Sixth Sunday of EASTER (Written on May 5, 2009)

For the Lectionary (what's a lectionary?) of May 17, 2009: Acts 10:44-48

 

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles…

 

CONTEXT by Larry Patten

Two years ago an afternoon nap was interrupted by a call from China. Maybe you get those all the time; I don’t.

My professor wife had joined other colleagues for an educational adventure to the land of terra cotta warriors, Tiananmen Square, and cities like Shanghai with its population of a gazillion (actually over 20,000,000). Before she left, she promised she’d attempt to call while tramping along the Great Wall.

And so the phone awoke me.

“How are you?”

“Fine, how are you?”

“Fine.”

“Are you okay?”

“Where are you?”

I could continue recreating our ninety-second conversation, but I don’t want you to drift off into your own nap.

She’d borrowed a friend’s international cell phone that then digitally borrowed fiber optic cables and satellite links and whoknowswhat connections to facilitate a banal, stunning talk between a sleepy husband and a wife standing on a wall completed about 221 B.C.E. Mostly, I was glad she was safe and having a good time.

Amazing: our “Hellos” and “How-are-yous” were exchanged while the 65.3 million square mile Pacific Ocean flowed clockwise between us. Amazing for my wife to perch on the edge of structure begun in the 8th Century B.C.E. and to gaze at hills just as Confucius (551 B.C.E. – 479 B.C.E.) may have done 2,500 years before her. Of course, I’m stretching imagination like fresh taffy to historically link my wife’s brief Great Wall sojourn to something the famous Chinese philosopher could have done. For all I know, Confucius knew less about the Great Wall than you or I do now.

I just want to create context, ya know! A wall built millennias ago. A vast ocean separating us. A conversation between distant continents.

Last week we met friends in San Francisco and, among other topics, marveled at the cable cars. How quaint! How old! And, by the way, how do they work? I tried to explain the simple underground mechanism first used on Nob Hill in 1873.

1873! What a looooong time ago . . . unless you’re wondering if Confucius scurried along the same stone path my wife did twenty-five centuries ago.

Context. Be careful about what impresses you.

About twenty centuries ago, a fellow named Peter, a devout Jew, visited with Cornelius. Since Cornelius was not a Jew, he was deemed the other category: Gentile. Jew. Gentile. Two different ways and worlds, separated—so to speak—by circumcision. It’s a great moment; a faith-shattering and faith-building encounter. Peter, the devout Jew and newbie follower of Jesus the Christ finally got it through his thick, rocky noggin: all are welcome in God’s realm of love!!!! (Yeah, it was definitely a multiple exclamation point experience for the disciple who’d denied knowing Jesus a few months before.) Peter, by way of a vision, the swirl of the Spirit, and being eyeball-to-eyeball with the uncircumcised Cornelius, had a light bulb in his brain finally switch on. Or, first-century wise, an oil candle sputtered to life in his cranium.

All are welcome. All are welcome? Really?

Context. Was China, or the Chinese people, ever mentioned in the Bible? I don’t think so, though I could be wrong. Am I?

Context. Peter, finally getting it, wondered, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people?” Five hundred years before Peter’s awakening, Buddha settled beneath the Bodhi-tree and into enlightenment.

I know nearly nothing about Buddhism (or Hinduism or Islam), but am thankful I live in a world and a time where I understand there is more than merely the circumcised and uncircumcised. The Biblical worldview that I love and embrace—and can barely live out on any given day—is limited. Peter probably never even knew of Buddha. After all Siddhatta Gotama had died five centuries before the “first Pope” figured out that Cornelius was welcome. And that’s fine. The context of the Bible, of this sacred word I treasure, is limited.

And yet I read about Peter as he crosses the threshold of Cornelius’ home and am thankful. He changed. The Spirit spun him around. For me, enthralled with Peter’s own awakening, let me be a fool for Christ by never shutting the doors on others. I have been privileged to baptize fellow travelers in the Christian faith. And I am blessed to learn from those with faith traditions different from mine.

in Peace,

Larry