{"id":228,"date":"2016-04-24T11:30:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-24T15:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=228"},"modified":"2016-04-25T10:43:13","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T14:43:13","slug":"breaking-the-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2016\/04\/24\/breaking-the-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY
\nby Rev. James Eaton, Pastor
\nFifth Sunday in Easter \u2022 April 24, 2016 \u2022 Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved<\/h4>\n

You can hear the sermon being preached by clicking here<\/a><\/h3Are you a rule person? All of us are in one way or another. We\u2019re social beings and we live within marvelously complex sets of rules most of us take for granted. For example, everyone here knew what to do with pews: you knew they were for sitting. We take chairs for granted. But most of the world\u2019s population doesn\u2019t sit in chairs; they sit on the floor, sometimes with pillows, sometimes on rugs. I used to teach Sociology which has a lot to say about rules and one of the experiments I suggested was to violate some rules and see what happened. For example, get on a crowded elevator and face the back; see how tense everyone gets. One of my students was skeptical about this until he tried it and people glared at him. Some of our most important rules have to do with who is ok to have for a friend or over to dinner; another set is how comfortable we feel with strangers, which has a lot to do with whether they are observing a different set of rules than we are. Today we read a story from Acts that\u2019s all about rules and breaking them. It\u2019s the church\u2019s memory of how they grew out of some rules, some boundaries, and it asks us: how are we going to grow out of ours?\n\n\n\n

Arguing God’s Rules<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s a while after Jesus left his followers to practice what he preached on their own. Most of them were gathered up in Jerusalem but the authorities there stoned one of them and arrested others and it forced them to scatter a bit. Peter has been down in Joppa, a sea port town, but he got a strange summons to go back to his home in Caesarea Philippi. It came from a Roman centurion, a lieutenant in the occupying army and it involved traveling with the messengers he sent, Gentiles, something no good Jew of the time would do on his own. Along the way he has a strange, troubling dream. He was hungry when he went to bed and in the dream a huge sheet is let down from heaven full of animals of all kinds. \u201cSlaughter and eat\u201d, he hears a heavenly voice say. It\u2019s a buffet, apparently.<\/p>\n

Now Peter is a good Jew. He knows the rules for good Jews, the kosher rules. Those rules are ancient and they prescribe that certain animals may not be eaten. Furthermore, even the ones you can eat must be slaughtered in the presence of rabbi according to another set of rules. These animals aren\u2019t kosher and Peter isn\u2019t authorized to do kosher slaughtering, so when God tells him to go ahead and eat, he\u2019s horrified. He\u2019s not falling for that; he tells God in so many words that he\u2019s not that kind of guy, he\u2019s a good guy, a rule abiding guy, and he\u2019s not about to violate those rules now. I love this, don\u2019t you? Imagine telling God off for not being religious. Yeah: I love this part. Peter actually tells God off for not being Godly enough.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019ve had my own arguments with God, and there are a lot of others in the Bible, and one thing I can tell you: no one wins an argument with God. Try it yourself. So the heavenly voice says this: \u201cWhat God has made clean, you must not call profane.\u201d Peter doesn\u2019t seem to get the point at first, does he ever? do we? So it happens three times. Three times God has to make the point that it\u2019s God that determines what\u2019s Godly, not Peter. Finally he gets it, presumably gets a snack, wakes up, goes on the journey where he meets up with Cornelius.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that I can say strongly enough how awful this is. It\u2019s just not done: good Jews do not go to the home of a Gentile, especially a Roman, most especially a Roman officer. But there he is and it turns out the summons was because of a heavenly visitation, an angel, who told Cornelius to send for Peter. My guess is that Cornelius wasn\u2019t any happier about the whole thing than Peter; he has his own set of rules and how would it look, inviting a Jewish peasant preacher and friend of a recently crucified guy to his home? But he\u2019s done it and when Peter gets there, he tells them about Jesus, how he preached and healed, how he was crucified, how he rose, how he sent the Holy Spirit and suddenly the whole group there feels that Spirit there, gets filled with it, which I assume means they miraculously know how to sing, \u201cEvery time I feel the Spirit, moving in my heart, I will pray,\u201d or \u201cDo Lord\u201d or something and there\u2019s a party and everyone has that camp feeling. I guess they all join hands and sing kumbayah and Peter goes back to Jerusalem to face the music.<\/p>\n

Confronting the Rules in Church<\/h3>\n

Because back there, the Christians in the church, all of whom are good Jews, have heard what he\u2019s done and they\u2019re horrified. The text says, \u201c[They] criticized him.\u201d Every pastor knows what this means: it\u2019s when the people in a church start whispering about you and the Deacons get frosty and the chair sends you an email that says \u201cPeople have been talking about some of your recent decisions and actions and we\u2019re going to have a meeting to discuss this on Thursday night.\u201d You see, Peter has broken the rules, lots of rules. I know what those Jerusalem Christians are thinking. They\u2019re like the woman in the old declining church I served once who said to me \u201cPastor, I hope you will bring people into our church but I hope they will be our sort of people.\u201d I knew what she meant. She meant people who knew how to sit in pews quietly, read the bulletin, use the hymnal to sing \u201cOur God Our Help in Ages Past\u201d. I\u2019ve been to the meeting Peter\u2019s going to because I remember when people who came into the centuries old Congregational Church crossed themselves and when some were noisy and some were children and some wanted different music. Peter was right when he argued with God: Peter knew the rules. It\u2019s God that doesn\u2019t seem to care about them.<\/p>\n

\n

The reason is that God has a purpose. Right from creation, God\u2019s been creating a humanity fit to live with. This takes some doing even among us. From our start, God intended to make us fit companions. There have been a couple of false starts but then God starts with Abraham to bless the whole world. This is where God is going: all people are children of God and it\u2019s time to act like it. Not even the rules we think make us Godly are as important as God\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n

No one\u2019s getting left behind. The whole story of the church is about breaking the rules that make the walls that keep us apart. What makes people mad about Jesus? He eats with sinners. What makes church people mad about Peter? He eats with Gentiles. The church is still struggling with this Gentile\/Jew divisions when Acts is written but it has exploded around the Mediterranean world because on the whole, it decided early on to embrace these Gentiles even though they didn\u2019t know who to use the hymnal or follow the liturgy. What was important?\u2014that they were children of God and had the same gift of the Spirit as the people in the church. In other words, the church people figured out they were just as much children of God as they were.<\/p>\n

Now this story about Cornelius and the others gets called a conversion story. Often when it\u2019s preached, the emphasis is on how we should go talk to people we don\u2019t know and tell them about Jesus and get them to come to church with us in our church, sit in our pews, sing our songs. It is a conversion story, of course; but who\u2019s the convert? I think the real conversion here is the church. It\u2019s the moment when they are converted from their rules to the reality of Jesus. For Jesus hates walls and whenever we make one, he always turns out to be on the other side. Who needs conversion? We do. Just like the song says, \u201cIt\u2019s me, it\u2019s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conversion<\/h3>\n

Our whole history witnesses to this rule breaking, this wall breaking. Congregationalists started out literally putting a wall called a fence in front of the communion table to emphasize it was too holy for just anyone; only covenanted members seen to be really good at following rules could come to the table. We got rid of the fence. Congregationalists used to think you had to be male to be a Pastor. In 1854, Antoinette Brown was the first woman ordained as a Congregationalist. More recently, we\u2019ve had a long argument about fully, openly including gay and lesbian folks. When I read about Peter being criticized for eating with Gentiles, I can\u2019t help thinking about the tense meetings I had early on when I preached that God was breaking this wall down. Some of us are there; some churches are a bit behind on this one. But it\u2019s where we\u2019re all going.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not our problem here. No, we\u2019re fine with that one and it\u2019s time for us to ask: what other walls are waiting to be torn down here? What rules are we invisibly upholding that keep people out, keep people from fully feeling the embrace of Jesus? Our purpose statement says we\u2019re about building a diverse community; diversity requires doing what the early Christians did, listening to the Spirit instead of our rulebook.<\/p>\n

This is indeed a conversion story, but the conversion at its heart isn\u2019t Cornelius; it\u2019s us, or more particularly people a lot like us, church folks. The conversion is this: they stop thinking it\u2019s their church, their rules, their comfort, that\u2019s important and realize the church doesn\u2019t belong to us, it belongs to Jesus; the church isn\u2019t inspired by us, it\u2019s a vessel for the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit goes where it will, not where we\u2019re comfortable. If we listen, if we\u2019re faithful, we will move along to where God is going. Where is that? Why where God was going all along: to the place where there are no walls, no rules, just the love of God and the embrace of Jesus and the fellowship of knowing each other, every single one, as brothers and sisters in the love of God.
\nAmen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor Fifth Sunday in Easter \u2022 April 24, 2016 \u2022 Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved You can hear the sermon being preached by clicking here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,3,13,2,32],"tags":[40,35,44,42,43,41],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easter","category-sermon","category-theology","category-worship","category-year-c","tag-conversion","tag-easter","tag-easter5c","tag-kosher","tag-peter","tag-rules"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}