© 2025 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon will be available here. Video can be seen here.
Back when Morgan County, Alabama, was still a dry county, people would drive just over the border into Madison County, where a liquor store had been opened by a savvy entrepreneur. Though I never witnessed it myself, I am told that Shine Peebles, a life-long Episcopalian and practical joker, would walk into the store and declare loudly enough for all the customers to hear, “Brother Billy,” invoking the name of a prominent nearby Baptist minister, “what are you doing in here?” Apparently it was enough to get most of the customers to duck out of the store, clearing the way for Shine to go to the front of the line.
The presumption, of course, is that Brother Billy would only have come to the liquor store to catch some of the members of his church red-handed. If he wanted to buy alcohol for himself, he would need to drive several counties over to avoid bumping into someone he knew. In more conservative Christian traditions, that’s all takes to get a minister fired from his position—the scandal of getting caught buying a bottle of booze. We might laugh with our superior sense of tolerance, but we have our own lines that we are unwilling for our religious leaders to cross. What if your bishop were caught coming out of a strip club? What if there was a photograph on social media of your rector at a MAGA rally?
There are people we don’t want to see our clergy hanging out with, and there are places we don’t want to see them go. Where do you draw those lines? In your mind, who are the people and where are the places that feel antithetical to who God is and what God wants in the world? What’s the group of people that, if you were to see me spending time and breaking bread with them, you would want to pick up the phone and call the bishop because you knew I couldn’t be an effective priest anymore?
In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is in that kind of trouble. Word has gotten back to the leaders in Jerusalem that Peter has been eating alongside Gentiles, and they are not happy about it. It’s hard for us to appreciate how controversial it was that Peter, a devout Jew and a leader among Jesus’ followers, would share a meal with the uncircumcised. Back then, Jews and Gentiles led wholly separate lives, not only because of the need for ritual purity but also because of years of oppression at the hands of their Gentile neighbors. Whether a follower of Jesus or not, Jewish people agreed that the one thing that most stood in the way of God’s vision for God’s people was the tyranny of their Gentile occupiers.
To enter a house and share a meal with non-Jews, as Peter was reported to have done, was presumed to be a violation of the Mosaic law and a betrayal of one’s identity. Zealots like Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as Paul the Apostle, were convinced that Jews who failed to keep the religious standards of their people were the reason that God had not yet come to dwell among God’s people. Breaking bread with the uncircumcised, in other words, was itself the reason that God’s promised salvation was not yet manifest on the earth. The Christian leaders in Jerusalem may not have been zealots like Saul, but they knew that no good could come of Peter’s fraternization with the Gentiles, and they hauled him in front of them to explain himself.
What I find most remarkable about Peter’s defense is how flimsy it is. All he did was explain to them what happened, step by step: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision.” Peter recalls for the leaders in Jerusalem everything that happened, but not once does he cite a verse from the Torah or the Prophets to justify his actions. Not once does he explain the theology behind God’s decision to include the Gentiles. His only defense is the experience itself, and experience is always the weakest warrant for any theological argument.
“There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners,” he told them. “As I looked closely, I saw four-footed animals, beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane has ever entered my mouth.’” Three times, Peter saw this same vision, and, each time, as he protested, the voice proclaimed, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And, as soon as the vision was gone, there was a knock at the door.
Servants of Cornelius the Centurion, a Roman officer who had experienced his own vision, had come to take Peter to meet their master. Led by the Holy Spirit, Peter went with them and entered the centurion’s house, where he told them about Jesus. As he was speaking to them, the Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles who were gathered there, and Peter, remembering what Jesus had taught them about being baptized with the Holy Spirit, declared, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” After they were baptized, Peter remained with them for several days.
Looking back from the perspective of an almost completely Gentile church, it’s easy for us to see that God was at work bringing even non-Jews into the community of faith. But it’s remarkable how personal, individual, and therefore unconvincing Peter’s argument is. Imagine a reporter sticking a microphone into the face of an embarrassed minister as he came out of a brothel and hearing the minister say, “I had a dream last night that God wanted me to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the people who work here, too.” Wouldn’t we expect a more convincing story than that before we agreed to fund that pastor’s new ministry among sex workers?
But the leaders in Jerusalem didn’t need one. Peter simply told them what had happened, without engaging in any argument or attempt at self-justification, and that was enough to win the hearts and minds of the church. By offering himself and nothing more, Peter enabled those in Jerusalem to see what God was doing and to put their hostility away.
When we become as vulnerable as Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to speak for us, God uses our vulnerability as a bridge that spans the hostility that divides us from others. Notice the reaction of the leaders in Jerusalem. Our translation tells us that “they were silenced,” but the word that is translated for us as “silenced” is a word that literally means “came to peace.” When they heard Peter’s story and witnessed his vulnerability, the people who were interrogating Peter came to peace. As other translations put it, they “stopped arguing” (CEV), or they “calmed down” (CEB).
The only way to dissolve the hostility that exists between us and the people whom we believe are standing in the way of God’s vision for the world is with the vulnerability and humility of Jesus. Peter didn’t convince his opponents of anything. He didn’t win the argument or wear them down. He adopted the posture of the cross, trusting that what Jesus had already accomplished would be enough. And the result was peace—the end of quarreling. That’s how the world becomes the place that God dreams it to be. Not when we win the theological battles but when we become like Jesus and trust that his self-sacrificial love is enough to unite us all.
That’s what Jesus did on the cross. His body became a bridge that spans the hostility that divides us from God and that divides us from one another. Jesus’ outstretched arms are offered not only in a gesture of embracing love but also as a means of connection between aggrieved parties. The principal accomplishment of the cross of Christ is the reunification of all people to God and to each other. That’s what forgiveness means. Peter knew that. He had experienced it for himself. So, when God showed up in a most unexpected way, he was ready to receive it, and he was ready to offer his own body as the bridge by which the barrier between Jew and Gentile could be abolished.
Because of Jesus Christ, you have been made one with God and with one another—and not just with the people you like or the people you manage to tolerate but even the people you cannot stand at all—the ones whom you think are the very embodiment of everything that stands in the way of God’s vision for the world. Jesus has made you one with them. Do you know how all the hostility and hatred between us and them goes away? When we become like Jesus—vulnerable and humble and willing to lose so that God’s love might win.