Sixth Sunday of Easter (B) — Acts 10:44–48
I learned something new this week, and it’s cool enough that I want to share it with you. To make sense of the world, we need to divide our experience up into different categories. Man and woman, old and young, big and small, red and green. The categories we use, we share with other people in our culture, so we can communicate effectively. But it may surprise you that, with even these most basic divisions, not every culture does it the same way.
You can see this most easily with color. In English, we have eleven major color categories: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink, Brown, Black, Grey, and White. Japanese doesn’t have a separate category for Green; they just call it a shade of Blue. Russian splits what we call Blue into two categories: Blue and “Glouboy” (light blue), the same way we split Red and Pink. And weirdly, many languages in the world divide colors into just three categories: Black, White, and Red.
This means that what we call “blue” isn’t somehow inherently “blue.” It only fits in the “blue” category because that’s the category we’ve made for it. That doesn’t make it less blue, but it does mean the category is about us, and not about it.
Our first reading today is short, but it makes up a small part of a much larger story. At the beginning of Acts 10, Peter receives messengers from a Roman Centurion, telling him that he has received a vision from the Holy Spirit, and asking him to come with them so he can explain it, Peter is… uncomfortable.
This man, Cornelius, is a Roman. He’s the bad guy in the Jesus story. And he’s a centurion, a military leader. He is exactly the kind of person who has been making life miserable for God’s people. He is not a Jew; he’s the opposite of a Jew; he’s a gentile oppressor. God can’t possibly want him to hear about the resurrection.
But Peter’s had a vision of his own from the Holy Spirit, so he goes reluctantly. When he gets to Cornelius’ house, he discovers that this Roman Centurion has been attending synagogue for years, devoted to the God of Israel—or at least as devoted as an outsider can be. So Peter tells him the story. I mean, just like Israel’s God can’t really be for Cornelius, Jesus can’t really either. But at least he can celebrate what God is doing in Christ, as he always has.
And as Peter is speaking, the Holy Spirit comes and fills Cornelius and his household. And this is very strange. They have not been baptized, and we know that baptism is when the Holy Spirit arrives. The water comes first, and then the Spirit. That’s how God works.
But that’s not how God works in this story. Peter is astonished. He is quite certain of Cornelius’ place in the world. He belongs in the category of outsider, his identity permanently separate from the Jewish people. But for some reason, God has stepped over that separation, even gone as far as to do things out of order so even Peter can’t object. The water is brought, the Roman gentile is baptized, and Peter stays for a few more days, even eating with this guy, despite all the laws about keeping kosher. Peter has discovered that his discomfort isn’t about Cornelius; it’s about Peter. A few days later, he finds himself defending his actions before the other apostles, and everyone eventually rejoices that God has even made gentiles his beloved children.
And the most important thing to understand, perhaps, is that while Cornelius is welcomed into the Holiness of Jesus and God’s promises to Abraham and the beauty of abundant life… he doesn’t have to stop being himself. Cornelius remains a Roman, a centurion, a gentile, not a Jew. And at the same time, Peter doesn’t have to conform to Cornelius’ way of life. He remains an Israelite, a fisherman, a Jew, not a gentile. He keeps his laws and rituals and responsibilities before God, and Cornelius finds devotion to God in other ways. And both sit down at the same table, share a meal, and are part of the One Body of Christ.
We divide colors into categories, and we divide people as well, for better and for worse. In the earliest days, Christians struggled to put women and men, rich and poor, Jew and gentile on equal footing—and often failed. Our Bible writers struggled, too. Even the first letter to Timothy, written specifically to a teenaged leader of the church, encouraging the gap between young and old to be crossed, also says that women should keep silent, a verse that’s hurt many over the centuries.
But Lutherans read even the Bible through the lens of Jesus. And in our Bible there is another story told alongside the first, one that reflects more brilliantly our new connection to God’s old promises. It tells of Miriam, leading Israel in worship after God brings them across the Red Sea. It tells of Deborah, directing the army of Israel in battle. It tells of Na’aman, the foreign war general, transporting cartloads of dirt from Israel to Aram, so he can worship Israel’s God on his own soil. It tells of Mary, running from the empty tomb to be the first person ever to preach Jesus’ resurrection. And Roman Cornelius, and wealthy Lydia, and the elect woman and her children in Second Peter. Outsiders, it seems, but also servants of God,
Our history—not just Roman Catholicism, but our own Lutheran heritage—has also drawn lines. Some of us remember when women couldn’t even be acolytes. Lutherans supported the terrible evils of the Third Reich during the Second World War. Today, those parts of the Lutheran community in the southern hemisphere usually take a back seat.
But there is another story told alongside the first, one that reflects more brilliantly our new connection to God’s old promises. It tells of Elizabeth Platz, the first American Lutheran woman to be ordained, and Barbara Andrews, the first disabled woman to become a pastor. It tells of Lydia Rivera Kalb, the first Latina. Of Elrean Miller, the first Black woman. Of Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, the first Lesbian couple. Of Patricia Davenport and Vivian Thomas-Breitfeld, the first Black women elected to be bishops in 2018.
And yesterday, in the Sierra Pacific Synod in California, Jeff Johnson, who was the first gay man ordained in American Lutheranism, lost the vote to become bishop by only two votes. His 207 was beaten by 209 votes to Megan Rohrer, who will now be the first ever openly transgender bishop, certainly in the Lutheran Church, and perhaps in any church in the world.
Like Peter, some of us may be uncomfortable with this. But that’s about our categories, and not about who these servants of God intrinsically are. And like Peter, we cannot help but exclaim, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit as we have?” God allows people to be women, or people of color, or gender or sexual minorities, to keep their identities with all their special gifts and challenges. But they have a new identity as well, as Baptized Children of God.
And so do we. This is the good news: That you don’t have to try and be something you are not. God welcomes you, all of you, your whole identity, into his promises, into the One Body of Jesus Christ. And now, along with everything else you are, you are also now God’s beloved Child, adopted into the community love in Baptism, grafted onto the vine of salvation. Children of God, hear Jesus’ new command: That you love one another. Not just because it’s good, or kind, but because it’s who you are. God has made you into love. Abide, live, in him. Amen.