A sermon preached by the Reverend Scott D. Nowack
 on April 29, 2007
at Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, PA.

To Seek a Newer World

Acts 11:1-18
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵‘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. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” ⁸But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The 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. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁷If 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?’ ¹⁸When 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.’ * 

Have you ever had a break through? Have you ever had one of those “Aha!” moments in your life when you finally understood an idea that eluded you in the past or discovered a solution to a problem that you studied and worked through over and over again. Break throughs are great, reckless, extravagant, and wild. They can turn our world upside down and change us forever. That’s the power of a break through!

The Apostle Peter had a break through as he traveled spreading the Gospel. In his travels, he is led by God to convert and baptize the first Gentiles, the first uncircumcised believers of Jesus Christ. God is doing a new thing. A new day has dawned and the world is changed forever. God had broken through to the peoples of the world offering them new life in Christ.

Now back in Judea, in Jerusalem, the apostles and believers were not thrilled with what Peter had done. He is summoned to Jerusalem to meet with these leaders for some special “congressional hearings”. With Peter present, the leaders in Jerusalem begin to stick it hard to Peter. They don’t mince words in their questioning. “Peter, what are you doing getting mixed up with the Gentiles? What were you thinking by eating with them?”

The Jerusalem church saw themselves as an extension of Judaism, as a new sect of the Jewish faith. They were still following the old laws, mandates and instruction of Judaism. They believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but they still saw themselves as part of the Jewish tradition. They had a limited understanding of what God had called them to be. They didn’t and couldn’t see the big picture of God’s plan of salvation of the world which included the Gentiles.

How often do we as the church of Jesus Christ limit our understanding of God’s calling on our lives and remain in the familiar, our comfort zone, and the safe, secure places where we live?

My friends, we are called by God as Christians to reach out beyond our immediate sphere of influence; to break through the familiar, the assumptions, the traditions that can tie us down. We are called to carry the Gospel to new places and new faces to seek and create a newer world in Jesus’ name.

William Willimon, a well-known author and a bishop in the Methodist Church, told a story about a young, idealistic college student who found himself in the worst housing projects of Philadelphia. This young man was a new Christian. He grew up in a safe, affluent suburban neighborhood and was blessed with a loving family, good schools and lots of opportunities. In college, he had taken several courses on the Bible, church history, and Christian theology. He dreamed that one day he would graduate and go into the world to preach the Gospel to all people converting thousands to the Christian faith. This young man left his comfort zone, his safe, secure place and became an urban missionary without a clue on how to evangelize in the middle of the inner-city. Even though frightened and intimidated, he was excited to share his faith. He approached a large tenement and made his way in down a long, dark, dirty corridor and up a flight of stairs. As he walked he heard a baby crying from one of the apartments. He knocked on the door and was met by a woman holding a naked baby. She was smoking and really was in no mood to hear about Jesus. She cursed at the young man and slammed the door.

The young man was devastated. He left the tenement and sat on the curb. He thought to himself, “Look at me. How in the world could someone like me think I could tell anyone about Jesus?”

Then the young man looked up and saw a dilapidated old store on the corner. It was open, and he went inside and walked around. In the store he remembered the baby in the tenement was naked and the woman was smoking. Do you know what the young man did? He bought a box of diapers and a pack of cigarettes and headed back to the apartment. He knocked on the door. Before the woman could start cursing him out again, he slid the diapers and cigarettes inside the open door.

After a moment, the woman invited him in.

The young man played with the baby. He put a diaper on the baby even though he’d never put a diaper on a baby before. And when the woman asked him to smoke, he smoked – even though he’d never smoked before. He spent the whole day playing with the baby, changing diapers and smoking cigarettes.

Late in the afternoon, the woman asked him, “What’s a nice college boy like you doing in a place like this?” He told her all he knew about Jesus. This took only about five minutes. When he stopped talking, the woman looked at him and said, “Pray for me and my baby that we make it out of here alive.” He prayed.

My friends, this young man experienced a break through! By the leading of the Holy Spirit and supported by the power of God, he brought the Gospel to a downtrodden woman looking for a new way to live, a way out of her current situation, and did so with a box of diapers and a pack of cigarettes. God called this young man to get out of his comfort zone and beyond his immediate sphere of influence. Like this young man, we are called to obey God’s purposes for our lives: to act, to move, and carry the Gospel of Christ out of our familiar spheres of influence and into new places and to new faces to create a newer world in Jesus’ name.

This is the work of the church. The Danish theologian Hans Kung describes it this way. He says, “We must entice people from the world to God. We are not to shut ourselves off from the world in a spirit of asceticism, but to live in the everyday world inspired by the radical obedience that is demanded by the love of God. The church must be reformed again and again, converted again and again every day, in order that it may fulfill its task.”¹

I am convinced that one of the main reasons for the decline of mainline Protestantism is our lack of focus on conversion. We focus our attention on accommodation, adjustment, and the Gospel reduced to the status quo. My friends, if we hope for something more, for a new heaven and a new earth, we must know the cost of discipleship and be willing to pay whatever the cost may be.

When we look at the ministry of the church in the United States over the last century or so, we see God break through into the world outside the walls of the church. The faithful members of the old mission boards of the Protestant churches reached out beyond their immediate spheres of influence to reach the world, home and abroad, for Christ. They saw the needs of hunger, poverty, and disease in their communities and across the globe. Hearing God’s call upon their lives, they saw the need and tried to fill it. These mission organizations sent missionaries all around the world to bring the Gospel to all nations and peoples of the world. For Presbyterians, the nation where we had a large impact and now a strong presence is in Korea. In fact, the largest Presbyterian Church in the world is in Seoul, South Korea. Churches both Catholic and Protestant sought to help the sick and injured. Hospitals were created to local missions to meet the needs of society providing healing and health to all in need. This legacy lives on in the names of hospitals in major cities across the country.

What motivated these Christians to break through and meet the needs of the world around them? What cost are you and I willing to bear? Are we willing to sacrifice the familiar, our comfort zone, and the safe, secure places where we live to God?

We have something incredible to offer the world, the Living God of the Universe, the ultimate truth. The world is a very different place today and we can no longer afford a “business as usual” attitude toward the world. We do things differently today than we did twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago. Mobile phones, email, wireless internet access, text messaging have completely revolutionized how we communicate and relate to one another. As a result, our spheres of influence have grown astronomically. We can talk with someone in China on a mobile phone while riding in a cab through Center City on the way to attend a video conference call with clients in Sydney, Australia. How can we, the Christian church, take full advantage of these changes? For example, how can we utilize the internet to get the Inspire and our worship services to a broader audience? How can we use such social networking websites as Facebook and myspace to reach out and minister to young adults and our college students away at school? The possibilities are numerous and within our reach.

And we can’t stop there! When you leave here today, be watchful! Revelation chapter 3 says that the Lord opens doors no one can shut and shuts doors no one can open. The leaders of the Jerusalem church did not see or understand the new thing God was doing in the world through the Apostle Peter. We need to watch for God at work in our life and in the world around us. Seek after Him with all you’ve got. Get after Him with the best effort you’ve got and leave the results, the outcome, the grades in school, the college acceptances, leave everything else up to God.

God has broken through and offers all people, all of us, new life in Christ. What part will you play as a servant of God to bring this new life to the world?
 

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

1 Kueng, Hans. The Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1976).
 

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org