Whose Conversion Is It, Anyway? A Sermon by Randy Harris

Highland Presbyterian Church

May 13, 2012

Psalm 98; Acts 10:44-48

The sign in front of the church said, “Where all are welcome.” My friend John

Leggett, then pastor of this church in Nashville, said “I don’t know if we really believed

it when we put it there, or whether it was just something we thought we should believe.

We never could have known what trouble it would bring.” As John shared this story with

a gathering of fellow pastors, he said

One person gave it a meaning that we never imagined. He broke into the

church, and was caught cooking a meal in the Parish House. He wasn’t a stranger,

exactly, because he had worshipped with us a time or two. But he wasn’t exactly an

insider, either. [John] was one of the few who even knew who he was. Though I

knew he’d been having some difficulties, I was still surprised when the police called

to tell me that he’d broken a window to get in. But he had a reason: “I was hungry,

and I knew Pastor John wouldn’t mind if I came in to eat.”

Amazingly, [John said,] he’s still with us. An elder saw him through the court

proceedings. Another member served as a mentor of sorts. He still contends with

temptation. But, over the years, he’s slowly changed. What the scriptures say about

Jesus is true of him as well: he’s growing in grace and in stature.

Every other week or so, [said John,] I am witness to an amazing sight. I watch

as the one who had been so hungry joins the procession of hungry saints marching up

the aisle to the Table to feast on the grace of God.

But from his view behind the Table, John says he couldn’t tell who had changed the

most—the man who had once broken into their community in the truest sense of the

word, or the church who had found a way not only to tolerate his presence, but to

embrace it.

Who was converted in that story? Who was changed? Was it the man? Yes,

certainly he was. But what about the members of the church? Were they also converted?

It’s hard to tell sometimes. It’s hard to tell in our lesson from Acts this morning, too.

The tenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles tells of the conversion of Cornelius, a

Roman soldier—and more importantly, a Gentile, a non-Jew. Up to this point in Acts,

everyone who has become a part of the church has had at least a loose affiliation with the

Judaism of the 1st Century. But now, the Spirit is blowing beyond Israel’s family tree of

faith and belonging—and beyond the comfort zone of the earliest Christians. This

encounter with Cornelius provokes a crisis. After all, if the church welcomes this Gentile

outsider, it would no longer be just “people like us”—anyone could come in.

The problem was that those first Christians were originally Jews, and had been

raised to believe that God was partial to Jews as God’s chosen people. If you weren’t a

Jew, by definition you were a Gentile. And if you were a Gentile, then you are not

included in the chosen people.

But if there’s one thing we learn in these days of Easter, it’s that the risen Christ is

not going to play according to our rules; and it is very likely that he is going to include

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those we might consider “outsiders.” “The resurrection of Jesus destroys death by any

name and conquers anything that deforms or destroys human life,” says the Declaration

of Faith of the Presbyterian Church; and we see ways that the Spirit of this risen Christ is

at work to overcome the boundaries that deformed life by separating folk one from

another. Chapter after chapter through this section of the Acts of the Apostles, we see the

walls coming down: the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), Saul the persecutor of the church

(Acts 9), and now Cornelius (Acts 10). The circle grows wider and wider with each

passing chapter of Acts. And that’s a wonderful thing! But that’s frightening for the

church, because maybe, just maybe, it means that this risen Christ isn’t just changing

these outsiders; perhaps he is changing the ones on the inside, too. And then as now, you

know how we like change!

There’s no doubt that the Spirit of the risen Christ was at work to convert Cornelius

and his family, to usher them into the church. And in our own time we rejoice every time

the Spirit works to bring in another family, another convert. Think how full with joy our

hearts are when we open the font, pray over the water, administer baptism, and embrace a

new Christian. Someone who was outside has been brought in by the wide embrace of

God’s loving welcome.

But thanks be to God that God’s converting work is not limited to those we would

consider to be outsiders. After all, through its history, the church has a rich tradition of

reducing the gospel to small things—a ticket to heaven, say, or a code of morality, or to

some other very small part of what God is doing, but not the broad grandeur of what God

is doing. Peter and his friends thought that the gospel was for them, and for those like

them; but he and the others quickly learn that they are not in control of the Spirit’s

working. In fact, in what we just read from Acts, the Spirit crashes in, interrupts Peter’s

sermon, and pours out upon these Gentiles. And that changes not only them, but Peter,

too! “Now I know,” he says, “that God shows no partiality.” This story of the

conversion of Cornelius is also about the conversion of Peter, and with him, the

conversion of the church.

Just before the verses we read from Acts this morning, Peter has a vision. It’s a

strange vision, a vision of a sheet being let down from heaven, full of all of the foods that

a good kosher-keeping Jew wouldn’t eat. The voice says, “Eat!” And Peter says, “I

can’t!” “I wasn’t raised that way. We don’t eat these things!” Three times he’s told to

eat, and he finally gets it. It’s not just about the food. It’s about people. It’s about

Gentiles. They’re not unclean. They, too, can be a part of the church, they too can be

Christian, every bit as much as the Jewish Christians are. For Peter to understand and

embrace this notion means that the church that he has come to know is already being

called to change, to rethink how it views those outside its walls. The church is being

converted from restricting God’s grace to people like us, to being open to God-sightings

in people of every kind. From thinking “unclean” about not only foods, but people; to

being aware that God’s image is imprinted upon every human heart. Those people who

are so different, who were separated from God’s people in most every way that we could

imagine, have received the Spirit “just as we have,” says Peter. Certainly those Gentiles

are being changed by the Spirit. But so is Peter.

In February of 1949, the Rev. Dr. John H. Leith, pastor of First Presbyterian Church

in Auburn, Alabama, preached a sermon on what was then “race relations Sunday” in the

old Southern Presbyterian Church. In that sermon, in 1949, in Alabama, Dr. Leith told

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his congregation that the Lordship of Jesus Christ mattered more than the court of public

opinion, and that the image of God was upon all of humankind, and not just upon some.

That included their African-American neighbors, whom many of his church members

regarded as less than themselves. Leith then went on to tell them that Presbyterians in the

south had done a very poor job sharing the good news of the gospel with their African-

American neighbors. At the time of his sermon, he noted that there were 3,349 black

members of the southern Presbyterian Church—but there were over 5½ million black

folks in the south with no church affiliation whatsoever.1

Do you see what he was saying? On one hand, he was noting that the members of

the congregation needed to get out there and encourage their unchurched black neighbors

to become a part of the church, to respond to the good news of the gospel. On the other

hand, he was suggesting that the same Spirit who would be at work with those neighbors

was also going to be at work in the church, changing it, converting it, so that such change

in the world might happen.

I wonder: Who is it in our day that stands outside the church, awaiting a word of

God’s grace from us in the midst of a world gone mad with walls and divisions? Walls of

race continue to stand tall as we remain all-too-separated in this community we love.

Lord knows, the state of North Carolina just pronounced a sure, certain, bruising word

against homosexual families this week with the passage of the Marriage Amendment.2

Will those families hear that same harsh word from us, or will we speak the same

gracious word to them that that has been spoken to us here? What about the rising

number of folk who are simply not connected to any church at all, who have become

disenchanted with the infighting and bickering for which the church has become known

in a world all-too-bereft of love and compassion?3 Surely the Spirit is at work with all of

these people, often in ways that are hidden from our sight. But we can trust that this

same Spirit is at work changing, transforming, and converting us along the way as we

seek to be the church with, for, and among such folk.

Friends, the living Lord of the church is at work for the transformation of the world.

But along the way, we who believe ourselves called to share in Christ’s transforming

work must remember that we are on the receiving end of that transformation, too.

On Thursday, former General Assembly Moderator Joan Gray posted a wonderful

story on Facebook. She says that

One of my common themes as I talk with people about the state of the church

today is “people don’t just ‘fall in’ the doors anymore. You have to go out where

they are and bring them in.” But sometimes they do just fall in. I was in my office

on a rainy February afternoon working at the computer. Becky, the receptionist

came in asking rather excitedly, “Do we have any books about Christianity?” In the

few seconds it took me to process that questions she continued, “There are some

people up front who want to learn about Christianity.” I went with her back to the

1 “On Mistaking the Clean for the Unclean,” Race Relations Sunday, February 13, 1949. In Pilgrimage of

a Presbyterian: Collected Shorter Writings (Geneva Press, 2001), 14-19. 2 North Carolinians voted on May 8, 2012 to amend the constitution to say that marriage between one man

and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in the state. I am

indebted to the Rev. Dr. Stephen Shoemaker, pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, for the

image that homosexual persons were “bruised” by this action. 3 Diana Butler Bass explores this question well in her book Christianity after Religion: The End of Church

and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (HarperOne, 2012).

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front office and met Amir and Lelah (Joan has changed their names). He is a

graduate student at Emory, she is his wife. Amir told me that they were from Iran

and wanted to learn about Christianity, could we help?

Becky and I went into a frenzy gathering materials and telling them about all

the opportunities our congregation offered to explore the Christian faith. Not scared

off by our enthusiasm, they came the next Sunday and the next. They found a

Sunday school class that wholeheartedly helped them with their exploration of the

faith. They began attending worship regularly. And so it was that last Sunday

evening we stood around the baptismal font as they gave their testimony and were

baptized into a living relationship with Christ and his body.

One of the things that made this baptism so poignant was the fact that their

decision to become Christians probably would cut them off from their family and

native country. Conversion from Islam is a crime in Iran. They are the only

Christians in their families. What would induce two intelligent people to make such

a costly decision? Lelah said that even when she was in Iran she had begun to read

the Bible and was attracted to Jesus. Amir expressed his delight that Jesus was a

savior, not a “boss” or dictator. They had found their “pearl of great price” in Jesus

and the fellowship of his Body. The group at that worship service lingered together

afterward, basking in the joy of this baptism. We were inspired by the burning

passion on the faces of Amir and Lelah.

But then Joan pauses to reflect—to reflect on what the Spirit might be doing with

the rest of the church as Amir and Lelah come into their midst.

And so I have found myself thinking about my own faith and passion for God.

I have to admit that my default mode is to live in my version of Christianity like an

old bathrobe, comfortable, comforting, not demanding much. I find myself

resenting God or sometimes other people when I am pushed out of my comfort

zone. I see many others in the Church who are [comfortable, too]. And I also

realized that none of us can make ourselves more passionate. So here is my prayer

(adapted from John Donne) for myself, and for the Church [and a prayer for us here,

as well]:

Batter our heart, three-personed God,

for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That we may rise, and stand,

o’rethrow us,

and bend your force to break, blow, burn, and make us new.

May this be so for outsiders and insiders alike, and for the whole of this creation

that God so loves. Amen.