Different People

Acts 10:44-48

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

May 21, 2006

The Road Less Traveled. I know you’ve heard that phrase before. It was made famous by Scott Peck, who used it as the title of his book. Peck was quoting a poem written in 1920 by Robert Frost, called "The Road Not Taken":

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In the 10^th chapter of Acts, a series of proddings by the Holy Spirit causes Peter to take the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference in the history of the Christian church.

You know the story. Peter, a devout Jewish follower of Jesus Christ, has a dream in which he is told to eat food that was prohibited by Old Testament law. (I think it was pork barbeque!) Three times Peter is told to eat the unclean food, and three times Peter refuses. After each refusal, Peter hears the voice of Christ saying, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." Finally Peter awakens from his dream.

Immediately after his dream, some messengers arrived at the front door of Peter’s home. They had been sent by a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Peter, realizing the parallel between his dream and this group of Gentiles, goes with the messengers to the home of Cornelius. When they arrive at the home of Cornelius, Peter says, "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any person impure or unclean." And after Peter heard what Cornelius had to say, about how an angel had told him to send for Peter, Peter exclaims, "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts [people] from every nation who fear him and do what is right."

And so Peter shared the gospel with that group of Gentiles who gathered around him at the home of Cornelius. It is as Peter concludes his proclamation of the gospel that we pick up our text this morning. Hear now the word of God as it comes to us in the 10^th chapter of Acts, beginning to read in the 44^th verse...

The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever.

At some point, Peter had to make a decision: does he do the safe thing, and associate only with fellow Jewish believers, or does he take the road less traveled--actually, the road virtually uncharted at the time--and open the door for the proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles? Scripture tells us that Peter took the road less traveled, and that decision has proven to be a critical turning point in the Christian church, for its effects continue today, even here at the Georgetown Presbyterian Church, where we Gentile Christians gather to worship Jesus Christ.

It has been said that the normal Christian needs three conversion experiences. One is a conversion to Christ. The next is a conversion to the people of Christ, the church. The third conversion is to the mission of Christ in the world. In the 10^th chapter of Acts, we are witnessing Peter experience this third conversion, as he is called to open the door of the gospel, to invite "different" people to become part of God’s kingdom.

You know that what Peter did couldn’t have been easy for him. It had to go against everything that Peter had been taught all his life, for him to make that decision to go and associate with Gentiles. The dilemma that Peter faced is one that most of us can relate to. Most of us have struggled with how to associate with people who are different from us. Most of us have prejudices, even in the context of the Christian church.

James Montgomery Boice, who was a pastor and author in Philadelphia, as he comments on this 10^th chapter of Acts, has pointed out that "...we have prejudices of our own. We have denominational prejudices, believing that God is more willing to work with our denomination than with others. We have racial prejudices, thinking that God prefers one race or prefers working with one race to working with others. We have national prejudices, supposing that our nation is somehow intrinsically superior to all others..."

What are your prejudices? Where do you draw the line between "normal" and "different"? The truth is, every one of us has some prejudices that keep us from reaching out to people who are different.

Yet what Peter discovered was that God does not make the same distinctions as those that we make between people. "God does not show favoritism, but accepts people from every nation who fear him..." This much is clear in those few verses at the end of the 10^th chapter of Acts, as we see God sending the same Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles as he did when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles at Pentecost. And the Holy Spirit endowed the Gentiles with the same gift of speaking in different languages, just as had happened with the apostles at Pentecost. God does not treat the Gentile Christians differently from the Jewish Christians.

"Different" people are viewed no differently in the eyes of God.

This is not a new thing from God, for God had always had a vision that encompasses every human being from every nation and every tribe on the face of the earth. From the very beginning, God declared that it was his intent to bless the whole world. Throughout the Old Testament, the prophets remind the Israelites that God had set the Israelites apart, not so they could consider themselves superior to the rest of the world, but so that they could become a light to the Gentiles, declaring the wonders of God to the Gentiles and calling the Gentiles to worship the living God.

Yet every step of the way the Israelites resisted. They sought to hoard the blessing of God for themselves. They looked down upon the Gentiles. All through the Old Testament, and even in the time of Jesus, it was clear that the Jews despised the Gentiles as morally inferior.

Maybe you remember Jonah, who so hated the thought that God might have mercy on the Ninevites that he ran away, and then when he saw that God actually did spare the city of Nineveh, Jonah went off to pout under a bush. Do you remember what God said to Jonah? God said, "Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left... Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

You see, God’s vision is always broader and more inclusive than our vision. Where we may be tempted to shut the doors to the kingdom, God clearly calls us to embrace the world of people who are different from us. It is a call to set aside our prejudices and realize that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.

One other thing I want to lift up out of this story. It is tempting for us to say that all are welcome, but that if they want to be a part of us, they have to become just like us. They need to dress the right way, cut their hair the right way, drive the right kind of cars, act just like us. But as Peter observes the Spirit at work among the Gentiles, he comes to the conclusion that the Gentiles Christians don’t have to be the same as Jewish Christians. He welcomes them into the community of faith as they are. He doesn’t make them get circumcised before they can be baptized. And so he sends the message that different people don’t have to look like one of us in order to be one of us.

That’s the beauty of the Body of Christ--we’re allowed to be different, yet all are equally a part of the Body. We don’t have to be uniform in order to be united in one Body.

I was talking with someone the other day, and he said that one of the things that he respects about this church is our willingness to reach out into the community and to embrace this community. He said that we’re not at all like the prayer that goes like this: "Dear God, please bless me and my wife Betty, our son Bob and his wife Jean; us four and no more." And he’s right. We’re not like that at all. But that doesn’t mean that we remain satisfied where we are. This third type of conversion, the conversion to the mission of Christ to the world of "different" people, is an ongoing conversion, one in which we are constantly called to expand our horizon and our vision of who is part of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Somewhere in your family heritage, somebody in your family was "different." Maybe that was several generations ago. Maybe it was you who were on the outside, looking in. At some point, somebody welcomed you, as Peter welcomed the Gentiles. And the Body of Christ is better because you are part of it.

Now, it’s your turn. Look for the "different people." Because in God’s eyes, they aren’t different, at least not in the way we think they’re different.

Amen.