No Favourites – Sunday 5th May

Sometimes or maybe quite often the Holy Spirit has to go to amazing lengths to enable the lost to be found and the found to accept the lost withing their midst. What we hear in chapter 10 of the Book of Acts is one of those amazing lengths – both ways!

Our text is part of a whole chapter on how the first Gentiles had their Pentecost Day. It is often called the ‘Gentile Pentecost’. It shows three things:

1. That the Holy Spirit is determined to get searching people finding his truth and love among us, his already found people.
2. That the Spirit is determined to enable those already found to allow the lost being found in their midst.
3. Just how true it is that God has no favourites.

Searching people found:

It takes so much for the Holy Spirit to get this one done.

He has to prepare the searcher, Cornelius.

Cornelius is a Centurion in the great Roman military machine that rules over around a third of the worlds known population at the time.

Cornelius is doing his military service in the Roman province Judea. Cornelius commands 100 men. He lives in a beautiful Mediterranean, sea-side city of Caesarea Maritima; ‘City of Ceasar by the Sea’, named after Caesar Augustus. It is the capital of the Roman military in this far-from Rome province.

So we can imagine Cornilius living in a neighbourhood of military colleagues and friends close to shore in their lovely Roman villas next to the Hippodrome (horse racing track) and the amphitheatre. He goes to the races. He has a bet. He goes to the show….life is good.

We hear something unexpected about Cornelius. He is a “God-fearer”. He believes there is only one God, not many gods, as do most of his colleagues.

We might know him as one of the many irreligious people in our community who put their children in our schools, because they can see the value in those ten commandments and good clean living. In other words, many would say, Cornelius is a “good man”.

But, like we all need to discover, Cornelius is about to find out that being a ‘good man;’ living out those 10 commandments, or at least the last seven, is not enough. He need spiritual transformation by Jesus.

The Spirit has been at work in this man’s life for years, but now is the time for a new dawn in this man’s life.

How does th4e Spirit crate this movement? He creates unrest; enough unrest for action to be taken.

In a dream, Cornelius hears a voice: “I have heard your praying and seen your generous giving to others, says the Spirit. You need to meet this man of God named Peter. He is over at the tanner’s house in nearby Joppa” (about 30kms away).

He sends two of his workers to find this man Peter.

Part one done. Now for the harder task; to convince those already found to search for the searcher!

Convincing the Found

Since the Day of Pentecost Peter has been on the move. At this particular time Peter is on the move in and around Jerusalem. Joppa and Caesarea are only 30-40 km’s from Jerusalem. At Simon the tanner’s house, Peter goes up for an afternoon snooze in the heat of the day. Nothing unusual yet.

But then he becomes disturbed from his slumber enough to take some action. The Spirit is issuing him a dream with a voice too; one that will require action.

Peter is told to kill and eat every kind of unclean animal as laid down in the Torah! This disciple of Jesus and leader of the fledgling Jesus movement is still a Jewish law abiding man of God! He cannot cannot stomach the dream. It is a call to do something he has been taught NOT to do all his life.

Peter protests at this gross demand of God. This is an insult to his prized status as a chosen one of God. This mission is below him. You can hear him thinking, “Surely Jesus does not want me to break the rules of my family and faith to really mix it with people I have been told all my life are no good, below me, not worthy of God and not worth my time and effort?”

The Holy Spirit says, “Yes. That is exactly what Jesus wants you to do … and now”. As Peter tries to recover from this ground shifting assault on his sensibilities, Cornelius’ men turn up, looking for him.

Peter starts to get what God is asking him to do. He sleeps on it. In the morning they all hit the road for the moment the Holy Spirit has orchestrated.

Peter gets there and does not find just one Centurion, but one centurion and his while clan – servants, relatives, babies, grandparents, dogs, donkeys and cats!

The found and the one being found tell each other the stories of what they have seen God doing in their lives.

Peter goes with what he knows. He tells the gathering about what he is now beginning to understand through what he knows of the Word, what he knows of Jesus and what he is beginning to hear in the recent events directed by the Spirit of God through various people, and now and again by dream or vision.

Here is his big learning point in all this:

Part two complete. The found one now welcomes and accepts the searching one and the searching one is finally found.

This is big. News gets straight to Jerusalem. The leaders of this first Church are amazed at just how broad God’s intentions are for his world and for them, his church. After hearing the story, they too accept that the found can be instrument for searchers to also be found.

They are surprised and overflowing with amazement at God’s goodness when they declare again:

Friends, this church, according to the New Testament – found people searching for and accepting searchers in the hope they are found by Jesus.

This being church: not as fortress to keep the searchers out and keep us already found happy within. This church is more like a lighthouse to help the searchers find him, a search party looking for searchers and leading them to Him; hospital to help the searchers get well, a school to let the searchers, as we ourselves keep learning, a safe house to let the searchers find rest and peace.

Our goal of being here today is not merely to be part of an organisation of like-minded people whose only goal is to have a cuppa and share life’s journey, but a bakery to feed them, a school to teach them, a retreat centre to help them find rest, a movement to help them see God’s presence and purpose and ours in it.

The Spirit had to do all this. Peter needed all this. Cornelius needed all this, and the established church community and its leaders needed all this work by God’s Spirit.

We need the Spirit’s work too because the searching don’t know where to look, the found don’t seem to trust that they are the place to find what the searchers need, and both of them can’t grasp how broad and wide God’s intentions are for all of them; that he really does not have any favourites – only the intent to love equally favoured sinners!

Here’s what I am hearing for us:

If God truly shows no favourites and really does want all people to share in the love and hope of Jesus as we do, then:

• There is no one around this town who is excluded from the reach of the Holy Spirit. He goes where and to whom he wants.
• Of course, not all people are searching. Cornelius was searching at this time but there were plenty of other Centurions who were not! We don’t determine the heart of a person – whether they are truly searching for Jesus or just pleasing themselves or lost in their own pain still.
• But Jesus invites us to get into the conversation in the lounge room, or the school ground or the church building, or the vineyard, manufacturing plant, main street, coffee shop or family gathering, pub or park among people whom he is preparing – like Cornelius.
• And when we are there, like Peter, simply go with what we already know of Jesus story and the hope, love and forgiveness he brings from the Word we already know, and our experience of life in Jesus we already have lived so far.
• As we engage as we are able in this searching for the searchers, we will come across people who are not searching and have little interest in finding anything new beyond themselves. Some people cannot see outside themselves or their pride or their pain. They are just not in this dream of Jesus for them yet. We can commend them to the Spirit future work when they may be ready and go with those who we sense are searching – those ‘persons of peace’ we hear of in Luke’s gospel (Luke 10).

Friends, they marvelled at the breadth of God’s intent for people. I marvel at the depth and breadth of his favour on me. Like Peter and Cornelius and the rest, I have not, and could never earn this grace of being found in Jesus.

“God indeed shows no favouritism”, they concluded. Me too!

St Petri people? O, they don’t have favourites. They speak the truth they have learned so far. They celebrate their life together in Jesus and they share the love and hope of Jesus with anyone everywhere.

And the Spirit does it all.

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