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.