"Divine Order", May 13, 2012

John 15:9-17 Acts 10:44-48 Boundaries are important and are all around us. Floating lines marking the lanes in a swimming pool to prevent swimmers crossing into one another, or to separate the deep end from the shallow. Lines on a basketball court identifying what is in-bounds and what is out. Rivers and Mountain ranges which mark the separation of States and Countries. Boundaries provide definition and security, creating identity and order. We are taught order, one, two, three, four, five, as basic building blocks to all we will ever know. As we learn different languages, we always begin learning: Uno, duos, thres, quatro sinq; Un, du, troi, cat, sinc, cis; Eins, zwei, drei, fier, funph. We learn order, to understand progression, and differences and ways of knowing. But what if, all that we learned in this life, all the created orders and boundaries, had been learned as the parameters of life we need to reject and overcome? A means to the end of discerning where there have been voids in our order. Where limitations and boundaries control, where ends restrict and divide that we are challenged to surpass. This morning we are given only the punchlines to these passages, assuming we understand the context. Centuries before the Roman Empire, in the primordial stories of Genesis, Abraham was given commandment by God of what foods are clean and unclean, kosher and non-kosher. Different from vegetarian and non-vegetarian, Kosher ordering segregated reptiles, shellfish and certain birds, as well as animals with cloven foot or toes, as unclean; versus those with a hoof and fins were clean and good. In the days of the Apostles, following the Resurrection, Simon Peter was told to go to Caesarea. After a long journey Peter went up to the rooftop and had a dream. In this dream, a great sheet was let down from heaven, as a dining room table cloth, on it were all the creatures of the earth. In response to which Peter rejected what was offered as unclean, while a voice from heaven declared what God has made is not for you to decide, and this happened three times. After the third vision, a knock came at the door of the house where they were staying, and the companions of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius led Peter away to Cornelius own home. Now just as there were boundaries separating different foods, there were religious laws that segregated who you could talk to and whose home you could enter. But being invited, Peter went into Cornelius home. Cornelius, the Centurion of Rome declares he had a vision in which he was to send for Simon Peter and he did. Simon Peter begins what is one of the most eloquent of sermons ever preached, that Peter now perceives there is no separation between clean and unclean, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. While Peter's companions are astonished at what he is saying, Cornelius and his household are baptized in the Holy Spirit. Peter asks the question which the Ethiopian Eunuch had asked in last week's reading, Is there any reason why these should not receive Water Baptism? The great irony was that the early church understood there was and is an ordering: Jesus was Jewish, Jesus called Jewish Disciples, each disciple had been baptized in water, and later following Easter's resurrection on the day of Pentecost, the one's Jesus had chosen received a Baptism of the Holy Spirit. There was a Baptism of Water as believers chose to be disciples with tangible earthly elements, and later, if chosen by God the disciples were Baptized with the Holy Spirit as a spiritual kind of confirmation. This spiritual baptism, the gifting of the Holy Spirit was what distinguished the Confirmed from the Baptized infants in faith, the ordained from common believers. Here, the order was wrong! Gentiles, Not Jews but Romans, a Centurion of the Emperor no less, had been given the gift of the Holy Spirit! Had God made a mistake? To suggest that God could make a mistake was blasphemy! So how and why had this Cornelius received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he did so before receiving the Church's Water Baptism? Peter's solution, which everyone acquiesces to accept is that he should be baptized with water. The painful reality is that in the church today, we practice baptism with water NEVER expecting that there could be, let alone would be a baptism of the Holy Spirit as well. The historic understanding of this is simply that baptism is for everyone, Jew or Gentile. But, what if the point of this experience is that not only is our Ordering, our segregations not the DIVINE ORDER, but that in every person there not only could be, but is a Baptism of the Holy Spirit? Not only an in-borne gift, but a time of spiritual awakening, a questioning of priorities and commitments, which then commissions them as Apostles serving others? The problem with the church is that we always attempt to concretize experience. We had an experience once, so we endeavor to create practices that force the Holy Spirit's hand. Jesus said, This is my commandment: “That you love one another.” In the turbulence of the 1960s, with Race riots in Watts and Harlem, with sit-ins and protests at the Presidential Campaigns, with fire-engine hoses and attack dogs turned loose on people for riding buses together through Alabama and Mississippi, the Beatles sang “All You Need IS Love”. FAR more than a blessing “Can't we all just get along” to love is a commitment to care about this other person. We take “friendship” for granted. On Facebook, any acquaintance of and acquaintance can “friend” us, sharing photos and thoughts and relationships. Throughout our lives, we worship and work to go from being part of the masses and crowds which followed Jesus, to actually being a disciple, obeying his word. Yet, according to the Gospel of John, on the night of the Last Supper before Jesus' betrayal and arrest and trial and crucifixion, in the Upper Room with his disciples, after washing their feet, after breaking bread with them and after sharing the cup, after sharing in communion with Jesus, he called them friends. How powerful if we actually treated one another as Jesus treated his friends. Aristotle claimed there were three kinds of friends. There are friends who are useful to us. Who for business or political reasons we want to keep close. There are friends whose company we find pleasurable. The third kind, the best kind of friends, are friends whom we enjoy as friends. These are formative friends. Their company effects us, keeping us out of trouble and forces us to consider what otherwise we would miss. These are friends we allow into intimate contact to know us without pretense as we are. What I find intriguing in the Gospel of John, is that according to the DIVINE ORDER, it is not Jesus' friends who become Jesus' disciples, but his disciples who become his friends. We long to be his disciples, to follow where he leads. According to the Gospel lesson, after Jesus had befriended the disciples, after their spending three years together, learning from his teaching and admonitions, they celebrated communion together where he washed their feet, he broke the bread and gave them the cup, Judas walked out of them, and only after all that, Jesus invites the disciples to a different kind of intimacy as friends, a trust where nothing is withheld, where there is absolute caring. The Divine Order is not the Order we routinely follow, not the logical progression, Divine Order is continual digging deeper, trusting more.