Listen, Learn, Obey

Preached at South Salem Friends Church

April 21, 2013

Mary and Martha, Radical Faith

Luke 10: 38-42

Jesus went into Bethany, a town close to Jerusalem, and was invited in by a woman named Martha, who had a sister named Mary (and a brother named Lazarus, as we remember from a later story).  Martha was hospitable and busied herself with serving everyone—the word is diakonia, root of deacon, by the way—and Mary sat at Jesus’s feet to hear what he had to say.

Martha was weighed down by her work, distracted and driven to do it right.  She came to Jesus and said, “Master, Messiah, don’t you care for my distress? I am drowning in work, and Mary is doing nothing to help me. Tell her to work alongside me and help me.”

Jesus replied, “Martha, Martha.  You are full of cares and disturbed about so many things.  But only this one thing is a duty, is required. Mary has chosen what brings health and is useful and honorable.  No one will be allowed to take it away from her.”

We don’t have the next bit of the story, which is where, perhaps, Martha sits down also, her worry smoothed away, and lets the words of Jesus soak into her.  We can see that there must have been some time when she did so, because she is the one who runs to meet Jesus when he comes to comfort them after the death of her brother Lazarus.  In John 10, she says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died, and I know even now that God will give you whatever you ask.”  When Jesus responds that Lazarus will rise again, she says, “I know that he will rise again at the last resurrection.”  Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, still lives. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She replied with as decisive a statement of faith as any in the Bible:  “Yes, Master, yes Messiah, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, come into our world just as you were meant to.” This belief is the foundation on which the church is built.

Clearly, Martha had done some listening, too. 

South Salem Friends are making this next year a holy experiment.  Though I know you are sad about being unable to keep Jim as your pastor, your elders have a vision of how to move forward in this next that can transform your lives individually and as a congregation.

Let’s think first about your call to be ministers, deacons, servants to your neighbors through your Tuesday evening dinner.  This is an awesome ministry, and the fact you find it still invigorating and fun means you are doing it right.  Hospitality is high on the list of Christian values, as is generosity, another aspect of your ministry.

At the same time, this ministry is grounded in a vision of Jesus, the resurrection and the life.  Jesus is in our world, just as God means him to be, and his Holy Spirit walks with us every day to teach us what we need to learn and tell us what we need to do.  The work of Jesus in the world is to reconcile the world to God.  Reconcile means that you once again bring yourself face to face, eyebrow to eyebrow, with God.  You look God in the eyes and let God look you in the eyes.  What do you see?  What do you sense that God sees in you?

Let’s take a few minutes to sit with this picture.  You look directly into God’s eyes, reconciling with God.

Write down for yourself or to share what you saw in God’s eyes.

Part of the reconciliation is letting God see into your soul through your eyes.  God sees all that is there, alive, dead, beautiful, ugly, clean, dirty.  God loves you and wants you to be whole and holy.  What does God see in you that makes God happy? Write this down so you remember it.

What does God see in you that God wants to clean up, beautify, or resurrect? Write this down so you can remember it.

Please give God permission to fix what needs fixing and to love you into a life of resurrection.

Now, this is the business of sitting down to listen to Jesus, the Son of God, sent by God into our world to show us what God is like and what perfect human life is.  Jesus said about himself, “I do what God tells me to do and say what God tells me to say.”  Jesus's kind of life lived in connection with God wasn’t because Jesus was so different from us; this is what human beings are made for. Jesus came to teach us how to live this way.  It is a life of listening and risky obedience.  It can get you out of trouble with others and into trouble.  And it is not simply an individualistic way to live.  Whole congregations, like S. Salem, can live this way.

Many years ago, when I was in high school, a Lutheran minister named Bill Vaswig came to Newberg Friends.  Bill taught me to ask God for help, listen, and then try to do what I heard to do.  It was very simple.  I observe many times that I ask desperately for help over and over and never sit still long enough to hear what God says.  I also observe that sometimes when I get a nudge, I fail to recognize it as God and thus do not obey it.  I also notice that sometimes I ask, I do what I hear, and God is in it.  I don’t always even have to ask. 

How do I know it is God I’m hearing from?  The Holy Spirit turns out to be quite practical a lot of the time, and most often very matter of fact, and sometimes quirkily funny.  And what I’m told is not a violation of spiritual truth but instead advice about how to implement it in my life.

I may have told this very story here before, but it is a good one, so I’ll tell it again.  I spent about 10 years working to forgive someone who had wounded me so deeply it affects my life to this day.  I said to God over and over, "I know I am supposed to forgive, and right now, all I can do is say to you, ok, if you forgive this person, I will forgive you for doing it.  You can let him into heaven if you have to be so scandalously gracious.  This is the best I can do."

Then one day I was driving with the radio on, and I heard in my spirit the words, “Becky, you can do better than that.”  “Ok,” I said. “You’re right.  Please forgive this person.  Please let him into heaven.” 

Well, I can tell you that listening and obeying and saying what God wanted was so freeing to my spirit. The person had died, and I felt in my car a spirit that was grateful for my forgiveness. I believe my forgiveness set that other person’s spirit more free to receive God’s love also. 

At least twice when I have been so angry at God, I have been very frank in expressing my feelings about how things are going.  “Do you know what you’re doing?” I have cried out in outrage and despair.  My experience is that in the quiet following those cries, God talks back.  This is the crucial teaching of the book of Job.  Job rails against God, and God shows up to talk. And Job says, “I talked a lot, and now I see you, and I regret what I said, I choose God over myself, and I repent and am comforted here in my dust and ashes.”

Jesus comes to help us when we ask.  We need to have the faith of Martha to say, “We know you are sent by God, God’s Son. What you want to do, you can do.  What do you want us to do next?”

As you experience a year where you are caring for each other as pastors, it falls on each of you to prepare for worship together by asking God if there’s something you need to sing, pray, or preach, or if there is someone you need to bring to Jesus as the congregation meets. If anyone lacks wisdom, just ask God, who gives wisdom liberally and without scolding. 

Jesus is here today to teach you himself.  Jesus is the head of the church universal and local.  Jesus is smart, capable, and strong and well worth listening to, obeying, and following around.

God's Will for Women: Deborah and Phebe (and Margaret Fell, Elizabeth Hooten, Mary Fisher, etc.)

Some days, it seems to me that the Kingdom of God is among us.  When I see wheelchair access to sidewalks, for instance, I remember the teaching in the Jewish laws and prophets to remove barriers from before the blind and lame.  When I remember that I am a mandatory reporter for abuse, I recognize the implicit Gospel, the good news that God cares for the child, the weak. When I hear about mediation training and teaching conflict resolution in schools, I hear behind that the Sermon on the Mount and how deadly anger can be.  When I stand up to share what God has given me, I recognize that God’s Holy Spirit comes to sons and daughters and enables them to worship in spirit and in truth. 

And then some days, I hear of Christians who have a real concern that the evils of our society are permeating the community of believers in Jesus, and they/we want to be counter-cultural.  And suddenly, some of the very ways the Kingdom has changed our world for the better come under condemnation as anti-Biblical.  And then it feels like we have to start over. 

Since the mid-1600s when the Quaker movement began, the principle that God calls and gifts humans and humans in response recognize and record God’s gifts has made it possible for the callings and giftings of women to be used, recognized, and affirmed by recording them.  When early Quakers took this stand, they were astonishingly counter-cultural.  George Fox’s Journal records his response to someone who asked if women even had souls.  He prooftexted Mary’s song, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” and said obviously they do have souls. The fact this was being debated helps us understand the culture of the time. The second evangelist in the Quaker movement was Elizabeth Hooten.  She became an itinerant preacher and suffered persecution in both England and the Colonies for it. Along with ten other women, she was one of the group of evangelists called the Valiant Sixty.  Mary Fisher traveled to Turkey to preach to the Sultan.  She was imprisoned and flogged for her ministry by the Christians in England, but was received respectfully by the Sultan of Turkey.  Margaret Fell, also jailed, wrote a pamphlet on “Women’s Speaking Justified,” basing the legitimacy of women preaching on the Biblical witness. She spoke before King Charles II on behalf of freedom of conscience in religious matters. One of the martyrs for freedom of religion in the colonies was Mary Dyer, who persisted in witnessing to the Massachusetts Bay Colony despite being banned.  She was hanged on Boston Commons. 

Margaret Fell’s pamphlet contrasts the stories of how God used women with pronouncements often cited to exclude women from certain activities and functions in the church.  She uses the creation of humans in God’s image as male and female to conclude that God puts no distinction between them.  She includes the fact that the church is referred to as feminine in relation to Christ, and the church is also charged with spreading the good news of Christ.  She tells the stories of Jesus sharing the good news of the Kingdom with women and never despising them.  She remembers the loyalty of women to Jesus as followers even to his death.  And she honors the women who visited the grave as the first bearers of the news of the resurrection.  “Go tell,” said Jesus.  She points to the reiterated message that God uses the weak to meet the objection that women are weak. She cites the willingness of Apollos to learn from Priscilla as well as Aquila.  She notes that Paul referred to women praying and prophesying, that he advises women to set aside preoccupation with appearance and learn without disputation. 

She attributes the prohibitions from Paul against women speaking out in the services to their unlearned and unruly manner of doing so, just as Paul asked all to have orderly worship and not speak all at once.

To paraphrase a small part of her pamphlet: “And what about those who have had the power and Spirit of the Lord Jesus poured out on them and the message of the Lord Jesus given to them?  Must they keep silent because of these irreverent and indecent women of the past?  Must words spoken to tattlers and busybodies be taken as silencing all women for all time? What has blinded men to take these scriptures and stop the message and the word of the Lord in women? Can’t they see that Paul talked of women who labored with him in the Gospel?  Can’t they see that the apostles joined with women and others in prayer, and that the unity of the early church included women?

“In the Old Testament, God gave the Spirit to whomever God pleased, including Deborah, Huldah, Sarah, and to Anna who witnessed to the Messiah in Jesus when he was just a baby.  The Lord Jesus showed himself and his power to men and to women without respect of persons; He poured his infinite power and spirit on all flesh. Women and men led by the Spirit are not under the Law. Christ in the male and the female is the same Christ; his wife is the church, where God said that the daughters would prophesy as well as the sons.  And where God pours out the Spirit, those men or women must prophesy.”

Thank you, Mistress Fell.  Yet today in 2013, this must be addressed again and not to people of evil intent, but to people endeavoring to read the Bible carefully and keep its teachings faithfully.  What can be said to help them see that the Bible itself contains the seeds of the destruction of gender-restricted roles in the church, seeds of hope that all are called into freedom to love and obey God’s call without barrier?

We can start with the Old Testament to see these seeds of destruction and hope. When Moses was overworked with hearing and mediating disputes and judging between Israelite and Israelite, his father-in-law suggested the following:

Exodus 18:21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens: and let them judge the people (KJV).  The Hebrew word translated here as “men” is usually masculine, though sometimes it is translated as persons; the word for rulers is masculine. 

It seems probable that there were no women chosen to be part of this group of early judges.  In fact, any subsequent group that read this literally would never put a woman in as a ruler in this system. 

It is not that different a statement from the one in 1 Timothy 3: If a man desire the office of bishop, he desires a good work. A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, able to teach, not a drunk, not abusive, not money-hungry, not a brawler, not a coveter. He should be patient, rule his own house well and soberly, and have obedient children.  And the same is true for deacons—they must be serious, straightforward, honest, not drunks, not greedy, respectful of the mystery of the faith with clear consciences, with wives of sober, faithful character, not slanderers. Deacons also should have one wife, and their households and children should be above reproach (mostly KJV; worth noting is that “if a man” really means “whoever” as in “If a man has ears, let him hear.”)

It certainly appears from this that the activities and position of bishop (sometimes called elder) and deacon (also called minister) must be filled by men.  And good Christians trying to obey God read the Bible and believe this.

But look at the history of how God behaves, even in a world where these are the norms.  In Judges 4, God chooses and gifts a woman to fill the role set up by Moses for men, namely Deborah. 

The world the Israelites lived in was decentralized into tribal lands.  All the people who had witnessed the miracles God did for them in their journey to Canaan died off.  The Israelites began worshiping Canaanite gods, and God was angry and allowed them to be raided and oppressed.  Periodically, God raised up a hero who delivered them.  One of those heroes was Deborah.  She was a prophetess, married to Lapidoth, and she was Israel’s judge.  People came to her from all over for judgment. 

The word for judge here is shaphat. It means to judge, govern, vindicate, punish; to act as law-giver or judge or governor; to rule, govern, judge; to decide controversy; to execute judgment (http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H8199&t=KJV). It is an action performed by God, by Moses, by David, and by the coming Messiah  (Isaiah 2:4, Isaiah 11:4, Micah 4:3). (May the Lord judge between us; the judge of all the earth; God judge betwixt us; the Lord judge you.) Judges are included in lists with priests, Levites, elders, heads, officers. The children of Israel came up to Deborah for judgment (mishpat), a word used of actions of David, of kings, of God, of Moses. 

The point here is that God chose, God raised up, God gifted, and Deborah cooperated.  She was recognized by her people as possessing the Spirit and gifts of God that suited her for this authoritative role representing God to her people.

Therefore, it seems wise to allow God the last word in the church as well.  Rather than take a socially normative statement as a commandment for us to follow, let us likewise recognize that God has chosen, raised up, and gifted women in our congregations to act on God’s behalf and to pray, prophesy, sing, and teach in obedience to God. This is still counter-cultural. Our culture is not friendly to the witness that Jesus is present through the resurrection to teach us in our own hearts and through each other, and we are responsible to obey, to be deacons in the household of God.

Recall with me that Paul himself speaks lovingly and approvingly of Phebe, a diakonos, a deacon, a minister, a servant of the church at Cenchrea.  Paul tells the Romans to receive Phebe in the Lord, to assist her however she needs because she has been a woman set over many to care for them, a guardian.  The word for “succor” (KJV) is prostatis. It comes from proistemi, which means to be over, to superintend, to preside over, to protect, to guard, to care for, to attend to.  In the root of that second word is the idea of establish, keep intact, sustain, stand firm. 

What we can learn from Phebe is two-fold.  First, diakonos is translated three ways (KJV): minister (20 times), servant, (8) and deacon (3). We can find that Jesus advised his followers, “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.” Jesus promised that his servants would be with him where he was going.  Servanthood, doing what another tells you to do, is at the heart of diakonos. 

We can also learn that Phebe got the very least powerful translation of the term, despite evidence in the next verse of her authority in the church at Cenchrea.  This helps us remember that translations do not take place in a social vacuum, that the King James Version, for example, comes from the same century that saw the rise of Quakers and the imprisonment, beating, and hanging of women who witnessed publicly to the presence and power of the resurrected Jesus and their own sense of obligation to do what Jesus laid on them to do.   

The witness to equality in ministry is not “Women’s Lib”; the witness to equality makes space for women to be equally obedient to God as men can be.  If anything, the increasing freedoms given to women in England and the Colonies derives from the Gospel and is a sign that the Kingdom of God is here. (The fact that women are no more perfect than men in their exercise of freedom is another sign of equality.)  Let us once again return to acknowledging that God has the right to call, gift, empower and inspirit anyone God chooses and that we humbly listen to God’s word through God’s messenger, put our faith in the God who inhabits each of us, and do what God tells us to do.

Jesus's Family

Preached Aug. 1, 2010, Family reunion 

Mark 3:31-35

Jesus says, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). If I get to be Jesus’s sister by doing God’s will, I need to know: What is God’s will? Jesus says that the law and prophets are summed up in loving God wholly and loving my neighbor as I love myself. This tells us the direction we should be moving in every action we take—toward love, toward family.

I grew up in a missionary family in a dangerous part of the world—central Africa.  My parents brought me up to know Jesus, and they set a great example of following God’s call wherever it leads.  And yet, my experiences as a child left me unsure of the stability of God’s love for me and unsure if God had good things in store for me, and the gradual recovery from that is taking a lifetime.  These ae some things I’ve learned over that lifetime about God and people.

1) People run from God when they fear God is angry about their sin. They think, “I don’t belong in God’s family.”  But it’s really like when kids get their good clothes and themselves dirty when their parents have clearly said, “Stay out of the mud.” They want to run and hide the evidence they have disobeyed.

2) God looks for people to show them love, just like how parents want to clean the kids up.

3) People need to stop running, turn around, and see who God really is and how God really feels about them. If the kids stop running and come out of hiding, the worst they face is a bath and different clothes, particularly from parents with a sense of proportion.

4) Jesus came to make this clear: God wants to love us and to do us good. “Bring the kids to me,” says Jesus. “Don’t make it hard for them to trust in God’s love. Sure, God’s going to give them a bath and new clothes, but those are the signs God loves them and won’t leave them dirty and afraid.”

5) Turning around and looking into God’s eyes will give us confidence in God’s love; we can persist in talking with God about what worries us, and we can be generous to others. “What food do you have,” Jesus asks, and the disciples answer, “We’ve got a kid here willing to share two fish and five little biscuits.”

6) All this good news is true even if our world is ending personally or globally.

This is the good news: God is here, God loves you, God has forgiven you. Trust God, talk to God, and be generous. This is what God wants us to tell everyone who is on the run: God wants us to “go home to our friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for us and what mercy he has shown us” (Mark 5:19).

The disciples worried about who was a real follower, a real insider, a member of God’s family: who is doing God’s will?

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” (Mark 9:38-42).

Whoever is not against us is for us; whoever gives us a cup of water in Jesus’s name is for us; whoever makes it hard for us to trust in Jesus is against us. Whoever gathers others toward Jesus is for Jesus; whoever drives others away, scatters them, is against Jesus. In families, we need to consider how we make it easier for others to trust in Jesus, and we need to consider how we make it harder for others to trust in Jesus.

St. John writes in 1 John 3 and 4: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. . . . The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters . . . We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another . . . We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action . . . this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another . . . Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”

How to be a member of Jesus’s family

1) trust in the character of God as revealed by Jesus Christ, God’s Son

2) obey Jesus’s commandment to love one another

3) do what you can to to meet people’s needs and set them free—including family members—representing Jesus to them

We know how complicated families can be by having come from some sort of family ourselves. Disagreements within a family are often harder to work through than disagreements with acquaintances or friends—in my own family I was not sure it was ok to disagree until I was in my 30s—after a loud family fight in which my father shook his finger at me and said, “You aren’t going to change my mind on this,” and I said, “I don’t know whether I even belong in this family,” we found a way back to each other and learned we could disagree and express that and still honor and respect each other. When my dad was dying, his last words to me were, “Thank you for being you.” That’s redemptive family talk.

The Graciousness of God: Naaman and Elisha, Cornelius and Peter

Preached at Silverton Friends Church

Feb. 10, 2013

Before I get to the actual sermon, I want to share with you some of my own story.  Growing up Christian, as I did, and as perhaps some of you did, resulted in my getting the Gospel message mixed up with the Christian culture variation I grew up in.  I made God like my parents and other adults I was around, the negative as well as the positive.  I did not have much understanding of the enduring love of God, and how that is a part of God's character, nor of God's grace.  I lived in fear of the Rapture catching me in an imperfect state.  I feared God would abandon me for mysterious reasons.  

Because God is love, God began tutoring me about how God loves when I was in my teens, a rebellious and sincere spiritual seeker.  God met me at various times, never insisting I be all perfect first.  And a few years ago, when I was so angry at God for messing up my life, I was in church during our time of silent waiting, and I heard God say, "Look at me." Just like a little kid, I kept my head down in sulky anger.  I felt God take my chin and tip up my head and God looked into my eyes, and I saw nothing in God's eyes except love.  This is what I want everyone I know to experience.  God loves me, God loves you, even if or when we don't like it. 

When I took this denominational job, God placed these words of Jesus in front of me: "Come to me, all you who labor and are carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke on you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in my spirit, and your souls will find rest.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." When I have found the load heavy, I try to off-load it onto Jesus because of this promise of partnership and because Jesus is strong and smart. Jesus wants to partner with each one of us.

The two stories that caught me as I prepared for today’s sermon were the story of Naaman and Elisha and the story of Cornelius and Peter.  One from the Old Testament, one from the New.  Listen to the stories in a slightly free-range version, and then later you can read them in 2 Kings 5 and Acts 10.  To be sure, there are some differences, but those seem minor compared to the liberating and grace-filled similarities.

Naaman was the commander of the Syrian forces, which at this time were successful in battle against Israel.  He took prisoners, and one of those, a young girl, became a slave in his house.  Naaman also had the skin disease the Bible calls leprosy, which is different from what we call leprosy today.  It was a disease that disfigured people by turning parts of their skin white and was believed by Israelites to be an outward sign of a failure to care for others’ needs and share their hurts—gossip, murder, stinginess, theft, pride.  The little Israelite girl said to Naaman’s wife, “If the master were in Israel, he could go to the prophet Elisha and be healed of his leprosy.”  Naaman’s wife told Naaman, he told the king of Syria, and the king said, “Go to Israel and tell their king I want you to be healed.”

Naaman took some gifts with him, entered Israel and told the king there that the king of Syria wanted Naaman healed.  The king of Israel was scared and suspicious: “He just wants to pick a fight with us so he can invade us again.”  He was so upset he tore his clothes apart.

But Elisha, the prophet of God, heard about the problem and sent a message to the king of Israel.  “Send Naaman on over to me.  He’ll find out there is indeed a God to be respected in Israel.”

Naaman journeyed to where Elisha lived.  Elisha sent his servant out to meet the Syrian captain.  “My master Elisha says that you should go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River and you will be healed.”

Naaman was so offended.  “The prophet won’t even come talk to me himself?  The nerve!  And to wash in the Jordan?  That river is filthy, not like the sparkling waters of my rivers back home in Syria.”  He turned around and started home, angry and disappointed.

Some of his followers came to him, probably cautiously, and said, “Sir, if the prophet had asked you to undertake a dangerous and difficult quest in order to be healed, wouldn’t you have tried it?  Why not try this easy thing?  What could it hurt?”

Naaman saw the sense of this.  He drove to the Jordan River, walked into the water, and washed himself seven times.  When he came up after the seventh, his skin was clear of leprosy, as unblemished as a baby’s.  “Now I know that there is no other God in all the world except Israel’s God,” he said.  “I will never worship any other God.” He went back to thank Elisha, who came out to meet him this time.  “Let me give you a thank you gift,” he said.  “No need,” said Elisha.  “Then do me one more kindness,” said Naaman.  “Let me take dirt from Israel so that I can build an altar to your God on it and worship only your God from this day on.  But please ask the Lord to forgive me for my duty to my king—entering the temple of the Syrian god Rimmon and bowing down; I will have to bow down also.  May God forgive me for this.”  “Go in peace,” replied Elisha.

Notice these things:  Naaman was a political enemy of Israel, and a Gentile.  His healing came about as he was able to humble himself to do a simple task prescribed by one of the lowly Israelites.  The healing was free—an example of God’s graciousness. Naaman was convinced on the spot of the supremacy of God and declared himself a convert from that moment on.  He went home to his job and family and resumed his duties, again covered by the graciousness of God.  He is a sign of the inclusive mission of God to reconcile the whole world to God’s self, and implicitly a rebuke to those who wanted to keep God local and confined.  As Jesus points out in Luke 4:27, “there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” This comment maddened the Nazareth folks to the point where they wanted to kill Jesus.

This story focuses on Naaman, the foreigner.  We don’t see much of what Elisha was thinking or how God prepared him for the encounter.

In the New Testament, we do see this preparation in the story of Cornelius the Roman and Peter, Jesus’s disciple.  Acts 10 tells this story, and it is so important, it is retold several times.  I’ll tell it just once.

Once again, the foreigner is a political enemy of Israel, a Roman military officer, part of the occupation forces.  But Cornelius reverenced God, gave to the needy, and prayed regularly. One day he saw an angelic messenger from God, who told him to send for Peter from Joppa.  The angel even gave Cornelius Peter’s street address.  So Cornelius sent three of his people to get Peter.

The next day in Joppa, around noon, Peter went up on the roof to pray.  He became hungry and asked someone for something to eat, but while he was waiting, he too had a message from God.  He saw a sheet full of animals, reptiles, and birds coming down from heaven, and he heard a voice tell him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”

Peter was horrified.  “You know I have never eaten anything unclean.  I can’t do this!”  The voice replied, “Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.”

This happened three times.  Peter was amazed and wondering what it meant when God’s spirit said to him, “Go downstairs and find the three men who are looking for you.  Don’t hesitate to go with them, for I sent them to you.”

Peter went downstairs and found Cornelius’s messengers.  “I’m the one you’re looking for.  Why have you come?”

They told him about Cornelius and his message from God.  Peter invited them in for the night.  (This was a big deal, by the way, since at least one of these folks was a Roman soldier.)

The next day, Peter and some other believers went to see Cornelius.  The whole family met them along with close friends.  When Peter entered the house, Cornelius bowed down to him, but Peter made him stand up.  “I am only a human,” Peter said.

He addressed the crowd.  “You all know it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any person unclean or impure.  So when I was sent for, I came willingly.  Why am I here?”

Cornelius told him again the story of the heavenly messenger, and how glad he was to see Peter in person.  “Now we are all here in the presence of God to hear what God has to say to us.”

So Peter spoke:  “I now realize how true it is that God doesn’t have favorites.  Instead, if you revere and respect God and do what God says is right, God accepts and welcomes you. So I’ll share what I know about God.  God sent to Israel the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who owns everything. God set Jesus apart and filled him with the Holy Spirit and power to do good and defeat the devil.  God was with him.  I know because I saw this myself.  I also saw Jesus murdered—crucified—and then I saw how God raised Jesus out of death.  Many of us saw the risen Jesus, who sent us out to tell this story and preach that Jesus is appointed and ordained by God to judge the living and the dead.  All the prophets point to him and bear witness that everyone who trusts in Jesus and relies on Him receives forgiveness of sins.  That is the nature and character of Jesus.”

While Peter spoke, the Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles and they spoke in unknown tongues, just like the Jews earlier at Pentecost. 

Peter’s Jewish companions were surprised by this.  Then Peter asked, “Can anyone forbid taking these folks into full fellowship with us through the ceremony of baptism, seeing that God has graced them just as God graced us with the Holy Spirit?” And no one could.

When Peter went home, he was in trouble with the other Jewish believers, so he told the whole story again (see Acts 11).  “The voice spoke from heaven, ‘Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.’ So who was I to think I could oppose God.”

Then Jewish believers started preaching to Gentiles, and Gentiles believed, and Barnabas went and got Saul, who became an apostle to the Gentiles, and even later, in Acts 15, Peter stood and again told the story of Cornelius being graced with the gift of the Holy Spirit even prior to baptizing him. Peter said, “God, who knows the heart—the will, the emotions, the imagination—bore witness to their faith by giving them the same Holy Spirit we received.  God made no difference between us and them.  God cleansed them by faith, by their conviction that Jesus came from God, and that by means of Jesus, we are saved for eternity and welcomed into God’s kingdom. Now then, why do you test God’s patience by requiring Gentile believers to come under the law of Moses which neither we nor our ancestors have been able to obey.  We Jews are saved through the grace of our Master and Owner Jesus just as the Gentiles are.”

James stood in agreement and quoted some prophets who pointed to the inclusion of Gentiles. He concluded, “We should not put obstacles in the way of Gentiles who turn to God.  We will ask them to refrain from sexual immorality, from eating food sacrificed to idols, from eating or drinking blood, and from practicing strangulation (a puzzle that may refer to the common practice of infanticide, see David Instone-Brewer's sermons on the web). These four behaviors scandalize Jews, and we want to reach them, too.“

Notice these things:  Cornelius was a political enemy of Israel, and a Gentile.  Unlike Naaman, he was able to humble himself, even bowing to one of the lowly Jews.  The gift of God’s Holy Spirit was free, not requiring any kind of ritual—an example of God’s graciousness. Peter was convinced on the spot of the graciousness of God to all human beings, and declared himself a convert from that moment on.  Peter went home to his fellow Jewish believers and taught them about the graciousness of God.  Cornelius and Peter are signs of the inclusive mission of God to reconcile the whole world to God’s self, and they are an implicit rebuke to those who want to keep God local and confined.  As Jesus points out in John 10:16, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I am commissioned by God to bring with me to God, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd.”

We don’t read in the history that the conversion of Naaman had any far-reaching effect on ancient Syria, but we do read that the conversion of Cornelius, and because of him, the convincement of Peter, had an enormous effect.  Christians now understand God through the work God did in the heart of Peter.  Salvation is not through rules but through the graciousness of God.  The law of God’s kingdom is the law of love.  As Micah puts it, “What does God require of us but to do the right thing, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.” And as Paul says, “The secret is this, Jesus Christ in, beside, and with you, your hope and expectation of glory.”

Some queries to think about:

How can I exemplify to those inside and outside the church the character and nature of God’s graciousness? 

How have I cleared away barriers so that others can trust and love Jesus?

 How have I imposed my rules on others in ways that are hurtful and ungracious?