Unexpected
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Acts 11:1-18
The New Testament in a Year sermon series
Rev. Brian North, Westminster Presbyterian, Chehalis, WA
January 22nd, 2012
In August I laid out the sermon series for the whole year. I had given today’s message a tentative title of “Unexpected.” Who knew that after the dry winter we’ve had so far – December was a record dry month, at least through Christmas – who knew that during the week leading up to a message on the way God works in unexpected ways, that we’d have 12-18 inches of snow on the ground!?! This has been an unexpected week! So, I decided it was an appropriate, and providential title for the sermon. Really, the fact is, an awful lot of life is unexpected. Some unexpected things are good, others are not. For instance, on more than one occasion, I have been holding one of my kids, especially when they’re under the age of two or so, and unexpectedly had them throw up all over me. The joys of parenting, right? And on Wednesday morning Gwen and I were outside with our kids. She and I put on our snowshoes, and I had Elliott in a kid back-pack thing, and we were tromping through the 17” of snow we had at our house, and I walked right into the drainage ditch between our yard and the street. It was completely unexpected, even though I was right at home! It was so filled in with snow I couldn’t see it and I forgot it was there. Between the unexpected step down, and the weight of Elliott on my back, I fell down to my knees like a toddler learning to walk – fortunately, keeping Elliott upright and not dumping him into the snow! So unexpected things happen – both good and not so good.
And today, as we continue our series going through the New Testament in a year, which we started in September, we’re looking at this idea of the unexpected, and how God works in unexpected ways. So I invite you to grab your Bibles, or a blue pew Bible, and turn to Acts 11:1-18. We’ll read the whole thing in one fell swoop this morning. And as we read it, count up all the things that might have been unexpected to the people in this passage.
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ‘I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.
At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’ When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’
(How many unexpected things did you count?) I count at least 7 things in there that are unexpected for the various people in the passage. And every single one of them is an unexpected move of God. The Gentiles receive the word of God; Peter had a vision from God; The vision declares that all food is clean to eat; A voice in the vision reiterates that message when Peter resists; Three men, following God’s leading, unexpectedly show up at the door of the house where he’s staying; He senses the Spirit of God telling him not to distinguish between Jews and Gentiles; and the Holy Spirit came upon the Gentiles the in much the same way that it did on the Disciples in Acts 2. Clearly, God moves in unexpected ways, and we see several of them here. It happens often enough, that you’d think we would begin to expect God to move like this, but so often we are caught off-guard.
In fact: This is common throughout Scripture, and in our lives, too. For instance, a couple chapters before this we read of Saul, who persecuted the church. But he had a radical encounter with Jesus and Saul was transformed into a follower of Jesus. He later changed his name to Paul, and he went on to start churches and many of his letters to those churches comprise much of the New Testament. That was unexpected.
We can back up a little further and find God moving in other unexpected ways. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That’s unexpected. Jesus healed people with some amazing miracles. Unexpected. Jesus taught with uncanny wisdom. Unexpected from a carpenter. Jesus died on the cross. Unexpected by everyone except Jesus himself. Jesus rose from the grave. That’s pretty unexpected. We can go back further, too: Israel’s escape from Egypt; Manna from heaven, water from a rock; the young shepherd boy David being chosen as the king in waiting; Nehemiah leading the rebuilding of the Jerusalem wall…there are many other examples of the unexpected ways in which God has moved and led His people.
And probably the key point in all of this is that these are acts of God. Or, as we see in this morning’s passage, they’re things declared by God. This unexpected new direction we read about this morning is not because of the whims of a group of people, or a bright idea that Peter had and he decided to push it upon his fellow Christian brothers and sisters. Peter was just as shocked as anyone. In fact, his initial response to the meaning of the vision, which was the catalyst for everything else, was, “No!” But God was persistent, and got through to him. Two of the unexpected things in this passage particularly had long-term ramifications: The meaning of the vision, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles.
The background behind the vision is that there were food purity laws that any devout first century Jew followed, to the point of not sitting at a meal where non-kosher foods were served – which basically meant, no meal sharing with Gentiles. These food laws were initially given by God to protect the Israelites and keep them pure from neighboring nations; it was a way of keeping them “set apart for the Lord.” Now, we’re still called to be “set apart” in our relationship with people and with God. We’re still called to holiness, and there are still boundaries, which when crossed, are sins against the Lord. So we’re set apart…but for the purpose of being a light to the world, to be God’s hands and feet in the world. We are sent by Jesus, just as he sent the Disciples to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so this vision from God to Peter is the catalyst for that to happen, because it removed one of the biggest barriers to ministering to other people. And before Peter had much time to think about the message in this vision, God sent confirmation in the form of the guys knocking at his door, asking him to come stay at a Gentile guy’s house for a few days…where there would undoubtedly be food served that crossed the lines of food purity.
For Peter, it was clearly God speaking into his life, declaring that these foods are clean: Because they were a barrier to reaching people with the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. They, and now we, are called to share the Good News of salvation through faith in Jesus with anyone. God’s gift of forgiveness and grace isn’t for a select few; it’s for the world, even if the whole world doesn’t always receive the gift. So then comes the second of the particularly impactful unexpected things, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon these people. And it was then that Peter saw the unexpected wideness of God’s grace. He didn’t see that coming. The Jewish, Old Testament lenses through which they viewed Jesus prevented them from seeing the breadth of God’s grace, and it was unexpected. Maybe it is unexpected for us, too?
Maybe God is moving in an unexpected way in your life. Actually, I’m sure that He is. He does this with us all the time. Lloyd John Ogilvie, a Presbyterian Pastor and former Chaplain for the U.S. Senate, says in regards to this passage, “It gives us the assurance that the Lord will move us on in our growth, and that the one place He will never let us stay is where we are” (Lloyd John Ogilvie). God will always move us in unexpected ways – deeper understanding of the Bible, greater sensitivity to God’s Spirit, confession of sin, and so forth.
But my guess is that God is also opening doors for us to reach out to people with the love of God in Christ, perhaps to help someone in need and ultimately to share the Good News with them so that they would follow Jesus as well. And like Peter, perhaps those people are hard for us to reach: A family member you don’t get along with. A neighbor whose dogs bark at night and really annoy you. The waitress with piercings all over her ears and nose and tattoos up and down her arms. Every day we come in contact with people who are far from God, and they live right here in our community. Are we prepared to minister to them and mentor them in a relationship with Jesus, or would we let certain barriers get in the way?
This has been a huge area of growth for me in the last several years. As head pastor of a downtown church in a prominent location with a reputation for helping people in need through gas vouchers and snack packs, we get a lot of people walking in off the street looking for assistance. As a result I’ve had a lot of opportunities to pray with people, to counsel people, and to minister to people, who are nothing like me. I mean radically different in every way imaginable: drug users, homeless people, alcoholics, mentally unstable people (well, maybe I’m a little bit that), people who’ve probably been abused, neglected, and are downtrodden…just a lot of really colorful people, and a lot of people who are a lot different than me. Some of them even hair. But here’s the thing that I’ve come to realize in a more profound way than I ever had before: They’re just as worthy of the love of God and being ministered to as anyone else. And so I do my best to minister to them. In fact, all of us on staff do. Especially those of us in the office: Melodee, Robin and Kent…they all do a great job of ministering to whoever comes through the door, even the unexpected ones, much like happened to Peter here in Acts.
But here’s the thing I’ve come to realize that I think Peter finally realized, too, and it is this: I’m really not so different from them. Their struggles and their sins might be ones I’m not so familiar with, their family backgrounds may be a lot less stable, their education level may be different…but I am every bit the sinner that anyone else is. That’s true of all of us. In fact, let’s all just take a moment to say that sentence together: I am every bit the sinner that anyone else is. And so maybe what’s really unexpected, is that God’s grace is extended to me, and to you. And that grace is a license to receive forgiveness. It’s the opportunity to confess, seek God’s transformational power, to let the Holy Spirit lead us into a new and holy way of living. And that gift is available to all.
One final thought as we wrap this up: if I’m honest with myself, and maybe it’s the same for you, it certainly was for Peter and the others who questioned him about eating with Cornelius… deep down inside, somewhere where I don’t even like to admit it exists…I have this basic assumption that I deserve God’s grace, and others don’t. That’s an ugly thing that is buried somewhere deep inside of me, and probably a lot of us have. And in this thinking that I deserve God’s grace and others don’t is one truth and one lie. The truth is that other people aren’t worthy of God’s grace. The lie is that I am deserving of God’s grace. Rather, I’m on the same playing field as anyone else. All of us are. That’s the unexpected realization Peter and his fellow believers had then when the Spirit of God touched Cornelius and the others in the same way that it had Peter and his Jewish buddies. And it’s the realization we can have now. And so maybe the most unexpected thing in all of this, is not that God’s grace is extended to people who are radically different than you or me, but that: God’s grace is extended to you and me. God loves you so much, that he sent his only begotten Son so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. That’s the gift for the world, which includes you and me. It’s unexpected, but that’s how God works. Let’s pray…Amen.
