Chosen to Testify
Acts 10:34-43[1]
We all have our comfort
zones. Your favorite restaurant. Your favorite grocery store. Your favorite route to work. Your favorite chair at home. We like staying in the comfort of what is
familiar. But Easter pushes us way
beyond what is familiar. When was the
last time you heard of an executed convict becoming one of the great religious
leaders of the world? And even more, when was the last time you witnessed
someone come back to life after being dead for two days? Easter definitely takes us out of what is
familiar and puts us squarely in the middle of something so strange, so new,
that it changes everything and everyone.[2]
No one can stay in their comfort zones in new light of that first Easter
morning.
In our lesson from Acts for
today, there’s a lot that lies behind the seemingly simple story of Peter’s
preaching. In the first place, Peter was
preaching to the household of Cornelius, a Roman Centurion. He wasn’t preaching to Jewish people at the
local synagogue. He was preaching to a
gathering of Gentiles--and to the family and friends of a Roman soldier! Normally Peter would not even enter such a
home. Probably a short time earlier, in
Antioch of Syria, he had refused to even eat with Gentile believers converted
by Paul’s ministry (Gal. 2:11-14). And in
this case, Peter only consented to go to this unfamiliar place because God had
specifically commanded him in a vision to do so (Acts 10:9-20)!
I’m not sure Peter knew what
to expect when he went so far outside his comfort zone. All he knew was that he had been commanded to
go. And when he got there Cornelius told
Peter he had been commanded by God in a dream to seek him out and listen to
whatever he had to say. That was Peter’s
cue. He finally put all the pieces together and realized that God wanted him to
tell them the good news about Jesus, because God would accept people from all
walks of life, from all ethnic backgrounds, from all races and classes (Acts
10:35). It was one more sign that Jesus’
death and resurrection had changed everything and everyone.[3] In case Peter had any lingering doubts, the
Spirit came upon this group of foreigners just as he had come upon the Apostles
on the day of Pentecost! God made it
crystal clear that the amazing events of Jesus’ death on the cross and his
resurrection from the dead were changing everything and everyone. No one could stay in their comfort zones any
longer.[4]
One of the ways in which the
apostles talked about Easter was by repeating again and again that God had
chosen them to be witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection and therefore to testify to
what they had seen.[5] But as is the case with the way God always
“chooses” people, it was not for them to enjoy a special privilege, but rather
it was for them to carry out a task.
They were chosen to spread the news about Jesus’ death on the cross and
his resurrection from the dead changing everything and everyone. I doubt any of them could foresee what that
would mean for them.
Although some of the Apostles
were slow to leave their own “comfort zones,” various events made it impossible
for them to avoid spreading the good news beyond Jerusalem and Judea and even
beyond Galilee to the “ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The purpose of their calling was to take the
message to all people everywhere.[6] That is a continuous theme in the Scripture
lessons throughout the Easter season--that they were to spread the news far
beyond their “comfort zones.” The
Scriptures repeatedly express the idea that the purpose of our experience of
new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is to spread the
news far and wide.[7] And that means going beyond our comfort
zones.
I think one of the biggest
obstacles to the growth of this or any other church is that we tend to stay in
our comfortable, familiar routines. Some
might say, we stay in same rut we’ve been in for years. It’s uncomfortable changing your
routine. It can make us feel uneasy to
try to get outside our comfort zones in order to share this new life with
people who are strange to us. But the
Scriptures make it clear that the events of Easter will not allow us to stay
where we are. Jesus’ resurrection from
the dead is the first act of God’s work of making all things new.[8] That means everything is changing. And that means we all have to change--even
changing our routines and getting outside what feels comfortable to us because
we too have been chosen to testify to others about the new life God offers us
all in Jesus Christ
[1] © 2013
Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev.
Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/31/2013 at First Presbyterian Church of Dickinson, TX.
[2] Cf. Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:143,
where despite the uniqueness of the resurrectin, he emphasizes that it is an
event among others which can be witnessed, saying, “It is an event which involves a definite seeing with the eyes and
hearing with the ears and handling with the hands, as the Easter-stories say so
unmistakeably and emphatically, and as is again underlined in 1 Jn. 1. It
involves real eating and drinking, speaking and answering, reasoning ... and doubting and then believing.”
[3] Cf. L.
Susan Bond, “Acts 10:34-43,” Interpretation
56 (Jan 2002), 81: “When Peter announces that God is not partial, it is good
news and bad news. It means that Cornelius can be included in the promises. It
also means that there are no longer insiders and outsiders.”
[4] cf.
Bond, “Acts 10:34-43,” 82, where she points out that in light of the cross, “If
Cornelius follows this peculiar Lord, he’ll have to lay down his sword and lose
social status. Peter, along with other Christians, will have to enter into the
risky business where only God in Christ judges. He will have to lay down his
religious membership card.”
[5] Cf. John
B. Polhill, Acts, 85, 93; William H.
Willimon, Acts, 34-37. In fact, after the outpouring of the Spirit
at Pentecost, they rarely mention the events surrounding Jesus' resurrection
without adding, “We are witnesses of these things.”
[6] Barth, Church
Dogmatics IV.3: 488-91, where he discusses at length (ibid., 488-491) the
fact that the Scriptures speak of a universal renewal of all things and all
people, despite the fact that they also maintain the distinction between those
who have responded to the call and those who have yet to respond. Barth also maintains this distinction, while
at the same time concluding (ibid., 490), “In the light of the universalistic
passages of the Bible, we can say that man in every time and place stands
already in the light of life.”
[7] Cf. Dictionary Of The Later New Testament And
Its Developments, ed. R. P. Martin & P. H. Davids, s.v. “Evangelism in
the Early Church,” by D. S. Lim. He says
that “testifying” “consisted of one’s personal experience of salvation,
especially the power behind one’s transformed and/or exemplary life (cf. 1 Pet
3:15).”
[8] Cf.
Willimon, Acts, 3;cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 26-27, 28, 30, 32-33.J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit,
98-99, 191.
No comments:
Post a Comment