2022 05 15 Sermon

Sermon for May 15, 2022 Easter 5 C House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35 Peter’s Weird Dream Rev. Karl-John N. Stone

Do you ever have weird dreams? Do you remember them, or do they rapidly escape your memory? Do you talk about them? Write them down? Last week the confirmation class had their end-of-the-year pizza party—(and what a great group of kids we have, by the way)—but as we ate our pizza the conversation turned to dreams, and how weird they can be. The kids talked about how dreams often follow a logic of their own, which only makes sense within the dream. When you wake up, you wonder: “how did my dream go there? That makes no sense!”

Sometimes in dreams we might see family or friends, maybe even loved ones who have died. Maybe you even see yourself in a dream sometimes. The weirdness of dreams is often symbolic, and this symbolism (if we are open to the messages that might be hiding in the symbolism) can lead us to new insights about life or relationships or the world. It might even change our beliefs and behaviors!

This is what we see happening in today’s reading from Acts 11, which is one of many stories in the Bible about how God communicates with people through their dreams. Dreams are one of those natural phenomena that God has created within us, that he can use to help us. That’s what God did for Peter, who gained a whole new perspective about the diversity of cultures and peoples who have a place within the heart of God. But this perspective came through a dream that was weird indeed. In the dream, a large sheet was lowered from heaven, and came close to Peter. On the sheet were animals, beasts of prey, birds of the air. All of these were animals that Peter had never eaten before, and he would never have dreamed of eating in his entire life, because they were animals that the laws of Moses in the Old Testament prohibited Jews (such as Peter himself) from eating. Well, after seeing this strange sight, Peter heard a voice in his dream saying, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” This happened three times before the sheet was pulled back into heaven.

Meanwhile, God had also been at work in the dreams of another man named Cornelius, who was a Roman soldier living in the town of Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast; this was near the town of Joppa where Peter had recently brought the disciple Tabitha back to life (which we heard about last week). Cornelius was a worshiper of God, but he had not adopted the Jewish religion. In Cornelius’ dream, an angel of the Lord appeared, and told him to send some of his men to Joppa to look for Peter, and to bring Peter back to Cornelius’ house, so he could listen to what Peter had to say.

Notice that with both men, it was God who took the initiative. Peter didn’t decide “let me go find a Gentile and his whole family, so I can tell them the story of Jesus, baptize them, and eat a meal with them.” Peter didn’t decide that on his own, it was God who pushed Peter into it; God who opened the opportunities for this to happen; God who opened Peter’s heart and mind to do and believe something he had never considered before.

Then there’s Cornelius, who himself didn’t decide “I’m looking to hear the story of Jesus, so let me send some of my men to find someone who can tell me.” Cornelius didn’t decide that on his own, it was God who showed up in Cornelius’ dreams; God who was already working in the faith of Cornelius; God who honored the religious background that Cornelius had, which was different from Peter’s.

After Peter went to Cornelius’ house and told him and his family the story of Jesus; after Peter baptized them and ate a meal with them (probably with some of those animals from Peter’s dream, roasted to perfection, that he would have never tasted before); and after his fellow believers back in Jerusalem criticized him for doing this (because he ate food that his culture had forbidden him from eating his entire life), Peter explains the meaning of what his weird dream was all about:

God does not make distinctions or play favorites among people, regardless of their background, their nationality, their profession, their belief system, their culinary customs, or their religion. Everyone is eligible to experience God’s grace. Everyone is eligible for God to be at work within. Everyone is eligible to share God’s grace with another, or to receive God’s grace from another. That’s because all of these things happen by the initiative of God, who is so much bigger, more mysterious, than we imagine; and who works in ways, and among people, whom I might never have considered, because they don’t fit my own traditions, or my beliefs, or even my biases.

The Spirit of the Risen Christ is alive and well, and from the very beginning of Christianity has pushed us as followers of Jesus in new directions. That’s because the church belongs to God. It does not belong to us; it belongs to God. We just get to hop on board and go along with God for the ride—as we put our faith and trust in a God who is full of surprises; including the most wonderful surprise of all: Jesus is risen!

Allowing God to push us in new directions might feel scary, because it leads us into the unknown, where we have to rely more and more on God, and lean less and less on our own understanding. But as Peter himself said, “Who am I, that I could hinder God? Now I truly understand that God does not show partiality.” God does not play favorites. God works within anyone who opens their heart in faith.

Even though that kind of thing might feel scary, when they Spirit of the risen Christ shows up and gives us a push, it is always a push into practicing God’s love in greater ways for all the people of the world, especially towards people who might be different from us in some way. This is what Jesus taught on the last night he had with the disciples: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples.” God asks us to see people of a different race, language, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, political persuasion, social status, class, or culture—to see them with love, and to recognize that each of them, in all of their uniqueness, and with all of the characteristics that make them who they are, is a person whom God has created in God’s own image.

As with Peter and Cornelius from our Acts reading today, God asks us to “not fear” the differences among people, but to value and learn from each other, and even to be changed in some way as the Holy Spirit moves between us. This doesn’t mean that you have to agree with everything, or even like everything, about someone who is different from you—but Christ does ask you to love them, and to be open to maybe being changed in some way from your interactions.

Maybe that seems like a distant dream, but the dream becomes reality when we put our faith in the Christ who has reconciled the whole world to God through the cross; and whose Spirit keeps pushing us to find greater and greater depths of love for everyone, just as Christ has done for you and me. Amen.