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Hespeler, May 18, 2025 © Scott McAndless – Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35
There is one question that the Christian church has stumbled over again and again throughout its entire life. That question is this: what can God do and what can’t God do. I know that may sound like a foolish question to ask. It might even seem like the answer is so obvious that no one would even bother to ask it. But they did. And people continue to ask that question. And it is a question that often leads us to very difficult and conflicted places.
This was a question that arose very early on in the life of the church related to one particular thing. People wondered whether Gentiles could possibly be saved and whether they could have a place in the Christian church.
God Couldn’t Accept Them
And the answer to that question seemed obvious to just about everybody. No surely not, most everyone else objected. God couldn’t do that – God couldn’t save non-Jews. At least God couldn’t do that unless those Gentiles became completely Jewish by following the law, eating kosher and by becoming circumcised. Maybe – just maybe – if Gentiles did that, God might be able to save them. But otherwise clearly no!
And by the way, that is how we usually discuss such matters. But what was really at stake in that whole discussion? I mean, down at the brutally honest human level, what was motivating these early Christians to ask that question? I’m pretty sure there was you might call a yuck factor. Somewhere, deep down inside, they were thinking, “Eww, you know what those Gentiles are like, don’t you? They eat disgusting things like ham and bacon, and they don’t even circumcise their men. Yuck!”
And, yes, I know that none of those things sound particularly yucky to us, but that’s because we’re Gentiles and they’re fairly normal for us. But they really struggled with things like that.
Tribalism
It is something that is built into our humanity. We tend feel more comfortable with those who are like us and to want to exclude those who are unlike us. It probably goes back to the days when we lived in tribal societies, and it was safest to stick with the people of your own tribe.
But, if this was really about them just feeling uncomfortable around Gentiles because they were so strange, they didn’t talk about it that way. They didn’t say, “I struggle with accepting Gentiles.” They said, “God can’t accept Gentiles, or at least God can’t accept them as they are.”
Our Prejudice Becomes Our Theology
That is what we do. We take an issue that is essentially an issue of personal bias or maybe prejudice or maybe even racism and turn it into a theological statement about what God can and cannot do. We push our own prejudices onto God. This is not to suggest, of course, that they didn’t have all kinds of scriptures and interpretations to back up what they were saying. But, on a very personal level, it came back to the question of what they felt about Gentiles.
But then something happened. The Apostle Paul came along and he said look, here’s this amazing thing that God has done by raising Jesus from the dead. And Paul asked, what if, because of this amazing thing that God has done, maybe God can accept Gentiles just as they are.
And so, the church had a full-blown theological crisis on its hands. Most of the people in the church said one thing about what God could do, and Paul said something else. Who was going to solve this?
Luke Solves the Problem
And that is where the author of the Book of Acts (who we traditionally call Luke, because it is the same guy who wrote the Gospel of Luke) comes in. Luke was writing his Book of Acts, and he figured that he knew who the best person was to solve this conundrum. He figured that the Apostle Peter should know the answer better than anyone else.
Peter was someone who knew Jesus personally and was probably the first highly respected leader the church had. What’s more and even better, Luke remembered that he had heard a story about how Peter had personally worked his way through this very issue of including Gentiles. And so, Luke made the decision to include the story that we read this morning about Peter and a Gentile named Cornelius.
And that is what we often do with these sticky questions. When we disagree over what God can and cannot do, we look for some authoritative person – a Peter – to settle the thing. So, I am sure that when the early Christians first received a copy of this book, they were leaning forward eagerly. The were sitting on the edges of their seats waiting for the final answer to this thorny question.
Peter’s Journey
And that is what makes this story so interesting and so challenging. Because Peter, this authoritative and wise leader, doesn’t respond to this challenge in the way they might have expected.
Peter starts off thinking that he knows the answer. When he is offered, in a vision that has been fueled by his hungry stomach, a menu that includes the meat of all kinds of animals that a good Jew would never even touch, Peter replies vehemently, “By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”
This is a response that is entirely based on everything that Peter knows about his tradition and the clear teaching of the scriptures. And it is not just a response to the question of what he can eat. The food laws made it impossible to associate with Gentiles during meals. So, this answer also meant that the Gentiles could not be acceptable to God.
That is where Peter starts out in this story. He is absolutely certain that he knows what God can and can’t do based on his understanding of the scriptures and of the tradition. And that is what makes where he ends this story so interesting.
Who Was I?
So, what does he say at the end? Once he goes and actually meets Cornelius and his household, once he shares the message about Jesus with them and sees how they respond with enthusiasm and excitement, Peter says something very different. “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?”
I want you to listen to those words. What did Peter say? He was an apostle, and yet he said, “Who am I that I could hinder God?” He was someone who knew Jesus personally, and yet he said, “Who am I?” He was a good Jew who knew his tradition and his scriptures well and yet he said, “Who am I?” He recognized that, no matter what biblical, personal or theological understanding that he had, he was not in a position to tell God what God could or could not do.
That is why I think that we are in great need of more Peters in the life of the church today. We don’t need more people who think that they know God better than Godself. We need more people who realize that, however much they have studied the scriptures, they don’t actually have all the answers.
The Ongoing Struggle
This is important, of course, as we continue to struggle over questions of who is in and who is out in the church. There will always be issues that arise. We will encounter people whose lifestyles seem to be incompatible with Christian teaching as we have experienced it. We will run into people whose opinions threaten to divide us. We may even meet people who repel us for some rational or irrational reason.
I understand that the presence of such people might cause some issues that we have to manage and that it might cause us to re-evaluate some things in ways that are uncomfortable. Of course it will. But let’s not just fall back on the easy assumption that, because people may cause us some problems, God can’t accept them. Let us not put our prejudices onto God. Let us have the wisdom and the humility to say, “Who am I?”
Scriptural Inspiration
Peter’s humility doesn’t just apply to questions of who is out and who is in, though. It applies to all areas of theology and doctrine. One very important application for me is to the doctrine of scriptural inspiration.
The Bible says in 2 Timothy, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” (3:16-17) We might discuss, I know, what inspiration means and how it functions, but I will say that I believe absolutely that that verse is true. God inspired scripture.
But I am often annoyed in my discussions with some people who insist that they know exactly what God can and cannot do while inspiring scripture. How many times have I had people say to me, “Well, if God inspired it, therefore it must be one hundred percent literally true and historically accurate because God cannot inspire a lie.”
Can God Inspire Something Not Literally True?
There you go again, right? You’re telling us what God can’t do. Peter wants a word with you. Who are you to tell God what God can’t do? First of all, there is a literal story in the Bible of God sending a “lying spirit” to inspire his prophets. (1 Kings 22:22) So there are stories in the Bible of God inspiring lies.
But much more importantly, while I would agree that the scriptures have been inspired by God to communicate God’s truth to us, I do not agree that that means that God can only communicate in literal truth. Passing on data, facts and completely accurate information is indeed one way to communicate truth. But is it always the most effective way?
It isn’t for me. I realize that a wall of completely accurate data, a spreadsheet of numbers that reflect the true state of the universe or a list of who did what and when, may really turn some people on, but it is much more likely to bore me. It is certainly not going to inspire me.
Truth in Many Literary Genres
Much of the truth that I have learned about this world and how to navigate it came to me not by reading textbooks but from reading things like fiction, science fiction, poetry, mythology, legend and folk tale.
I learned perseverance and dedication by reading the Lord of the Rings. I learned tolerance and the power of friendship by reading Harry Potter. I certainly learned more about the real-world politics we are dealing with today by reading 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale than I did in civics class.
Fiction and myth and legend are all excellent ways of passing on important truths that may not be literal truths. And are you going to tell me that God is not allowed to use them to communicate truth to us?
By all means, study the various types of literature that are there in the Bible and do your best to judge how they are seeking to communicate truth, but if you are going to try to tell me that God is not allowed to use certain kinds of literature, I’m going to ask you who are you to tell God what God can do!
Atonement
There is one other area of theology where I see people doing the same thing: the theology of atonement. That is concerning the question of how God saves and forgives us. I have often had people explain the importance of Jesus’ death to our salvation by saying that God is so righteous and just, that God simply cannot forgive us without a price being paid.
They then explain that I must therefore understand the death of Jesus as a transaction – that God sent Jesus to buy off God’s wrath against me because otherwise God couldn’t forgive me.
The Meaning of Jesus’ Death
Now, I do believe that the death of Jesus is powerful and effective. It does bring me into communion with God. It is atonement which refers a process used by the ancient Hebrews to manage their relationship with their God. But I do not see it in terms of buying off an angry God who is unable to forgive me otherwise.
God’s forgiveness, as depicted throughout the scriptures, is a powerful force. It is an action that bursts forth from God’s steadfast lovingkindness which is deeper than the sea, higher than the heavens and wider than all the horizons. I believe that anyone who thinks that they can tell God who and how God can forgive has to ask the question, “Who am I?”
Learning from Simon Peter
So maybe we all need to take a lesson from Simon Peter and the humility that he learned in the home of Cornelius. Whenever you run up against something that seems like a limit on love, on compassion and forgiveness, on inclusion and on potential, you need to ask where those limits are coming from. And if they are portrayed as limits on what God can and cannot do, you need to reject such thinking. You need to ask who am I to tell God what God can and cannot do.