Social God (Trinity Sunday)

 

Social God
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Sunday after Pentecost, 30 May 2021
Homily preached at 8:00 a.m. said, 10:00 a.m. sung Eucharist 
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D., Rector

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

Today is Trinity Sunday, the patronal feast of Trinity churches all over the world.  The doctrine of the Trinity is an invitation into the deeper and deeper mystery and beauty of God.  Richard of St. Victor, a canon priest under the rule of St. Augustine who died in Paris in 1173, taught in his book on the Trinity that for God to be truth, God had to be one; for God to be love, God had to be two; and for God to be joy, God had to be three! 

 

We often miss the point, being misled by the categorical definition of the doctrine that became common in the Western Latin-speaking Church, where the names “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” are defined by what each represents and does not represent.  The Creed we will recite today, the Quicunque Vult or so-called creed of Saint Athanasius (BCP pp. 864-865), is the best example of this.    

 

The earlier Eastern view, the teaching of the 4^th Century Cappadocian Fathers who developed the doctrine in the first place, was less static, and more dynamic:  the roles and interactions, the relationships were the emphasis.  In this view, it mattered only somewhat whether you used the terms “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” or other terms emphasizing the timeless relationships: Speaker, Word, and Medium of Sound, Parent, Child, Uniting Bond; Mother, Daughter, Shared Love; Light, Reflection, and Brightness; Spring, Reservoir, and Stream.    The Orthodox image for this is perichoresis, the divine dance of the three roles (personae in Latin, or prosopoi in Greek).   The shape of the doctrine is that God is social, God is love:  the transcendent, the personal, and the immanent. 

 

As we prepare to celebrate the feast day for our church sharing the name Trinity, this little part of Christ’s Church, I invite us to reflect on relationships we have in our lives, and especially those at Church.  How do we participate in the divine dance? 

 

The important thing to remember when you talk about theology and doctrine is this:  the heart of Christianity is not in theology or doctrine.  It is in the experience of the living God in our lives and our loving service to and compassion with others.  “The first commandment is love God.  The second is on par with this: love your neighbor.”   This is the life-giving heart of the Church, a reflection of God who, as this doctrine teaches, is at heart social, at heart communal. 

 

Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff writes the following: 

 

“We believe that God is communion rather than solitude.  Believing in the Trinity means that at the root of everything that exists and subsists there is movement; there is an eternal process of life, of outward movement, of love.  Believing in the Trinity means that truth is on the side of communion rather than exclusion; consensus translates truth better than imposition;  the participation of many is better than the dictate of a single one” (Leonardo Boff, Holy Trinity, Perfect Community).    

 

Here is the core of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  It expresses why it was so right to name this Church here in Ashland “Trinity.”  Community, consensus, free give and take and mutual service—this is what makes us who we are. 

 

Thanks be to the Triune God,  Amen.

 

Invitation to Local Pilgrimage (Midweek Message)

 

Invitation to Local Pilgrimage

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

May 26, 2021

 

Yesterday, a group of six Episcopal Church bishops, including Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, held a virtual memorial service to mark the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by an active duty police officer in Minneapolis.  You may still view this moving service at this link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBZu9whBsxQ 

The Church has responded warmly to the Black Lives Matter and Say Their Names movements as part of its ministry of social justice, recognizing that any country, like our own, where a young black man has three times the risk of being killed by police and security officers than his white peer, still has a long way to go in dismantling systemic racism and white privilege.  It is part of our Gospel message, following our Lord who taught us to stand with the downtrodden and support the marginalized.

 

Here in Ashland, the small “Say Their Names” pop-up memorial set up on June 19 (“Juneteenth”) last year in Railroad Park, after being marred in August by white supremacist graffiti and vandalism, was restored and enhanced by the efforts of a broad group of community members.  It has now been made part of a permanent installation by a group of local artists. The grassroots Southern Oregon Alliance for Racial Equity, with the approval of the Ashland Arts and Parks Commissions, commissioned a group of local artists to create a public, community-oriented art installation around the theme of Black Lives Matter in the Rogue Valley. This theme included but was not limited to: a reflection on the Black Lives Matter movement and this important chapter in our nation’s history, an illumination of the experiences of Black residents in the Valley, and an homage to the life of Aidan Ellison, a young local black man killed at the Stratford Inn in November, after the Almeda fire had displayed hundreds in the community. 

 

 

 

​

The installation organizers and artists hope to create a dialogue about race, bring together Rogue Valley residents of all backgrounds, and serve as a declaration of our commitment in Ashland and the Rogue Valley that Black Lives Matter. Through continued conversation, recognition of our shared history, and this public avowal, we all hope that we can work towards becoming a more united and inclusive Rogue Valley community.

 

During the week of this sad anniversary, I invite all of you to look at Bishop Curry’s service, and then make a pilgrimage: a small, local one, to be sure, but a pilgrimage, a holy voyage, all the same.  Let’s all try to get down to Railroad Park (on A Street) and walk the length of the installation.  Read the names, enjoy the beauty, and savor the feelings of the expression.  Meditate on how each of us plays a part in and benefits from the system of privilege and bias.   Here is a prayer from the BCP to help in that process: 

 

“O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Fruits (Pentecost B)

 

First Fruits

Whitsunday (Pentecost) (Year B)
23 May 2021
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

By the Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
8:00 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth

10:00 a.m. Said Mass with Music in the Chancel
Acts 2:1-21; Ps 104:25-35, 37; Rom 8:22-27; John 15:26-27,16:4b-15 

 

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

In this week’s clergy conference call with Bishop Akiyama, we heard two troubling stories from right here in Southern Oregon of challenges to sibling priests stemming from prejudice based on race or class.  In one, people left a congregation and a congregant declined home communion when a priest was called who was not the “right” gender and race.  In another, a local mayor and city council used the power of their office to try to stop an episcopal congregation from ministering to the poor and homeless.  The Bishop, bless her, asked that her priests hear these stories so that we could begin a discussion on how to faithfully minister in this trouble time.  She responded to the stories by detailing her theology of priestly calling, saying that “the Gospel is not a buffet from which to pick and choose according to one’s whims,” calling us to stand firm in our open preaching of the Gospel even when this spurred opposition, and offering Diocesan support for legal challenges to officials who violate the First Amendment’s ban on government fostering one kind of religion over another.  Both priests telling these sad stories still wanted to minister to all, including their antagonists, but found greater and greater opposition as they tried to do so.   These foes thought, perhaps, they were trying to follow the Spirit of God by standing up for the right as they understood it.  But the stories’ ugly details revealed that laying such prejudice and malice on God’s Holy Spirit is blasphemous. 

 

Today’s scriptures tell us just how varied the workings of the Holy Spirit are:  In Acts, the Spirit is God’s active and almost overwhelming presence in a shared communal event facilitating communication and empowering ministry.  In John, Jesus calls the Spirit to be at our side, a comforter or advocate, enlivening memory and strengthening the heart.  In Romans, the spirit is a quiet whispering intermediary between us personally and God, giving us access to God and to our own inexpressible unformed feelings.

 

In practical terms, what we experience as guidance by the Holy Spirit often seems very close to conscience, insight, intuition, arriving at a firmly held conclusion, or even coincidence. But there is a difference. 

 

It is important in understanding the story of the outpouring of the spirit on the Day of Pentecost to know what occasion the day was:  the feast of Shavuot, or Weeks, fifty days after the Feast of Passover.  Shavuot was a festival of the first fruits, where the very earliest produce of the agricultural year was becoming available.  Remember the hardship of winter in a pre-industrial society.  You stored food by drying it, salting it, perhaps smoking it, or saving roots in cool cellars.  By early Spring, your larder was pretty low, and fresh fruits and vegetables only a vague memory.  So the earliest produce of spring signaled that hardship was over, and prodigal summer was arriving soon. On Shavuot, the first produce was given back to God in thanks, and then you held a big party with fresh produce, not dried and stored food.  

 

Paul uses this very image—first fruits—in today’s epistle to describe the Spirit.  Paul sees the world in which we live both as an early spring on the verge of a rich summer, or a woman in labor, suffering great pain in hope of a new life being delivered.  The spirit is a sign that the baby will be born, that produce will come.  The Spirit is like the first fruits in the spring, after our larders have run bare:  it is a sign of better things to come, of more and more life and abundance.

Elsewhere, Paul says this, “God establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (2 Cor 1: 20-22).  A seal: a symbol and authenticating sign of the genuineness and reliability of our faith and hope.   An anointing: this means being smeared with sweet oil.  A person was made a king or a priest in ancient Israel by a ritual of putting olive oil on the head or body.  The act set the person aside for a special role and work.  A first installment: the first payment of a much greater sum to come later. 

 

He also says, “God has given us the Spirit as a guarantee” (2 Cor 5:4-7).

 

How do we know God’s Spirit is with us?  

In Galatians, we read this: 

 

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  (Gal 5: 22-23) 

 

Thus “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” are signs of the Spirit, that seal of the sureness of God’s promises, that down payment on the whole of God’s promises, those first fruits of an abundant and rich harvest. 

 

Sisters and brothers at Trinity:  I made a realization a couple of years after coming here:  it is somewhat providential that Trinity Ashland’s Patronal Feast, Trinity Sunday, comes one week after the Feast of Pentecost.  Because I see the Spirit of God at work in the good people of this Parish.  Susan Stitham likes to joke that our parish and community are full of white haired people who used to be very important people.  We have many, many accomplished people here, to be sure.  But more importantly, we are focused on things that matter, and are overflowing in good works, acts of mercy, and skillful advancement of God’s reign in our own lives and the lives of those about us.  We do not talk a lot about the spirit, but our lives are rich in peace, love, joy, patience, generosity, self-control, and generosity.   What a blessing to be with you, and learn from you, to see God at work in your lives and of the community at large.

 

May we continue learn to hear the Spirit’s whispers, and recognize her thunderings, be warmed at her gently burning hearth, and also be purified in her raging fire.   If we continue to follow the way of Jesus open to the Spirit all the while, this fire will burn through all the world. 

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Liturgical Form of Athanasian Creed (for upcoming Trinity Sunday)

 

Affirmation of Trinitarian Faith

(from the Athanasian Creed, 5^th century,

Adapted from U.S. BCP 864-5 and

Church of England Common Worship 145)

 

We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity,

Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Being.

 

For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son,

            and another of the Holy Spirit.

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

 

As the Father is, so also is the Son, and so also is the Holy Spirit.

The Father, uncreated; the Son, uncreated; and the Holy Spirit, uncreated.

 

The Father a mystery, the Son a mystery, and the Holy Spirit a mystery.      

The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.

 

And yet they are not three eternals, nor three mysteries, nor three uncreated

but one eternal, one uncreated, and one mystery. 

 

So likewise the Father is All-Nurturing, the Son All-Nurturing,

       and the Holy Spirit All-Nurturing. 

And yet they are not three All-Nurturings, but one All-Nurturing. 

 

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.

 

So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Spirit Lord.

And yet not three Lords, but one Lord.

 

Christian truth thus demands that we declare each of these

    Persons to be both God and Lord.

Our Catholic faith tells us not to say

      there are three Gods, or three Lords.

 

The Father is made of none,

neither created, nor begotten.

 

The Son is of the Father alone,

not made, nor created, but begotten.

 

The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son,

neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

 

So there is one Father, one Son, one Holy Spirit,

not three Fathers; nor three Sons; nor three Holy Spirits.

 

And in this Trinity none is ahead or after another;

none is greater, or less than another;

 

But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal.

So we must worship the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity.

 

We believe and declare that

our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both divine and human:   

 

God, of the being of the Father, the unique Son from before time began;

        human from the being of his mother, born in the world.  

Fully God and fully human, human in both mind and body. 

 

As God he is equal to the Father,

As human he is less than the Father.

 

Although he is both divine and human, he is not two beings, but one Christ: 

One Christ, not by turning God into flesh but by taking humanity into God,

 

Truly one, not by mixing humanity with Godhead,

But by being one person. 

 

For as the mind and body form one human being

So the one Christ is both divine and human.

 

The Word became flesh and lived among us:

The glory of the unique Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.    Amen

Thy Church (Midweek Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

May 19, 2021

Thy Church

 

One of my favorite hymns (# 302 in the 1982 Hymnal) is taken from a very ancient Eucharistic Prayer found in the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, written about the year 90 C.E.:

“Father, we thank Thee Who has planted
Thy holy name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus Thy Son to us imparts.
Thou, Lord, didst make all for Thy pleasure,
Didst give us food for all our days,
Giving in Christ the bread eternal;
Thine is the pow'r, be Thine the praise.

Watch o'er Thy Church, O Lord, in mercy,
Save it from evil, guard it still,
Perfect it in love, unite it,
Cleansed and conformed unto Thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
Was in this broken bread made one,
So from all lands Thy church be gathered
Into Thy kingdom by Thy Son.” 

The hymn gives a glimpse into the life of the Church at that early time:  the broken bread, one loaf from many grains, is seen as a symbol of the church, a single possession of God drawn together from many different kinds of people.  God is the one who draws the diverse church together, planting the name and teaching of Jesus in our hearts.   

When I as in Beijing serving in the interdenominational Congregation of the Good Shepherd, I was struck by how different Christians talked about Church.  “God, bless our church,” the Mennonites, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists would generally say, where Episcopalians, Anglicans, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics would prefer “God, bless your Church.”  In the older view, the Church is a creation of God rather than an assembly of like-minded people.  The Church belongs to God.  In classic imagery, the church is Christ’s bride.  It is bigger and wider and deeper than the local congregation.  We are the Church, not consumers served by the Church in some kind of smorgasbord or buffet where we can pick and choose.

This difference in viewpoint explains why the recitation of the Nicene Creed is an important part of our Eucharistic celebrations:  we have the intention to link our faith with what has been believed by all believers in all places and at all times. 

The Didache lets it theology of the Church teach us about what our attitude should be toward our possessions: “Share all things with your brother or sister; and do not say that they are your own. If you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more in things which perish.”  Stewardship for the Didache is rooted in the view that we are part of the mystical body of Christ and the fellowship of all faithful people:  because in church we share eternal mystery with each other, we should share our material possessions all the more. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

As We Are One (Easter 7B)

 

“As We Are One”

 

Easter 7B 
16 May 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth, 10:00 a.m. Said Mass with music live-streamed from the Chancel  
Homily Delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D. 
at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon 
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19

 

 

 

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

 

 

We live in a scary world: pandemic threat here and the horrors it is bringing to India right now, evolving mutant viruses that might outstrip the immunity bestowed by vaccines developed a year ago, threat of war in the Ukraine, North Korean nukes, and increased tensions in the Taiwan Strait, aerial bombing in Gaza, a divided body politic in the U.S. where we seem to live in alternate universes from each other, all in addition to the normal threats of aging, degenerative illness, and death.   It is a scary world. 

 

The world’s scariness is the constant background noise we must hear behind the Gospel reading today, part of the last supper story told by the Gospel of John.    Here, the night on which Jesus is betrayed, he prays.  And what does he pray for?  For us.  He prays for his disciples and for those who will come to believe because they hear their words.  He prays for us: “I am asking on their behalf; … on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.   … Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”   

 

 

He doesn’t ask that we escape the scary world.  He doesn’t ask that everything go easily for us.  Facing his last trial and torment, he sends us on the road ahead, knowing that we will end up facing the same kind of trial and torment. 

 

 

And he prays:  Protect them, father.  Make them holy.  Make them one.  May they be comfort and support for each other just as you are my comfort and support.  May they love each other as we love each other.  May they be one as we are one. 

 

 

I think that is why this passage, which rightfully should be a Maundy Thursday reading, is chosen for today’s lectionary, the Sunday after the Ascension and before Pentecost.  It is about us getting on in the world where Jesus seems to have left us alone,  facing the scary world that he faced.  It is about how we get by, how we find faith and confidence, how we don’t lose hope.  How we overcome our hatreds and tribalism, and even our petty differences and power struggles, and actually help each other, love each other, and comfort, comfort, comfort. 

 

 

In Luke’s telling in the Gospel and Acts, we are so empowered because of the Spirit that Jesus sends us on Pentecost ten days after he finally leaves us at Ascension, flying up on a cloud to a heaven we cannot see.  In John’s telling, Jesus breathes this spirit on us the evening of Easter when he first appears to us.   How we find faith and comfort and strength, how we find God present is told differently in these different stories.

 

 

But in today’s story, it is because Jesus prays for us.  Prays for our safety, for our good, that we not be twisted and distorted by the ugly things we see or do.  That we be one with each other and one with him and his Father. 

 

 

Church unity is a nice slogan and a beautiful ideal.  But how it often has played out in our history has been like this: one group or faction uses force to make the others conform to their ideals of the good and orthodox.  It might be brutal and ugly, like the inquisition or the religious wars between various sects, or it might be tarted up and prettified, like when Methodists, Mennonites, or Mormons talk about “laboring with” a disaffected brother or sister, “counseling in love,” that is, browbeating them until they submit.  But it is the same:  force and bullying to achieve the appearance of unity, a simulacrum of consent.   In the Episcopal Church, with our democratic forms of governance and decision-making, we pass resolutions in General Convention, winners take all and losers be damned.  We might not browbeat, but the invitation to walk out the door if you can’t get along with us is implicit in our ever polite, procedure-bound seeking of the same ersatz imitation of union and one-heartedness.  Sometimes I think we might be better off by drawing lots or throwing dice, like the eleven in today’s reading from Acts. 

 

 

I believe that one of the great ways to avoid such imitations is to wipe away in our minds the division between us and them, between the righteous and what John’s Jesus calls the ‘world.’  Curiously, unity is possible when we stop insisting on having things our way.  Remember, in Gethsemane:  "Thy will, not mine, be done." 

 

 

False unity is not what Jesus is praying for.  This is not what he hopes for us.  Rather, “May they be one as you and I, father, are one.”    Unconstrained sharing.  Heartfelt agreement.  Common ground, common life.  A great harmony of song, not a unison monotone.  A perichoresis, or delicately balanced dance of submitting and asserting, cooperating, and loving every minute of it.  “One as we are one.” 

 

 

We live in a scary world, one where charity has limits, compassion gets fatigued, and everybody at one time or another is on the make.  One where living the truth of God’s gentle love can get you hurt, and speaking truth to power can get you killed.    Through it all, Jesus prays for us.  He still prays for us, just as his Mother prays for us.  And so we must pray for each other, and for all. 

 

 

In the name of God, Amen.

 

The Ultimate Zoom (midweek)

 

The Ultimate Zoom

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

May 12, 2021

 

“For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col 3:3)

 

Tomorrow is Ascension Day, the glorious feast marking the end of the 40-day ministry of the resurrected Lord, and beginning the 10 day wait for “power from on high” when the Holy Spirit would descend upon the Church on Pentecost (the “50^th day” festival).  That is the timing at least according to the Book of Acts.  In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus ascends to heaven the evening of Easter (Luke 24:50), the same time when John’s Gospel places the coming of the Spirit by having Jesus himself breathe onto his disciples with the words, “receive the Holy Spirit.”    Ascension and Pentecost mark the end of the Great Fifty Days of the Paschal celebration. 

 

In one sense, the mystery of the Ascension means Christ departs from us and flies up into Heaven.  Yet in another, Jesus in entering Heaven becomes present to us and all the world.   No longer bound in space and time or limited to a single then and there, He now is in the heart of the great celestial dance and is available to all who turn to him in trust.  His entire self is taken into Eternity, and our own humanity can now participate in Him, and in some ways we are with Him there.  Doing Church by live-streaming and Zoom this last year and a half has taught us the power of being present while absent.  The Ascension, where Jesus “zooms up” to heaven only to be closer to us, surpasses these technical tricks by far.  Perhaps it is the Ultimate Zoom.

 

Church of England priest, poet, and scholar expert on the “Inklings” (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and friends), Malcolm Guite wrote the following sonnet on Ascension Day tapping into several of these themes.  It is from his book Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). 

 

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place
As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.
We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,
Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.

 

Grace and Peace.  Fr. Tony+

God of Surprises (Easter 6B)

 

A God of Surprises

Easter 6B
9 May 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth

and 10:00 a.m. Said Mass live-streamed from the Chancel

Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

 

God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. 

 

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes the process of his nation moving from Apartheid to multi-ethnic democracy thus: it was “a kind of roller coaster ride, reaching the heights of euphoria that a new dispensation was virtually here, and then touching the depths of despair because of the mindless violence and carnage that seemed to place the whole negotiation process in considerable jeopardy. And just as we were recovering our breath, the God of Surprises played his most extraordinary and incredible card.”  “God’s sense of humor is quite something, you know… Beyers Naudé … was an Afrikaner who originally supported Apartheid but then … said, ‘No, apartheid can’t be justified scripturally,’ [for which] he was turfed out of his church.  [T]hey expelled him because they said he was a traitor.   And so he joined up with blacks and others who [opposed Apartheid].  When freedom came, there was a [freeway] in Johannesburg that had been named after … D.F. Malan [the principal architect of Apartheid].  In 1994–95, the name was changed to the Beyers Naudé Highway. I mean, you would almost imagine them in heaven sort of rolling in the aisles.”

God is a God of Surprises.  All of us have seen it in our lives.  Unexpected things, for good or ill, abound. 

The stories we have been reading these last few Sundays from the Book of Acts tell of one of the great tricks played by this God of Surprises, the great turning point when the early Christian Church, despite itself, reached out and brought in the gentiles as equal partners to what previously been a Jews-only affair.  The story is told in Acts chapters 8-15.   

A couple of weeks ago, we read where Philip teaches an Ethiopian Eunuch and baptizes him (Acts 8:26ff).   This guy is not only a gentile, but also has a physical impediment that the Scriptures specifically taught prevent full participation in the worship of God’s people (Lev. 20:20).  The Ethiopian Eunuch asks “Here is water.  What is there that possibly can keep me from being baptized?”  What once was an impediment is no longer one.  

Today’s reading is part of a larger story about Cornelius and Peter. Cornelius is a centurion of the Italian Cohort, famous for its harsh suppression of anti-Roman nationalism.  Though professionally required to harshly deal with Jewish nationalism, he has come to believe in the one God, but has not converted to Judaism.   Because of his faith, he is told by an Angel to go and find Peter, who will tell him what God wants him to know. He sends messengers to set up a meeting. 

Meanwhile, Peter takes a noon-day nap and has a dream where he sees a giant picnic cloth.  On it is every kind of animal, most of them forbidden as food by the Hebrew Scriptures.  A voice tells Peter to butcher some of the animals and eat their flesh.  Peter is understandably reluctant:  “I try to keep kosher, like God commands. Those creatures are abominations.  I can’t eat them.  You’re testing me, right?” 

Relentless, the voice replies, “Don’t call unclean what God has declared clean.”  This happens three times, and Peter wakes up, deeply troubled.  Just at this time, the messengers from Cornelius arrive.    The synchronicity is too great for him to ignore.  He agrees to accompany them to see Cornelius.  

Now as I said, Cornelius is a gentile.  Eating with Gentiles or even having extended dealings with them is a contaminating act under the careful and strict interpretation of the Law.   His ‘kind’ has been seen for centuries as unclean by Judaism of any stripe.  It’s the written Word of God that makes the distinctions, and for many, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.  No more questions allowed.”   

Yet God, that trickster with surprises up his sleeves, has other plans.  Peter has seen the vision of the unclean foods turned clean, and has heard the chastising voice when he is reluctant to follow the voice’s instructions.  And now he meets Cornelius, a gentile, someone his faith tells him is unclean, and he wants to hear the Gospel.  

Peter begins with “I understand that God shows no partiality.”  He declares that “no matter what nationality, God accepts anyone who is in awe of God and tries to do what is right.”   As Peter continues, the Holy Spirit falls on those gathered, including the gentiles.  Peter declares, “can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

 

Note this: “The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles” (Acts 10:45).  Peter and the other leaders of the early church did not want to welcome these marginal people, these people outside of God’s Law.  And they were surprised and shocked when they began to see in these unclean strangers the very signs they saw in themselves of God’s action and engagement.   

Peter, against his native sense of duty to God, openly baptizes gentile Cornelius without first demanding that he be circumcised.  It took a dream vision and huge amounts of “coincidence” to bring him to do it, but he does it nonetheless because he recognizes in the lives of these strangers things he knows from his personal experience come from God.

 

In coming chapters, the onetime Saul, now Paul, preaches widely and succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.  Large congregations of Gentiles become the mainstay of the Church.  Paul is early Christianity’s Beyers Naudé, once an opponent who became a proponent of what he had stood against.  The God of Surprises turns him from persecutor to vessel of grace, just as He turned an Italian Cohort Centurion, Cornelius, from agent of Roman oppression to faithful believer and member of the Church.    And so in chapter 15 of Acts, the Church must meet and figure out in Council how to manage the new reality, Gentiles as Christians.   They come up with a surprise:  do not require them to become Jews, only require the basic morality expected of all the peoples of the earth in Genesis 11. 

 

As it was then, so it is now:  the Church continues to respond to the call of the God Surprises by discerning new and startling, unexpected, ways forward.   We include more and more, and are changed in the process. 

Thanks be to God.