5th Sunday of Easter 2025

Sermon: 5th Sunday of Easter 2025

Texts: Acts 11:1-18, Rev.21:1-6, John 13:31-35

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

And Peter reported back to the Jerusalem church regarding the gentiles: “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?” This narrative segment where Peter visits and baptizes Cornelius, the believing Roman centurion, is one of my favorites moments in the New Testament. It recalls to us that God, to borrow a phrase from the scholar Richard B. Hays, is a God of widening mercy. God is ever extending that “repentance that leads to life”, for He wants life to flourish, and not perish. And that realization from Peter: “who was I that I could hinder God?” is a statement that again and again comes to break down the walls of my own prejudices and suspicions.

I can imagine how difficult it must have been for Peter to see that God was widening His mercy. For there was a particular world and structure that Peter lived by, and then God comes in and reveals to Him that the good news of the Kingdom is not for just one group of people, the structure is about to be revolutionized. That even the hearts of those Romans, who often symbolized imperial oppression, can be touched by the love of God and be transformed just as Peter and his fellow disciples were transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, God’s mercy can shock and break open the little boxes we have put God in. God’s mercy is wild and free, and we cannot dictate who is worthy to receive it, for it has been poured out on all Creation. The question should not be: why are “they” receiving God’s mercy? Instead, it should be: “If I received it, and I’m not someone that can actually tout my horn about much, then why not them?”

So if God does not hinder Himself in bestowing grace upon all life, then who are we hindering from receiving God’s love and mercy? Peter’s rhetorical question is so important for us today: who are we hindering?

I will be upfront, as modern Christians, we have hindered and continue to hinder many from entering into the church’s life. Our desire to control who gets to be blessed or not often leads us to act contrary to the way of Christ, as if we were the best judge of who can receive God’s mercy. We can’t even judge ourselves rightly, we are going to start judging others? We are led astray by this impulse. Our rule of life, the disciplines of faithfulness we undertake are not meant to toughen our hearts towards the neighbor, but on the contrary, it is meant for us to love them more deeply, to seek to listen more attentively, for God has dealt graciously with us! How could we close our eyes and ears to the God-breathed person in front of you?

Peter could have doubled down on his denial of including the gentiles into the church. Those Romans, they are the worst, how could I ever eat and make fellowship with them? Let alone baptize them? But Peter understood, after repeatedly receiving the same vision from God, (and how often do we need constant reminders from God to do what we need to do? I probably would have required twice as much as Peter!) that God’s love breaks down human barriers, and instead builds a wider table for all to sit.

I myself can remember a time when I hindered God from loving others I used to consider to be outside God’s acceptance. And like the other grumblers in the Jerusalem church, God silenced me, until praise over this widening mercy could come out. Because when you listen with charity, when you open your heart to let the Other speak their story, we allow ourselves to see what God calls us to do with one another in the Gospel, we can recognize our shared humanity, our fragility, and finally, our belovedness. What a joyful disruption in my neat little worldview when the Holy Spirit shows up in people I had discounted. When the lives of those others’ remind you of the love Jesus gave you, a mutual recognition that God is present in that other person and you are called not to reject, not to judge, not to evaluate them according to your standard, but rather to embrace in love and celebrate without judgement the fact that God is always more loving, always more merciful, always more surprising than I could have ever imagined.

What a great joy it is this new thing that the Lord is always doing! As the John of Revelation sees, a new heaven, and a new earth: “See, I am making all things new!” Stemming from the resurrection of Christ, which assured us the surprise of hope in God’ eternal love for us, we are invited into this newness of God’s Kingdom. Our old prejudices, our penchant for control and power, they are buried down in the old world of separation. No longer are we separate, but brought together with the stranger in our midst, with those we never knew God could show His presence through. According to John, Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And the end is always new life in Christ, a widening and expansive embrace.

One aspect of our altar here at House of Prayer that I like, are these two windows looming over the altar. They have the symbols of Alpha and Omega, and when the sunlight shines through them, they project their colors over the open space in the altar. The thought that always comes to my mind is how fitting that the beginning and the end of our Christian existence is best encountered upon the Communion table. The beginning and the end of life are found in Christ’s invitation to His feast. In hospitality and belonging, in love and hope, in being fed and renewed is the focus of our being. Wherever we are led out in the world, whichever adventure God leads us in, we are always led back from our travels gathered around this table where we have our beginning and our end within the One Body of Christ.

So instead of the Christian mindset being ruled by the question: “why did you go to x or y person and eat with them?” you can respond: “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?” Beloved, let us not hinder the widening mercy of God, and instead be channels by which others’ can see their belonging in Christ Jesus. That in this community God has revealed the fullness and abundance of life rooted in love and forgiveness for one another. Allow your mercy to be widened just as God has widened His to include every one of us. What God has made clean, let no one call profane. God holds us close in Christ Jesus, and desires for each and every one of us to widen the invitation to the feast which is our Alpha and Omega, our beginning and end: the new heaven and earth where love and mercy reign, where there is no separation, where peace will reign at last. Let us pray.