Text: Acts 10: 1-5, 9-15, 19-20, 24, 27-28, 34-36, 44-48
Eighty five years ago, I probably would not have been welcomed in this pulpit.
As a woman, ordination was out of the question.
A combination of tradition and a patriarchal society and a way of reading the scriptures precluded the church from welcoming women as preachers and pastors.
It still does in some places and traditions.
But here I stand… ordained, my calling from the Holy Spirit confirmed by the church.
As a young(ish) woman, I have always lived in a church that ordained women. I have always been a part of a church that valued the contributions women made in ministry, in leadership, and in the world. It has been a given.
But I also know what it took to get here.
Late this spring, folks from Immanuel joined with other churches in our circuit to read together through a series of essays called, “I’m Black. I’m Christian. I’m Methodist.”
While their experiences were contemporary, these pastors wove into their narrative the history and legacy of exclusion and discrimination of our church. While some Black Methodists chose to leave, for those that remained within this denomination, separation and exclusion and discrimination continued to be our legacy.
Our church divided over slavery, rather than taking a stand for the full humanity of our siblings.
When we finally re-united, it was as a segregated church, with black churches and clergy all set apart in the Central Jurisdiction until 1968.
The impact of that structural racism continues to be felt today.
What surprised us the most as we read through that book of essays, however, were parallels between these stories of exclusion and discrimination and our current debate within the church about the lives and leadership of our LGBTQ+ siblings.
I am here today because how we understood God’s call in the life of women changed.
In the same way, we have claimed a more expansive vision of what it means to be the church from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
The church is more diverse and beautiful and powerful today because we have recognized how the Holy Spirit is moving through one another.
I wonder where God is going to change our minds next…
This isn’t a new question…
It is a question as old as the church.
As we journey through the book of Acts, we see God’s Kingdom widening.
From Jerusalem, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.
The faithful Jewish disciples begin to welcome and share the good news with those on the margins of the community…
And those who are converts in more far flung places…
And now we have a story about God speaking into the life of a Gentile and how God moves Peter to share the good news.
As the leader of the apostles, Peter had been visiting all of the house-churches where the followers of the Way were gathering in the wider area, especially on the coastal plains of Sharon.
He had just been to Lydda and then spent some time in Joppa.
And it was there, moved by the Spirit, that Peter had raised a faithful servant named Tabitha from the dead.
He was able to do amazing things, working and teaching in that community.
He was faithfully serving God and thought he knew exactly what that meant.
He presumed that he understood the rules of faith.
But just like Saul in the chapter before, Peter was about to have his world turned upside down yet again.
He was about to catch a glimpse of the scope and the breadth and the depth of God’s love for all people.
Our story today starts in the home of a gentile. A captain of the Roman army, named Cornelius, receives a vision from God and sends for Peter.
Let’s talk a little bit about this guy and what it means…
A Gentile is anyone who is not Jewish, someone who was not a part of the family of Israel, either through birth or conversion.
An outsider… as far as the faith was concerned.
There were gentiles, like Cornelius, who were described as “God-fearers” or “God-worshippers” which meant that they would have practiced elements of the Jewish faith and worshipped the God of the Israelites, but they were limited in their participation.
The temple had many different courts, and the requirements to move further and further into the temple, towards the holy of holies, left many out. The big open area you see in the photo is called the Court of the Gentiles. That was the only part of the temple Gentiles could enter, divided from even the steps leading up to the building by a wall.
These folks would not have kept the same ritual laws and for that reason, it was forbidden for Gentiles to enter these holy places or for Jews to enter the homes of Gentiles… lest they encounter something that would have made them unclean.
But many faithful god-fearing folks like Cornelius continued to show up. They continued worshipping God from those outer courts. In spite of the barriers, they wanted a relationship with God.
And God wanted a relationship with them.
So God prepares Peter’s heart for a more expansive vision of who was included in the Kingdom of God.
Before he is summoned to Caesarea and the home of Cornelius, Peter is given a vision of the clean and unclean joining together and he is asked in the vision to eat something that is unclean.
He doesn’t want to embrace it.
Everything in his very being tells him that it is wrong.
The holy was being profaned by the ordinary.
And then the voice in his vision speaks: “Never consider unclean what God has made pure.”
There is a knock at the door and the Holy Spirit whispers to him… go.
Peter is summoned to the home of Cornelius, and although he was not allowed by Jewish custom to enter, he did.
He entered the home of a gentile and broke bread with the unclean.
And when Cornelius asked about why God had brought him there, Peter shares the good news of Jesus Christ.
As he preaches to the entire gathered household, the Holy Spirit descends upon them and they receive the gift of faith.
The profane, the ordinary, the unclean… these people who were outside of all that Peter knew to be holy… the spirit and presence of God filled their lives.
He and his companions could see it… feel it…
And Peter exclaims: “These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water, can they?”
None of the disciples could deny their gifts.
Water was brought and Cornelius and his whole family were baptized on the spot…
They were part of the family of God…
At various points throughout the history of the church, faithful folk stood up and exclaimed: These people have received the Holy Spirit… just like we did – How can we stop them from being baptized?
How can we deny them a place at the table?
How can we continue to reject their leadership when God has so clearly spoken in their lives?
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism was against women preaching in principle… until he witnessed the Holy Spirit working through the lives of women like Sarah Crosby, Grace Murry, and Hannah Ball. He relented and licensed them for preaching in the circuits across England.
Likewise, Wesley was a staunch opponent of slavery the very first Discipline of the church prohibited members from owning slaves.
In fact, that Methodist egalitarian spirit is what drew large numbers of Black people to the movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
As Rev. Erin Beasley writes: “Under Methodist, all Christians became brothers and sisters despite their background… “ and no matter their gender, ethnicity, or class.
And yet, even as God pushes us to expand our vision of who is included, that long-memory of what we had believed is hard to shake off.
It is not easy to let go of control.
Or upend our expectations.
Or give way for others to lead in new ways.
Sometimes the witness of the Holy Spirit is sometimes rejected by those who are trying to follow God’s will.
Even after John Wesley licensed women to preach, it was not until 1956 that women were granted full clergy rights in the church.
The anti-slavery position of the early Methodists quickly became more lenient as they sought to establish more congregations in the South. Black ministers like Richard Allen were not allowed to be ordained as elders… requiring them to be supervised by white clergy… eventually leading these folks to leave the church.
It is hard to let go of our traditions, our rules, our power.
We hang on to what we know and understand.
There is an uproar in Jerusalem when the hear about what Peter had done.
The apostles summon him back to the city to account for his actions.
They start with criticism. They launch into accusations. They read off the rules.
I can imagine their frustration growing as they start to wrestle with the implications of what has just happened.
The leaders of the early church, like Peter just days and weeks before, believed that faith meant one thing, and God was trying to show them it meant something else.
It doesn’t stop the Holy Spirit from moving however.
Not only does God act by giving us these unique and undeniable experiences of grace and power and Holy Spirit-led transformation… like Peter experienced with Cornelius…
But God also expands the vision of the whole church by calling those who have had these life-altering experiences to tell their story.
The apostles were furious and demanded an explanation.
Peter gave them one.
He told them about his vision.
He told them about how God led him to the house of Cornelius.
He connected what he had experienced of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with what he witnessed first-hand in Caesarea.
In chapter 11, verse 16-17 he testifies: “I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”.
“I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another,” Peter says.
I give thanks that the apostles rejoiced in his witness.
They came to understand that God wants to be in relationship with all of us.
With the whole of creation.
With you and me.
And we keep learning that lesson…
We keep discovering and remembering and learning all over again just how far our vision needs to expand…
With black and white and brown.
With young and old, and gay and straight,
Folks who are married and single and divorced and widowed.
cis-gender, transgender, and non-binary folks,
with those struggling with mental health and those who love them.
With life-long Americans and with people who have just arrived in our country.
Are we there yet?
No.
Have we sometimes taken steps backwards?
Absolutely.
Like Peter, we are still learning that God shows no partiality to one group of people or another.
It has been a hard lesson… centuries and millenia in the making…
But God keeps pushing us… stretching us… calling us into a more expansive vision of what the church can and should be.
God is God.
And we can fight it.
We can resist it.
But God will keep pouring out the Holy Spirit on whomever God chooses.
