Acts 10:27-48
Today Our topic is change. In general everything changes but there are parts of our lives that we like. Our homes, cars, restaurants that we want to never change.
I read a story about Henry Ford. It seems that Mr. Ford had a man working for him as production manager on the Model T. His name was William Knudsen and he became convinced that it was time to update the Model T, it has been in production for 4 years.
But there was a problem; Mr. Ford would not even consider the idea. Ford loved his creation just as it was and was opposed to any changes at all.
While Mr. Ford was away on a vacation in Europe, Knudsen decided to put together a car to demonstrate his ideas for changes using a new design and color.
Ford returned from a European vacation, and he went to a Highland Park, Michigan garage and saw the new design created by Knudsen.
On-the-scene mechanics later revealed how Ford responded.
They say that the car had four doors, and the top was down, painted gleaming red and built on a new, low version of the Model T.
One eyewitness tells how "Ford had his hands in his pockets, and he walked around that car 3 or 4 times…. Finally, he got to the left hand side of the car, and he takes his hands out, gets hold of the door, and bang! He ripped the door right off!… How the man done it, I don’t know! He jumped in there, and bang goes the other door. Bang goes the windshield. He jumps over the back seat and starts pounding on the top. He rips the top with the heel of his shoe. He wrecked the car as much as he could."
Knudsen left for General Motors. Henry Ford nursed along the Model T, but design changes in competitor’s models made it more old-fashioned than he would admit. Competition made it necessary to make changes and he grudgingly produced the model A, but his heart was never in it.
Henry Ford was one of the most creative men of his age. And yet… Henry Ford - resisted the obvious need for change.
I think it is generally true that most people don’t like change. Not everyone will become violent at the suggestion or even when forced to do things differently
Read someplace that the only people who DO like change are "wet babies" … and even they aren’t too excited about it. (PAUSE)
Churches are notorious for that kind of attitude as well. You’ll find many church boards and members saying things like
“we’ve never…………………………….done it that way before”
Someone once said that when it comes to change, the church is often like the snail riding on the back of a turtle
the church is often like the snail riding on the back of a turtle
…and do you know what a snail does when it rides on the back of the turtle?
It holds on tight and yells : "Whee!"
Many churches bulk at even the slightest change in their routine. Even when they’re fairly sure the changes would be something pleasing to God they still resist.
Now, things weren’t a whole lot different back in the days of the early church.
People back then didn’t like change anymore than people now do.
In our scripture today it is hard for us to imagine just how dramatic the changes described in the text are. We really don’t recognize how different our world is in comparison to the early church. We don’t even consider that what happened in our reading today did not become widely accepted until 50 or more years passed.
When Peter was invited to participate it was so big that the first half of the chapter describes how God prepared Peter. He gave him a vision that blew his mind. This big sheet comes down out of heaven and inside of it are all the unclean animals, the ones that every Jew learns from childhood are not to be eaten. And he also heard a voice, “Get up, Peter, Kill and eat.”
I think that you will recall that Peter is often a bit vocal and sometimes says things before he thinks them through. “No way God! I have never eaten anything unclean. “
God takes him through the vision and words 3 times. Peter knows whom he is speaking to and yet he argues with the Lord about change.
It seems that Peter would never have been open to visiting the home of the gentile Cornelius. I doubt he would have voluntarily agreed to make the trip with the messengers much less enter the home of a Gentile.
So Peter is holding on to his traditions of Clean and unclean from the Law of Moses. These same laws of clean and unclean apply to people as well.
Gentiles are automatically unclean and just hanging out with them will mess you up. It is like hanging around a smoker – you don’t have to smoke yourself before you smell like smoke.
So, being around unclean foods or people automatically made you unclean.
At the time of this event the church is said to be between 3 and 10 years old.
They have established rules and traditions and Gentiles were not a part of that set of traditions.
The church at this point, is a group of Jews that believe in Jesus as the messiah.
They don’t offer sacrifices any more because they understand the sacrifice of Jesus as being the full atonement for their sins. They keep a different Sabbath day than the traditional Jews changing from our Saturday to Sunday to celebrate on the day that Jesus was raised from the dead.
But, in spite of the fact they believe differently than most Jews… the Christians in this early church were still - very much - good Jews.
And they still thought like Jews
And so they still avoided unclean foods and situations.
And they also avoided people that they considered to be less than human, gentiles.
Jews referred to non-Jews as "Gentile dogs" (this was not an affectionate term – it was an insult)
They wouldn’t sit down to eat with Gentiles
They wouldn’t spend the night in a Gentile home
And, if they had to buy something from a Gentile merchant, a good Jew would. Wash the money that might have been handled by a genital and that item before they ever used it.
In fact, some Jews actually had pools (called Mikvehs) in their homes designated for washing larger items such as tables and chairs.
Jews would accept Gentiles ONLY on one condition: they had to convert to Judaism. They had to come to the synagogue to study scripture and worship. And that meant that the men had to be circumcised.
Now, however, God was preparing Peter to understand that God’s plan was bigger than Peter could have ever imagined.
The events that looked like Change were a part of the plan.
God planned to bring the Gentiles into His church. And He did not have a requirement of commitment to Judaism first in order to be a follower of the way.
So. God intended to bring about a major change in His church. And God knew that people are no different than people now… they hate change.
So, He had to bring about this adjustment in the most powerful way He could.
He brought about a meeting between Peter and Cornelius. Peter being the leader of the church and Cornelius an important military a man that God had already drawn into a direct relationship.
Cornelius was a man that was a righteous God-Fearing man. He had power and wealth and did not abuse either. - He was a man who was known as a man of prayer and a man who gave to the poor
This was a Gentile that the Jews of Caesares Knew well and probably already respected. But, he had not taken the final step to become a full convert. He had not been circumcised.
God waited until Peter and his friends actually got to Cornelius’ house before He revealed what he was there for. Reveal how the Gentiles would join the church.
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When Peter got to Cornelius’ house along with 6 Jewish witnesses he preached about Jesus. How He had lived and died, and rose from the dead. And Peter preached about what God had done in the church since that day.
I don’t think that Peter and his Jewish companions had any idea what God was about to do. They had arrived and Peter was going through the motions of teaching.
If there was some kind of a response, I would think that they would be holding a Judaism 101 class for the family and then giving the invitation to be circumcised.
But before Peter finished, God moved and the Holy Spirit was poured out on the whole family.
They are speaking in tongues and praising God.
The scripture tells us that the companions were astonished.
That word astonished, I wish that it was not a word that would still be used to describe Christians today.
--Whenever we witness God moving we are probably much more surprised than real believers should be.
If we hear of a person that receives a physical healing…what is your real response?
How about when the news reports about a convicted felon on death row that speaks of new faith?
Do we really believe that God Changes things? People Situations Lives
You know, for the number of people that say that they hate change; we live in a very changing world.
The only thing that really does not change is God.
In Jeremiah 29:11-13 God explains,
“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Change in this world is total and constant. None of us can avoid being affected by the change around us.
But, it is all in God’s plan. The plans he has for us, the changes are for our good. The changes offer us hope and if we have any doubts, we can pray to God and he will listen.
If we are having trouble with the changes in out lives we can go to him and share out hearts and He will listen.
God is the unchanging constant in our changing world. We can’t get totally away from our situation. But we can be open to the change that God intends. Changes in our community, changes in our families, changes in how we understand God.
We can be willing to remain open minded in unexpected situations.
We can purposely not let our astonishment keep us from responding to the changes that God brings about.
-- As a church we have changes that are just a couple of weeks away.
We don’t know what to expect?
It is easy for us to land some place between two extremes. We can decide that we don’t like the change without ever giving it a try or we can totally embrace the change with no question and just move ahead seeing no value in the past.
The right way to face change should start someplace in the middle.
As a church, a body of Christ, we have to let God help us with our unity. We need to be open to the way he directs his church with what seems to be dramatic changes.
If we are astonished, or shocked or disappointed then we may not fully accept that God really is in control. That no matter the first impression, we must remember that God does all things for our good.
What it really comes down too, do you trust God enough to allow him to change you?
As we move to our time of Holy Communion thins morning open yourself up to the vision of what God is doing in your church, in the past, the present and even the future.
All Glory be to God.
