Sunday: 6th Sunday of Easter
Reading: Acts 10:44-48
Preacher: S. James Steen

If we had been reading the Acts of the Apostles like a book, instead of listening to fragments read in church each week, when we reached today's passage from Acts, we would have just witnessed what may have been the most important events in the history of the Church. I know that this is a brash claim. What about the conversion of Constantine, which opened the Roman Empire to Christianity, the Council of Nicaea, which set the definition of the Trinity that remains the definition of Christian orthodoxy to this day? What about the Reformation, which gave us the priesthood of all believers and justification by faith? As an Anglican, I might name the Elizabethan Settlement, which gave us a Church both Catholic and Reformed and roomy enough to welcome a remarkable breadth of belief and practice.

You may think of other great moments in Christian History. But the Church would not likely have survived to experience any of these I have mentioned had it not been for the two great conversions that Luke describes in the 9th and 10th chapters of Acts.

The early years of the Church were dominated by two great men who were, at the same time, gifted and in need of Conversion. Acts gives us the stories of their conversions. Paul, in his hatred of Christians, was the proverbial zealot who protested so vehemently that one has to suspect that he was drawn to the object of his hatred. It's a bit like my own strong disdain for the cult of the iPhone. Alas those who know me well will tell you that, since my conversion, there is no greater evangelist of the technology of Steve Jobs than I. So it was with Paul, who after his celebrated conversion became the greatest evangelist in the history of the Faith.

But if Paul, in his zealotry, had rejected the idea that Jews could become Christians, Peter, a devout Jewish follower of Jesus from the beginning, rejected the notion that Gentiles could become Christians without first becoming Jewish. Surely, he insisted, Jesus had been sent to proclaim the good news to the Jews. How could the unclean, uncircumcised, idol-worshiping Gentiles be welcomed directly into the Church?

Then, just as Paul was converted by a vision in which Jesus addressed him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Peter was converted by a vision in which a voice challenged him, "Peter, what God has made clean you must not call profane." Thus, Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles, with the blessing of Peter, and the Church broke out of its narrow, sectarian, roots, proclaiming the Good News to the whole Roman world.

To me, this is all fascinating history, and what makes it so fascinating, sometimes tragically so, is that it is history that continues to live. The struggles described in these pages have recurred time and again down through the history of the Church. Whether the unclean have been Gentiles, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, ethnic and racial groups, women, or gays, the problem is really the same. The conversions of Peter and Paul serve as a metaphor - I am inclined to say an archetype - for the ongoing need we all have for conversion from the tribalism that cripples us spiritually and wounds others. For a community, like ours, that dares to claim for its primary vision mirroring the radical hospitality of Jesus, this narrative from Acts is absolutely foundational and its implications are both broad and deep.

There is a prayer that I return to again and again as a reminder of what is really important about God. It's a prayer of thanksgiving for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world, and it's found in the Book of Common Prayer. As the prayer asks God to "Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship," it reminds us that we are made richer when we embrace those who are different from us, and it reminds us that it is those who differ most from us who are most likely to reveal God's presence to us. Finally, this prayer reveals what is most true about God when it states that when we become able to love all God's children, we will finally understanding the nature of God. What occurred in the conversions of Peter and Paul is powerful because is gets to the core of what it means to be converted to the mind and heart of God.

As proof of Peter's conversion, he visits a Gentile, Cornelius, and his family. Almost immediately he says that now he sees that God shows no partiality. While Peter continues to talk, the Holy Spirit falls on all who are present, bringing us to today's reading, where Peter's Jewish Christian companions are amazed that God has poured out the Spirit even on these Gentiles. Then Peter proceeds to baptize the whole family.

James Alison calls us to comprehend just how vast are the implications of Peter's conversion. He says, "What Peter is saying when he affirms that God has revealed to him not to call anyone profane or impure is that the heavenly counter-history, the subversion from within of the story of this world, has an indispensable...rule: that no discrimination against any sort of repugnant person can resist the crucible of learning not to call them profane or impure. The story of heaven is the story of how we learn not to call anyone profane or impure, so that a story is created in which there are, in fact, no impure or profane people, where not even disgusting people consider themselves disgusting, but rather where we have learnt to disbelieve, and to help them to disbelieve, in their own repugnancy."1

Whom do you find repugnant? I believe we all have a list, perhaps hidden most of the time even from ourselves; that is until we find ourselves in a situation where we feel revulsion at the sight or sound or smell of one with whom we are convinced we have nothing in common. Rush Limbaugh immediately fills my revulsion screen. But he is not the only one. Alison is saying that Peter calls us to a conversion so radical that we no longer think of anyone in this way. He is saying that to the extent we allow ourselves to be thus converted, we will understand what the Bible means by heaven. I believe he's right.

Dear God, show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children.

Amen.

1James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1996, 2000)
p. 102.