Acts 2:1-4 Acts 10:34-36
There is an old folk song called Sonny, and it makes me cry every time I hear it. It tells a story about a man who grew up living on a farm with his mother. His father was a sailor and never at home, so Sonny took care of the farm from a young age. The chorus repeats his mother’s words to him:
Sonny, don’t go away; I’m here all alone.
Your daddy’s a sailor, never comes home.
Nights are so long, silence goes on;
I’m feeling so tired and not all that strong.
Sonny hears these words all his life and he never leaves. Even after his mother dies and Sonny is all alone on the farm, he continues to hear his mother’s words in his dreams. Sonny never leaves, and he becomes the one who is truly alone.
Even if his mother would never have wanted him to live such a lonely life after she was gone, Sonny is paralyzed by the memory of her words.
It makes me cry every time I hear it. Such a tragic story.
Parents and teachers want to give their children guidance to live by, but sometimes it seems like we fail to give them permission to spread their wings. Even when that is truly what we want for them.
And, sometimes, children are paralyzed, like Sonny, out of a fear of disappointing the parents or teachers.
So. Let’s take another look at Peter.
Remember a couple of weeks ago we spent some time with Peter, the disciple. I told you then that Jesus saw some potential in him that was not at all apparent to me. To my eyes, Peter acted like an impulsive kid who needed clear and strong direction – and even then, he would go off and say or do something dumb.
But you may also remember I said that we would see later on, in the book of Acts, that Jesus was right about Peter. And now we are there, now we see it.
Peter is, we now see, The rock. Before The Rock was The Rock. Peter is the rock Jesus needed to build his church.
It began on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came in like the rush of a violent wind; tongues as of fire rested above the head of each of them, filling them with the Spirit. Each one given the ability to speak in different tongues –
Let me stop right here for a moment and acknowledge how weird this matter is. I mean, I get the point that this ability to speak allowed them to communicate and share the good news with people from all nations. Although it is confusing when the people in the streets below, who are hearing them, exclaim that they must be drunk. That’s confusing. Because I cannot remember a time when I saw drunkenness improve anyone’s powers of communication.
From the people in the streets below you almost get the impression that the apostles who have been lit on fire by the Spirit are, maybe, actually, babbling.
Let’s remember that the gift of tongues, as it is called in the Bible, an ability to speak in a “Spirit” language. Which would be incomprehensible to anyone who wasn’t empowered by the Spirit to understand, but to those who were empowered –
Whatever was said that day, whatever was heard that day, one thing we know is that the Spirit empowered these apostles to share the gospel and other people to hear it. Peter was one of these men who, by the power of the Spirit, found his voice that day.
When the people down in the streets start jabbering indignantly about the drunken fools in the room above, Peter steps out and begins to speak.
Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.
And he begins to tell the story of how God has been at work through the ages and leading up to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. This Jesus, whom God has lifted up, through whom God has defeated the powers of death, is Lord and Messiah. Men of Judea, Peter says, fellow Israelites, the entire house of Israel. People of Israel, Peter says, Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
These people in the streets who heard his words are stricken to the heart and turn immediately to Peter and the other apostles for guidance. Three thousand, they say, were baptized in Jerusalem that day, the day of Pentecost.
And that is only the beginning. Day by day thereafter the Lord added to their numbers. My goodness – wasn’t that a time!
Read on in the book of Acts – you know how much I love the book of Acts – read on, and you will see what you might already suspect: these heady days of new beginning can’t last for long. Honeymoons all have to come to an end, and this one does too.
Eventually there are disputes among the apostles about the details. Details like, who is the gospel for? Who should receive the Holy Spirit? And what do they have to do?
Details, yes, but not minor. These are actually critical matters and they grow increasingly difficult because the church is on fire. The Spirit is moving and growing faster than these men can keep up with it.
And we reach the point, in Chapter 10, when Peter is confronted with the decision about a man named Cornelius. Cornelius is a Roman centurion, so this is complicated. A centurion was a Roman military officer who was in command of 100 Roman soldiers. And we all know there is every reason for the followers of Jesus to be distrustful of a Roman military office, a soldier of the Empire that crucified their Lord.
But, we are told, Cornelius is well-respected by all the Jews. Cornelius is a God-fearing Gentile, which simply means that he believes in and, in the ways available to him, worships the God of Israel. He gives alms and he prays. Although he is not a Jew and never will be a Jew.
You see, Cornelius is not a man of Judea, a fellow Israelite, he is not one of those whom Peter addressed from the upper room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. He loves the Lord, but he is not a son of Israel.
And yet he, oddly enough, receives a vision from the Lord. Your prayers and alms have been received, Cornelius hears, and now this is what you should do. He is instructed to send some men to Peter. He does and they go.
And at the same time, the ever-industrious Spirit of the Lord sets to work on Peter. Peter receives a vision that he cannot understand, but it seems to be suggesting to him that some of the things he has always understood to be true and good, will not necessarily be the way forward.
Cornelius’s men arrive at his door, Peter greets them, and he begins to see the light. They all go back to Cornelius where this Roman centurion and his whole household is baptized.
And for the young church, the ground has shifted beneath their feet.
Standing in the house of Cornelius, Peter began to speak: “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. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.”
It’s a beautiful moment. And once again I say to you, it could have been so different.
Jesus taught the disciples that God was stirring up a new thing, but no one imagined that it would include anyone other than Jews. The apostles followed in Jesus’ path, by going out to all the villages and towns and speaking in the synagogues, telling the good news. Even when they went out to all the nations, they would find the Jews who lived there and speak to them.
But that Holy Spirit, quick as lightning, just kept getting out ahead of them. The Holy Spirit kept showing them that God’s plans were greater than they ever imagined.
Greater even than Jesus had told them.
When Jesus sent out his disciples to do his ministry he said to them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans.”
Jesus, himself, when he was approached by a Syrophoenician woman begging for healing, declined to help. His response to her was, “I’m here for the Jews. You are not a Jew.”
If the apostles of Jesus had been unwilling to move beyond the strict understanding of what had been taught to them by Jesus, they would have dug in their heels and refused to follow the Spirit.
Like Sonny, paralyzed and unable to move on, to listen to where the Spirit was leading them. Stagnant.
It seems like it could so easily have stayed that way…the apostles adhering to the narrow path, denying the cries of the rest of the world, justifying their actions with the words of Jesus and leaving it at that.
And if it had gone that way, you and I would not be here now.
These wonderful, beautiful apostles had to grapple with the evidence that God was, still is, and always will be, doing a new thing. They had to acknowledge that they would go beyond their teacher, their Lord, in their actions on behalf of his church. They had to realize that Jesus wasn’t giving them a set of new rules so much as he was giving them a vision in which God is always at work in the world shining more light, spreading more love.
And, like those first apostles, we are called upon to recognize this too. As God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, “Look; I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
As the church of Jesus Christ, it is incumbent on us to ask every day: How is God intending to expand God’s love today? Who is God inviting in to God’s household today? And how is the Spirit of God empowering us to do it?
Hear me, Church: the places we will go are not limited by what has been said and done in the past. The places we will go are yet to be revealed by the Holy Spirit of God.
