inclusion into the fold. This week, we see how the Holy Spirit erased the distinction Jews had set up between themselves and the Gentiles, to the shock and surprise and - perhaps even discomfort - of the good, observant Jews who had come with Peter to Caesarea. We see the Holy Spirit moving out in the wider world, not confined to the Apostles and their followers, but working in hearts and communities to bring them into relationship with God... breaking the traditions of these early Jewish Jesus followers wide open as it did so.

Peter was able to see what was happening; God had been working in him to bring him to the point of being able to follow when the winds of the Spirit descended; he had been listening and paying attention, pondering the vision he had, and trusting that somehow it would all come together when the moment was right. So when the Holy Spirit showed up, he was able to name what was happening for those around him, put the pieces together, and be about the work of extending God’s kingdom.

It makes me think - where might the Holy Spirit be moving in this congregation today? Where might the Holy Spirit be working out in our community that we as a church need to get in on? What is God trying to say to us through the Holy Spirit that we need to pay attention to?

I’ve only lived here for not even three years yet, so what I see and what I hear about life on our island may be different or incomplete as some of you who have grown up here or who have summered here or who have had a longer connection to this place. But what I do know is that Chebeague is changing. The older generation is passing away, and with them leaves much of the island’s history, its stories and its identity. There is so much grief - both in missing those loved ones in our community and in the way of life that seems to be slipping away with each passing. There is worry and anxiety around who will fill the shoes of these matriarchs and patriarchs and carry on the traditions of this place...there’s worry and anxiety that change is happening too fast; that people are burning out because they are tapped for too many committees with too many organizations, that the way we are doing things is unsustainable. In and amongst all this, we face the same issues that many communities face all over - with neighbors who live in poverty, wrestle with food insecurity, addiction, or mental illness.

At the same time, new families are moving to the island, wanting to build a life here, looking for year-round housing and for a caring community. There’s something here in this place that draws people to its shores. People are looking for a community that reminds them of a simpler time, a less hurried and frantic pace, that invites you to slow down and to get to know your neighbors. Now - we aren’t like that all the time - especially as we head into the summer season - but so many people who come to this place - to this island - want to come back. Such an influx of people brings mixed blessings - new ideas and new energies...and new ideas and new energies that aren’t the same as what we’re used to.

The church - our church - seems to be caught between these two realities….between reliving what has been and is no more, and the energy of the new and possibile; between the desire to cling fast to what seems to be slipping through our fingers and the desire to open our hands and let go to receive new dreams and visions, between memorializing our ancestors in a mausoleum and standing on their shoulders to step boldly into what our church - and our community - can be together.

Church historian Rosemary Radford Reuther has this to say about the church - that it must be organized to do two things:

1. To pass on the tradition from one generation to another
   
2. To be open to the winds of the Holy Spirit by which the tradition comes alive in each generation.
   

The tradition that Reuther speaks of is a living tradition - it’s the tradition of being faithful to Jesus, of following the risen Christ, of spreading the work of God’s kingdom and making that kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven...and our task is to see how that faith comes alive with each new group of people it takes root in; and it may look similar to ours...and it may look very different.

Incidentally, passing along this tradition is something that we as a church believe is important as well - one of the core values of our life together is Rootedness -  We believe that new shoots come from strong roots. The winds of change may blow, but our roots sustain us and enable us to grow and flourish. Our traditions, faith, and connection to this island give us strength to pass on the seeds of love to the next generation.

Peter’s rootedness - in the rich tradition of the Jewish faith, in his dedication to Christ, in his listening to the Holy Spirit - enabled him to see this new thing that God was doing. In that moment, Peter chose not to run off of the established scripts of his tradition to try and manage the work of God; he didn’t make them take membership classes or memorize doctrine or convert to Judaism, as would have been the tradition at the time. Peter chose the work of the kingdom, the new opportunities and possibilities God was opening up with the inclusion of the Gentiles into this new faith community.

Like Peter, we are challenged not to run off old scripts, but instead we are invited to chose the work of the kingdom, to see what God is doing, to be open to the winds of the Holy Spirit to see where new energies, new possibilities - where the kingdom is sprouting forth in our community. We’re invited to tend our rootedness in faith - through prayer and study - and continually be seeking what the spirit might be saying to the church in our present time and place.

I invite us this week to prayerfully consider as we think about where we are as a congregation and where our island community is right now: what might God be saying to us through the Holy Spirit about who we’re called to be as a church? What old scripts might we need to ignore in favor of the living tradition of faith? Where do we need to give up our agenda in favor of that of the Holy Spirit’s?

I don’t have answers as to the challenges we face or the opportunities that might present themselves - maybe none of us do right now - but we have the Holy Spirit, and the ability to prayerfully listen - and to respond to our community out of that place of openness and discernment rather than out of fear or pain, and to choose God’s kingdom work for our community. May we seek to follow that Spirit this week, in all that we do. Amen.

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