Resilience for Times When You’re Not In Control

A sermon for Foundry UMC, - Rev. Ben Roberts

Acts 11:1-18 – 5/15/2022

There are numerous aside from the point takeaways for this passage. For instance, God wants you to take naps and eat snacks. It's okay to eat bacon. Wonderful and good as they are just not the point.

This 5th Sunday of the Easter season the author of Luke Acts continues to tell a story of an expanding early church community. In this passage what we are being treated to is a recounting of the conversion of Cornelius and his household. Peter’s version here given as he says “point by point” is offered to the believers at the church in Jerusalem. Any story of a conversion or out pouring of the Holy Spirit in someone's life should be an immediate cause for celebration. But this isn't a celebration, it's more of an interrogation.

There is a distinction noted about the communities involved. In this case the distinction is noted in the passage as circumcised or uncircumcised believers. That is, those following laws and rituals including dietary restrictions physical observance and those who do not. The Israelites and the gentiles within an expanding Christ follower community. But the interrogation doesn't feel necessary if it was just a matter of did you or did you not do the ritual? Instead, the questions are rooted in long standing traditions involving the identity of those to whom God comes. Peter's actions in dining with and staying with this gentile household is a real cause of concern for believers’ whose identity, assurance, and to some extent control is tied up in the observances of purity practice.

In seeking to be generous, I’m not sure it can be overstated the significance of Peter transgressing norms in this story and perhaps that’s part of why a story of a single household takes up almost a chapter and a half of Acts. Karl Kuhn, a Professor of Religion at Lakeland College puts it this way in a commentary for this week; “such purity norms reinforced for Israelites their identity as a people set apart to serve God, to honor God’s Torah, and to receive God’s deliverance. Purity codes for many Israelites…emerged from and reinforced Israelite understandings of how creation, humanity, and daily life were to be ordered, or “mapped out.” They reflected essential elements of their worldview that defined their role and place as the people of God.”[1] Once more those norms were predictable, outlined, taught from birth, they were somewhat manageable and Peter himself adhered to them.

Peter reports how he argues with a voice in his vision telling him “kill and eat.” In verse 8 he recounts how three times he pushed back on what he’d been shown and told, “by no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” Not only this, but in Chapter 10 he also double-checks the people who were sent to fetch him essentially saying, “Y’all know there’s rules about me coming to your house, right?” But all the same, Peter knows he’s not the one in control of the situation and has been sent out to bring the good news. Comforted or spurred along on some level by an answer from heaven saying, go without hesitation, “make no distinction between them and us,” “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

But still, and not without good reason the believers in Jerusalem encountered I imagine all manner of unsettling feelings when they first received the story: anger, betrayal, fear, uncertainty. And based on some of the Greek words used in the text, possible reactions include meddlesomeness or seeking an altercation. I’m not sure I blame them either because frankly from their view things were out of control and possibly perilous for their own wellbeing.

It's almost a little too simple this story. Sort of the biblical version of 1/2 hour sitcom. Main characters are introduced conflict emerges quick solution is found and everything is wrapped up in 1 1/2 chapters. It sounds rather nice as a way to get