O For a Thousand Tongues

Charles Wesley

My first church appointment out of seminary was not in this country. A lot of people joked with me when I came to the Eastern Shore about my “overseas mission” but I had a previous overseas mission to England. For a year Suzanne and I served in the British Methodist Church on the York:South Circuit in northern England. It was a great year. We got steeped in English history, learned how to drink hot tea properly, and came to love fish and chips. I also got to meet my first British eccentrics.

You know these folks. People who have an extraordinary interest in very specific subjects. Like Cyril Nutbrown, who was an inventor and who used to tell me all about his latest ideas. When I left England he was ready to revolutionize the potato chip industry because he had figured out that if the packagers would just put the opening to a bag on the side rather than along the narrow top then people would be able to get more of their hand into the bag and would therefore grab more chips with each dip into the bag and would therefore eat more chips.

Cyril could tell you everything you needed to know about potato chip bags, but Oliver Beckerlegge could tell you anything you could ever want to know about Charles Wesley. Oliver was a retired Methodist minister who kind of took me under his wing at Methodist gatherings in York. He was probably in his 80s when I met him and I didn’t realize then what an accomplished man I was meeting. Oliver was the editor of Charles Wesley’s unpublished works. He also compiled all the names of Methodist ministers who served from 1797 to 1932. He was such an eccentric that he actually had an entry in The Indexer, the international journal of indexing, the mark of a true professional, but that’s another story. What really put the fire in Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes was Charles Wesley.

Now why should that be? Many of you may not even know who Charles Wesley is or was. What is it about him that would inspire an aging Methodist preacher to devote so much time and energy to studying him? Well, this being the 300th birthday of Charles Wesley I think you ought to know about the object of Oliver Beckerlegge’s passion. Because his passion was not just about Charles Wesley. His ultimate passion was for God and his desire was that everyone should find the words to do what we were all designed to do, which is to praise God.

Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707 about 30 miles down the road from York in a place called Epworth. It’s still a small town in the Lincolnshire countryside. His older brother was John Wesley, who is usually credited with being the first Methodist, and their paths were closely intertwined for the rest of their lives.

Their father was a priest in the Church of England, an institution which was at one of the lowest points in its history. There were many people who felt that all the fire had gone out of the church. The church still had a prominent place in the society, but it seemed to have no power to move the people to love God. Even so, John and Charles were soon set on a course to being priests, partly as a result of their mother, Susannah, who is one of the most energetic figures in our history. She had 19 children, 10 of whom reached adulthood. Even with all those children, she devoted an hour each day to teaching each individual child. It had a profound impact on the brothers.

John grew up to be the driven, public leader with many of the qualities of his mother. Charles was a little more carefree. They both went to Oxford and one day John was trying to counsel his younger brother to be a little more restrained and studious. Charles replied, “What, would you have me to become a saint all at once?”[i] But he eventually did buckle down and become a pretty good scholar. He mastered seven languages and followed John into the priesthood.

In 1735 the two brothers took off as missionaries to Georgia. It was not a pretty sight. Charles got shot at, slandered and shunned. By December of the next year he was back in England, a broken and discouraged man. John lasted another year and then came back in a similar state. Someone who saw the two soon after John returned said that Charles was “at present very much distressed in his mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the Saviour.”[ii] It was a dark period.

But then came a remarkable week in May. The two brothers were in London and Charles was lying ill in the home of some Moravians, a small band of Christians whose faith had inspired him in Georgia. On May 21st he opened his bible to Isaiah 40:1, which reads: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” In the care of the comforting Moravians he was changed at that moment. He wrote in his journal, “I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ…I saw that by faith I stood, by the continual support of faith…I went to bed still sensible of my own weakness…yet confident of Christ’s protection.”[iii] Three days later his brother, John, was sitting in a service at a meetinghouse on Aldersgate Street when he felt his heart strangely warmed. It was the week of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit had embraced the Wesley brothers. They were never the same. Neither was England.

Right away Charles Wesley started writing a hymn. It was the first of about 6,500 hymns. He wrote and additional 2,500 poems. Some have figured that this means he wrote an average of twelve lines of hymnody every day, seven days a week, for the next 50 years.[iv]

But this is the thing that made Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes light up when he talked about Charles Wesley: It wasn’t just that he was prolific, but Wesley knew how to give people words that allowed their hearts to sing. There has been a legend in Methodist circles for many years that Wesley took old bar tunes and set his words to them so that people would sing them. That’s probably not true, but it is true that people took to Charles’ gift.

Methodists changed the world by singing their faith. That was new. There was music in Anglican churches and in other Christian churches, but it was primarily done by large, formal choirs. Methodists believed that everybody could sing….that everybody should sing! One year after his conversion, the Methodists had their first hymnal made up almost entirely of songs by Charles. Before John Wesley died in 1791, he had published at least 64 hymnals,[v] and Methodists were singing at the top of their lungs. One observer said of them, “Never did I hear such praying or such singing. Their singing was not only the most harmonious and delightful I ever heard, but they sang ‘lustily and with a good courage’….If there be such a thing as heavenly music upon earth I heard it there.”[vi]

One year after his conversion, Wesley wrote a hymn to recognize the anniversary of his being claimed by Christ and sent forth by the Holy Spirit. In it he talked about how much he wanted to multiply the praise he wanted to give to God. In the hymn he calls for others to join him in singing – especially those who felt far off from God, who were wounded and searching and looking for God to come and save them. You probably know this song. It has been at the front of many, many editions of Methodist hymnals, including our current one.

1. O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace.

3. Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
'Tis music in the sinner's ears,
'Tis life, and health, and peace.

4. He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me.

5. He speaks; and listening to His voice,
New life the dead receive,
The mournful broken hearts rejoice
The humble poor believe

6. Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come;
And leap, ye lame for joy!

There were other verses, too, that didn’t make the hymnal. 18 of them in all. And in these other verses Charles was trying to extend the realm of singers. He knew what his life had been like. He knew that coming to know Christ had not just a little bit of his life – it had changed everything about his life. He knew he had no more right to the kingdom than the lowliest person he met. They were all welcomed in by God’s grace:

Harlots and publicans and thieves,
In holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes
From crimes as great as mine.

Murderers and all ye hellish crew,
Ye sons of lust and pride,
Believe the Savior died for you;
For me the Savior died.

With me, your chief, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below
And own that love is heaven.

There were other Wesley songs that have survived, too. When we sing at Christmas time, “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn king!’” we are singing the words of Charles Wesley. When we sing on Easter morning, “Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!” we are singing the words of Charles Wesley. When we gather at annual conference in a month’s time, one of the first songs we will sing is one that Methodists have been singing a long time: “And are we yet alive and see each other’s face? Glory and thanks to Jesus give for his almighty grace!” Those, too, are the words of Charles Wesley.

We still sing these songs because the words have not lost their power to tell us who we are and how great God’s saving grace is. They are full of references to Scripture. When Bernard Manning looked at the Wesley’s hymns he found that there were only five books that weren’t represented: Ezra, Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Third John.”[vii] You may not have heard of Nahum and Zephaniah, but if Wesley had written a hymn about them you might have!

Charles also knew how important it was to lift up the love of God. He didn’t have any illusions about what the world was like or what our lives are like when they are trapped in sin. He was capable of describing it in some graphic detail. Like us, he lived in a time of wars and he wrote about it in a poem he called “For universal peace.” We’ve got it on page 449 of our hymnal:

1. Our earth we now lament to see
With floods of wickedness o’erflowed,
With violence, wrong, and cruelty,
One wide-extended field of blood,
Where men like fiends, each other tear
In all the hellish rage of war.

In the second hymn he uses Satanic images from the book of Revelation and a reference to the child sacrifices condemned in Jeremiah and 2 Kings to talk about the devastating consequences of human violence:

2. As listed on Abbadon’s side,
They mangle their own flesh, and slay;
Tophet is moved, and opens wide
Its mouth for its enormous prey;
And myriads sink beneath the grave,
And plunge into the flaming wave.

Then there is the plea for peace:

3. O might the universal Friend
The havoc of his creatures see!
Bid our unnatural discord end,
Declare us reconciled in thee!
Write kindness on our inward parts
And chase the murderer from our hearts!

Wesley knew that death and destruction could not ultimately win the day. God had already claimed that prize through Jesus and the cross. That’s why he could also write these words in one of my favorite Wesley hymns ‘Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown’:

’Tis love! ‘Tis love! Thou diedst for me,
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, Universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move;
Thy nature and thy name is love.

That’s the vision that made Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes glimmer. He knew how much life and beauty and energy had been captured in the words of that old eighteenth century Methodist. He knew that in the harmonies of heaven, there is a strain that rings with Wesley’s words of praise. I suspect Oliver is singing those words right now.

So why do we care? Why do we bother to remember a 300-year-old poet? Because there is still a place for poetry. There is still a place for people who can look at this world and see beauty. There is still a place for words that open worlds untold. There is still a place for people who can talk without shame and without hesitation about a love that lies behind all the dangers and darkness of the world.

In the gospel reading for today, Jesus prays to God for his disciples, that they may be one. He knew that they would be tempted to division and breaking apart. He knew that the world would doubt their story. So what he prays for is that they will be united and in their unity they would testify to the love that God showed forth on Jesus and in Jesus. And because God loved Jesus, God loved the followers of Jesus and because God loved them and drew them together into a new community, it showed that God’s love has the power to overcome all those things that threaten to pull us apart and that threaten to make us less than God’s own people.

We still have that calling…to be one people…but to offer praise in our language, in our tongue. We all have a song to sing to God. You know molecular biologists have discovered that when you get right down to it…down into the cells, into the atoms, into the smallest fragments of the way we are made…at the most basic level, what we are made of is vibrations. Each of us is a tone, a unique note quavering to a beat we cannot even consciously acknowledge. That note is singing a song of praise to God. What we need is to liberate that song so that we can join the angels in singing. How can we keep from singing?

So happy birthday to Charles Wesley. And thanks be to Oliver Beckerlegge and all the other eccentric saints of God who have not been ashamed to lift up their voices in praise of the God who has not let us go and will not let the world be until it becomes the place it was created to be – the realm of God’s glory. Thanks be to God.

John 17:20-26
“I do not ask this only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one. Just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so may they also be one in us, so that the world might believe that you sent me. The glory you have given to me, I have given them, so that they can be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me, so that they may be made perfect in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them just as you have loved me.

“Father, those whom you have give me, I will it that where I am they may be there with me, so that they may see my glory, which you have given to me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. Just Father, the world has not come to know you, but I know you and these know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

[i] www.igracemusic.com/hymnbook/authors/charles_wesley.html
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] William C. Goold, Good News, May/June 2007.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.

Discovering Ourselves Across the Waters

Acts 16:9-15
In the night, Paul had a vision. A certain Macedonian man was standing and calling to him, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us."
Since he had seen the vision, we immediately sought to go into Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to preach good news to them. We put to sea from Troas, on a straight course to Samothrace, followed the next day by Neapolis. From that place we came into Philippi, which is in the first ranks of the Macedonian cities and a colony. We stayed in this city for several days.
On the day of the Sabbath we went outside of the gate by the river where we supposed prayer would be happening, and taking a seating position we spoke to the women gathered there. Then a certain woman named Lydia, a dealer in fine purple cloth from the city of Tiatira and a worshipper of God, heard. The Lord opened up her heart completely to attend to what Paul was saying. When she was baptized along with her whole household, she beseeched us, saying, "If you judge me to be a believer in the Lord, come stay in my house." So she prevailed upon us.

One of the things that I live with as a pastor is the fact that there are a fair number of people who think that what I do makes absolutely no sense. There are not many people who question the need for builders, janitors, teachers, police officers, store managers, or farm workers. If there were no farm workers it would be pretty evident pretty quickly that we have a serious problem. But pastors? What would change in our world if there were no pastors? And by extension there is a question for you. Christians? What is it that Christians do that we would miss if they weren't there?

There are some people who are asking that very question. Recently some high-profile books have been written by authors who feel like religion is not only nonsensical but it actually has some negative effects on the world. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher, has written two books recently, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, which call faith into question.

“Religious faith is a conversation stopper,” Harris says. “The only thing that guarantees a truly open-ended collaboration among human beings is their willingness to have their views (and resulting behavior) modified by conversation--by new evidence and new arguments. Otherwise, when the stakes are high, there is nothing to appeal to but force. If I believe that I can get to Paradise by flying a plane into a building, and I am content to believe this without evidence, then there will be nothing another person can say to dissuade me, because my leap of faith has made me immune to the powers of conversation.”[i] Harris is basically saying that religion, faith, can lead people to do crazy things…terrible things because how do you convince them otherwise? He assumes that because there is no rational evidence for faith it will always lead to irrational acts.

Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist, has also written a new book on atheism entitled God is not Great. He also believes that religion, including the Christian faith, is a leftover from days of superstition and that it causes people to hate others rather than to love them. “Religion has been an enormous multiplier of tribal suspicion and hatred,” Hitchens says, “with members of each group talking of the other in precisely the tones of the bigot.”[ii]

These are intelligent guys and fascinating to listen to. I respect their insight and their challenge. But they don’t respect what I do and they don’t respect who we are because they have come to see faith, whether Islamic or Buddhist or Christian, as irrational, unyielding, inhumane, bigoted, hate-filled and bound to old, old beliefs. Interesting. It would be easy to respond by pulling out defensive slogans, like a T-shirt I once saw that said, “God is dead, and it credited the quote to the philosopher Frederich Nietzsche. Then it said, ‘Nietzsche is dead’ – God.” But there’s something to be learned from listening to our critics. Christianity needs some evangelists who will listen and respond and help others to see what true Christian community looks like. Books like these also challenge us to look again at what we do believe and why we believe it. What is the ground of our hope? It’s a new mission field.

But I really didn’t come here today to talk about Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. I came here to talk about the Holy Spirit because that’s what sends us forth into these mission fields. The Holy Spirit is what grabs hold of us and rattles our cages and turns our world upside down and gives us visions of things we have never seen and sends us places we have never gone. If we look unusual or even threatening to the world, it is because the Holy Spirit has made us different from the rest of the world.

The story we have from the scriptures today is one that gives us a blueprint for what all Christian outreach and evangelism is about. In a lot of ways it is similar to the story we had last week about Peter and his vision in the sailcloth. You remember that Peter’s vision was of animals – creatures that had been declared unclean by the law of Moses. A voice comes to Peter and tells him to kill and eat and he resists, but it is a vision that changes everything. The door was being opened for new things to happen and new people to come in. The result was that Peter baptized a Roman soldier and his family causing a big crisis within the early Christian church. God was opening the door to foreigners to come into the faith.

Well, the vision in today’s story is very similar. Paul had been traveling as an apostle to the Gentiles – the nations. But his journeys had only taken him within Asia. But he has a vision. In a dream he sees a Macedonian man standing on the other side of the strait that separates Asia from Europe. The Macedonian says, “Come across and help us.” It was a crazy thing to do. A dangerous thing to do. Christians had no foothold in Europe. There was no compelling reason to go. No precedent. But when the Holy Spirit had fallen at Pentecost Peter had remembered the words of the prophet Joel – “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, your old people dream dreams.” Visions had an impact. Dreams meant something. It was tested by the community. There were conferences to determine whether things were ‘of God’ or not. But people did not believe that God had stopped communicating. God still had things to do and Paul and the early missionaries were caught up in the energy of the Holy Spirit.

So when the vision of the man from Macedonia comes along, Paul and his companions go. Luke, who wrote Acts, says, “We sought to go immediately because we were convinced that God was calling us to preach the good news in this new place.” So they sailed and they traveled to Philippi, a major city in the area of Macedonia.

But listen to what they did. They didn’t just set up on a street corner and begin to preach. The scripture says they stayed in the city several days. They were getting the lay of the land. Trying to understand this new environment. Trying to listen for what God wanted them to do.

Philippi was on the main road across Macedonia. It would be a place where all sorts of ideas were in the air. All sorts of religions would have been represented. It was also a colony of Rome, which meant that it had a lot of Roman features. This was a cosmopolitan place – a crossroads of the world.

Does this sound familiar? The Eastern Shore may not be the crossroads of the world, but we know something about living in a nation where a lot of different ideas are in the air. We know something about living in a world where religion is a question of debate and a source of energy and tension. We know something about looking around at the world and wondering, ‘How do we speak to this place? These people? This time?’

Well, that’s what Paul and these early disciples were doing. They spent several days in the city, and then on the Jewish Sabbath, they went looking for the place where Jews would gather to pray. This was outside the city gates, down by the river. What they found was a small group of women, including Lydia, a businesswoman who dealt in clothes dyed in purple. They sat down and began to talk and in the midst of their talking, it happened. Lydia heard. I mean, really heard. She believed and on the spot she and her entire house were baptized.

The Holy Spirit was in Europe, too. And the same sorts of things that the disciples had seen happening in Asia were now happening here. Lives were changed. Lost people were found. Women who lived on the edge were brought to the center. And people who were searching for life and love and hope, found it. Lydia said, “If you think I’m a believer…if you think I can be…come, stay in my house with my family.” Lydia was the first European Christian.

So what’s the word for us? There is a word for us here. One of the things that make people like Harris and Hitchens shake their heads at us Christians is that we read this story, which is an old history lesson from two millennia ago and we believe that God has something to say to us through it. How can that be? What do Paul and Luke and Lydia have to tell us 21st century people?

Maybe it’s the message that we have been here before. As Christians we have been in this situation before. There have been times in our history before when we have had to listen for a voice, search for a new vision, change the way we have done things. The early church began as a small band of Jews in Jerusalem in a far-off corner of the Roman Empire. But the Holy Spirit came on them and it was suddenly clear that things were going to get uncomfortable. Peter had a vision and they realized that it was now going to be O.K. to let in people they didn’t think they could. Paul had a vision and it took them one step further. Now we don’t just welcome those who come, we go to them, even if it means going to places that we have never been.

The truth is being learned over and over again. If you want something you’ve never had – like an experience of the Holy Spirit – you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done. If you want something you’ve never had, you’re going to have to do something you’ve never done. And when the church has listened to that challenge and acted in that way, it has been embraced by the Holy Spirit all over again.

And the kingdom grows, not by domination, not by the sword, not by hate, and not by ignorance and failing to listen – the kingdom grows by going to be with people where they are and sitting down with them and talking with them and going into their homes. Those are all the methods that Paul used. And it challenges us to a relational form of evangelism – that keeps reaching out.

You know people who are thirsting for a word of truth. You know people who are hurting. You know people who don’t want to be beat over the head with another sales pitch. They just want someone to listen to them. They just want someone whom they can look at and see in their lives a bit of integrity. They want to see someone who is earnestly struggling to be a better person and who is doing that because they have had an encounter with the Living Christ. Will you be the person to whom they can look? Will you be the one who sits with them and offers a word of hope?

This week a lot of the small groups in our church are beginning a study of the book The Myth of the 200 Barrier. It’s a book that’s going to get us asking a lot of questions about ourselves. The 200 in the title refers to the Average Sunday Attendance in a church, which happens to be about where we are. The book describes what happens in churches that are our size.

Now you might wonder – why the emphasis on numbers? Isn’t our size the right size? The size God has created us to be? What is our purpose in reading this? Are we focusing on numbers over quality of ministry? Why are we rocking the boat? Why are we talking about change?
Those are good questions. And I hope you’ll ask them as you go through this study. But one thing the Vision and Design Team hopes is that you will recognize Franktown Church in this description and realize that one thing that characterizes churches our size is that they go through certain changes. They can’t stay the same. In order to continue to be faithful, they have to do new things, listen for new voices, search for new visions, and reach new people. Sound familiar?

If we want something we’ve never had before, we’re going to have to do some things that we’ve never done before. We will build on our history. We will still be Franktown Church. But we will be more. If we are gripped by the Holy Spirit we will be going into a new future that we could not have imagined.

God is going to do great things in us and through us yet. I think Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens will be surprised. Because God is reconciling the world to God’s own self. Christ is making all things new. We are walking, not according to flesh, but according to the Spirit. The only question is: Are we going to let that knowledge change us? It’s better the world know this now. Who you gonna tell? Thanks be to God.

[i] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/542154
[ii] Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great, excerpted on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18503995/site/newsweek/page/9/

Vision in a Sailcloth

Acts 11:1-18
The apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles were also receiving the word of God. Then Peter came up to Jerusalem and the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them?"
So Peter began to lay an argument before them: "I was in the city of Joppa praying and while in a trance I saw a vision. A vessel, something like a large linen sheet, came down from heaven, lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. In looking at it closely I saw the four-footed beasts of the earth and the wild animals and the reptiles and the birds of the heavens. I heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter, kill and eat.'
“But I said, 'No way, Lord. I have never put common and unclean things into my mouth.'
“But a voice from heaven continued a second time: 'What God has made clean, you must not call common.'
“This happened three times and the whole thing was drawn up into heaven. And look, at that very moment three men appeared at the house where we were, sent from Caesarea to me. The Spirit told me to do with these men without making any distinctions. The came together with me and these six brothers also accompanied me to the house of the man. He told us that he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, the one called Peter. He will give words for you through which you and all your household will be saved.'
“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit embraced them just as it did us in the beginning. I remembered the words of the Lord as he said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' Now if God gave the same gift to them as to we who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I have the power to hinder God?"
When they heard this they praised God: "So God has also given the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

There are three important questions that we have to answer as individuals and as a church. The three questions are: Who are you going to eat with? Who are you going to be embraced by? And who are you going to follow? Now none of those is grammatically correct, and I know that there are some of us who care very deeply about that sort of thing, so let me rephrase the questions: With whom are you gonna eat? By whom are you going to be embraced? And whom are you going to follow? But really, don’t get too caught up in the whos and the whoms because the real question of today is: What are we going to be? Are we going to be people who are content or resigned to be what we have always been? Or do we really believe we can be transformed? Do we really trust that God can change us? Do we really understand what it means to be claimed by the Risen Christ? What are we going to be?

These are real questions for us because of the scripture reading that we have from Acts this morning. The story of Peter and his vision is one that was very challenging for the early Christian community to hear. It was a story that pushed them to think about the implications of Jesus’ resurrection. Now that Jesus was raised from the dead, it meant that things had changed, but they weren’t ready for all the change that was coming. It meant that they would now be a larger family that included not just Jews but also others – Greeks, Romans, Gentiles. It’s not always very comfortable when your family grows.

There’s the story about a young woman who brought her boyfriend over to dinner with her parents one night. They were planning to get married and as dinner ended the young woman’s mother asked her to help clear away the dishes. Then she went to her husband and said, “Find out what you can about this boy.”

So the father went with the boyfriend into the other room and he said, “So, what do you do?”

The young man said, “I’m studying philosophy and theology.”

This worried the father a little bit so he said, “Well, you know, my daughter is used to having enough a house and food to eat and to having the basic necessities of life. How will you take care of her?”

The young man said, “I will study hard and God will provide.”

“Well, how are you going to afford a beautiful engagement ring like she deserves?”

The young man said, “I will concentrate on my studies and God will provide.”

“And what about the children you may have? How will you take care of them?”

Again the young man said, “Don’t worry, sir, God will provide.”

After they had left, the mother asks the father, “Well, what did you find out?”

The father says, “He has no job and no plans, but the good news is he thinks I’m God.”[i]

It’s not always comfortable when your family grows and it wasn’t comfortable for the church. Because the problem with an open door is that…it’s open. And because it’s open, God can send anybody through it. Anybody. Even people we might not think ought to be coming through it. And not only that, but God will send us through it to meet the world out there.

Last week we talked about how Peter was living out his calling after Jesus’ resurrection. Peter was the leader of the Christian community, the one everybody was looking to for guidance on what they should do in this confusing period when Jesus was no longer physically present with them. Peter seemed to be picking up where Jesus left off – healing people, even raising people from the dead, like Tabitha in the story we had last week.

But even Peter was going to be challenged. Even Peter had some things to learn. Following the miracle with Tabitha, he stayed in Joppa, a seaside town some distance from Jerusalem. He was staying with a man named Simon the Tanner and while he was there he went up on the rooftop to pray, which would not have been as hard for him as it sounds to us who live with sloped roofs. The houses of Peter’s day were flat-roofed and many people used them as a regular part of the house, just as many people around the world still do.

So he was up on the roof praying when he begins to get hungry. I can imagine that he was starting to have images of his favorite foods. Clam fritters and collard greens with a ham hock, yeast rolls and watermelon rind pickles. Hey, you have your images and I have mine! Only this is certainly not what Peter was imagining. Or at least he would never admit to imagining this, because at least some of that would have been off-limits to him.

Good Jews did not eat shellfish or pork. These were considered unclean foods because of the Law of Moses. You can look it up right there in Leviticus chapter 11. Things you shall not eat: On land the no-nos are things like the pig, the hare, the rock badger, and the camel. Anybody been sneaking camel burgers lately? I remember when I was growing up there was a fast-food place in Charlottesville called Caravan, Home of the Humpburger. I think by these rules it would have not been kosher. Actually, greasy as that place was, I think by ANY rules it wouldn’t have been kosher! But then you also could not eat things taken from the water that did not have fins or scales. So fish were O.K. but jellyfish, clams, oysters, shrimp…these were out. And the list goes on. You can’t eat osprey or eagles. Bats are out. Locusts and grasshoppers are…O.K. Go for it. But there were also other rules about when unclean animals came into contact with other things. For instance if you had a gecko, which, even though it does television commercials, is unclean…if you had a gecko that died and fell got into a vessel – like an earthen jar, you would have to break the jar. Dead geckos were expensive even if they can save you 15% on your car insurance. You had to make or buy a new jar if they touched one.

All of this seems very archaic to us now but it was a powerful part of the Jewish faith, and still is for many observant Jews. It was a way of expressing that God has intentions for those who are set-apart. The children of Israel were supposed to look different from the rest of the world. They were supposed to make distinctions between things God wants and things God doesn’t want. It was not just in their beliefs; it was also in their daily life. All that they did, all that they ate, was supposed to be done in mindfulness of what God would have them do. They were a holy people and one of the ways they expressed this holiness was through these food laws.

Jesus had started to upset this understanding, though. He had started to break the rules. When some religious leaders chastised him for healing on the Sabbath, a day that had been set apart for rest, he told them that they had their priorities wrong. They were taking God’s gift of the Sabbath and making a rule out of it that took precedence over compassion. When they chastised him for letting his disciples take grain from a field on the Sabbath, he said, “Sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around.” When they questioned him for hanging out with sinners and foreigners and women, he reminded them that God’s love had no limits. Then he showed it by going to the cross. Jesus had already opened the door to change, but the disciples had still not taken it all in.

But I was talking about Peter on the roof, hungry. Well, he has a vision and in this vision there is something like a sailcloth coming down from the heavens. I say it was “something like a sailcloth” or a big sheet because it has four corners, but the first word that is used to describe it is “a vessel.” This is something meant to hold something. You put things in this thing.
What is in this thing is a collection of animals. Peter sees that there are four-footed animals and birds and reptiles. It’s a whole zoo there. Then he hears a voice that says, “Peter, get up, kill and eat.”

Peter’s first reaction is pretty understandable. “You know, I was hungry, God, but this isn’t what I had in mind. A little falafel would have been just fine. I didn’t think I’d actually have to go out and slaughter something. And from the looks of things on that sheet or whatever it is, there are some things on there that I’m not supposed to eat. I think I even see a gecko on there. You know we’re going to have to burn this sheet. I can’t eat from that.”

Peter must have thought this was the right answer. Just like he must have thought it was the right answer when he told Jesus at the Last Supper, “You’re not going to wash my feet.” This may be the new age inaugurated by Jesus Christ, but he was still a good Jewish boy.

God, it seems, was not playing by the same old rules, though. “Who are you, Peter,” the voice says, “to call profane something that God has made clean?” Something was changing and it is taking Peter awhile to see it. Everything takes Peter awhile. He does things in threes. Three times he denied knowing Jesus. Three times he had to profess his love for Jesus when he asked, “Peter, do you love me?” Three times he argues with this voice before the thing is taken back up into the heavens.

Then there are three guys who show up. Not in the vision, but at the door of the house where Peter was staying. Representatives of Cornelius, an Italian soldier who had feared God and who had been on the edge of the Jewish community. Cornelius had had a vision, too, and he wanted Peter to come to Caesarea, where he lived. So Peter went.

When he got the house the first thing Peter said was, “I’m not supposed to be here. Jews do not associate with Gentiles, much less visit in their homes. But I had a vision and in it God told me that I shouldn’t make that distinction anymore. What God calls clean, who am I to call it unclean?”

Cornelius shared his vision, too. Then Peter told the story of Jesus and how it revealed that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” [Acts 10:34-35]. The house was filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit and Peter baptized Cornelius and his whole family.

It was a great day…a great event. But Peter had some explaining to do. When he got back to the other disciples in Jerusalem, they had a lot of questions. Mainly they were disturbed that Peter had accepted hospitality from a man who had not been circumcised – the sign that the Jews had used to mark their being set apart. “You went to his house and you ate with them,” they said.

That’s when Peter pulls out his own questions…the same ones I started this sermon with. I hear these questions in his response to them. “Who are you going to eat with? I had a vision and in that vision God told me to eat food we had called profane. Cornelius had a vision and God told him to welcome me to his table. Both of these were from God. How could we not eat together? If God wants to prepare a table where all are welcome, God will do that.

“Who are we going to be embraced by? Cornelius’ household was embraced by the Holy Spirit.” That’s what the word is in the Greek. Sometimes it gets translated as the Holy Spirit “fell upon” them, but it fell upon them in order to embrace them. The word is used in other places to describe hugging. When Paul heals a young man who fell out of a window, he first embraces him. That’s what the Holy Spirit wanted to do with these disciples. That’s what the Holy Spirit wanted to do with Cornelius and his family. The Holy Spirit wanted to embrace them and there were some disciples who couldn’t handle that.

Finally Peter asks the question, “Who are we going to follow? We left our fishing nets and our tax tables behind to go walk behind Jesus. We went places where folks said we shouldn’t have gone. We developed relationships with people that folks looked down on. We upset tables in the Temple. And we saw Jesus turn the world upside down. Didn’t I say, ‘Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ [John 6:68]. Are we going to stop following God now? When it’s obvious that God is opening the door to the Gentiles and to the rest of the world, are we going to stop following Jesus now? And who are we fooling if we try to? If God is giving the Gentiles the same gifts that God gave us, who are we to hinder God?”

If the disciples were listening they might have remembered a story Jesus had told them about a man who did a foolish thing. It was an incredibly foolish thing to do. Before he died, he split up his estate and gave a large share of it to his youngest son, who was a pretty reckless, immature kid. He didn’t follow the rules. He didn’t know how to love his dad or to honor him.

So what he did next was pretty predictable. He goes off to a far country and blows the whole wad. Spends it all on wine, women, song, slot machines and video games. (He would have spent it on the last two if there had been such things.) He ends up broke and slopping pigs – pigs! Unclean – remember?

But he comes back determined to offer himself as a slave to his father, just so that he can had a minimal existence. But while he was still far off, his father comes out to meet him. This is really extraordinary how of the rails this father is! The father comes out to meet him and falls upon him, embraces him – yes, it’s the same word. And kills a fatted calf so that everyone can eat with this son. And everyone goes along with this ridiculous scenario because it’s the landowner who’s doing it. If the father wants to squander his estate this way, that’s the way it’s done. If the father wants to welcome this wastrel back and throw him a party, that’s what happens. And they all go.

Except the older son. Who stands on the sidelines and grumbles. Who will not give in to the father’s foolishness. Who will not forget the way things are supposed to happen. Who will stand apart and refuse to be embraced and refuse to sit down to eat with his brother and refuse to follow where the father is leading. Who will not love because the kind of love the father offers is too great to understand or control.

Do you think maybe the disciples remembered that story as Peter told them about his vision and his experience with Cornelius? I think they must have because after he shares this with them they say, “So God has given the repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles, too.” How amazing. Because when we find our place in the story we may start as the older brother, but we’ll never find our way to the table unless we recognize ourselves as the younger brother, too, making our way into God’s love out of grace and grace alone.

Who are you going to eat with? Who are you going to be embraced by? Who are you going to follow? We are going to be challenged to answer those questions as we move into the future. Many of us are going to be reading The Myth of the 200 Barrier over the next few weeks. It’s going to challenge us to think about who we are and how we structure ourselves for ministry. But I hope it also challenges us to think about these three questions because they lie behind everything we do.

When we come to this table we are coming with all kinds of people. Around this table are people from all times and places who have found life in Jesus Christ. Here are Peter and Cornelius. Here are Julian of Norwich and Eleanor Nicolls and Linwood Walker and all the saints who have preceded us. Here are refugees in the Sudan and children in Iraq and soldiers in the field who are searching for God in the most difficult situations. Who are we going to eat with?

Who are we going to be embraced by? Will we huddle with our fears against the darkness, or will we allow ourselves to be embraced by God’s Spirit that casts out fear?

Who are we going to follow? Because God is going to do great things. God is going to prepare a feast. God is going to change the world. And we are invited to follow. Thanks be to God.

[i] Adapted from beliefnet.com, http://www.beliefnet.com/dailyjoke/DailyJoke.aspx?QID=9300