Sermon Tone Analysis

Isaiah 65:17–25

Acts 10:34-

Rise Up

When I was a kid, I used to hear people talk about “the C&E” crowd.

Those were the people you only saw at church on Christmas and Easter.

This term was used in a pretty derogatory way and it always made me uncomfortable.

It still does.

I know it’s not always intended this way, but it just feels like another way to divide people rather than bringing us together.

It’s a way of sorting out who’s “in” and who’s “out”.

Even when it’s not meant to do that, that’s what it sounds like.

As I look out here on faces I haven’t seen in a while, I don’t see a bunch of people who are just coming coming to church out of guilt or obligation or a bunch of people who don’t really belong or have the secret handshake memorized.

I see a bunch of people who made it a point to come to church for the most important celebration of our faith.

And that’s a pretty great thing!

When I was a kid, I used to hear people talk about “the C&E” crowd.

Those were the people you only saw at church on Christmas and Easter.

This term was used in a pretty derogatory way and it always made me uncomfortable.

It still does.

As I look out here on faces I haven’t seen in a while, I don’t see a bunch of people who are just coming coming to church out of guilt or obligation.

I see a bunch of people who made it a point to come to church for the most important celebration of our faith.

And that’s a pretty great thing!

God is not keeping score.

There is no record book in heaven of how often you made it to church.

Now, I will say there are 6 more weeks of Easter and I’d love to share the rest of the story with you over those 6 weeks.

But that’s just because I get really excited about sharing stories with people.

It has nothing to do with trying to guilt anyone into coming back.

And shame on anyone who tries to say God plays favorites or who puts up religious dividers between people based on their piety or attendance record.

God does not play favorites.

God’s love and renewal and new life is for all people.

Period.

Jesus did not rise up from the grave just for a specific group of people who do things one specific way.

Easter - the resurrection - this is the key to everything we believe.

Without this piece, Jesus was just a pretty cool guy with some great things to say.

So it is exactly as it should be that today is the most exciting service of the year with the most people in attendance at pretty much every church in the world.

If we’re supposed to share the news of God’s love and shown to us in Jesus Christ, then we should be excited for opportunities to celebrate it with others - whomever they might be and whenever they might be with us.

Old friends, new friends, people we see 3 or 4 times a week, people we see once or twice a year.

Everyone deserves the message of peace and hope that comes with the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

It’s so much easier to worry about somebody else’s piety than to just focus on our own.

We want a neat set of rules that everyone follows the same way, but that’s just not what we are given.

The Bible is a large and often confusing book that is wide open to a great deal of interpretation.

We want to be able to say definitively that we know who is “in” and who is “out” but we just aren’t given that in scripture.

We are just told that Jesus came for everyone and this celebration is open to all people who care to join it.

No hazing or secret handshake.

No entrance exam or dress code.

Just people who want to figure out this God stuff and try to love one another.

Trouble in the Text

Recently, three historic black churches in Louisiana were burned in acts of domestic terrorism.

This is not remotely the first time someone has acted out in hate in exactly the same way against black churches in the United States.

Still in 2019, there are black churches in the US trying to balance the joy of Easter with mourning over the loss of their worship space.

Just this week, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris suffered a devastating fire as well.

This fire was not likely arson like the churches here in the US, but was probably due to restoration efforts, which, somewhat ironically, is why much of the artwork there was already out of the building and safe from the flames.

During Holy Week, one of the most iconic and beautiful worship spaces in the world is devastated.

In South Africa, during Holy Week services on Thursday night - a night that we too gathered for worship - a church wall collapsed killing 13 people.

Another church trying to navigate Easter joy in the midst of tragedy.

Another church that has lost their worship space, as well as beloved church members.

And this morning, in Sri Lanka, several churches were bombed during Easter services, killing 207 people as of my reading of the news at 8:30 this morning.

The death tolls there keep rising.

Two of these tragedies were just things that happened: a wall weakened by a storm and a fire sparked by chemicals used to restore an elderly building.

Two of these are the result of targeted hate - people drawing lines in the sand and living into division not unity.

Ironic that on the day we celebrate the thing that brings us together as brothers and sisters and gives us the opportunity to live new and light-filled lives, there are those targeting that message with hate.

Hate is nothing new.

Divisiveness isn’t something that was recently invented or introduced into the world.

It’s not even something that has increased in modern times.

We just have more access to the news about it these days.

Even as recently as 10 years ago, we didn’t have things like news alerts popping up on our phones and watches about something that happened in Sri Lanka.

People have been arguing and fighting about how to live life since the dawn of time.

When people disagree, we have some weird human urge to make them do things our way.

If we feel unheard, we try to find ways to make sure our message gets out there.

Even if it’s a terrible, hateful, and/or untrue message.

Even the Christian church has been disagreeing since the very beginning about how we should be living out and spreading the message of Jesus’ resurrection.

In this morning’s passage that from Acts, Peter is giving a sermon not long after he’s eaten a meal with a group of non-Jews.

This is highly unusual -the dinner part, not the sermon.

I think Peter liked to preach at least as much as I do.

This is unusual because the non-Jews wouldn’t have been eating a kosher meal.

Eating with them would have been a violation of Kosher law on Peter’s part.

There was a big debate in the early Christian church about if Jews who followed Jesus had to keep kosher or not and here is Peter - THAT PETER who followed Jesus all around during his ministry here on earth - eating with non-Jews.

Basically, the early Christians were arguing over the rulebook of piety - just like we tend to.

Peter is saying, “Hang on a minute, folks.

God’s love is shown to all people in Jesus Christ: Jews, gentiles, and everyone in between.”

Just a few days ago (in our time - it’s been a while for Peter from his perspective), Jesus gave us the command to love one another just as he loves us.

That means we don’t get to just talk about how nice and welcoming God is - we have to go be all nice and welcoming ourselves if we are going to take Jesus seriously.

We are called to care and take action when a black church in the US falls victim to hate crime and when the Roman Catholic Church suffers a loss as historic as Notre Dame and when a church in South Africa collapses and when churches in Sri Lanka are attacked viciously on Easter Sunday morning.

This also means actively seeking out peace and reconciliation with one another.

Not just those we only have little beefs with.

Not just the people we’re going to be stuck with whether we make nice or not (family, coworkers, neighbors).

Not just the people who live in our community or country or even our side of the planet.

Everyone.

All the people.

Individuals and groups or communities of people.

Is there a group of people that make you uncomfortable?

That’s exactly who we are being told here to go seek peace with.

Are you nursing a grudge against someone?

Peter says you have got to go sort that stuff out because we don’t get to choose who God does and doesn’t bring into the family or how God brings people in.

The news of God’s impartial love is not just abstract information about God.

It places a clear demand on us, to love impartially as God loves.

Peter enacts God’s impartial love by eating with Gentiles.

At the table, Peter actively works out reconciliation with Gentiles; he actively seeks peace with them.

Peter is saying that this isn’t about choosing sides based on how we do or don’t do things.

This is about how we are to be in relationship and community with others, even when we disagree or struggle to understand one another.

Jesus came to earth, died, and rose again to reconcile us to God, to one another, and to ourselves.

And we can’t have reconciliation without being involved with other people!