Looking out for a king size sheet
Sermon preached in St Salvator¿s Chapel, St Andrews on Sunday 17th May 2009 by Rev Christine Goldie
Reading: Acts 10: 44 - 48
Sermon
Acts 10 verse 44: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who were listening to his message.
Last Sunday, with my congregation, I celebrated twenty-five in the ministry. Interestingly, they are the people among whom I undertook an attachment while in my final year of BD studies. Had I learned anything since that ordination day in May 1984? Well, in my days at GCU chaplaincy ¿ regarded as something akin to a sojourn in outer darkness by some colleagues who¿ve never ventured beyond the confines of a parish ¿ I did do a lot of pulpit supply. And in that time and in that way, I learned to use the lectionary. More than that, I discovered that choosing a text in order to make a point to a congregation on any given Sunday usually resulted in a crude lecture that didn¿t fool the very straightforward folk I ministered to in my early years in Clydebank. Later on the lesson continued and, in the parish I served until last summer, it became clear to me that if God really were desperate to convey a special aspect of eternal truth to a particular congregation at a particular time, he? she? might help the hapless preacher by giving a word, via the lectionary. So, as the church began to exercise herself over the General Assembly that begins this Thursday, up in last Sunday¿s lectionary popped Philip, the deacon of early church financial administration fame, in conversation with a man described by his ethnicity and sexuality, the Ethiopian eunuch. Imagine my surprise, then, when I turned up today¿s readings to discover, not Philip and the eunuch, but Peter and the soldier, Cornelius.
Cornelius, like the eunuch of last week¿s reading - who was on his way home from worship when Philip turned up at God¿s behest ¿ was also a religious man. More than that, according to author Luke, he was a good man, keen to help the Jewish poor, and faithful in his prayer life. Within our story, too, there is a strand of similarity between the two principal characters. Cornelius had a longing, a hunger so deep that he had a vision so vivid, so clear, that he heard his name spoken. His was a very deep, personal belief in God, that took all of this on trust. You¿d call it faith. The following day, a different man was also having a vision. Somehow a king size sheet was being lowered from the sky, and within its straining confines wrestled a veritable Noah¿s ark of animal, reptile and bird life. Like Cornelius¿s vision, Peter¿s, too, had an auditory component: not a name, but this: Get up, Peter. Kill, and eat! I¿d rather just have heard God speak my name! Peter, who¿d proved when a disciple of Jesus that none could ever accuse of reticence, had his reply ready before the sheet crumpled on the ground: Certainly not, God! Then, being Peter, like the rest of us, giving in to the temptation to express his religious credentials ¿ in case God hadn¿t noticed or noted them ¿ and blow his own horn: I have never eaten anything ritually unclean or defiled. God, as so often with our self-righteous protestations, was clearly unimpressed. And while Peter was protesting and God was not being impressed, the front door bell rang, and on the door step were three men, sent by Cornelius. The story takes the rest of a chapter to tell. In the fashion of Lesley Garrett¿s two minute opera, that she used to do on Classic FM.... The three men and Peter went to Caesarea to meet Cornelius, where something happens that changes Peter¿s mind and makes a nonsense of his self-righteous boasting. After a short sermon ¿ Peter could never resist them ¿ covering Jesus, his cross and resurrection ¿ what else? ¿ something miraculous and utterly of God happens... Which is where the lectionary takes up the story, stepping in just at that point where Peter is drawing his sermonette to a close, just at that point when, as a preacher, you note surreptitious movements, as your congregation reaches for pocket or handbag to fish out their freewill offering envelopes. Just at that point, something that could only have come from God, happened. Luke is blunt: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who were listening to his message.
It¿s two weeks before we celebrate the Pentecost that Luke describes in his second chapter in Acts. Peter was the preacher/ speaker that day also, that day when, Luke says, the church grew by three thousand, as three thousand believed and were baptised. Now, that kind of scenario tends to put the frighteners on hard-bitten Presbyterian folk like me.... folk who cringe when, as happened at a united Good Friday service I attended in Bearsden this year, a right hand a few pews in front of me rose heavenwards, thus, waving in praise of God. Oh yes, I realised a long time ago the problem is mine.... Perhaps for that reason, folk like me tend not to pay too much attention to the event called Pentecost that the church will celebrate two weeks today. Thanks for not inviting me too preach then.... Too much exuberance... too much restrained, unpresbyterian enthusiasm. And the same folk who struggle with Pentecostal spontaneity probably pay almost no attention at all to this second Pentecost that Luke tells of ¿ this second one, right at the heart of the book of Acts, in more senses than one. Peter¿s dilemma ¿ how to reconcile the honourable limitations he has placed on the unconditionality of God¿s love with God¿s obvious disinclination to have any limits at all ¿ is ours, too. Like Peter, we are safer with what we know, what we¿ve been taught, with what makes us ¿comfortable¿ ¿ as if comfort were any test of anything to do with faith. A man who lives near my church ¿ he happens to be called Philip, which I find interesting ¿ would agree with me that his behaviour is eccentric, and he is a challenge to some in our congregation. For example, he sometimes turns up just in time to serenade me at coffee time after worship. I don¿t mind. He has a beautiful voice, and I don¿t have many men turning up unannounced to sing to me. You¿re right.. I don¿t have any men turning up to sing to me.... But I¿ve seen people stiffen ¿ just one or two, mind you ¿ and glance disapprovingly in his direction. Philip¿s challenge to us is: to what extent can we welcome those who make us uncomfortable? As if our comfort mattered. Peter¿s dilemma was on a larger scale...
The challenge facing the Church of Scotland next Saturday night is somewhat bigger that the one that faces my congregation when Philip turns up and starts to sing. Unless you¿ve been on an extended vacation to Mars, you¿ll know that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will, on Saturday ¿ yes, the timing is curious ¿ consider the right of the congregation of Queen¿s Cross Church in Aberdeen to call the Rev Scott Rennie, currently minister of Brechin Cathedral, to be its minister. The congregation¿s right was called into questioned by twelve dissidents after the Presbytery of Aberdeen upheld the congregation¿s right. Of course, because of Scott¿s Rennie¿s circumstances, the question has turned somewhat: not only is it about this congregation right¿s to call the minister of its choice ¿ a fundamental right, for sure ¿ it¿s also about the church¿s attitude to homosexuality, who can be called to ministry in the church, and, of course, about what to do with this: scripture. It was, of course, to scripture that Peter referred in his answer to God¿s gift of the king size sheet, and in scripture that he took refuge when God had been gracious enough to grant him a vision. Deuteronomy chapter 14 or Leviticus chapter 11. That¿s where Peter took refuge. That was fine when the day of Pentecost came first time around in the life of the early church, when the audience, though huge, contained only, in Luke¿s words: Jews and Gentiles converted to Judaism, and Peter was able to quote chapter and verse from the prophet Joel. But when the day of Pentecost came all over again, not lit up by tongues of fire resounding to strange sounding speech, but signified by a king size sheet with members of a zoo clinging to the edges, God expected a little more of Peter than that he take refuge in scripture. It was not a word, a verse, a chapter that God offered when the particular outsider, Cornelius, invaded Peter¿s comfort zone. It was, instead, a sheet, not with ¿Congratulations, Peter¿ painted on it, but with every kind of animal, reptile, bird, struggling to keep their place. A zoologist¿s dream.... Peter¿s nightmare....
By the time the preacher stands here next Sunday - unless it fudges.... God forbid that, for all our sakes - the Church of Scotland will have reached a momentous decision, whichever way commissioners call it. It has the opportunity to declare that God¿s love is bigger, wider, surer, stronger, more open, more secure, dare I say, more lovely, than sometimes the letter of scripture makes it appear. Or to say something very different. The day of that second Pentecost was a huge one that declared something wonderful about God¿s emerging church. Dare we hope for a third such day? As we continue faithfully to read of God on the pages of our scriptures, perhaps we should glance up from the page from time to time.... Look out for a king size sheet, containing a menagerie, landing near you, sometime soon.