This is another sermon preached at St. Raphael's Church, Crossville, Tennessee.
In today’s lessons, I was struck, and you will understand why in a bit, by the collect,”Grant us so perfectly to know your son, Jesus Christ, be the way, the truth of the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life.”
Which is a great lead in to the trouble of the 11 (because Judas has left) - the trouble of the 11, and the women who are in charge - look, it's a dinner party; the women are in charge - when Jesus says, “I'm about to leave and you can't follow me,” Now, they don't really have a clue what that means just yet. This happens as a part of the farewell discourses in John. That is, after they finish dinner, before they go to the Garden, and the Passion narrative starts. They will know soon. Right? They will know when they get to the Garden. They will know as they watch the Passion. They will know as they wait after the Crucifixion, and they will still know some in that period of time that we talk about between Easter and Pentecost; and the Church will come to wonder, “What do we do now?
“We know what it looked like to follow Jesus when we were all wandering around the Holy Land together. And this was a model that we all knew.” This was a very common model. You would have your teacher and your teacher would have the disciples. They would live together, they would talk together, not so different from the Athenian Academy. or the same kinds of educational efforts, if you will, in Alexandria. They knew what that was like.
“But now he's not here. And how do we go on?” And we get hints that they fall into a very human kind of response to that. Peter said, "Well, I'm going back to go fishing." We heard that a few weeks ago.
Funny thing. Peter is the one who shows up again today. because Peter has been confronted with something entirely new. And what we have in chapter 11 of Acts is not the event itself. It's Peter telling the Jerusalem Church about the event, in the face of their question, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”
See, institutionally, that's pretty much the same thought process as, “I don't know what else to do, I'm going to go back to fishing.” Stop and think about that. We have institutional ways of talking about that. We have a church way of talking about that. Everybody should know this. “What are the seven last words of the church? We've never done it that way before.” Or in, you know, corporate speak, “fI you do the what you always did, you’re going to get what you always got.”
And honestly, for a lot of people, and a lot of times, that's comforting. Years ago, I was listening to a segment of “Morning Edition” on NPR. In those times these were short segments, and they were called “The Hidden Brain.” It has now become a whole hour long podcast, and what they do is they look into neuroscience research. And they see studies about how human beings respond to various kinds of circumstances and how we live with one another. And it seems that we are hardwired to be more anxious about what we might lose, than to be excited about what we might gain.
And sure, that makes sense. That's evolutionary. That's what got us into trying to conserve things for hard times. And as a response, we don't stop to think that we get bogged down because getting what you always got actually feels safe and secure. You know, it would have been a bad hypothetical, and happily, it never happened, for Peter and Andrew to put their heads together and one say, “Okay, I'm the leader now.” And they continue wandering around as a group of now 11 or 10 or losing people, talking about Jesus, but as the same institution, just under new leadership.
And that's where the question from the Jerusalem community comes from. “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them? Because we've known what it's been like to follow Jesus as Jews. as Jews who saw the Messiah in Him rather than somewhere else.”
And we have Peter's response. “Well, it wasn't what I was planning to do. And then. three nights in a row, I had this dream, and in this dream, this vast tarp gets lowered by four angels. And in it, there's every kind of animal imaginable. And I hear a voice says, ‘You hungry? Eat!’”And the vision had four footed animals and but four footed animals would include kosher animals like cattle and non-kosher animals like pigs. And birds of the air would include kosher birds like chicken and un-kosher birds like vultures. I have no idea what they were going to do with the reptiles. But you see my point. And Peter said, “God, I can't be indiscriminate like that. I've never been indiscriminate like that.” And God, as much as says, “If you do what you always did, you're going to get what you always got:” he said, "If I say it's clean, it's clean."
So as Peter has come back to Jerusalem to tell his story, he says, “So God has given me this perspective, this literal change of vision, or vision of change. Play it either way. And then, these people show up. And they bring me back to meet this centurion. and his household. And the Spirit said, ‘Preach.’ And I preached. So far, so good. And then they had the same experience in that household that we had on Pentecost.” Remember, this encounter is after Pentecost, and Peter has gone out. “They had the same experience of the Spirit that we had on Pentecost. Okay. Sounds pretty Godly to me. What am I gonna do?” Or as he said, "Who was I that I could hinder God?"
“Peter, if I tell you it's clean, it's clean;” or, “Peter, if I say, he's clean, he's clean. If I tell you, he's mine, and you see the same evidence that he's mine that showed that you're mine, It runs directly in the face of, ”You’ll get what you always got.”
Honestly, we know it could be a great challenge to us. to look forward in hope. Because there's always loss in looking forward. Always. I mean, I have things I hope for. And over the years, I've had many things I hoped for, and every time I took the step forward, there was also something I left behind. I had to be intentional about it. but….
So as I reflected on the collect; and as I reflected on Peter being called to do something that he'd never imagined; and Jerusalem recognizing and accepting something they had never imagined, I thought about another collect. And you've heard it before, most of you. You may have heard me preach on it before. It's a favorite of mine. “O God of unchangeable power and eternal light. Look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery. By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up. And things which had growed old are being made new. And that all things are being brought to their perfection by Him through whom all things were made.
That's the answer to the issue in today’s collect. To follow in the footsteps of Jesus is to look forward and hope for what is new, to be available to recognize that God may well do something that never occurred to us. That God may well call someone that we never thought to recognize. That God may put us in a position to love someone that we weren't sure about, and to recognize that is our vocation. By the way, if you don't know that collect, we use that in three circumstances and all of them look forward. One is as the last prayer in the Solemn Collects on Good Friday. One is the prayer after the ninth lesson on the Great Vigil of Easter before Lent is actually closed, looking toward Easter. And one is that every ordination in the church. Every person called a ministry has that prayer said over them.
These two collects together call us forward. Every one of us has been called to look for those places where we're called to see something new. It is not easy. We are more hardwired to worry more about what we might lose than to look for the promise of what we might gain. It is so much easier to do what we've always done and accept what we've always got. and not see where God might be calling us to something unexpected. It is easier. But it's not what it really means to follow Jesus.