Year C Easter Sunday, Acts 10: 34-43, April 15, 2001
Title: “The “surprise” about God.”
This sermon of Peter is both a first and a last. It is the first recorded sermon to a Gentile audience in Acts. It is also the last time Peter gives a sermon. Peter’s preaching to Gentiles is extremely significant. It was not Paul, but Peter, who was the first to convert Gentiles and this speech formally inaugurates the Church’s mission to the Gentiles. While they had their differences Peter and Paul were in agreement that the Gentiles were equal in worth to the Jews. Peter’s speech to the pagans in the house of Cornelius is the last example Luke offers of the preaching of the apostles as leaders of the Jerusalem church. After this he will turn his sights on Paul’s missions to the Gentiles. The author of Acts wants to stress the movement out to the entire world by Paul was in no way a break with the Jerusalem Church. It was inspired growth.
The narrative continues after the speech, showing Peter’s listeners receiving the Spirit, a “Pentecost of the Gentiles,” if you will, and then being baptized.
In verses thirty-four to thirty-five. Peter addressed the people in these words, Literally, “Peter opened his mouth.” This is a formula used to introduce an important statement.
God shows no partiality, Although this is omitted from the reading, it is an extremely important point. It sweeps away in one breath centuries of racial and religious prejudice. Anyone, from whatever nation, who meets the requirements of Micah 6:8, that is, who acts justly, loves mercifully, and walks humbly with the Lord, is acceptable to him. This teaching, implicit in the early prophets, now becomes a central tenet of the new faith. Just as the prophets of old insisted that God’s choice of Israel was an act of grace, not of partiality, which called for a response of obedient service, not of careless complacency, so now this revelation calls for a change of heart leading to forgiveness. Salvation is open to all. This would be news, indeed, coming from a Jew spoken to Gentiles! It would surely get their attention.
In verse thirty-six, Peter immediately relates this fact to Jesus’ life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection as well as his commission to his disciples to carry on his work throughout the world. True, God first sent the word to the Israelites. True, that “Word” was a Jew, Jesus, who proclaimed “peace,” a distinctly Jewish word for “salvation”. Yet, also true that this Jesus is Lord of all, not just of Jews.
In verse thirty-seven, Here begins what the early church called the kerygma. The term means “preaching.” It was really a set pattern, an outline of the life, ministry, crucifixion, death, resurrection of Jesus and sometimes his commissioning of his disciples. From this outline preachers would fill in examples from the life or teaching of Jesus to bring home a point. From this outline or pattern and the supplying of examples the Synoptic gospels took shape. In fact, verses thirty-seven to thirty-nine, give a resume of Jesus’ ministry which, is very close to an outline of the Synoptics, especially Mark, the first written gospel. It begins with John’s baptismal ministry.
In verses thirty-eight to fourty-three, It goes on to tell of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem, of his crucifixion and resurrection, followed by his commissioning his disciples to be personal witnesses of all this culminating with the offer of forgiveness through faith in Jesus which will enable the believer to avoid condemnation when Jesus judges both the living and dead at the end.
In verse thirty-eight, God anointed him, the force of this would be stronger if it were translated “God made him Messiah.”
With the Holy Spirit and power, in Luke, the author depicts Jesus’ ministry as powered by the Holy Spirit, which he received at the time of his baptism. “Spirit” and “power” can thus mean the same thing here, although there are intimations of the Trinity, for in Luke 5:17 the Spirit is the “power of the Lord,” that is, Yahweh, God the Father.
“Doing good and healing all who were in the power of the devil,” only the “power of the Lord” is strong enough to defeat the “power of the devil.”
In verse thirty-nine, we are witnesses; the stories of and about Jesus are based on eyewitness accounts, people who were there. Yet, their witness is not purely factual or objective. They have interpreted their experiences in the light of the way they feel about Jesus and who he is.
In verses forty and forty-one, “They killed him...God raised him,” This contrast occurs often in the apostolic preaching. Humans treat Jesus one way because of sin and what sin can do. God treats him in quite another way because of his fidelity and what obedience can do. The power in Jesus could conquer the worst that humans could do and that power, in the end, could conquer death physical as well as spiritual.
In verse forty-one, “seen, not by all,” there can be no doubt about Jesus’ resurrection. He appeared to many witnesses- not to the people at large but to those selected by God to see and proclaim the risen Savior, “Peter and his fellow disciples.”
Jesus ate and drank, they could testify with assurance because they knew him intimately before he died. They ate and drank with him then. Now, they do the same after the resurrection. Besides insisting that it was really Jesus and not a mere ghost, the reference to eating and drinking may well point to some peculiarities of Jesus table manners, especially as it would pertain to their last supper together before his death.
Luke, in his gospel, the only Evangelist to record the risen Lord’s eating and drinking with his disciples Luke 24:41-42, regarded this as among the most convincing of the many features of his bodily resurrection.
In verse forty-two, “He commissioned us to preach,” the resurrection appearances not only assured the disciples, but they were occasions to send them on mission. They were to continue what Jesus began in his lifetime on earth. This would be done first and foremost by preaching. The message would be the same. Everyone will be judged at the end of his or her life on earth as to readiness for resurrection themselves. If they died having lived a life in union with Jesus, then God will treat them the same way he treated Jesus. He will raise them up.
In verse forty-three, “forgiveness,” the judgment of how worthy of eternal life a person would be can only be a positive one if a person has repented and believed in Jesus. It is Jesus, not the person, who accomplishes reconciliation with God and dispenses forgiveness from God as a result of his obedience.
In verse forty-four, “the Holy Spirit came down upon all,” not in the liturgical reading The preaching of the Word among the Gentiles had the same effect as it had among Jews earlier.
The crucifixion shows what sin can do and does do. One of the most perplexing questions not only in the ancient scriptures but in all cultures is why do the good suffer and the evil prosper? Where is justice? Where is God?
The resurrection answers this question. Maybe not to everyone’s satisfaction, but it does answer it. The resurrection shows what God can do and does do. Humans, as a result of sin, and their own willfulness and insistence on having it their way, have messed up everything. Not only their own lives, but other people’s lives, even creation itself. You name it. There is nothing unaffected by human sinfulness. Even later generations are adversely affected by earlier decisions of humans, such as, disease, war, political philosophies, injustices.
God, as a result of raising Jesus has shown where he is going with all of this. He says: Those who live and die with Jesus will be treated the same way I treated Jesus. They will be raised up to new and everlasting life. Those who do not, will not. There is justice! There also is love. In the end, justice and love will be seen to be the same thing.
If we suffer at the hands of injustice and remain faithful to the Lord, we will be vindicated.
We might be vindicated in the here and now. That does happen. We might live to see the injustice done to us be the very undoing of those who did it. However, we absolutely will be vindicated in the eternal realm.
The more people who live a life of justice, love and good example, the more those realities will take over the injustice, hate and bad example that seems to prevail. There is strength in God alone and so Jesus accomplished in his own singular life what no other human or army of humans could do. Yet, there is also strength in numbers. Jesus established the church to combat the strength that evil has in the numbers of people who are under its sway.
The more Christians witness to the love of God and the more there are of us, the more we hasten the day when love will establish justice even here on earth. Hence the need to continue the missionary effort of the Church.
The appearances of Jesus were meant to do two things, first to confirm our faith and encourage us; with that encouragement spread the faith to others, all others. Easter teaches us, reminds us that justice will prevail because, in the divine sense, it does prevail. No matter how strong the evil one seems, or sin seems, or injustice seems, it is only a matter of time before eternity wins out and justice prevails.
Everyone starts out life as an image of God and God does not favor one group or person over another on the basis of any of the typical human prejudices.
It matters to God how a person behaves, be he or she a Christian or not.
Christianity is open to everyone.
God will treat those who imitate the attitudes and behavior of Christ the same way he treated Christ; He will raise him or her up from death to eternal life.
Through Christ, encountered now through preaching, God will forgive those who repent of sin.
Surprises: The people who heard a Jew say that God shows no favorites would be greatly surprised. One of the most disturbing things about Jews in those days was their claim to be above the rest of humanity because they were God’s “chosen.” The typical Jew looked down on non-Jews and the strict Jew looked down even on his fellow Jews who were lax and loose in keeping the details of the Law. For a Jew to publicly admit to Gentiles that God was not like that, that that idea was a human error, a false conclusion was shocking. True it was based on a partially correct premise, that is,. God had “chosen” the Jews. However, they neglected to finish the sentence. God had chosen the Jews to communicate his love and his will to all peoples. They liked to leave that part out because it meant that they were less “special” and more servants of the word of God. There is no religious basis in Judaism or Christianity for considering one group of people automatically better than another. It is true, as Peter goes on to say in verse thirty five, that some individuals are better than others, but that is on the basis of free-will behavior, not birth into a certain group, be it ethnic or intellectual.
Humans are surprised that God does not think like them. Humans are also surprised that God does not act like them. Sinful humans kill good people because they consider themselves stronger and the good folks are “good” only because they are weak. That is the way they treated Jesus. But God treated him differently. He raised him up. He not only did not let him stay dead, but he raised him into his eternal presence. It is not that God had to accept any and all human behavior, whether he likes it or not. It is that God can always outsmart humans and thwart their efforts to control things and control God. He never takes away free will, but he does trump human will when he sees fit. Humans can fool themselves into thinking God does not exist or cannot resist human power. They can do this for a period of time- three days, three weeks, years, centuries. But eventually, it becomes clear that God is not bound by our rules, rather we are bound by his. This “surprise” about God can really hurt when humans have to learn the hard way that God will be God either with our cooperation and consent or in spite of us. He will let us get away with sin only so long.
We are surprised that God through the resurrected Jesus would entrust those weak and defecting disciples with the awesome task of carrying on where Jesus left off. God did not abandon those who abandoned him but surprisingly entrusted them with a challenge they had once already failed. Of course, with a difference. He now gave them the power, through giving them his own divine Spirit, to succeed, not on their own power but by his. Whereas humans would cast away folks who failed them, God gives them a second and third and fourth chance. He forgives them so that they can carry his message of forgiveness in a more convincing way. Peter never forgot his sin and never let anyone else forget it either, not because he never forgave himself but because he never forgot God’s mercy. Even that surprises us. Most humans would try to “forget about it” and certainly would not tell others who otherwise would not know of their wrongdoing in the past. Amen.
