May 18, 2025 "A New Thing"

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 11:1-18

Psalm 148

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

grace and peace to you from the one who is doing a new thing. Amen

“See I am making all things new”

“Who was I that I could hinder God?”

These two pronouncements from our lessons for the morning

 have been echoing in my head

 and bouncing off one another this week.

 On the one hand we have the pronouncement,

the promise,

 from the one on the throne in John’s vision

that God, the alpha and the omega

 the beginning and the end

is doing a new thing.

On the other hand

we have Peter

catching flack for paying attention and participating

in the new thing God is doing among the gentiles,

who responds to the criticism he receives

by telling the story of how he got to that point ending

 “who was I that I could hinder God?”

We long for God to make things new.

We get upset when God does a new thing.

That sounds about right for us humans.

 But I think we get upset

 because we have this habit of hearing what we want to hear

 rather than what God is telling us.

Yes God says “see I am making all things new”

and when we hear that we think ‘great,

let’s escape from all the bad stuff in our lives,

 new will be better,

the grass is greener on the other side of the fence’

 and sure there is a touch of that in Revelation,

 “a new heaven and a new earth”

is part of the promise,

but it is a promise made by and within the Alpha and the omega,

 the beginning and the end,

whose place, whose home is among mortals,

which means there is no other side of the fence

 God is with us making things new right now

 and we struggle with this

 as much as we long for it

because there is no wiping things out and starting new

- God tried that with Noah and the flood

 and promised not to do that again,-

no the new heaven and new earth,

 or as Jesus puts it, the kingdom of God

is among us here and now

God is renewing what is already here

 and God has made us a part of the renewal.

Which of course is easier said than done,

especially given our aversion to change,

especially big change.

Peter runs into this in our reading from Acts.

God is doing a new thing among the followers of Jesus,

expanding the good news to include the gentiles

gentile is Greek for ‘the nations’ by the way

a short hand for saying anyone who is not Jewish

this is a broad expansion on God’s part

 and God calls Peter to be part of this new thing,

he will be the one

to start sharing the message of Jesus with the gentiles.

And this goes against everything Peter has been taught his whole life.

 As a member of the Jewish people

 he has been taught that because Jews are the chosen people

 they must remain separate from everyone else

and there are rules, commandments to that effect

originally gifted to teach the people

how to live with one another and God

Over time the rules became the focus

 rather than the relationships

 but Jesus is doing a new thing

 (or perhaps you could say returning to the original intent)

focusing on relationships rather than rules

and when the choice is between following a rule

 or fulfilling a relationship

Jesus chooses the relationship every time

the disciples are called to be a part of this way of life,

and that means breaking the rules they’ve been taught their whole lives.

For Peter it takes a vision from God,

 he is praying- listening for what God will say to him

 and boy does God have a doozie of a message-

he is praying when he falls into a trance

 and has this vision,

 a sheet with animals on it

and a voice that says “Get up Peter, kill and eat”

and Peter protests

 because the animals on the sheet

 are the ones that he’s been taught to avoid,

according to the rules these are unclean, profane

and if Peter touches them he will be too,

 even after all the new things that he has seen Jesus do,

 Peter is still following the old rules

until the voice answers his protestations

 “What God has made clean you must not call profane.”

 God is doing a new thing,

 and as Peter comes out of his trance

 some gentiles come asking for him

 and urged by the Holy Spirit

Peter goes and preaches to them

  and maybe he’s not completely convinced

that what he’s doing is God’s will

it’s hard to change ingrained notions of right and wrong

 clean and unclean overnight

but then the Holy Spirit comes upon those he’s preaching to,

 in the same way it had the disciples that day of Pentecost

and finally Peter understands.

We hear this story second hand today

Peter has been called before the Jewish believers in Jerusalem

and told to justify his breaking of the rules,

 his eating with Gentiles,

they are not happy with him.

And Peter walks them through what happened

 because it took him awhile to understand God’s message,

 a vision, a voice from God,

and the witnessing of the movement of the Holy Spirit

going ahead and doing what Peter was reluctant to do.

Peter tells the story again and concludes

 “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?”

And this silences Peter’s critics.

 “Who was I that I could hinder God?”

 God has promised to do a new thing,

and God is going to do it,

 whether we like it or not,

God would rather have us participate in the new thing

but even if we don’t,

 God will find a way,

 God will make all things new.

You may have, probably have

encountered something like this in your own life of faith,

 because God continues to do new things,

God continues to push us

 to expand the boundaries of the community that gathers in God’s name

to include an ever widening group of people,

 including and especially people that have been labeled unclean, other

 (to be clear God has loved these people all along).

and this can be difficult

 because we hold onto what we have been taught as children as right and wrong

as central to our identity

and it may take many messages from God

for us to get the message

- the instructions in Peter’s vision

had to be repeated three times

and even then Peter was unsure of the message.

But Peter even as he was confused

continued to do what Peter does best,

follow God-

ever notice that?

 Peter is a little slow to understand sometimes

but he’s always following Jesus

 and once he gets the message

he jumps in whole heartedly

 even if it contradicts his past experience,

 Peter is the rock

because he is willing to be transformed by his experience of God,

and he is honest with the people in Jerusalem

 about his own struggles with the new thing God was doing before him

 but ultimately Peter followed the movement of the spirit

 even if it contradicted what he felt in his gut to be right and wrong,

 look I struggled with this too he tells his audience

 but “who was I that I could hinder God?”

So how do the critics respond?

“When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

Praise is the appropriate response to the actions of God

We heard in our psalm for today that

 God made creation for praise,

everyone is praising God in the psalm,

 the heavens, the earth,

even the sea monsters are praising their creator

along with the people

 whose creator continues to care for them

giving them strength to be faithful servants of God

which means joining in the new thing God is doing

and responding in praise. Amen