Fifth Sunday of Easter May 9, 2004

Currents in Theology and Mission, April, 2004

Acts 11:1-18

Psalm 148

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35

By the Fifth Sunday of Easter we begin to explore hospitality, trust, and love as marks of Easter's new life. With trust and love we begin making our way to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Spirit's power that informs our Easter mission. We make our way there through dreams--transporting, boundary-breaking visions.

First Reading

"We thought God was only for us!" But the lessons this day bring a new dream.

Ruth, a member of our group, has dreamed of Jesus sitting on the edge of her bed. But she's never told anyone about it.

We wondered if that's how Peter felt when he made his way to Jerusalem to give account of his experience with Cornelius. Did he worry how this story of two dreams meeting would play as a basis for changing traditional understandings of God's requirements for holiness, for who was in and who was out? Imagine us changing a major church policy by appealing to dreams and experiences that run contrary to what we've always known, read, and believed about God's desire for God's people.

Maybe it was the fumes rising up to the roof from Simon the Tanner's shop in Joppa, the city from which Jonah had once launched his fateful and wildly successful mission to Nineveh. Maybe it was the odors and blood from animals that made this Simon the Tanner unclean and occasioned this dream of Simon Peter, his houseguest. Clearly, Peter had questioned whether this was of God. It was so different from what the tradition and Law had held. Peter was so lost in thought that he hadn't heard the visitors knocking until the Spirit tapped him on the shoulder, telling him to go and not ask any questions. It probably wouldn't have gone anywhere if the men downstairs weren't telling the same kind of wacky story and if Peter and his companions from Joppa hadn't had a compelling experience of the Holy Spirit with Cornelius in Caesarea.

What else could Peter say to the brothers? Peter told them about the dreams. It was too crazy for him to make up. It was too bizarre not to be of God. I mean, think about how Peter and Cornelius must have felt: two powerful men, talking about seeing angels clear as day at the foot of their beds during their prayers, talking about a voice of God saying that what God says is OK is OK, even if God's never said that before in thousands of years. "Peter and Cornelius were so far apart in culture, religion, geography," said Ruth, "and yet the Spirit moved them to relate, to go toward this vision."

So there they were. They had both taken a leap of faith, gone out on the gospel limb, together. Peter tells the circumcised believers at Jerusalem (cranked that Peter had just gone and baptized these unclean, unchosen, uncircumcised Gentiles, and that, like it not, they were already joined to them as brothers and sisters in Christ) about his experience of Cornelius's Pentecost: "You remember how this happened to us, when the Spirit fell on us in that powerful, undeniable way? Well, it's happening to others."

Of course, Peter does reshape his story a little for this particular audience. Peter manages to slip in the angel's indication to Cornelius that Peter has a message of salvation for him. Peter is careful not to defend himself as much as he does God, who saved an "unclean" Cornelius and his household. Peter understands the church's squeamishness about eating unclean foods and staying in a nonkosher home; Peter had gulped a little himself. They wonder what will be the sign of their unity, if these purity laws are now broken through by God. Peter points to the Spirit. Unlike the first account, where Peter actually got a pretty good sermon in, in this retelling the Spirit interrupts after just a few words, and even before baptism. The Spirit is in charge. They have received the same gift of grace through Jesus, in the presence of witnesses, concludes Peter. Then, it's up to the rest of the community to say the Amen.

The theme of God's new creation continues in the reading from Revelation. The vision John shares is of a time when Chaos will not rule through waters, when the Empire will no longer exercise control over the waters as a resource, but water will be God's gift for all the thirsty. It reminds Ruth of Martin Luther King Jr.'s stirring dreams of a time when there will be no oppression, no discrimination, no more crying. In the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, we trust that it is already done.

The Fifth through Seventh Sundays of Easter take us through Jesus' farewell discourse. We begin to drive toward Ascension and a time when Jesus born of flesh will no longer appear even in his resurrected body. The farewell discourse takes place in John's Gospel following Jesus' acts of love in washing the feet of his disciples and eating a last meal with his followers, even feeding Judas, who has just left to betray him.

When Ruth looks for love and trust, Christ alive in the church and the world today, she thinks of sister Vi, who used to wash the feet of her nursing home residents, and how they willingly gave their feet up to her ministry, Vi died ten years ago. But Ruth sees Vi's loving, kind, helpful essence in her sister Bonnie. Though no one can replace Vi, Ruth trusts that the Christ in her is certainly alive in this world through the pieces of Vi's love that those who knew her picked up to embody and share.