Text: Acts 10:34-43
Focus: justice
Function: to help people see the passion of God for justice
34Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. 36You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Welcome to the meeting house of the first Church. They too, went to the houses of the individuals so and ate and had fellowship together and encouraged each other through the use of the their own gifts of the Holy Spirit.
We can learn a lot about the teachings of Jesus if we look at the practices of the first Church.
I hope it doesn’t upset you to know that the first thing they did with the teachings of Jesus was sell all of their own possessions, put them in a community pot so that there would be enough for everyone and then took on the task of ministering to the poor and the displaced in their own communities.
And that is why the Church grew so fast those first few centuries after the apostles and all the miracles that we see in the NT stopped happening. The miracle that grew the church was the way that people gave up greed and selfishness to make sure that everyone had enough.
I love our Church building and it serves a great purpose. But one of the ways that the early church was able to keep up the ministry to the poor in their communities was because they didn’t invest in elaborate buildings for worship, but did what we are doing today and met in the homes of the individuals.
It built a community. Fellowship together is important because it strengthens the faith of the individuals as they use their gifts to enable others to serve God.
Look at us. Hopefully I have the gift of being able to understand and explain the holy Scriptures to you in the context of our worship together.
You all serve as well in many meaningful ways.
We are meeting here and Delbert and Edna have graciously opened their home to us. They are using their gifts and blessings from God to serve others. God blesses us for our sacrifices for others and we enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit of Christ when we let the Spirit move.
I love the creativity of the bulletin that we get every week. If I were doing it, it would be the same old boring stuff each week. But Carol listens to the leading of the Holy Spirit and puts together a meaningful worship experience that ties in wonderfully with the theme of the Scripture which I send her, hopefully early, each week.
When God uses us, we become part of something and the Lord promised that as we are being used by God, the Holy Spirit will flow out of our bellies as rivers of living water to refresh the world around us.
That community setting of the early church fostered that dynamic.
That poem and those crosses given to us by Jody at Christmas was again, the Holy Spirit working inside of her to be a blessing to all of us.
The early Church had preachers, but they were more like us here at Painter Creek whereby they were not so dependent on the preacher, but were able to rely on the Holy Spirit to use them and that built the community that was able to withstand the political persecution that lead to thousands of them being martyred for their allegiance to a different way of living.
I am not asking you to be martyrs. Apparently that is an eternal blessing given by God as a reward for faithfulness. It is God’s choice, not ours.
And that is a long introduction to today’s theme.
The lectionary, which I follow, is a plan of scripture that takes us through every passage of the bible in a 9 year cycle. The idea being that the preacher keeps focused on the Scripture rather than their own personal opinions and problems. I could preach what I learn in my devotions every morning, or I can follow this plan and give a more balanced approach to the Christian Scriptures.
The lectionary uses this time period after Epiphany to include several passages about how the Gentiles were included into the Christian faith. It helps us see the new covenant that God made with all of humanity instead of just one race of people.
And this story is about how a gentile becomes part of the Church. A gentile is anyone who isn’t Jewish. Christianity grew out of the Jewish religion and you know that Jesus was Jewish.
Cornelius was a righteous man. And he was a gentile. He didn’t extort the local population with his authority as a Roman Commander. He saw the suffering of the Jewish people and instead of hardening his heart toward them and turning away, pretending that he didn’t see them, or that they weren’t “his problem,” he gave away his fortune to help poor people in their distress.
As I was preparing this lesson, the Holy Spirit drew me to verse 35 where is says: anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.
I realized that Peter was talking about a pagan gentile who followed the leading the Holy Spirit as she pricked his conscience and led him to doing mercy on behalf of the poor.
Because Cornelius was actually doing acts of social justice, God sought him out and brought him into the fellowship of the believers who were also following Jesus in the way they lived.
The story is pretty fantastic. Jews were forbidden to go into Gentile houses by their laws. Peter is praying and has a vision, three times, whereby God tells him that God is able to redeem anything or anyone.
The Holy Spirit tells him to go to this house of an unclean man and in the house, he starts preaching the message that we have for this text.
I remember giving my heart to Jesus. It was a real experience for me even though I was only 4 years old. I am not denying it.
But Cornelius never responds to an alter call because none is given. In the middle of Peter’s sermon, we read it later in the text, the Holy Spirit falls on the room and they all begin to shout with ecstatic utterances.
Peter concludes the story with God’s openness to everyone even if they are not Jewish.
But Cornelius, another Gentile like we saw two weeks ago when we saw the coming of the wise men, is already a believer.
Let us practice justice. Doing the right thing, always. Loving everyone else as much as we care for ourselves is a high standard. That is why the early church gave up greed and shared everything and then took on the mission of Jesus to change the world.
Let us not merely spiritualize these words and say that Jesus was only concerned about saving souls from hell. Jesus’ Spirit inside of us leads us to the kind of sacrificial love that the first church shared.
We are called to live sacrificially for others because God also loves them
May the Spirit of Christ enable us to be faithful.
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