Spirit in Mission

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Acts 10:44-48, with additional reference to Acts 10. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Our reading from Acts this morning — this scene of the Holy Spirit coming to people as Peter preaches — is actually the conclusion, the climax, the punch line, of a much longer story, a story that takes up all of Chapter 10. And like so many scripture stories, if we want to understand what is going on here —  especially if we want to understand what this story has to say to us — then we have to fill in the story so far to know what’s brought us to this point.

This story begins in the town of Caesarea with a Roman centurion, of all people, named Cornelius. Now, Cornelius is devout and God-fearing man. He believes in the God of the Bible, he does good and righteous deeds, he prays every day — but he is not a Jew, he is not a member of the community of faith, he is not included in the covenant people to whom the apostles have been preaching the good news of Jesus. One day Cornelius is praying, and while he prays the Holy Spirit sends him a vision of an angel, who directs him to send to Joppa for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter, who has something important to tell him. Cornelius has no idea who this Simon Peter is, or what message he might have; but as soon as he comes out of his vision he does as he’s been told: he sends messengers to Joppa to invite Peter to come visit him.

Meanwhile, back in Joppa, just as Cornelius’s messengers are drawing near, but before they’ve arrived, Peter goes up on the roof of the house where he’s staying to pray. As he prays he falls into a trance, and in the trance the Holy Spirit send him a vision: he is hungry, and he sees the heavens opened, and something that looks like the sail from a ship is lowered, and in the sail he sees all kinds of animals, clean and unclean, kosher and non-kosher. A voice from heaven says to Peter “Rise, kill, and eat” — but Peter says “No, Lord, I’ve never eaten anything unclean in my life; how can I eat of these unclean animals now?” — and the voice replies “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.” And just to make sure Peter gets the point, the vision us repeated twice more — three times Peter hears the message “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.”

And then, just as Peter is coming out of his trance, the messengers from Cornelius arrive and knock at the door. Peter’s hosts come to tell him there are Gentiles downstairs asking for him, and the Holy Spirit tells Peter to go with them — doesn’t bother with a trance this time, just tells Peter to go with them without hesitation or discrimination. And Peter, although he knows perfectly well that his Jewish-Christian hosts will be scandalized, Peter goes down to them, and invites them in, and shows them hospitality, and the next day he leaves with them to go to Caesarea and speak to Cornelius. A few of the believers decide to make the trip with Peter.  

When Peter arrives at Cornelius’s house, Cornelius comes out to greet him and invites him to come in. This is a big moment for Peter. Peter has never been inside a Gentile’s home before. Just like he’s never eaten anything unclean or non-kosher, Peter has never eaten or drunk or associated or even visited with a Gentile, a goy, someone outside the covenant, someone unclean. Crossing the threshold of Cornelius’s house literally means for Peter going into a socio-religious territory he has never been in before. But he’s learned from the vision the Holy Spirit sent him, and he says “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean,” and he goes into the house, and he begins to preach, he begins to tell Cornelius and his entire household and all his invited friends the good news of new life in Jesus.

Now, usually in the Book of Acts all of Peter’s sermons follow the same basic pattern, leading up to the moment when Peter calls upon his listeners to repent of their sins and be baptized, so that they can receive the Holy Spirit and have a new life in Jesus. But in this sermon, Peter hesitates a bit. Is it appropriate to offer baptism to these Gentiles? Can they repent? They’re not part of the covenant. God never chose them. God never offered them the path to atonement. Can they even turn to God? Are they capable of receiving God’s blessing? Can they possibly belong to Jesus the way a Jew, one of Jesus’ own people, can belong to Jesus? When it comes right down to it, what good news does Peter really have to offer Cornelius and these Gentiles? It’s time to offer them baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit — but Peter isn’t really sure he’s ready to do that.

And that’s when it happens: While Peter is still speaking, the Holy Spirit takes the initiative, the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius and the others, they begin praising God and speaking in tongues — and Peter, by the Spirit, recognizes right away what is happening. This is the same thing, he realizes, that happened to the apostles, that happened to him, at Pentecost; this is the same gift of the Spirit that transformed his life; this is the Spirit making these Gentiles full members of the Body of Christ. And if the Spirit has accepted them, Peter says, then how can the Church refuse them? He orders that they be baptized — which I’m sure raised the eyebrows of his Jewish-Christian companions — and he stayed with them, living under their roof, eating their food, having communion with them, for several days.

What this story shows us is the Holy Spirit in mission. We often speak of the Church’s mission; but what this story shows us is that the mission really belongs to God, the spread of the Church is the Holy Spirit’s work. At each point in this story it’s the Holy Spirit that is making things happen: the Spirit moves Cornelius, and the Spirit moves Peter, and the Spirit gives the household ecstatic praise, and the Spirit gives Peter understanding of what that praise means. At each point, it is the Holy Spirit that is active in bringing people together in Christ. Peter and Cornelius and the others have their activities too, to be sure — they are not just passive pawns in the Spirit’s work — but the work they do they can only do because it is the Spirit that is working in and through and around them. And the Spirit’s mission, we should note, is not limited by Peter’s limitations, or the limitations of Peter’s idea of the Church. Peter isn’t too sure about accepting these Gentiles. But the Spirit has no such hesitation, God’s mission isn’t limited by this cultural boundary, God’s mission opens up Cornelius and the others to the spirit of new life — and it’s Peter’s job to expand his idea of the Church, to grow the embrace of his faith, so that he and his Church can welcome in the believers the Spirit has created.

And that, I believe, is the meaning of this story for us. For us, too, in our time, the message is that the Holy Spirit is at work, the Holy Spirit is on a mission, the Holy Spirit is creating moments of praise and connection and liberation and communion in the world all the time — and our job in the Church is to discern the mission the Spirit is doing, and then to go join in doing it too. We don’t engage in mission because we’ve done a demographic analysis and determined who our target market is and who we can best attract to our brand; we engage in mission because the Spirit calls us, because the Spirit is at work and inspires us to join in the work as well.

And like Peter in the story, sometimes joining the Spirit in mission means that we have to expand our idea of the Church beyond our comfort zone. It’s easy for us in the Church to get all caught up in our ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable, what’s clean and what’s unclean, what belongs in church and what doesn’t belong in church. It’s easy for us to make our own judgments about who’s in and who’s out, who can be blessed and who can’t be blessed, who belongs and who’s beyond the pale. But this story reminds us that the Holy Spirit is not limited by our limitations, the Holy Spirit is not bound by our boundaries in the Church — and if we want to fulfill our purpose to join the Spirit in mission, we have to look beyond our walls and our ways and our well-established customs, to see what the Spirit is doing at large, to recognize the moments of praise and connection and liberation and communion the Spirit is creating among all sorts and conditions of people, even people we would not expect, and we have to expand our idea of Church to embrace and welcome and join these whom God has chosen, too.

Our reading from Acts this morning tells how the Spirit’s mission expands the embrace of the Church to people Peter never expected. May we, in Trinity Church, expand our embrace to join those to whom the Spirit sends us, too. Amen.