From the Acts of the Apostles:
[Peter said to the circumcised:] “I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Acts 11:16-18 – September 1, 2012)
A couple of days ago I talked about Cornelius’s conversion from pagan to Christian through some time spent as a pious not-quite-proselyte Gentile. In today’s reading Peter defends his decision to baptize the Gentiles (Cornelius and his entire household) with this great question, “Who was I that I could hinder God?” It certainly shut down his critics!
How often do we stand in God’s way? Well, how often have you heard these words: “We’ve never done it this way before”? Or it’s more affirmatively stated equivalent, “We’ve always done it this way before”? Both usually said in that dismissive, fatally negative tone of voice.
“How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb?”
“Change??!?!?!??!”
It happens again and again in our churches. Nearly everyone will acknowledge that we need new carpet for the Nave or the Parish Hall, but then someone will ask, “What’s wrong with our old carpet? I like the old carpet.” I once served a church where there was universal agreement on the need to replace the carpet in the worship space, and everyone agreed that it should be red (the color of the previous carpet), but the Vestry debated for six months about the shade of red! (Finally, a member of the board just went out and ordered the carpet and put all out of our misery!)
I read recently about a church where a recently deceased parishioner had left a bequest of $15,000 for a new prayer garden. The memorial committee met for months, but eventually disbanded because they couldn’t decide where to put it or what it would look like. “We’ve never done it this way before!”
Wouldn’t be great if that were a cry of delight and adventure instead of the fatally negative dismissal of change it usually is?
A few years ago my wife and I made our first trip overseas together to Ireland, a country neither of us had ever visited. Everything we did on that trip was something we had never done before. We had never before driven on the narrow back-country lanes of Ireland, the single-track roads where one might meet a flock of sheep or a herd of cows and have to back up a hundred yards or more to wide spot and let them pass before you could go on. We had never before climbed the cliffs of County Antrim and seen the Giants’ Causeway. We had never before eaten “the full Irish breakfast” with black pudding, baked beans, sauteed mushrooms, and grilled tomatoes added to our usual fare of bacon and eggs. For eighteen days we lived an almost hourly experience of never having done nearly everything this way before, and we loved it.
Wouldn’t it be great if folks in the church, instead of fearing change and difference, would greet new things with “We’ve never done it this way before!” as a cry of delight and adventure?
We always need to remember Jesus’ words, “You did not choose me but I chose you.” (John 15:16) We have been invited by God to a surprising adventure. Just like Peter we need to ask (some of us constantly), “Who am I to hinder God?” Ours is not to hinder God, but to follow God; not to stand in God’s way, but to journey in God’s way; not to say dismissively, “We’ve never done it this way before,” but to cry with delight and excitement, “We’ve never done it this way before!”
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
Episcopalians reciting the Daily Office usually read the Psalms from The Book of Common Prayer, not from the Bible. This can cause some confusion about psalm verses because the versification and number of verses in the BCP differs from that in most Bible translations. The Psalter used in Anglican prayer books, including that of the Episcopal Church (until the 1979 book) was based on Miles Coverdale’s translation of the Bible which predated the Authorized (King James) version by nearly 80 years. The Coverdale Psalter had been used in all editions of The Book of Common Prayer, back to the first in 1549; while some editorial changes were made, the basic versification and numbering was maintained and this was continued in the 1979 version, which is a new translation but follows the tradition of Coverdale. Although not metrical, the translation was rendered with chanting in mind. 
Judaism is not a missionary religion. It is, however, a proselytic religion. This means that Jews don’t go looking for converts, but those who come to them interested in becoming Jews are instructed and initiated; these initiates are called proselytes. Cornelius might have become a proselyte, but we know that he was not because if he had been, Peter would have had no issues with seeing him, meeting him, eating with him. Peter did have those issues initially, but then was shown the vision of unclean animals which he was told to eat. Peter interpreted that vision to mean that he should not treat non-Jews as unclean; it was the beginning of the Jewish Christian church welcoming non-Jews (“Gentiles”) as members.
The picture of Jesus getting advice from his brothers just tickles me. John makes such a deal of it (while pointing out that his brothers did not believe in him – as the Messiah, I suppose – at the time). It seems so at odds with John’s otherwise oh-so-perfect, oh-so-divine Jesus!
The Jews, John tells us, disputed among themselves as Jesus was delivering the lengthy dissertation on bread from which these statements come. Earlier he had introduced this idea that his flesh was bread to be eaten by his followers: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (v. 51) The very idea of consuming human flesh is off-putting, even disgusting, and would have been extremely objectionable to the Jews; no wonder they grumbled and mumbled, complained and disputed. Even as a metaphor, the statement demands a lot from Jesus’ followers!
On the cover of our worship bulletin this morning is a depiction of King Solomon’s Temple. It’s an artist’s rendering of someone’s reconstruction of the Temple based on the description of its construction in the Old Testament record. Our first reading today (from the First Book of Kings), as long as it was, is just a small part of the dedicatory prayer that King Solomon offers when the Temple is finished and consecrated.
Where were you on July 20, 1969? In July of 1969 I was living in a boarding house and studying in Florence, Italy. The boarding house or pensione in which I lived, Pensione Frati, did not have a television. My landlord, Colonello Roberto Frati, arranged for me and the other Americans living there to go to his sister-in-law’s home where we could watch Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing on her TV – this great big box of a television set with a tiny black-and-white screen. We all gathered around that box peering into that tiny screen listening to the Italian news commentators and struggling to hear the American commentary behind them. I’m sure that when we heard of Commander Armstrong’s death we all thought about wherever we were on that day at that moment when he stepped out of the lunar lander and became the first human being to walk on another world.
Wow! Does this look familiar? The second chapter of Job begins with a scene nearly identical to that which we considered yesterday. Satan (with other heavenly beings) presents himself in the heavenly throne room and, once again, God and Satan have a conversation about Job and, once again, the bet is made. In fact, it’s sort of “double down” time! Yesterday, I argued that although the Book of Job is fiction it (like the other forms of literature found in Holy Scripture) embodies truth.
A later selection from the Book of Job was called up by the Sunday Eucharistic Lectionary several weeks ago. In my sermon I said to the congregation that the Book of Job is fiction (which it is). You should have seen the look on one of my parishioners’ face! There’s a fellow in the congregation who is, shall we say, conservative with regard to the Bible. While I don’t believe he actually considers the Bible to be the inerrant word of God per se, he’s pretty sure that it is to be taken with the highest degree of certainty and words like “myth” or “fiction” applied to Scripture are not to his liking. I swear I thought he might have an apoplectic fit right there in his pew! But let’s be honest: do we really think that God and Satan are engaged (or have ever been engaged) in a game of chance involving the lives of human beings?
