Holy Spirit of the Living God, we give you thanks for all the times you have illumined us through your Word. We ask that you do so once again, that we might be able to discern your work in this world and faithfully participate in the proclamation of your Kingdom. Amen.
There are those days when I am so glad that God is involved in my life. There are also those days, however, when I'm not so glad that God is involved in my life, primarily when I like my life the way it is. You see, God has this uncanny way of moving us in directions we aren't really sure that we want to go. Sometimes even in directions that we definitely don't want to go. And usually, my disgruntlement with God at times is not so much that God is moving me, but the way that God is moving me. Sometimes we get those more subtle wake-up calls, like someone tapping us on the shoulder saying, "wake up." But other times are like getting a glass of cold water thrown on your face.
In a sense, the way God works really should not surprise us all that much. There seems to be a pattern throughout the entire Bible of God's behavior. God often uses the most absurd, or sometimes even offensive, way to get our attention and to call us to faithful action.
Ever since I've been here in Ladd, we've seen this happen in the way that God rescued the Israelites from Egypt. We have seen God use the littlest of the earth's peoples to make several points: God is sovereign over all earthly powers; God will not stand for abusive systems and will liberate the captives at the expense of the oppressors; when a group has been silence by the powerful, God will become their voice and speak for them; and those who exclude others, will in the end find themselves excluded by God. It's a basic behavioral pattern that naturally flows from who God is.
But, how often do we hear the message of who God is, and still we do not get it? As we read the Israelite Scriptures, the Jewish people just aren't getting it. So when we get to Acts, the first book that talks about the origins of the earliest Christian community, we expect, now that Jesus has come, that they are finally going to get it. But, it just doesn't seem to be the case. So God has to again illustrate to the people what they are to be all about. And in today's text, God does so through Peter, whether Peter likes it or not, in a manner not unlike the glass of cold water in the face.
Thusfar, as we look at the Christian community in Acts, we see that they've had a rough go of it. Skipping back a bit in the story, we saw that Jesus was betrayed, executed by the Roman authorities, gone, and then he reappeared to the disciples.
This is the point at which Acts begins. From that point on, empowered by the living presence of the Christ of God, which they called the Holy Spirit, they formed as a community of faith within the Jewish tradition. In today's terms, we might think of them as a Jewish "denomination." They were first and foremost Jews who worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they were also a distinct branch of the family tree.
As time passed, their way of life came in conflict with the Jewish authorities. Eventually this led to bloodshed as some were killed for blasphemy. Naturally, they reacted like any other community that experiences persecution, they tended to become defensive and turn inward to protect themselves. "They" were seeing both other Jews and Gentiles as those "other" people. "They" were the ones who threatened their community, so Christians had to be careful how they interacted with "them."
But even while they were on the defensive, they could also remember that they were special, for they believed that their community alone had access to the Holy Spirit of their Lord. The God they had encountered in Jesus Christ and who dwelled with them was their God, and nobody else's. If anyone wanted to lay claim to their greatest treasure, the Holy Spirit of the Living God, then those people would have to join their community and conform to their image and their way of life first. And so the plan was to sit still and anyone who wanted to tap into the treasures of heaven would have to come to them. That seems to have been their plan.
God, however, seems to have had other plans. You see, this newly formed community was formed for a reason: it was created by God to do something, to embark upon God's mission. It was meant to go out and bear the Holy Spirit into the world. It was never meant to sit still and try to hoard the Holy Spirit while it expected the world to come to it. It appears that this is the lesson that the Christians had forgotten, and it was this lesson that God was reminding Peter of, so that he could in turn go back and remind the community.
And of all people that God had chosen to work through in order to get this message to Peter, it just had to be Cornelius. How characteristic of God is that. Cornelius represented everything that was most threatening to the new Christian sect. He was a Gentile, whereas they were Jews. And he was a centurion, a Roman soldier, one of those people who dared to crucify Peter's Lord. If there was any one group of people who truly deserved to be forsaken by God, it was the Roman army, and especially its leaders. But, it really should not surprise us that God would use the very type of person that Peter despised most to give him a wake up call. It is quite in line with the divine character. And it seems to have worked quite well.
Before Peter arrived at Cornelius' house, he believed that people had to join the community of faith in order to receive the Holy Spirit, in order to be embraced by Christ. Cornelius and his "type" of people (those who have neither been circumcised nor baptized) simply seem to be beyond the reach of the Holy Spirit.
During Peter's encounter with Cornelius, however, Peter discovered that God really did not send him there in order to teach Cornelius about the ways of God. Rather, God sent Peter there to teach Peter through Cornelius what God was doing in the world…outside of the church. Because the church was becoming isolated, they were in danger of missing out on the entire point of their existence. When Peter sees how God is at work in Cornelius' life, he is converted and embarks on the next phase of God's mission: to proclaim that God is doing a new thing…and including the Gentiles in it.
As I read this text for today, I really got the sense that this story about Cornelius is really not about Roman centurions. I think it's about followers of Christ coming to grips with the reality that we really don't want to include everybody in our church. We all have "those" people that we would prefer not be included. And I think that Peter's conversion is ultimately about us having to come to grips with that all-too-often-encountered reality that sometimes (if not often) the Good News for the world seems most offensive to those of us in the church. Let's face it, do we really want everyone to be a part of the group? Are we so naďve as to believe that somehow-just because we are "followers of Christ" that we are free from all prejudices?
"Cornelius" is the name that the Bible has given this morning to those very people that we don't want here with us right now. What types of people make us nervous? What are those other names that we call them? Maybe… Democrats? Republicans? Hispanics? African-Americans? Middle-Easterners? Gays and lesbians? Transgendered people? Theological liberals? Theological fundamentalists?
Oh, make no mistake about it, we all have "Cornelius" in our lives. And, if we truly desire to chase the Holy Spirit of the Living God, to touch God more fully, then it is vital to ask ourselves "who" those people are that we resist because we feel threatened by them. It's vital because if we can't answer that honestly to ourselves, then we may very well be missing out on something very important that God is trying to tell us through "them."
So, who is your "Cornelius"?