John 17:1-11

 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

 

Acts 10:34-48

³⁴Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵ but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. ³⁶ You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. ³⁷ That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: ³⁸ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. ³⁹ We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; ⁴⁰ but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, ⁴¹ not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. ⁴² He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. ⁴³ All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

⁴⁴ While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. ⁴⁵ 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, ⁴⁶ for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, ⁴⁷ “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” ⁴⁸ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

 

Sermon. May. 24. 2020.

Rev. John Steitz

Acts10: Radically Inclusive

 

The church does not trade in goods and services. Rather we, guided by the Holy Spirit, engage in relationships and community with one another. In our relationships with one another and in fellowship as a Jesus Way community we seek to be radically inclusive.

Acts 10 is a key passage that shows how the emerging Jesus movement, the early church, was led by the Holy Spirit to become radically inclusive.

The issue was accepting Gentiles, that is non – Jews into the church. Jesus was Jewish. All of the disciples that Jesus gathered around him, the twelve and the seventy, were Jewish. The apostles were all Jewish when the Holy Spirit came upon them in Jerusalem.

Therefore, some reasoned, anyone who became a believer must first need to become a Jew in order to fully become a disciple of Jesus.  It seemed clear to many of these early disciples that in order to join the Jesus community a person would first need to embrace being a Jew.

As Acts 10 unfolds the Holy Spirit transforms Peter’s heart and mind. He realizes that God is calling the emerging Jesus movement to be much more radically inclusive than he had imagined or thought possible.

Peter is led to declare, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” This understanding, this insight transforms the church from being a sect within Judaism to becoming a radically inclusive global movement.

God created us in God’s image. To express this as Quaker do, there is that of God in every person. By declaring that God shows no partiality Peter makes it very clear that every person is a child of God.

Biblical scholars see Galatians 3:28 as the earliest Jesus Way creed. There Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Radical inclusion was an essential characteristic of the early church, as expressed in the Galatians 3 creed. No distinction was to be made between Jew or Gentile. The social distinction between slave and free, so important to the way of the Roman Empire was not to block participation in the Jesus community. In Christ Jesus even gender distinctions were transcended.

This radical inclusion combined with a radical sharing within the early church to make sure everyone was feed, and the way disciples loved one another, really made the Jesus Way community stand out.

In Acts 10 verse 47 Peter challenges those who are already Christians, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

Basically, who are we to reject those who the Holy Spirit includes?  Yet painfully we see people who claim to be in Jesus’ church rejecting others for a variety of reasons.

The very reason that there are Black churches in our country is that historically White people did not want Black people to worship with them.

In Richmond, Indiana where I went to seminary, there were two congregations very close to each other that belonged to the same denomination. The members in one congregation historically had been from professional and business families. The other congregation was very much working class.

 

This second congregation was formed specifically because the professionals and factory owners in the first congregation didn’t want to worship together with the workers. So the wealthy folks built and funded a congregation for the workers separate from the congregation they worshipped in.

As an Open and Affirming congregation we join with Peter in truly understanding that God shows no partiality. We see the Holy Spirit moving in the lives of people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender expression. We seek to be radically inclusive as we welcome, embrace, affirm, and love one another in Christ.

Next month we will be celebrating twenty years as an Open and Affirming congregation. We are going to be lifting up our commitment to be radically inclusive in our hospitality to people who are transgender, lesbian, gay, and bisexual.

One important way we are being radically inclusive is through our emergent Open and Affirming committee.  Although we cannot meet in person, we are gathering online. We are advocating for and modeling the radically inclusive Jesus Way.

We are now being called to engage in ministry that is radically inclusive in a COVID 19 world. As an Open and Affirming congregation we seek to forge a path forward that keeps people safe and that ensures that those most vulnerable to the effects of the virus are included.

Through this weekly worship video, the daily prayer circle, our care partners, and doing our committee work online we seek to be radically inclusive for all.

As we discern together God’s call for us in this time and place we recall Paul’s words in Ephesians 3, verses 2 – 6:

“Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. You are one body and one spirit just as God has called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.”