Sunday, May 18th, 2025: "Resurrection People: Peter and Cornelius"

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The First United Presbyterian Church

“Resurrection People: Peter and Cornelius”

Rev. Amy Morgan

May 18, 2025

Acts 11:1-18

Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And 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. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

There’s the table with the cool kids. The ones who bring home-made sandwiches with the crusts cut off in fancy lunch boxes decorated with the most popular movie characters. 

Then there’s the kids who eat the school lunch. Some because their parents don’t have time or energy to make them a lunch to bring. Others because they are on the free school lunch program. Because they have to wait in the lunch line, they don’t get first pick of tables and therefore don’t get to eat with the cool kids. 

But they hope and pray that they don’t get stuck at the table with the weird kids. The ones who eat cold leftover meatloaf or plain cheese sandwiches out of paper bags. The ones who are rumored to eat glue or even boogers. Eating with those kids is social annihilation. 

The divisions of a school cafeteria are stronger than any dividing wall devised by humankind. Kids know where they belong and who they are supposed to associate with. And, most importantly, they know who they are supposed to avoid at all costs. 

The problem is, we never seem to grow out of this pattern. It’s as old as the Bible, it seems. First-century Jews did not eat with gentiles. No self-respecting Roman would associate with one of those cannibalistic Christians. Lepers had to live in their own areas outside of town. Slaves knew their place in the household structure. There were clear rules about who you were and were not supposed to talk to or touch or eat with.  

Throughout human history, we’ve stratified society based on race and class and religion, but also health and ability, occupation and age, political beliefs and cultural practices. We find all kinds of creative ways to divide up the lunchroom. Using categories like sacred and profane, clean or unclean, moral or immoral, liberal or conservative, right or wrong, cool or weird, we justify these divisions. We never outgrow the school cafeteria. 

And we do this, at least in part, to keep ourselves safe. At their own, separate tables, the cool kids are safe from being knocked off their social pedestal, and the weird kids are safe, for a short time, from being picked on. Sometimes we just need a space where we can be with people who are like us, where we can feel safe within the walls of our tribe, where we know the right things to do and say. 

First-century Jews stayed away from gentiles because it kept them safe from the wrath of God and safe from the wrath of the emperor. They followed the rules that kept them away from other people because, generally speaking, other people were dangerous. They’d been conquered and re-conquered, persecuted and oppressed. Staying in their lane meant staying alive. But still, God had chosen them. They were a people set apart. Crossing those barriers between their people and other people threatened to destroy that special relationship. And without that, they had no identity, no divine promises or protection. That covenant relationship with God was everything, even for Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah. 

While huddling at our separate lunch tables might make us feel safe, more often than not, this practice has resulted in tremendous harm. Our attempts to separate ourselves from others have resulted in suffering, slavery, and genocide. Heretics have been executed along with political dissidents and ethnic minorities. People with disabilities have been locked away and treated worse than animals in unsanitary institutions. People suffering from HIV/AIDS have been denied medical care out of fear or homophobia. All we have to do is decide another group is unclean or immoral, and we are free to criticize, criminalize, and dehumanize them. From the lunchroom to the board room, from the playground to the hospital, from the congregation to Congress, separating ourselves from one another has had disastrous consequences for large swaths of the human population throughout history.

The death and destruction wrought by our human tendency toward divisiveness does not reflect God’s design for human thriving. The God who is making all things new is establishing a new social order that does not include division and separation. The story we read from Acts this morning, and really the whole trajectory of this book, shows the Holy Spirit’s work to counteract this human tendency. Peter is commanded to “get up, kill and eat.” He is told to rise up, be resurrected, and destroy anything that separates him from all those other tables in the cafeteria. Here, resurrection means being raised to a new life where rules, righteousness, piety, perfection, and perceptions take a back seat to love, unity, and salvation. 

When news reaches the church in Jerusalem that Peter has switched tables in the lunch room, the leaders are upset about the rules that have been broken instead of joyful about the souls who have been saved. Even the weird kids get uncomfortable when the cool kids want to join their table. 

Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber founded a church in Denver that ministered to those on the margins of society – addicts, trans folks, people without housing. After she gained national exposure, she wasn’t thrilled with the new people who started showing up. She called them “bankers in Dockers,” people who had social credibility anywhere, people who could easily find a church filled with people who looked and acted like them. She wanted to keep her community safe for the weird kids who didn’t have another place to go and feel welcome. 

As she struggled with this new development in her faith community, a young trans woman shared that she found it affirming that these “cool kids” were joining their table. Other people who looked like these “bankers in Dockers” had rejected her, but these folks wanted to be in community with her. 

And that’s what Peter discovers, too. These gentiles, these people with cultural credibility and social status, were asking Peter for help, inviting him into their home, welcoming his message and recognizing his religious authority. Even if Peter had wanted to refuse this invitation to the cool kids’ table, he couldn’t. Because this was clearly the work of God, the movement of the Holy Spirit. Who was he to hinder God?

Who are we to hinder God? Who are we to decide what God can and can’t do? Who are we to determine where the Holy Spirit is going to show up?

And yet, we try to do it all the time. We are afraid of some people, or groups of people, and so we don’t sit at their table, and we don’t invite them to sit at ours. We are angry at some people, and so we don’t sit at their table, and we don’t invite them to sit at ours. We are disgusted by some people, and so we don’t sit at their table, and we don’t invite them to sit at ours. 

And all the while, the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us, “Get up!” Rise up, be resurrection people, get out of God’s way! Push the tables together! Make the table bigger! And watch what happens. 

The Jerusalem elders finally get it. After hearing Peter’s story, they are silently dumbfounded and have to think about it for a minute. But then they rejoice that God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life. The word repentance in Greek is metanoia – literally, changing your thinking. Because Peter rose up and crossed the line separating their tables, people received the ability to change their minds and experience new life. 

Can we imagine that? Someone actually changing their mind? That feels like a fantasy today!

But we are resurrection people. We are those who believe God can do the impossible. God can bring people together and break down any dividing walls we can construct. And we are those who are called to rise up and walk across the lunchroom and sit down at those tables filled with people who frighten or frustrate us, who revile or revolt us. And when we do that, we believe minds can be changed. We believe repentance is possible. And we believe new life will come of it. 

And that is something to celebrate. When heretics and orthodox sit together, when people from every angle of the political shape share a table, when those who are healthy break bread with those living with illness or disabilities, minds will be changed. And those minds might just be our own. 

Peter didn’t go to the home of a gentile with the expectation that the Holy Spirit, that same sacred spirit that had blown around his table at Pentecost, would make its way into the hearts and minds of a non-Jewish household. But when he sat at their table, he saw it happen, and his mind was changed. Yes, all those who received that Spirit were given the repentance, the change of mind, that leads to life. But the Jerusalem church leaders had their minds changed, too. Resurrection leads to the repentance that leads to life. All of us resurrection people are people who have changed our minds, who can change our minds, who will make the table bigger so that we will change our minds. 

The Confession of Belhar, written in response to the policy of segregation in the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, affirms that our unity as Christians is both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ; that through the working of God’s Spirit it is a binding force, yet simultaneously a reality which must be earnestly pursued and sought: one which the people of God must continually be built up to attain; that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted.

Who are we to hinder God, that binding force of the Spirit? What God has made clean, we must not call profane. We must not demonize, scapegoat, or sully the glorious beauty of any of God’s children. God has created us all in love and goodness. 

So we, God’s resurrection people, can rise up with changed minds and new lives. In the lunchroom and the board room, at the playground and the hospital, in the congregation and in Congress, we, God’s resurrection people, can destroy those divisions that have caused such suffering in this world. We will rise up to pursue and seek out and build up and make visible our unity so that the world may see that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, all are welcome at God’s table.

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.