Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA ON THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY 7 JANUARY 2007

"I truly understand that God shows no partiality." (Acts 10:34)

I always like to describe the Book of Acts as the minutes of the early church. It starts off, as you know, with Luke (who wrote this book as well as the Gospel that bears his name) describing Jesus' Ascension. Jesus, having returned to the right hand of his Father, leaves the church in the hands of the Apostles, who do the best they can to spread the Gospel and to build up the infant church. Peter, never far from controversy, and never at a loss for words, figures prominently in Acts, today's lesson being a case in point. When we come across Peter, he is delivering a sermon. But it is not just any sermon. It is a sermon in which he is making a valiant effort to defend his actions. He's been hauled before the annual parish meeting to justify what the church members deemed unconscionable behavior, acts unbefitting his apostolic rank. His crime was the baptism of Cornelius. And in the mind of the congregation there were three very good reasons why Cornelius should not have been immersed in the font. He was a Gentile, he was a Roman, and he was an army officer.

Today as we gather to christen --- to "en-Christ" these beautiful children, resplendent in their baptismal gowns, we would like to think that we are swelling the ranks of the church --- the church is growing because of what we do. It's difficult for us, therefore, to get our minds around the fact that Peter's fledgling Christian community believed that baptizing Cornelius had the potential of splitting the church in two. Why? Because until Cornelius' baptism, the church was entirely Jewish. The earliest church was made up of faithful Jews, trying to keep all the commandments that Yahweh had given them. That included keeping a kosher kitchen, and not fraternizing with Gentiles, the ethnoi, those outside the Jewish fold. In this way, they believed, they could preserve their religious and cultural identity.

Now to Jews, Romans were impure. They worshipped idols, and even made the emperor their god. But their religious practices aside, they were the oppressors; they occupied Israel, ruling it with an iron fist. Cornelius then, as an officer in the Roman army, was a living symbol of that oppression. By making him a Christian, Peter was doing nothing less than aiding and abetting his infiltration into the church's ranks --- the ranks of a church, moreover, which was pacifist.

So Peter gets up to explain himself. And in so doing, he makes a statement which has to rank among the most important utterances in the New Testament. In terms of what it says about the nature of the Christian religion, it might arguably be more important than the Beatitudes. Peter tells his story --- a story replete with accounts of significant turning points --- his confession at Caesarea Philippi, his denial of Jesus, and later his profession of devotion to him. He says "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone --- anyone --- who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him." Other Bibles translate this as "God has no favorites." The Greek literally means "God is not an accepter of faces" No matter how we slice it, the point is this: Background, be it cultural, ethnic or religious, pedigree, credentials, wealth, pecking order in society are deemed to be utterly of no consequence when it comes to membership in the Body of Christ. Belief --- fearing God and doing what is right --- is all that is required. And Peter makes it clear that his opinion is not based solely on his own experience, but on the example of Jesus himself, who welcomed into table fellowship the unwashed, the unclean, the jetsam and flotsam of society, the least, the lost and the last. God shows no partiality.

Peter convinced the congregation. As he spoke, the Holy Spirit descended on the crowd. And at the end of his sermon, he asked "Can anyone withhold the water from baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" The Holy Spirit, he was arguing, was indiscriminate, lighting on all and sundry in the house, just as the Spirit, like cloven tongues of flame, had descended on Medes and Elamites and Mesopotamians and all the other unpronounceable ethnic groups on the Day of Pentecost. So all the members of Cornelius' household were baptized.

My question this morning is why is it that the church, nearly two thousand years after the baptism of Cornelius, still seems not to have learned this basic lesson. The church has consistently played the "Who is in and who is out?" game. Some thirty years ago, a tell-all book about the Episcopal Church entitled The Power of Their Glory made it abundantly clear that in every town in America, the Episcopal congregation was made up of the well-heeled and socially elite, and that others needn't darken the door. Race and gender have also been used as barriers to full inclusion in the church. I needn't remind you that Absalom Jones, the first black priest in the Episcopal Church, was ordained in Philadelphia two hundred years ago with the understanding that he and his congregation not affiliate with the Diocese of Pennsylvania. And when blacks were first allowed to be bishops, they were consecrated as suffragan bishops for colored work! Beryl Choi stood in this pulpit a few weeks ago and told us that in a former age, women couldn't be deacons, only deaconesses. They were set apart, not ordained, and the bishop, in setting them apart, placed only one hand on their head, instead of two. And when women's ordination as deacons was approved in 1970, it happened at the same time that laywomen were allowed to sit in the House of Deputies! And for some time we have been consumed with that which is proving to be the greatest barrier of all --- sexual orientation. How ironic that parishes in Virginia have forsaken the Episcopal Church for believing in the possibility that two people of the same sex can live in a committed relationship, and have cast their lot instead with a church that believes that it should be illegal for two gay people to dine together in public. "The cry goes up, 'How long?'"

The good news is this. We already have the theology to put us on the right track. Indeed, it is a theology that is articulated literally on Day One of the Christian life. All we have to do is catch up with and live into that theology. Listen to the questions we will soon ask the baptismal candidates: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? The questions make it clear that baptism is not merely some quaint rite performed for one's personal enhancement. It is not meant to create some "holier than thou" class of individuals. No, it is nothing less than a commissioning. And this is why the baptismal service in the old Prayer Book contained that little sermon for the new initiates: "We receive this child into the congregation of Christ's flock, and do sign him/her with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter s/he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end." Martin Luther captured this thought in his famous statement about this sacrament: "Baptism is a rite that takes only a few minutes to do, but a lifetime to finish."

Caroline, Madelyne, Finnegan, Iris, Emma, and Blake, whom we baptize today are the vanguard of a new generation. As some of us continue to sharpen our quills and send letters by snail mail, their lives will be ordered by BlackBerries, text-messaging one another in the vocabulary of a new shorthand that bears no resemblance to the Queen's English. As they are immersed in pop culture with its pantheon of icons, many of us will go to our graves believing that Paris Hilton is a hotel and Big Ben is a clock. It is our prayer that in their new awareness, they will also be the generation who will embrace the church's theology of inclusion and run with it, believing with Peter that God shows no partiality.

Let us pray: Descend, O Spirit, purging flame, brand us this day with Jesus' Name; Confirm our faith, consume our doubt; sign us as Christ's within, without. Forbid us not this second birth, grant unto us the greater worth! Enlist us in your service, Lord; baptize all nations with your Word. AMEN. [The Hymnal 1982, 297.]