A Time for Choosing
Easter 5
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
I love this graduation Sunday each year. We celebrate these wonderful young people for their achievements in earning a high school diploma or college degree and look ahead to their next challenges. After all, graduation means moving up. The best part of what you’ve done is not the diploma or degree, even if it’s Cum Laude or you’re the Valedictorian. The best part are the opportunities your achievements open for you moving forward.
I remember my first days like yesterday.
Just as you will learn a lot about whatever you’ll study, your faith deserves and requires the same sort of attention. If anyone ever tries to tell you faith is for simple minds, you’ll know that person hasn’t given it real study.
Think of God’s word as an impossibly beautiful stone on the beach. The centuries of study and our shared experience are like waves that wash away more and more sand to reveal more and more of God’s Word and his will for us in our time.
Some very early waves are washing in front of Peter in today’s passage from Acts. Recall that Peter grew up as a Jewish fisherman, raised in Galilee. To the extent he knew the scriptures, everything he learned was shaped by hundreds of years of Israel being occupied by so many foreign empires from Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia. No doubt Peter’s rabbis would have stressed the parts about Israel maintaining their faith and identity through all those challenges.
As he followed Jesus, Peter surely heard him emphasize God’s work beyond Israel when Jesus talked about part of scripture about Naaman the Syrian captain and the widow of Zarephath. Peter heard Jesus teach the parable of the Good Samaritan. He saw Jesus evangelize – which means bring the Good News – to the Samaritan woman at the well. He saw Jesus heal a Roman official’s son.
And Jesus also said he came to fulfill the scriptures, not change them. Jesus came to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham that through him he would bless all peoples. How would that work? It began very local. They had to start where they were.
The disciples were driven by the Holy Spirit to go first to the Temple courtyards and the then to synagogues to share the Good News about Jesus’s death and resurrection. They didn’t come up with a plan, the Spirit drove them. They shared their witness and were able to explain Jesus not only in light of the scriptures, but how he fulfilled them. In those first days it was all Jews telling Jews about Jesus, who was a Jew.
But then the Spirit drove Philip to baptize an Ethiopian eunuch on the side of the road. Then it led Cornelius the Centurion to summon Peter, and it prepared Peter to answer that invitation and baptize his whole household.
When Peter got the call from God to meet and baptize the Roman Centurion – an officer of the hated Roman empire in charge of 100 soldiers, he was initially confused. The vision he saw of the sheet wasn’t primarily about releasing Christians from the Kosher laws. It wasn’t primarily about bacon. It wasn’t even about shrimp and lobster. The sheet was symbolic for two things: Go where I send you and do what I tell you to do and share me with wherever and with whoever I send you.
He said the Spirit told him not to make any distinction between “them,” those Gentiles, and “us” Jews. This became a big controversy in the early church. Some thought that Jesus had radically reformed Judaism and that new converts would need to become Jewish to follow Jesus. It isn’t about the rules, it’s about the relationship which Jesus has now thrown open to all peoples.
All of that surprised Peter. But the Spirit sorted it out, starting here. As Peter said, “Who was I that I could hinder God?” But he stayed faithful to the spirit and we are the direct descendants of his faithfulness.
A word, then, to our graduates. (The ones able to be here today are all high school graduates.) You are each dynamic, bright, engaging and very likeable and truly good people. I suspect you will find the reality of college life is different from what you anticipate. That’s life.
You will find there are dips and turns in the road that you don’t anticipate. That’s also life. Remember that you are never alone. In addition to your families and friends, you’ve got your church and me just a phone call away.
We are sending you with a study Bible and I hope you will study it. Read about Jesus again and again in the Gospels, read the rest of the New Testament and wrestle with the Old Testament, too.
Find Christian community. That can be a group of friends that gather to read and talk about the Bible. It could be a student ministry run by the Episcopal Church or another church, or campus ministries like Cru and InterVarsity.
And above all, pray, especially when you have big exams and big decisions to make, and especially when you fail and/or real trouble crashes in on you, either of which can blindside you. Learn to seek and listen to the Holy Spirit. He will animate you toward recovery and restoration, and into a true life worth living.
AMEN