Who Am I to Hinder God?

Acts 11:1-18

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Do you have people in your life that for whatever reason you’re just not going to sit down with and share a meal?  Wedding receptions can be an absolute planning nightmare due to family feuds and making sure that so-and-so doesn’t wind up sitting with so-and-so for fear of the blow up that would ensue.   Ever been so-and-so?

Now, let me ramp this up a bit.  Are there particular kinds of people with whom you would rather just not have in your space?  Sick people?  Mentally ill people?  People of colour?  Of other ethnicities or nationalities?  People with different sexual orientations?   How would you feel if you were sitting in a restaurant and somebody unwashed, wreaking of body odours, and mumbling to herself sat in the next booth?  How would you feel if a young man of Middle Eastern descent sat at the booth and kept making calls in Arabic on his cell phone?  What if two men sat in the booth and were giddy in love like teen-agers, holding hands and stuff, what then?

Let me ramp this up a little bit more.  Are there persons or people who you believe are not welcome in the presence of God and whom God does not love?  Is there anyone whom you believe should not be welcome to sit in that pew over there?  Well, maybe you’re gracious enough to say you’re not going to play God and will tolerate them, but on the other side of the church.  But, what if they come to the potluck after service, would they be welcome to sit at your table or would you suddenly become a wallflower?

This is a difficult topic, this deciding who is included, who is acceptable, who is clean in God’s eyes.  I’ve often heard ministers preach that when Jesus was crucified, he was nailed to the cross in such a way that his arms were wide open in love to all.  Yet, when it comes to us, his disciples, we seem to have our arms crossed in judgement.  But, you know, we should be careful when we construct boundaries around the love of God because it makes Jesus’ arms look crossed in judgement. 

Do you remember what happened Easter evening when Jesus appeared to his disciples who were cowering in fear behind closed doors?  Do you remember how he blessed them with his peace and told them that as the Father had sent him, so he was sending them - with that particular ministry of healing and reconciliation?  Do you remember how he then breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (Jn. 20:22-23)?  Well, the same applies to us.  We, too, share that same mission of cross-bearing reconciliation and have been filled with that same breath and Spirit.  We share the task of forgiving and retaining the sins of others.

I find what Jesus had to say that night powerfully troubling.  It means that in our fellowship, in the hospitality and love that we share in Christ, we really do embody and really can enact the grace of God through our actions to each other and to whomever we welcome into our fellowship.  Jesus has given us the authority either to forgive the sins of others or to bear their sins against them in a way that has permanence.  Here’s how it works.  I know people who have been profoundly healed – emotionally, spiritually, and even physically – because a congregation opened its arms to them in forgiving love.  I know people who want absolutely nothing to do with God and their inner pain turned to bitterness because they walked into a church in need of grace and only a found a bunch of people with their arms crossed in judgement.

Jesus elsewhere said to his disciples, “Truly I say to y’all, whatever y’all bind (prohibit) on earth will be bound (prohibited) in heaven and whatever y’all loose (permit) on earth will be loosed (permitted) in heaven” (Mt. 18:18).  There is some pretty heated debate in the scholarly world as to what exactly that verse means but all would agree that we need to be real careful whom we exclude from fellowship and why because who we welcome in our midst is welcomed in heaven and who we exclude from our midst is excluded in heaven. 

Looking at our passage from Acts we find the Apostles in Jerusalem exercising this authority of binding and loosing with respect to Gentile people who have obviously become believers.  They all know that Peter has welcomed Gentiles into Christian fellowship in Caesarea and that the Holy Spirit fell upon them as well.  As Peter had come to Jerusalem they want to know what happened.  Peter tells the story that after a vision that destroyed his religion-based prejudices the Holy Spirit led him to the household of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius and told him to proclaim the message of Jesus.  As he was doing so, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as the Spirit had done with the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost.  Seeing God had welcomed these Gentiles Peter said “Who am I to hinder God” and then he baptized the whole household; servants, children, and all. 

It is remarkable that when the Apostles questioned Peter about this truly awesome event that the Apostles were not celebrating with joy and wanting to know all the wonderful details of this new thing God had down in the power of the Holy Spirit of welcoming Gentiles into the fellowship of Christ.  If you remember, Gentiles were not welcome into the Presence of God according to Jewish faith.  But here God had poured his presence upon them.  The Apostles were not amazed.  Rather, they criticized Peter and bluntly accused him, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”  Wow.  Scrape my jaw off the floor.  Knowing full well that God had given the Holy Spirit to Gentiles and welcomed them into the body of Christ, all the Apostles could do was criticize Peter for going and eating with them.  “There goes the potluck.  We can’t just eat latkes anymore.  We’re going to have to learn to eat bacon.”

God had gotten out in front of the religious prejudices of his people and fully included Gentiles into the Body of Christ.  Predictably, the Apostles wanted to treat them as if they were still to be considered unclean and not worthy of full fellowship in the people of God.  Those God had made clean by pouring his very self upon them, the Apostles still wanted to treat as defiled.  God was loosing, but the Apostles were binding.

Sometimes God, through the powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, gets out in front of us and does things that challenge us and doing so he leads us to accept those whom we believe we have a Scriptural basis to consider unclean.  When God does this we have a choice: either to continue to exclude them and hinder what God himself has done, or to take a deep hard look at own spiritual state and, considering the grace God has shown us each, humbly acknowledge as Peter did, “Who am I, who am I, to hinder God?”

Looking at a more contemporary situation, our denomination now finds itself in what I am convicted to believe is an Acts 11 moment.  Our denomination has a binding and losing decision to make.  For the past few decades God has been including people into the Body of Christ whom many believe to be unclean...and yes, I am referring to that pesky sexuality and gender matter that we stand divided on.  General Assembly is coming up in two weeks and the matter will again be on the table.  I, being your dutiful minister, must brief you on what is happening so that you won’t be caught unawares if the PCC should make the national news at some point during the first week of June.

As a matter of background, the current stance of our denomination is that we recognize that homosexuals and people who are differently gendered are the way they are because they were born that way not that because (and excuse my crassness) they made some “perverted” decision to “swing the other way.”  To take this stance is to say we understand that God formed them in the womb to be the way they are just as he formed each of us to have the sexual identities that we each have.  We have welcomed the work of some very sound science to come to this conclusion. 

This is also to acknowledge that nearly all of these folks have suffered greatly for simply being who they are.  Historically, the Church hasn’t helped them much at all.  Rather, we’ve called them an abomination to God and contributed to acts of violence against them.  Our denomination has repented of these hate crimes and has vowed to discontinue and counter any practice that might continue this violence.  It is the stance of the PCC that we want our churches to be safe places for people who are not heterosexual.

Furthermore, it is our denomination’s practice that in acknowledgement of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these folks we welcome these folks into the membership of our churches hoping they will find the love of Christ embodied in us and be accepted as they are.  Moreover, they are welcome to serve in any ministry in the church even as elders and even ministers provided they stay celibate.  Yes, homosexuals can be ministers in the PCC provided they stay single.  For us to have this practice means that we recognize that the Holy Spirit is at work in these folks just as he is in us.  Therefore, we must listen did Peter to the voice in his vision that told him not once but three times, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Presently, the matter that we continue to wrestle with as a denomination is what we call “full inclusion”.  This involves permitting or prohibiting homosexual marriage and permitting or prohibiting married homosexuals to serve as Ministers of Word and Sacrament.  To do this we must change our definition of marriage.  “Full inclusion” is on the table because we need to discern whether or not our current stance of being welcoming as long as they are not practicing is an insult to their basic human dignity and right to be in a fulfilling relationship.

As this matter has proven immensely divisive and threatens the very survival of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, last year’s General Assembly formed a special committee consisting of former Moderators of the General Assembly and charged them with the task of trying to find a way for us to go forward.  Their report came out Tuesday with four options which are: change nothing; full inclusion; create three sub-denominations under the one big denomination; or, let ministers, sessions, and congregations do what they want.

Well, back to the council of Apostles in Jerusalem, and to Peter, and to the point I wish to make: sometimes God, through the powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, gets out in front of us and leads us to accept those whom we believe we have a Scriptural basis to consider unclean.  When God does this we have a choice either to continue to exclude those whom God has included and hinder what God himself has done or take a deep hard look at our own spiritual state and, considering the grace God has shown us each, humbly acknowledge as Peter did, “Who am I, who am I, to hinder God?”  And maybe we should take one out of Peter’s playbook and just spend time eating with and getting to know those whom we regard as uncomfortably different from ourselves.  Amen.

 

Come to the House of God

John 1:43-51

Jesus’ conversation with Nathanael is one of the more enigmatic conversations in John’s Gospel.  There’s some “hidden code” in the conversation that needs to be cracked.  To our 21^st Century ears this moment of Jesus’ calling Nathanael just seems like Jesus has spoken to the heart of a young dreamer.  Yet, if we lived back in Jesus’ day we find that this conversation is loaded with symbolism that would have spoken deeply to the hopes of faithful Israelites at that time.  The name “Nathanael” has a deeper meaning as does the term “true Israelite”.  It is significant that Nathanael is sitting “under the fig tree”.  And the strangest thing of all, what was Jesus getting at by mentioning a vision of “angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”?  So, lets put on our secret decoder rings and get to the bottom of this mystery.

  First, the name Nathanael means “gift of God”.  So, the first thing that we need to know about Nathanael is not that he was God’s gift to women, but rather that by his namesake he was to be a blessing to others.  This is significant because God’s promise to Abraham was to bless him and his descendants so that they would be a blessing to the nations.  Israel was blessed not for its own sake, but rather to be a blessing.  Such became Nathanael as an Apostle.

Second, a true Israelite in John’s Gospel is a true Jew.  Jesus refers to Nathanael as “a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit.”  This is the only time in John’s Gospel where someone of Jewish descent is called “an Israelite” rather than one of “the Jews”.   John’s categorically negative and seemingly sarcastic use of the term “the Jews” has sparked anti-Semitism over the years so we need to be careful with how we hear it and use it.  John did not mean to describe all Jewish people with it.  Rather, John used the term, “the Jews” to refer to the corrupted religious and political establishment in Jerusalem as well as the power hungry and power wielding leadership of the synagogues who were spread throughout the nation and the Roman Empire.  In this conversation with Nathanael Jesus was saying that Nathanael, the one who is a blessing from God, was a true Israelite.  He was a true Jew for he was sincerely searching for and living for God and his kingdom rather than a power-corrupted religious authority.

Third, what does under the fig tree mean?  When Nathanael, the blessing from God who is sincere about searching for and living for God and his kingdom, asks Jesus how he knows who he is, Jesus tells him that before Philip called him, before Philip summonsed Nathanael to come and follow Jesus, Jesus saw him under the fig tree.  “Sitting under one’s own fig tree” was a common phrase in ancient Israel.  It symbolized well-being or shalom due to the blessings of God.

We came across it in our reading from Micah.  Micah speaking of the last days pictures peoples from the nations coming to Jerusalem to the Temple to learn the ways of the God of Israel so that there may be peace.  In that day God will settle all disputes.  There will be justice and equity.  Micah says, “Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken.”  Sitting under your own vine and fig tree was an image of what it was to be at materially comfortable and to have peace-filled leisure. 

By using this prophetically symbolic phrase, Jesus indicated to Nathanael that he knew Nathanael had a deep desire for the Lord to come and establish his kingdom and he wants Nathanael to know that in coming him, to Jesus, is where Nathanael would find its fulfillment.  Nathanael hears this as Truth and responds immediately with the confession, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”  He knows that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God come to fulfill God’s promise to Israel to establish his kingdom.  Nathanael, the blessing from God who is sincere about searching for and living for God and his kingdom, has now found himself in the presence of the Messiah.

The fourth image of the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man alludes to the dream the patriarch Jacob had while fleeing from his brother Esau.  In this dream Jacob saw a ladder from earth to heaven with the angels of God going up and coming down.  Above the ladder stood the LORD God who made to him the promise that he had made to both Abraham and Isaac.  When Jacob woke up he thought the place was the house of God and the gate to heaven.  So, he names the place Bethel meaning the house of God for he had met there his Lord, his God, the God of his father. 

So, with this allusion to Jacob’s dream Jesus is telling Nathanael that it is not such a great thing that he believes Jesus to be the Messiah.  Rather, Nathanael is going to see, is going to know that Jesus is God with us.  Jesus is Bethel, the house of God.  Jesus is the gate to God.  Jesus is the LORD God himself with his people.  Nathanael, the blessing from God who is sincere about searching for and living for God and his kingdom and who has now found himself in the presence of the Messiah is going to see in no uncertain terms that Jesus is the LORD God become human flesh and the way to God himself.

In closing there’s on last thing to be noted here in the calling of Nathanael: Jesus did not call Nathanael; Philip did.  It is safe to assume that Nathanael was a friend of Philip’s and that Philip, knowing the heart of his friend, did of his own initiative invite Nathanael to come and meet Jesus who is the house of God. Philip just simply knew that Jesus was the fulfilment of Nathanael’s hope.  Philip had a relationship with Jesus and he knew that it was a relationship that Nathanael was longing for.  Nathanael, with a bit of initial reluctance, came and saw and was known by Jesus and believed.  Jesus is the house of God and Nathanael had entered in.  Jesus is the gate to heaven and Nathanael entered in not of his own initiative but by trusting the word of his good friend.

Friends, here this wonderful news.  Jesus, by the powerful, fellowship building work of the Holy Spirit, has built us together to be the house of God.  Paul writes: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.  In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:19-22).   We are the temple in which God lives.  Among us is the gateway to God.  I am reasonably sure that we all have people in our lives whom we know are searching for God and who just might on the strength of their trust in our friendship come here and here come to see Jesus and find in him the Truth and the Life and the Way they have been seeking because life as it is ain’t cutting it.  They may hem and haw and it may take 1,000 attempts, but what’s there to lose.  They may even pull a Nathanael and say, “Church, can anything good come from the church?”  Let’s face it.  They are right in saying that.  The Church even this church over the years has blown it completely.  Yet, we know Jesus is here and we know people who truly are searching for the Truth.  Be like Philip.  Invite your friend.  Amen.

P.S.  In case anybody is wondering, Nathanael is only mentioned in John’s Gospel.  In the other Gospel’s he goes by the name of Bartholomew.  St. Bartholomew took the Gospel to India and then established the church in Armenia.  Tradition has it that the Armenian king, Polymius, became a Christian and in jealousy his pagan brother, Astyages, ordered Bartholomew’s execution.  Bartholomew was skinned alive and crucified head down.  Tradition has it that Philip and Nathanael traveled together on several missionary journeys and in Heiropolis in Turkey were crucified upside-down together, but Philip’s preaching from the cross led the crowd to take Nathanael down, but Philip refused and died.

Behind the Scenes

Revelation 5:11-14
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I haven’t had cable TV in almost two decades, but I seem to remember that at about 7 pm the networks warmed us up for primetime TV with those behind-the-scenes shows like Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood.  We got behind-the-scenes interviews with actors and directors, behind-the-scenes looks at the sets, behind-the-scenes Hollywood gossip, and a behind-the-scenes almost spoiler for upcoming episodes of our favourite primetime shows.  The intent of these shows was to make us think were privy to the real world goings on in the very unreal world of primetime TV.  Entertainment Tonight has aired for 38 years and Access Hollywood for 23.  For some reason we like our behind-the-scenes peeks into Hollywood and the lives of celebrities.

In the first century world they had behind-the-scenes looks into what they would have called reality.  In the Greek world what we call Greek mythology was behind-the-scenes reality to them.  Just read Homer.  They believed that everything that happened in our world was somehow the playing out of the elaborate whims of the gods.  It was priests, oracles, and epic storytellers who gave people back then there dose of “celebrity news” and how it pertained to their lives.  You know how it is – how it goes on Olympus is how it is down here just as how it goes in Hollywood is how it goes in Washington and that spills into the rest of the world.  Who would have thought that “ Celebrity Apprentice” would become reality.

Another form of behind-the-scenes looking they did back in Bible times was a form of literature called “Apocalyptic”.  The name comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, which simply means revelation.  Hence, the title of the Book of Revelation – The Apocalypsis to John.  The first words of the Book are The Revelation of Jesus Christ. 

We get our word apocalypse from this word as well.  Fortunately, apocalypsis does not mean what we have come to think apocalypse means.  We tend to think of apocalypse as nuclear holocaust and mass destruction. But unfortunately, when most of us think of the Book of Revelation, due to centuries of misreading we think of it as a road map to how and when God is going to destroy everything.  Ever since Hiroshima, we have been thinking the “Apocalypse” is now possible.

To read the Revelation in that end-of-time-roadmap way is to misread it.  Whenever you hear somebody saying, “we’re living in the endtimes and all those Bible prophecies are coming true” realize you are talking to someone who has been sadly misled.  The fundamental flaw there is the assumption that this Book had nothing to say to the people to whom it was first written because only today do we have the means to destroy everything.  The Revelation was in fact written to help late first century Christians living in modern day Western Turkey understand why they were being persecuted and how to deal with it. 

The only road map the Revelation gives us is that: God created the world; Imperial powers on earth and cosmic powers in the heavens are under the influence of Satan and are trying to destroy it (especially the people of God); in, through, and as Jesus Christ – the true Son of God – and by his life, death, and resurrection God has defeated the powers and is saving the creation; Jesus is coming back and all the while God is making all things new; therefore, stay faithful even if it means martyrdom and above all worship because worship is the fulfillment and completion of everything.

Our reading this morning is one of those scenes in the Book of Revelation in which we catch a glimpse of what is going on behind-the-scenes of history.  Behind-the-scenes of our reality everything living thing in heaven in the power of the Holy Spirit is worshipping God the Father who sits on the throne and God the Son the Lamb who was slain but now lives.  Obviously, things on earth are terribly out of whack but in heaven there is worship and if we stick it out to the end of the Book we will find that in time it will be on earth as it is in heaven.    

In the Bible heaven isn’t this far removed place that you have to die to get to.  Rather, heaven like earth is a part of God’s good creation, the part where God and his glory are readily present and experienced.  Instead of being far removed from each other heaven and earth are overlapped in a way we will never understand how but what happens on earth happens in heaven and what happens in heaven happens on earth.  But we cannot see heaven, because it is veiled to us, but the day will come when that veil is lifted, the day when heaven and earth are made new without that veil and it will be on earth as it is in heaven. 

There are a few places in the Bible where were get the hint that God’s purpose for his creation is to bring it under the Lordship of Christ Jesus and to fill it with himself.  Ephesians 1:8-10 reads: “With all wisdom and insight ⁹ he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, ¹⁰ as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  Reading down a little further in the chapter Paul prays for the church, for us, saying: “¹⁷ I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸ so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰ God^[f] put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²² And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

This filling, this fulfilling of Creation under Christ is what we catch a glimpse of in the moments of worship that we come across in the Book of Revelation.  Worshipping God in Christ full of his Spirit is where everything in God’s good creation is headed.  When we together worship, we are entering into that.  When we in personal devotion worship, we are participating in what all the creatures in heaven are presently and always doing.

Soldiering on, I said a moment ago that the Book of Revelation was written to persecuted Christians in the late first Century to help them understand why they were being persecuted and to encourage them to remain faithful and above all invite them to worship because worship is the fulfillment and completion of everything.  In worship is where they would experience the presence of God and the fullness of his power to strengthen and comfort them.  The message of the Book of Revelation is quite straightforward: When all Hell breaks lose on us here on earth, worship as they do in Heaven and be comforted by God himself.

So what does that look like for us in post-Christian North America?  We cannot say we are persecuted like they were back then.  The negative press we get these days, we’ve largely brought on ourselves because we have sought to rule our culture as its goodie-goodie, hypocritical morality police.  Only on rare occasions has the Church in the power of the Holy Spirit by which God raised Jesus from the dead tapped into the power of resurrection and actually brought forth peace and reconciliation, and justice, and equity.  Very rarely has the Church as we know it lived for the praise of God’s glory. 

We cannot say we are persecuted in the way Christians in the First Century were, yet the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka demonstrate this still happens.  Nevertheless, Hell still breaks lose on us from time to time.  We find ourselves suffering emotionally at home, at work.  Diagnoses come to those we love and to us.  When we suffer, worship is the place we should go to find peace and health.  Whether we live or we die entering into the behind-the-scenes worship that pervades God’s good creation is where we find our wholeness, our health, our peace, our salvation, our life in Christ filled with the Holy Spirit.

When I was in seminary I did some hospital chaplaincy work.  One evening myself and another seminary student were the chaplains on duty in a hospital that had the fourth busiest ER on the east coast of the US.  Early in the evening the pager went off summonsing us to the ER.  We entered the ER in time to hear the attending physician who was the head ER physician shout, “Where’s that G—D--- chaplain.”  We stepped to the fore to where he was standing beside a teenage African American boy who had been shot in the chest.  The Attending continued to shout.  “This boy’s been shot in the heart.  There is nothing we can do for him.  I want you to go in there and tell the family and in no way are you to get their hopes up.” 

We went into the little family room.  The young man’s grandfather and uncle were there.  The grandfather was a former Pentecostal preacher.  We gave him the news and he laid down on the couch facedown and began to pray in tongues.  He was entering into that worship.  The evening went on.  The young man eventually died.  The Attending sent a resident along with us to give the two men the news.  We entered the room.  The grandfather got up knowing what we were going to say and took the news with remarkable composure.  As we left the room and went to the main waiting room at the ER there were a bunch of teenagers.  He stopped to tell them that there would be no retaliation.  They were not to make his grandson’s death serve and evil purpose.  I watched the news the next couple of days.  They heeded him.

When all Hell breaks lose, go behind the scenes and worship.  There is where we find Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to sustain us.  Amen.