Actually, It’s the Story of Three Conversions

A Sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley on May 5, 2024

Have you ever walked up to a group of people and all you hear is the punchline of a joke? Everyone around you begins cracking up and you stand there thinking, “I don’t get it.” This describes what the lectionary organizers did this morning with our text from Acts. We pick up in the story at the punchline which makes absolutely no sense because we didn’t hear the rest of the story.

Turn in your Bible to Acts chapter 10. Acts 10 is like a play with 5 acts and we’re walking in on Act 5, Scene 2. So, let’s briefly catch up.

Act 1 begins in verse 1. We are introduced to a Roman commander named Cornelius. He is wealthy, powerful, has servants, is a leader of soldiers, and is also known as a God-fearer. A God-fearer was a person who worshiped the Jewish God and who supported the synagogue, but who had not taken the final step to be Jewish with circumcision. We meet Cornelius who is startled because he had a vision from God to go find this guy named Peter. Cornelius immediately sends servants and a devout soldier to go find him.

Act 2 finds Peter in the seacoast town of Joppa. It was about noontime, and he was on the rooftop patio feeling a bit peckish. While waiting for lunch, he had a strange dream of a large sheet descending from heaven with all types of animals in it and he heard God say, “Kill and eat.” Peter refuses and tells God, “I’m not going to eat any unclean animals that are forbidden to eat by our Jewish Law!” God then tells Peter, “Don’t call things unclean or impure that God has made clean.” This happens three times. It seems God remembers Peter is a little slow on the uptake and has to make sure he got it!

Acts 3 and 4 describe Cornelius’ men finding Peter and imploring him to travel to Caesarea some 30 miles away and meet their master. He does. Peter meets Cornelius who immediately falls on the ground to worship Peter and Peter tells him to get up, “I’m just a regular guy like you,” and he listens to Cornelius’ vision about being told to bring him to Caesarea.

Act 5, Scene 1 has Peter beginning to preach and share the Story of Jesus with Cornelius and all his household and we pick up in Act 5, Scene 2 which begins with verse 44. Hear the Word of the Lord.

At first blush, we are struck by the events and think this story is about Cornelius’ conversion and it is, sort of. Yet, as I zoom out from the text and see it from a different vantage point, I realize this is just as much about Peter’s conversion as it is about Cornelius’. Cornelius converted from being a pre-Christian on the fringes to become the host of the first Gentile Christian church in Caesarea. Peter was converted from being a Jewish/Christian isolationist who had all the answers to a man who was humbled by the Holy Spirit to be accepting and loving of others. And it’s then I saw the third major conversion in our Story. The very Church itself underwent a conversion.  We read in verse 44 that all who heard the Word were filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke didn’t say, “Cornelius and his family” but all who heard the Word, and that includes Peter’s Jewish companions who came up from Joppa. The church walls were shattered by the Holy Spirit’s power and the church in the first century had to make room for the “other” in the world. No longer was it going to be a secret enclave of Jewish worshippers who embraced Jesus as Messiah; from now on, the Church was transformed to be a living community of and for all people with Jesus in the center.

Pastor and Professor Alan Roxburgh describes conversion as involving three profound shifts in a person or community. First, there is a shift in how we see people and the world around us. Second, there is a shift in how we speak about the world and others. Because we see the world and others differently, we speak and behave differently than we did before. Finally, Roxburgh says there is a shift in our relationships and community. As a result of seeing and relating to others and the world differently, we form different relationships with others who see and speak of and into the world as we do.[2]   As we look at our biblical Story, we see these shifts in Cornelius, in Peter, but also in the community at large called the Church. Remember, Peter did not go alone to see Cornelius. Our text reminds us that many Jewish, circumcised brothers went with him and were astounded by what they witnessed there. I encourage you to go home later and read Acts 11 because it describes what happened when Peter went back to Jerusalem and told the Jewish Christians there what happened with Cornelius; the Christian Jewish brothers and sisters were literally speechless.[3]

My friends, the Church has forgotten its own conversion Story! It has developed amnesia with regard to this easily overlooked demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power in tearing down walls of segregation. For the last 2,000 years, the Christian Church has appeared hell-bent on creating rules and structures, guidelines and dogmas that define who is authentically Christian and who is not. We Christians tend to demonstrate we have forgotten the whole great commandment to love one another as Christ loved us through our excluding others who are different from us theologically, denominationally, ethnically, politically, socially, or sexually. Distorted evangelicalism of the last 60 years in our country has promoted a Christianity of exclusion more than inclusion. As the song written some 30 years ago says, the church needs to –

Draw the circle wide, draw it wider still.
Let this be our song: no one stands alone.
Standing side by side, draw the circle, draw the circle wide.[4]

UCC Pastor Rochelle Stackhouse writes that love is the most important charism and gift from God to us. It’s an identity marker of a genuine Christian community. She says, “As an identity marker, love defines the attitude, behavior, and norm by which the Christian community takes account of its life.”[5] She goes on to say that our loving God and our neighbor is the practice by which our churches undergo testing to determine whether or not they have remained as isolated communities defined by Law or have they become living, dynamic communities driven by the Spirit centered on Christ in love. As a Presbyterian, I am grateful that as a church, we are a community that is marked by love and inclusion and has dared to draw the circle wider and wider still. Our identity markers are not that we are pro-white or black, straight or gay, rich or poor, American or immigrant – our DNA is we are loving each other!

The love that Jesus talks about in John’s gospel lesson for this morning, what today’s epistle reading in 1 John is all about, is agape love. Agape love is inconvenient, willful, difficult, costly, sacrificial, and demanding. It’s a love that arises from the very heart of God, channeled through the Holy Spirit, and dynamically directed to all those Corneliuses, “those other people,” out in the world.  If it’s not, we cease being the Church.

Beloved, who are the Corneliuses of our world today? Who are the Corneliuses to you in your life? In our country’s history, it used to be Indigenous and African Americans. Then it became the Communists and Socialists. Then it was those people who contracted AIDs. Then it was those who were gay or Trans. And today, in our own country we view with suspicion those who are Republicans and those who are Democrats. Church, Jesus needs the Church to do better than that. The Church is a microcosm of the larger world and culture. If the Church can’t figure this out and get it right, there is not much hope the world or larger culture will.

If Peter can acknowledge the salvific work of Jesus is vital to a gentile Roman Centurion, in effect the enemy of the people, a gentile of all gentiles, and, if Cornelius, a Roman Soldier who pledged fidelity to Lord Caesar but now risks it all and pledges fealty to Lord Jesus, then maybe the Church in America can make room in the pew for people who are different from us. As your pastor, I am grateful that as a congregation, you have! All to the glory of God! Let’s not stop. In the name of the One who is, was, and is to come. Amen.

© 2024 Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801, and may not be reproduced or repurposed without permission from the author. All rights reserved.

[1]New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org.

[2] These are from notes taken during my doctoral work at Drew University in the late 1990’s.

[3] Acts 11:17-18.

[4] By Gordon Light, Music by Mark Miller. See https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/articles/history-of-hymns-draw-the-circle-wide.

[5] Rochelle Stackhouse, Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Feasting on the Word: Year A volume) by David L. Bartlett,  Barbara Brown Taylor