A seminary professor told students in his class that the primary spiritual virtue is stature or size. The professor believed that we can judge the health and authenticity of our images of God by how much complexity they can include. The same is true, he said, of church traditions in which these images of God are expressed, nurtured and protected. The test of our images of God, and of the traditions where they are expressed, is to judge honestly, how much change they can embrace without losing their identity and center. (Lectionary Homiletics, April/May 2004, p. 36).

This same measure also serves as the standard for our personal spiritual growth: "How large, or how small, is our image of God? Our spirituality really does have to do with stature and size. And, we really can interpret our own spiritual pilgrimages as the quest for sufficient stature in order to be faithful to God's call in our lives which, until we die, will always be faced with challenges and hard decisions.

When I, myself, was in seminary at The Oberlin Graduate School of Theology one of my professors said, "After Easter the world expected the Kingdom of God, but instead it got the church." What a disappointment, but nothing I know is truer than what that professor said! The lectionary reading from Acts today is an expression of the realization by the Apostles that they were expected to be the church and to establish churches in the name of the risen Christ. The kingdom had not come on earth and the Apostles were commissioned to keep the presence of the risen Christ alive until it does.

The reading from Acts today features the Apostle Peter and his explanation of why the God of the risen One had included non-Jews as being among those who had also received the word of God (11:1). In fact, the church here in Acts had made its first non-Jewish, or Gentile, convert, Cornelius. Many were asking, "Why has the good news, that was addressed to Israel (the Jews) moved out to this non-Jew, Cornelius? Today's text is a sort of rationale for that dramatic and decisive event.

To those who thought that Christ's life, ministry and Resurrection were for Jews alone, Peter related what he had done step-by-step. (11:4). Peter, the same reluctant and Christ-denying Peter of the Gospels, retold a life-transforming vision he had in which God had pushed him beyond his "comfort zone" into a new and deeper and richer understanding of his faith and vocation as an Apostle.

Peter was, prior to this vision, an obedient Jew adhering to a spirituality of holiness and purity. That means that he tried to keep to dietary and moral codes spelled out, sometimes in great detail, in the Book of Leviticus and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. Like Jewish companions he held to the so-called "holiness code" of ritual purity and holiness. His faith, therefore, involved the affirmation of certain boundaries, which rightly preserved its purity and identified the Jews as God's uniquely chosen people.

Yet, like all boundaries, the emphasis on holiness and purity was also ambiguous-it excluded as well as included. (Lectionary Homiletics, p. 36).

In Peter's response to his questioners he related that many of the changes he'd made with regard to Jewish holiness and purity had come to him in a trance or a dream. (11:5) (10:9-16). This vision came, he said, in something like a great sheet, "let down from heaven by four corners,...." (11:5).

He argued with God about the content of his vision, saying "No, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth." (11:8). (This had to do with dietary restrictions in the ritual practices of ancient Israel). Three times he heard as a part of his dream, "What God has cleansed you must not call profane." (N.R.S.V. 11:9-10).

We know, from other dream narratives in the Old and New Testaments, that dreams are often a means by which God makes a decisive difference in someone's life. Peter on his own, given his former adherence to holiness and purity codes, would not have made a positive move toward the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. That happened, according to the text, through a divine directive. (The vision from God about the unclean food of the Gentiles).

Peter realized, following his dream, that the content of the dream was not really about "unclean animals" or food. It was really about unclean people. The Gentiles, thought previously to be unclean people, outside the promises of God, are here brought into those promises. And Peter further realized that the inclusion of formerly unclean people in the promises of God was in accord with the plan of God which cannot be thwarted: "If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?" (R.S.V. 11:17).

It is clear from this lesson of the first non-Jewish converts, Cornelius and his family, that the whole post-Easter fledgling church was amazed by it all, perhaps shocked or dismayed. Perhaps the first church thought that the gospel good news was just for them. Maybe, as it appears, they thought it was enough for the risen One to transform a few lives of a few Jewish people. Perhaps it was enough for these same few people to gather into congregations of like-minded, if exclusive, souls.

It seems clear, too, from the lesson in Acts 11 that Peter discovered in his encounter with Cornelius and his family that God's Spirit is not restricted to our images of God. Indeed, God's spirit is all-embracing and unbounded. The gospel cannot be limited by any human convention even those which define our deepest religious identity and values. (Lectionary Homiletics, p. 37).

In this lesson Peter had to grow in wisdom and stature as he experienced God's never-tiring spirit, even when that spirit included the Gentiles, once deemed to be unclean people according to former Jewish law, custom and tradition.

One of the commentaries I was reading in preparing for this sermon cited a book by J.B. Philips that I read years and years ago, so long ago I'd forgotten all about it until reminded. (J. B. Philips also wrote a paraphrase of the Bible that many liked, but I never did). The book, though, was entitled, Your God is Too Small. I recall that it was not a long book, but the theme was that we always tend to make God smaller than God is. The book challenged its readers not to think that our own images of God, our own protected images, are enough to define who God really is.

Peter learned, as we must, that the God of the risen One is a living God, a God who continues to break down barriers and boundaries. The church presented in Acts wanted the Gospel, put on terms it understood before there ever was a Gospel! That didn't work! That church, as does the church in any age, had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into owning its mission defined by Easter.

It is the nature of the Easter-Gospel to reach out, to respond to God's continuation of the Spirit of the risen One as the ages unfold. It is such even though it is our nature to conserve what we have and to hunker down as though we have the final dispensation of the Gospel among a select few of us, or even a majority in a closed-minded community. Some want what they already have no matter how clear it is that God is not finished with the work of God's Easter risen Christ.

Maybe spiritual virtue does have to do with stature and size and that we fit the title of J.B. Philips' book, Your God is Too Small.

You may have heard an ancient quotation which has been attributed to many wise people from Empedocles to St. Augustine: "God is the circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." God's love has no limits, though it is more comfortable and far safer for us to think that God does have limits and we know what they are. It was not that way in Acts for Peter; he, too knew, or so he thought, that God was limited to Israel, its laws and its prophets. In the text today, even an otherwise hated Roman military officer and his family, were found to dwell in the divine circle and to have God as their deepest center.

We can't blame Peter for wanting to think in terms of circumferences or limits in matters spiritual and ethical; we all do that. But, in the risen One God is persistent through the ages to tell us that God's grace is not expressed by circumferences as much as by the divine desire to be the center of all lives. Peter knew that he was an Apostle of Christ only when he was able to see and welcome a Gentile as holy before God beyond what his own definitions of holiness and purity had been. Finally, Peter knew what it meant to be the church of the risen and living Christ. (The size of his image of God had grown at the prompting of God. Peter's spiritual stature, likewise, matured).

Throughout my development of the text in Acts 11 today I had this vision of everyone here anticipating exactly how I would apply the text to the contemporary church and to The Church of the Pilgrimage in particular. Some, no doubt, anticipate that I will say what you don't want to hear; others, probably, anticipate that I am finally going to say what they do want to hear. Rather than meet either of your anticipations I am going to say something far more radical than you anticipated. It is this: God wants us to listen to God's Word spoken today, not only yesterday and once and for all, not according to the small images we have of God, not according to what we want the Gospel to say, but according to what it calls us to do and be in 2004. It is this: We will not lose our center or identity as God's beloved children simply because we learn that God sees everyone as a beloved child. It is this: It is far more in accord with the Scriptures to view God as the center who is everywhere than for us to erect circumferences (barriers) not known to God. It is this: When Peter in Acts 11:17 realized that barriers of separation had been broken asunder in the risen Christ, he posed a question to those who criticized his inclusion of all who had formerly been considered "unclean"-Gentiles-as equally beloved of God.

The question: "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?" (N.R.S.V.). It is for each of us to decide in the context of today, of our lives, of our congregation to whom the pronouns in Peter's question refer. Who is, right now, "them," "us," "we" and "I" in Peter's question?

This is the radical thing I preach as I personally wrestle with this and other texts with regard to the risen One's presence in the complexities of life in the year of our Lord, 2004: the risen One of God won't allow me, or anyone else, to decide for him to whom the promises of God apply. My image of God is always being revised by the One who relentlessly proves to me the truth that for me to have a fixed image of God is still idolatry. With Peter who was spiritually graced to conclude, so it is, I hope, with me: If the gift of faith given to those not like me is at the prompting of the risen One, who am I, or you, to hinder God?

S.D.G.
Amen.