A sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 15:9-17

⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Luke’s record of the Acts of the Apostles is a narrative comprised of snapshots with not a lot of record of time. It might be that we can trust Luke to give us a chronological record, but he doesn’t exactly promise that. He promises an “ordered account” at the beginning of his first volume.

So we’re not at all sure when Peter climbed up on his roof to pray, but the vision he receives there is dramatic and clear and really ought to still stir us to question our own presumptions today.

Do you remember? All we share in our reading today is the culmination of the story, but I think that what builds up to it is what really speaks to us.

If you don’t remember this story, check it out. It’s one of the best!

An officer in Rome’s army named Cornelius is one of those rare converts to Judaism. At tea-time one day, God decides that it’s time for Cornelius to take the next step, and an angel appears to him.

“Cornelius!”

<gaping>

“…What is it, Lord?”

“Cornelius, you are one devoted dude. God’s got a task for you…”

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Peter is getting away sunning himself on his roof when all of a sudden he has a hunger-inspired vision.

Have you ever been so hungry you start seeing visions of food?

Peter does just that. But it’s a bunch of stuff he isn’t allowed to eat.

God lowers a tablecloth down to Peter and it’s got, oh, I don’t know, barbeque and lobster and cheeseburgers. Stuff you can’t have if you’re a devoted Jew.

And God tells Peter, “I know you’re hungry. Take your pick.”

“Yeah, right, God. I know temptation when I see it. I know enough not to sin that obviously.”

“No, Peter, seriously. If I tell you it’s okay, then it’s okay.”

And that exchange is multiplied by three. Just to hammer the point home. And it blows. Peter’s. Mind. It’s an abstraction he can’t figure how to put into practice. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just about food. Maybe God is just telling Peter, and just Peter, that bacon is on the menu now.

Mmmm bacon.

While Peter is trying to work this out, there’s a knock at his door. And Peter hears the Breath of God whisper in his ear:

“You’ve got visitors. I sent them your way. Go with them.”

And so Cornelius and his household are brought into the household of faith. It isn’t just about bacon, after all. And we get this marvelous proclamation that Peter makes in today’s reading:

“These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water, can they?”

John reminds us that the speaking-in-tongues bit that Peter witnesses is just icing on the cake, though. The fruits of the Spirit that Cornelius and his household are demonstrating are far simpler:

²By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.

[Cornelius] gave generously to those in need among the Jewish people and prayed to God constantly.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Remember: the followers of Christ who wrote our New Testament are recalling Jesus’ words and reflecting on them all the time. It’s when Peter has this rooftop experience and has to interpret it on the ground that we see Christianity really start to take a new shape.

If I call it clean, you’ve got no business calling it unclean.

If I call it blessed, you’ve got no business calling it cursed.

If I call it righteous, you’ve got no business calling it sin.

We so often think, in the Church, that we have a monopoly on praise and salvation and theology. But our own scriptures speak a contrary word. Did you hear the words of the Psalmist today?

⁴ Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth…
  
⁷ Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
   the world and those who live in it.
⁸ Let the floods clap their hands;
   let the hills sing together for joy
⁹ at the presence of the Lord

I’ve heard the sea roar. The sea doesn’t tire. The crashing waves will keep crashing as long as tectonic plates move and the moon revolves around the earth.

I’ve heard the applause of the floods, sometimes in a whisper and sometimes in a forte so deafening that I can’t even yell a conversation with someone standing right beside me.

I’ve heard the hills singing together in wind and birdsong and livestock.

And if God can call forth praise out of the inanimate features of the earth, how can we possibly say that God only calls the faithful of the Church?

The earth doesn’t need a thousand laws and regulations to tell it how to praise. All the earth needs…

Well, let’s unpack that one, shall we?

In order to get the applause of the floods, we need water. That’s a good place to start, right? But water, by itself, will just stand still. It won’t move. Still water is stagnant. It’ll grow things, but it won’t applaud. It’ll gradually become a pool of death.

For water to applaud, it needs to move. For water to move, we need slope. Gradient. Running water will applaud.

But only if it’s got obstructions. If I run water on a completely smooth surface, it won’t make a sound. I need shape and form.

The floods clap their hands because they’re slamming against rocks and trees, because they’re filling in holes with great sucking sounds (and if you’ve never heard a hole suck, you probably aren’t in rivers the way that I am).

Water, gradient, shape. They’re ingredients that occur naturally, that are always cycling and transforming. They don’t require thought or regulation. They’re just there.

And it’s funny. Our lives would be like that, too. God has created us to live lives that are constant praise, constant joy. God isn’t calling us to put forth tremendous effort to fake praise for an hour, or for ten minutes on a Sunday morning.

We don’t need rules and regulations. We just need to get over ourselves and recognize that we are created for praise!

And that’s how love ought to be, too.

“This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you.”

That means just love the people I like, right? No, it means just love the people in my church, right? No, it means just loving Christians, right?

As if we even do that.

No, Jesus’ words are for everybody. Love one another.

The only reason we don’t love is because we let our sin get in the way. We close ourselves off to other people. We don’t believe in what they do, in what they say, in what they profess, in what they live. We don’t agree with them and so we must be right and so we refuse to love them.

Let. Go.

Love one another.

We are created in God’s image, and God is love.

Take off the shades that discolor the people you see, the bigotry and judgment and pride, and let us all see one another with the eyes God has created.

And I know, I know it’s not as easy as taking off a pair of sunglasses. Letting go of sin, especially something as deeply rooted as prejudice and pride, takes re-learning of our lives.

But it’s okay. Peter didn’t get it right right away. He and Paul argue for a long time about the direction that the Way of Christ is heading. Peter, the simple fisherman who you’d think would have an easier time making the shift, doesn’t get it as quickly as Paul, who is rooted in law and the judgment and strictness of the Temple. Somehow, Paul shrugs off a lifetime of learning and sees Christ leading the Church out into the Greek world, and simple, stubborn Peter just can’t do it.

It’s weird. I don’t understand that.

But I do understand that I have a lot of learned behavior, learned expectations that I have got to shrug off so I can see God doing a new thing, so I can open my God’s eyes and see my neighbor for the blessing God sees.

God’s commandments are not difficult, not burdensome.

Because when we step out of our own way, we become God’s children.

Let go, friends. Let go with me, and let’s just see into what terrifying and new places God’s Spirit will guide us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.