5/6/18
Probably at least some of you remember the Beatles’ song “Yellow Submarine”. But how many of you remember the movie “Yellow Submarine”? It came out in 1968 – fifty years ago – and was an animated film that featured Beatles music, and the Beatles were the main characters, but the film was actually a product of the pop art movement of the time. It was originally intended for children, but because the animation was of such high quality, and so imaginative, it was popular with all ages, a big critical success, and actually helped put animation on the map as a serious art form.
The movie has a plot of sorts - the Beatles live in Pepperland, which is attacked by Blue Meanies, and good triumphs over evil in the end - but that’s all really incidental: people liked the movie for the movie is the artwork and the music. One of the Beatles’ songs in the movie is “When I’m Sixty-Four”. At the conclusion of that song, the screen is filled with the words, “Sixty-four years is 33,661,440 minutes, and one minute is a long time….” And then, for the next sixty seconds, what you see is the numbers one through sixty consecutively – one at a time, one per second. But each number is given its own illustration, and they’re all completely different, richly detailed, in vibrant colors. One was on a tropical island, with palm trees, and waves breaking on a beach; one was a speeding locomotive, one was the face of a lion: each one was a work of art, presenting its own little world, in the space of one second.
I remember very few of them specifically. What I do remember is the feeling of wonder, and delight, seeing sixty unique creations in a row like that, and then at the end thinking, that was a minute? One minute? That’s the longest minute I’ve ever spent. Normally when you say something like that (“that was a long day”) you mean you’re glad it’s over. In this case it was the opposite: you thought, all of that happened in one minute? It was a feeling of exhilaration, and joy; at discovering how much life you can actually pack into one minute.
I’m sure pretty much everybody who saw it felt the same way. And it’s just one tiny example of a truth about life: we all have assumptions about life, about how things are. That’s part of what growing up is about: figuring out what the world is like, and who we are. But sometimes life yanks those assumptions out from under us, sometimes that’s by the grace of God, and when that’s the case our world is enlarged, and we see better, and we breathe deeper. This is one of the ways the Holy Spirit works, this yanking us away from what we were sure was the truth. It’s all through the Bible: God is always doing new things, God is always creating new life. In my own life I have experienced this most often as a parent. Kids are always showing us new things about life, things we thought we had nailed down. And sometimes that experience is not comfortable at the beginning. But if we really follow it through, if we stick with the truth, it always ends in new life for us.
I’m going on about this because the reading we heard today from the Book of Acts is actually the tail end of the story of one such experience in the life of St. Peter. The story itself takes a whole chapter. Today’s passage is just a snippet which we only hear once every three years, and we hear another snippet from the same story every year on Easter Sunday, but they both make essentially the same point: that the gospel is offered to both Jews and Gentiles, that is, to the whole world. That’s important, of course, but the main body of the story tells us something more, which I think is just as important, because it’s about how God works in the world in this way that I’ve talking about. So I’m very briefly going to recap the story just in case it may have slipped your memory.
This chapter (chapter 10) opens by telling us of a man named Cornelius, a Roman centurion who lives in Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine. Cornelius is a man of position and wealth, and though he’s a Gentile, he’s what was called a “God-fearer”: he’s not a convert to Judaism, but believes in God, has an active prayer life, attends synagogue, and gives alms to the poor. Cornelius has a vision in which an angel appears to him and says, God has heard your prayers; there’s a man named Peter who is staying in a town thirty miles away: send some men to go get him and bring him to you. So Cornelius sends a couple of his slaves and one of his soldiers, all of them God-fearers as well.
In the middle of the next day, while Cornelius’ men are on the way to him, Peter has a vision of his own in which what looks like a large sheet descends from heaven with various animals on it, animals which it was unlawful for Jews to eat; and Peter hears a voice telling him to kill them and eat them. He thinks he’s being tested by God, and says, By no means, Lord, I’ve never eaten anything profane or unclean. And the voice then says, What God has made clean, you must not call profane. Acts tells us that Peter then sees this same vision two more times.
So as Peter is trying to understand what this vision means, Cornelius’ men get to the house where he’s staying, and the Spirit of God tells Peter, Three men are here looking for you; go down and go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them. So Peter goes down and asks them why they’ve come, and they say that their master the centurion Cornelius has had a vision from an angel of God to send for Peter and listen to what he had to say.
So Peter now knows that all these people are Gentiles. What we have to remember is that, just as there were laws that strictly prohibited Jews from eating certain foods, there were laws that strictly prohibited them from consorting with Gentiles. These were the laws they lived by: the assumptions they had about the way things are, the way God had ordered life: assumptions based on many centuries of sacred tradition: rock-solid beliefs. But Peter knows that God has done something completely new in Jesus Christ; and so, to find out if God is doing something new here, he’s willing to take the next step.
Peter goes with the men the thirty miles to Caesarea, to Cornelius’ house, where he’s gathered his relatives and close friends, so it’s a big crowd – of Gentiles – Peter is facing when he walks in. And the first thing he says to them is, You yourselves know it’s unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean, so I came here; why have you sent for me? He’s looking to find out the truth. Cornelius tells him about his vision, and says, so I sent for you and you’ve been kind enough to come, and now all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to say.
And Peter says, Now I understand that God shows no partiality, but anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God (this is the snippet we hear on Easter Sunday.) And then he tells them the story of Jesus Christ – his stump speech, that he evangelizes with - and at the end of that is the passage we heard today. Peter sees that the Holy Spirit has fallen on them, that the story of Christ has landed in them, he can see that they get it; and in response to this wonderful sight, he says, Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
In these words he hear the exhilaration of someone who has suddenly seen a truth he’d been blind to, who has shrugged off an assumption that he’d carried with him all his life, an assumption that he now sees is a just burden that he’s now free of; and his life is changed; and he sees better, and he breathes deeper; and the world is suddenly a bigger place.
God is inviting us all the time – every minute of every day (and you can pack a lot into sixty seconds) – God is always inviting us to grow into the infinite richness of God’s creation. It’s an invitation of joy, and freedom, and new life, for all of us. Thanks be to God.
Probably at least some of you remember the Beatles’ song “Yellow Submarine”. But how many of you remember the movie “Yellow Submarine”? It came out in 1968 – fifty years ago – and was an animated film that featured Beatles music, and the Beatles were the main characters, but the film was actually a product of the pop art movement of the time. It was originally intended for children, but because the animation was of such high quality, and so imaginative, it was popular with all ages, a big critical success, and actually helped put animation on the map as a serious art form.
The movie has a plot of sorts - the Beatles live in Pepperland, which is attacked by Blue Meanies, and good triumphs over evil in the end - but that’s all really incidental: people liked the movie for the movie is the artwork and the music. One of the Beatles’ songs in the movie is “When I’m Sixty-Four”. At the conclusion of that song, the screen is filled with the words, “Sixty-four years is 33,661,440 minutes, and one minute is a long time….” And then, for the next sixty seconds, what you see is the numbers one through sixty consecutively – one at a time, one per second. But each number is given its own illustration, and they’re all completely different, richly detailed, in vibrant colors. One was on a tropical island, with palm trees, and waves breaking on a beach; one was a speeding locomotive, one was the face of a lion: each one was a work of art, presenting its own little world, in the space of one second.
I remember very few of them specifically. What I do remember is the feeling of wonder, and delight, seeing sixty unique creations in a row like that, and then at the end thinking, that was a minute? One minute? That’s the longest minute I’ve ever spent. Normally when you say something like that (“that was a long day”) you mean you’re glad it’s over. In this case it was the opposite: you thought, all of that happened in one minute? It was a feeling of exhilaration, and joy; at discovering how much life you can actually pack into one minute.
I’m sure pretty much everybody who saw it felt the same way. And it’s just one tiny example of a truth about life: we all have assumptions about life, about how things are. That’s part of what growing up is about: figuring out what the world is like, and who we are. But sometimes life yanks those assumptions out from under us, sometimes that’s by the grace of God, and when that’s the case our world is enlarged, and we see better, and we breathe deeper. This is one of the ways the Holy Spirit works, this yanking us away from what we were sure was the truth. It’s all through the Bible: God is always doing new things, God is always creating new life. In my own life I have experienced this most often as a parent. Kids are always showing us new things about life, things we thought we had nailed down. And sometimes that experience is not comfortable at the beginning. But if we really follow it through, if we stick with the truth, it always ends in new life for us.
I’m going on about this because the reading we heard today from the Book of Acts is actually the tail end of the story of one such experience in the life of St. Peter. The story itself takes a whole chapter. Today’s passage is just a snippet which we only hear once every three years, and we hear another snippet from the same story every year on Easter Sunday, but they both make essentially the same point: that the gospel is offered to both Jews and Gentiles, that is, to the whole world. That’s important, of course, but the main body of the story tells us something more, which I think is just as important, because it’s about how God works in the world in this way that I’ve talking about. So I’m very briefly going to recap the story just in case it may have slipped your memory.
This chapter (chapter 10) opens by telling us of a man named Cornelius, a Roman centurion who lives in Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine. Cornelius is a man of position and wealth, and though he’s a Gentile, he’s what was called a “God-fearer”: he’s not a convert to Judaism, but believes in God, has an active prayer life, attends synagogue, and gives alms to the poor. Cornelius has a vision in which an angel appears to him and says, God has heard your prayers; there’s a man named Peter who is staying in a town thirty miles away: send some men to go get him and bring him to you. So Cornelius sends a couple of his slaves and one of his soldiers, all of them God-fearers as well.
In the middle of the next day, while Cornelius’ men are on the way to him, Peter has a vision of his own in which what looks like a large sheet descends from heaven with various animals on it, animals which it was unlawful for Jews to eat; and Peter hears a voice telling him to kill them and eat them. He thinks he’s being tested by God, and says, By no means, Lord, I’ve never eaten anything profane or unclean. And the voice then says, What God has made clean, you must not call profane. Acts tells us that Peter then sees this same vision two more times.
So as Peter is trying to understand what this vision means, Cornelius’ men get to the house where he’s staying, and the Spirit of God tells Peter, Three men are here looking for you; go down and go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them. So Peter goes down and asks them why they’ve come, and they say that their master the centurion Cornelius has had a vision from an angel of God to send for Peter and listen to what he had to say.
So Peter now knows that all these people are Gentiles. What we have to remember is that, just as there were laws that strictly prohibited Jews from eating certain foods, there were laws that strictly prohibited them from consorting with Gentiles. These were the laws they lived by: the assumptions they had about the way things are, the way God had ordered life: assumptions based on many centuries of sacred tradition: rock-solid beliefs. But Peter knows that God has done something completely new in Jesus Christ; and so, to find out if God is doing something new here, he’s willing to take the next step.
Peter goes with the men the thirty miles to Caesarea, to Cornelius’ house, where he’s gathered his relatives and close friends, so it’s a big crowd – of Gentiles – Peter is facing when he walks in. And the first thing he says to them is, You yourselves know it’s unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean, so I came here; why have you sent for me? He’s looking to find out the truth. Cornelius tells him about his vision, and says, so I sent for you and you’ve been kind enough to come, and now all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to say.
And Peter says, Now I understand that God shows no partiality, but anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God (this is the snippet we hear on Easter Sunday.) And then he tells them the story of Jesus Christ – his stump speech, that he evangelizes with - and at the end of that is the passage we heard today. Peter sees that the Holy Spirit has fallen on them, that the story of Christ has landed in them, he can see that they get it; and in response to this wonderful sight, he says, Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
In these words he hear the exhilaration of someone who has suddenly seen a truth he’d been blind to, who has shrugged off an assumption that he’d carried with him all his life, an assumption that he now sees is a just burden that he’s now free of; and his life is changed; and he sees better, and he breathes deeper; and the world is suddenly a bigger place.
God is inviting us all the time – every minute of every day (and you can pack a lot into sixty seconds) – God is always inviting us to grow into the infinite richness of God’s creation. It’s an invitation of joy, and freedom, and new life, for all of us. Thanks be to God.
