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"What is Possible; Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34 A Sermon Preached By Rev. Peter W. Shidemantle
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January 9, 2005, Baptism of the Lord |
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PEBBLE HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 5299 Jamesville Rd., Dewitt, NY 13214 Phone: 315-446-0960 |
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P The early response of the world community to the devastation and tremendous loss of life due to the tsunami in southern Asia has been one primarily of compassion and aid. We are already beginning to see that over the long haul, as longer-term commitments need to be carried through, political considerations are starting to intervene. But the initial response has been for the world community to pull together, laying other considerations aside, to attend to the overwhelming needs of the people and the nations most affected by this natural disaster. It is ironic, as many have pointed out, how this event has managed to bring people and groups together in ways that other efforts at reconciliation have not. I heard one report of a rebel group in one of the nations most affected working with governmental leaders in trying to assist the people. It would be rather easy to be cynical about this - that somehow there is advantage to be gained by being compassionate, and once the initial shock has worn off and the news organizations begin focusing once again on all the bad news of human making, self-interest will once again hold sway in our world. But I think we know that it runs deeper than that. Compassion is part of the human heart, part of who we are. But aside, perhaps, from the large and obvious things that lift and move us toward acting out of compassion, we are often reluctant to reach and extend beyond our comfort zones. There was a movie that came out a few years ago called Pay it Forward.* The plot begins with the assignment that a social studies teacher gives to his group of twelve year old students. Their assignment was to think of an idea to change the world and put it into action. The teacher instructs his students that an idea like this is “an extreme act of faith because it requires a belief in the goodness of people.” It is a good assignment, he tells them, because it is possible to do it. One of his students, named Trevor, accepts the charge, and he describes his budding idea to his mother: “You see, I do something real good for three people. And then they ask how they can pay it back. I say they have to pay it forward to three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then these people have to do it - twenty-seven.” He turns on the calculator and crunches a few numbers and says, “Then it sort of spreads out, see. To eighty-one. Then two hundred forty three. Then seven hundred twenty nine. Then two thousand, one hundred eighty seven. See how big it gets?” And so the film takes us on the journey with Trevor as he engages in various acts of kindness toward those whom the world might ignore or disdain. The recipients of these unmerited acts of kindness at first struggle with the burden of altruism, but eventually they find its blessing in the changes that happen within them as they pay forward the goodness to three others. In the midst of it young Trevor begins to really see all the overt and subtle ways people go about crucifying each other instead of seizing the daily opportunities we have to be about the task of raising each other to life. In the film Trevor actually inaugurates a social movement of paying-it-forward kindnesses, bringing national exposure to the movement. In a television interview he is asked why everyone does not embrace this movement of contagious hope, and he responds with a kind of sad wisdom beyond his years: “It’s hard for some people, when things are going bad, to imagine that some good can come from the situations within which they are living. People give up. They don’t think things can change. It’s too bad. Everybody loses. They must be afraid.” There was a movement begun some 20 centuries ago that parallels this 21st century story of a young boy’s commitment to find a way to breed acts of kindness amid the cruelties of a hardened world. In the Acts of the Apostles there is this wonderful story about a Roman centurion named Cornelius, described earlier in the chapter from which we read as “a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms liberally to the people, and prayed constantly to God.” Cornelius was not a Jew, but certainly would have known of the Jewish faith. He was a believer in God, and that belief inspired a prayerful heart and a generous spirit in him and all within his house. Cornelius received a vision from God, in which he is told that his prayers and alms have “ascended as a memorial before God.” He is told to send some men to the seaside town of Joppa, to the house of Simon the tanner, where there was staying a man called Simon Peter. As they went and neared the town, Simon Peter, the disciple of Jesus, also had a vision. He saw the heaven opened, and something like a great sheet descending, let down from the four corners of the earth. “In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air.” And a voice said to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter objected and since he had obeyed the dietary laws of Judaism his whole life, said, “Lord, I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” The voice came to him again and said, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” This happened three times, and Peter was perplexed by it. He didn’t know what it meant. While he was pondering this, Cornelius’ men arrived, looking for him. They told him that Cornelius, “an upright and God-fearing man. . . well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by the holy angel to send for you to come to his house, and to hear what you have to say.” The next day Peter went with them, and upon arriving Cornelius fell down at his feet and worshiped him. Peter lifted him up and said, “Stand up - I’m only a man like you.” Apparently as Peter was on the way to Cornelius’ house, certainly talking with those in the party who were sent to him, and as he arrived and met Cornelius, it became clear to him what the vision meant that God had given him. At first, Peter acknowledges how unlikely this meeting is. “You yourselves know,” he said, “how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.” So Peter had learned something he wouldn’t have come up with himself. All his cultural conditioning and religious practice, everything that he was, told him the exact opposite of what he had now come to realize, which he confesses at the beginning of the section from which we read this morning: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Peter then shares the message of the gospel, and in the section following the one we read, it is reported that the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard his word, and those who had come with Peter, Jewish believers like him, were amazed that “the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.” Peter declared that there was nothing to prevent these people from being baptized, to become part of the movement of Jesus Christ. This marked the transformation of the Christian movement, from a movement within Judaism itself, to a faith which from this point spread like wildfire among the Gentile masses. What is possible? Jesus says that “all things are possible to those who believe,” but experience would seem to dictate otherwise. As Trevor says in Pay it Forward, “People give up. They don’t think things can change. It’s too bad. Everybody loses. They must be afraid.” Do we think that God’s word and will should sit comfortably with us, that we don’t need to move, or change, or consider again? Of course not! If we do not feel some resistance to the movement of God in our lives, then it is something less than God that is seeking to move us. In the movie Trevor is at first skeptical that a twelve year old can find a way to change the world and actually put it into action. He asks the teacher, Mr. Simonette, what he ever did to change the world. “Well, Trevor,” he replies, “I get a good night’s sleep, show up here every day and pass the buck to you.” Which is what the apostle Peter does when he proclaims the message of, the ministry and mission and mystery of Jesus - he attempts to pass the buck in a way, stirring up the Holy Spirit within the hearts of hearers of this word, and challenging them to the extreme act of faith of living in a new Way. He challenges them with a possibility, that the good that Jesus did lives on after him through the vibrant witness, testimony and action of those who believe that anything is possible with God. A small example, but it is small rather than big ways that these things mostly happen. We got permission to have flyers about our Friday Nite Socials here at Pebble Hill distributed at the J-D middle school. The school couldn’t distribute them, but we could have them there, and the kids themselves could hand them out. We printed up a couple hundred and my daughter Kara took them with her, and started by handing them out to everyone on the bus that morning. A bunch of them wadded up the flyers and threw them at her. Kara called me about it from school, more angry than hurt. But you know, we had our second Friday Nite Social this past Friday night. The first time we had 14 kids from the community. This time we had 26. What is possible? You know, God’s purposes for the Gentiles to be included in the fellowship of Christian believers could never have been realized unless Peter had changed his mind. God doesn’t enforce God’s will on us. God entices us with God’s vision of an inclusive community, with life-changing and world-changing possibilities. It won’t go anywhere without our active and compassionate cooperation. The process of the Good News taking hold in us, of releasing the compassion in us, of freeing our imaginations and our hopes, often begins with skepticism, even resistance to the implausibility of it all. But then, for those who have ears to hear, whose hearts are softened, whose imaginations are freed up, the fear of the possible subsides, and in Paul Tillich’s terminology, we are grasped by the message and the Spirit shakes the foundations of our lives - compassion is incited, our hunger and thirst for justice is prompted, and when we are grasped by the power of the gospel the only thing we can do is pay it forward. You know, we live in a society that promises instant reward for self-sufficient people who know with certainty the way to go, the direction to move. The fact that it seldom works this way breeds a sense of failure and low self-esteem in many. We look for the magic bullet, the one idea that will take off if we are only smart enough and original enough to think of it. God is treated as though he has little to do with it, maybe only playing a supportive role. But, like Peter himself, we only learn of God’s will from God, not from our own resources. The Lord is not a passive bystander, but is committed to a process of disclosure by which his will is made known to us. As Peter discovered, getting on the same page with God is frequently confusing, deeply dependent on others, and it often takes considerable time. But God will get us there. Hear this as the church, as a people who have ourselves been included in the movement of God’s compassionate embrace of all humanity - and then consider, what is possible? * The treatment of the film “Pay it Forward” in relation to Acts 10:34-43 in this sermon is indebted to Avis Clendenen in “Lectionary Homiletics,” December 2004-January 2005.
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| Copyright, Rev. Dr.
Peter W. Shidemantle. All rights reserved. Permission granted for
non-commercial use.
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