"Revelation"
Sermon Presented January 13, 2008
Acts 10:34-43
Flannery O'Connor, one of the most acclaimed short story writers of all times, tells the story - titled Reflection - of Mrs. Turpin, a racist Southern woman who is completely unaware of her flaws. One day as she sits in the doctor's office waiting for her husband to be treated for an injury, she strikes up a conversation with others in the crowded waiting room. The reader "hears" her "thought" judgments as well as harsh verbal judgmental statements.
A sullen, over-weight, acne-covered young woman - a student at Wellesley, is also present, and through her dark and piercing glances, she reveals to Mrs. Turpin her intense hatred of her. The more Mrs. Turpin talks, the more ominous the looks directed at her!
Mrs. Turpin states with feeling: "If it's one thing I am, it's grateful. When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, a little of everything, and a good disposition besides, I just feel like shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is! It could have been different! Oh, thank you Jesus, Jesus, thank you!'" At that moment, a book strikes her directly over the eye, and the girl who hurled it crashes across the table and sinks her fingers into Mrs. Turpin's neck, calling her a wart hog from hell. The girl's mother and a nurse hold the girl while the doctor sedates her. Then an ambulance takes her away.
Mrs. Turpin is devastated. After the doctor examines her husband, the couple heads home - with Mrs. Turpin sporting a huge lump on her head and angry red marks on her neck. She lay down, but the instant she is prone, she sees the image of a razor-backed hog with warts on its face and horns coming out behind its ears, and she tries to convince herself that she isn't a wart hog from hell. But the denial has no force. The message was given to her, a hard working, church-going woman, and it won't go away.
Later, as Mrs. Turpin looks at the hogs on their farm, the accusation of the girl gathers force in her mind. She asks: "How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved, and from hell too?" As she tries to justify herself to herself, she has a vision. She sees a streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls are rumbling toward heaven. There are whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of Blacks in white robes, and freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping. And far behind the procession is a tribe of people whom she recognizes as those like herself who have a little of everything and the God-given ability to use it right. Then as she looks more closely, she notices that the virtues of the last group are being burned away. The vision fades, and when she heads back to the house, she hears the voices of the souls climbing upward into heaven shouting hallelujah. (Revelation)
Mrs. Turpin has a revelation - and it undoes her. The events of that day combined with the vision from God, cause her to see herself for what she is and to see others differently. That is what happens to Peter. He believes he knows what is right, and then suddenly he receives a revelation and everything changes. Acts 10:34-43. (Read text.)
Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that God continually reveals new insights. No one ever has it completely right because we can never know God in God's entirety. Individuals experience new understandings of God and God's will; and entire Christian communities experience new revelations. In Scripture we find slavery and oppression of women and children as acceptable norms because that is what the culture reflected. Until people question the status quo and work to make changes, nothing happens. When revelation comes and people begin to grasp new understandings, change can be accomplished.
Sometimes it takes centuries for God to find open hearts who will see the need for change and work for it. But God continues to reveal God's self to those who are willing to listen. When we see the light - and then fail to act accordingly, we sin. We need to act on the revelation we receive. Our text shows a new revelation given to Jesus' most impetuous disciple - Peter - after Jesus' death and resurrection, and Peter acts.
Peter and Cornelius meet because God gives each a vision - a new revelation. Peter is a Jew and Cornelius is a gentile - a Roman citizen. Jews believe they are God's only chosen people. God wants to expand the scope of the Gospel to include Gentiles and needs to bring the Jews on board.
This encounter with God gives Peter the understanding that God is bigger than he imagined and that God's call on the lives of people extends beyond the boundaries of Judaism. Peter gains a new theological understanding.
For Luke, the author of Acts, the conversion of Cornelius and his family is a breakthrough event in the life of the early church. This story comes right after the conversion of Saul, and is so significant that Luke tells it twice! It is a premier event in the history of the Christian Church - a new revelation that changes the direction of the Church universal.
Sometimes revelation comes suddenly - like turning on a light, and other times it is a slow gradual process. John Woolman, a Quaker in the 1700's, was open to the revelation that owning slaves was wrong and began working for change more than a century before other Christian leaders grasped that truth. A "light bulb" for one may be a slow process for another. Sometimes we are slow to receive a truth because our resistance is steeped in cultural prejudice.
We are closed to new revelations from God when we are confident we know what God wants. When we begin to realize that God isn't like us - that God is God and not limited to our understanding - we begin to make progress in our spiritual lives. God wasn't limited to Peter's understanding. When Peter paid attention to what he heard and saw, he received a revelation. "Now he's got it! By Jove, he's got it!"
Peter taught that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power and preached peace to the people of Israel. He did good works and healed the oppressed because God was with him. Now the message is to be given to those outside of Judaism. This is an epiphany moment for Peter - a new revelation that God's salvation is open to all people! God is impartial! God loves everyone equally!
It's good news that God shows no partiality! God's Holy Spirit comes to those who are seeking, irrespective of race, religious background or social status. The Spirit may come to one on death row, the CEO of a major corporation, an alcoholic lying on her bed at mid-day, a teenager at camp, the homeless at a shelter, a recovering addict at an AA meeting, a woman with AIDS or someone in the pew.
Sometimes we are like Mrs. Turpin and believe we are better than another or that we're okay the way we are, and then WHAM! we are hit right between the eyes - not with a book, but with a revelation that we are less and others are greater than we believed. When we absorb that revelation, our spiritual lives begin to blossom and we come alive to new possibilities.
I'll bet you have heard this statement: "He's really going to be surprised when he gets to heaven and sees who's there! He won't be expecting most of them!" This same comment could have been spoken of the early Christians who believed Jesus came only for the nation of Israel. But the Holy Spirit opened their eyes and enabled them to transcend their narrow vision of the Kingdom of God. We, too, have a narrow vision of God's kingdom and need revelation. There will be surprises!
Peter couldn't prove his new insight from the Torah or the Prophets. He had no proof-text for his sermon. He was without tradition or scripture to back him up. And yet his sermon (our text) revealed a new perception of the movement of the gospel that was brand new.
If we truly follow Jesus, we, too, will be in for surprises and new understandings of the gospel that can't be explained on any other basis than that God has shown us something we couldn't have seen on our own. Faith, when it comes down to it, is our attempt to keep asking ourselves "What is God doing and where is God going now?"
As we follow Jesus, we will broaden our understanding of God's kingdom and find ways to include people rather than exclude them. God doesn't call us to change anyone. That's God's department! But when we are convinced we have a new revelation from God, we should proclaim it so that others can ponder it or challenge it. Will we be faithful with God's revelations to us? I hope so!
