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ACTS 10:34-43

 Newness in Christ©

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.’

      We know the Easter story. We have heard it every Easter.  We’ve heard it in many sermons and in Sunday school, and we’ve read it in Bible many times.  We know the Easter story.

      We know first how terrible the disciples and Jesus’ followers felt in Jerusalem.  They had been through the happenings when their great friend and teacher had been grabbed and hauled into court.  We know how Jesus had been accused of various crimes and flogged and sentenced to die on a cross.  Some of the followers accused themselves of running away, deserting Jesus.  Others had stayed and watched at the foot of the cross as their tortured friend died.

      It was such a horrific time, and it was something they would never forget.  They would never be the same. How could they?  Their grief was so deep.  They found some comfort being together, but they all hurt deeply.

      And then!  That morning came—the morning of the first day of the week, the morning after the Sabbath when several of the women gathered some herbs to take to anoint the body.  They started off to the tomb, even before the sun was up.  They wondered as they made their way across the city, ‘Who can we get to roll away the stone that is covering the tomb?  The stone is too big for us to move on our own.’

      When they arrived in the garden, it was quiet, and the sun had dawned.  The day was fully there, and as they approached the tomb they saw that the stone was not blocking the tomb; it had been rolled away already!  The tomb was open!

      And Jesus’ body was not in the tomb!  They raced back to the Upper Room to tell the others. No one believed their story, but two of them, Peter and John, immediately took off running to see for themselves.  That footrace ended with John besting Peter; he was younger, after all.  But Peter pushed his way past John and went into the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid to rest. The body was not there, but the grave clothes were on the ground, and the cloth that had covered Jesus’ face had been rolled up and laid in a corner.  Jesus was not there!

      They ran back to tell the others.

      We have heard the story.   Later that day two of them took off down the road toward the village of Emmaus, and they met a stranger on the road who had not heard of the events of the past few days.  He did not seem to know of the terrible fate of their friend, but as they traveled together, the stranger opened the scriptures to them pointing to the many passages telling how the messiah must suffer.  They came to an inn along the away, and they asked the stranger to join them for a meal.  Bread was brought to the table, and the stranger picked it up, thanked God for the blessing, broke it, and handed it to them to eat.  In that moment they recognized him.  It was  as Jesus!  He was alive!  [And they asked themselves, ‘Were our hearts not burning within us when he was opening the scriptures to us on the road?]

      Back at the Upper Room, among Jesus’ followers, suddenly Jesus was standing among them!  What a moment!  Can you just imagine their disbelief and their joy all mixed together? Suddenly it was as if the clouds of pain and grief had parted and the sun was shining through!  Their pain had abated and in its stead came a flood of joy and gladness!  Suddenly they had no reason for the pain that had become their companion.  Suddenly everything was new and beautiful!  That was the Easter experience.

      But that was back then.  What about today?  What about the many days between then and now?  How is it that others have come to know Easter?  How is it that others have come to call Jesus their LORD and Savior?

      Our scripture today is not one I’ve ever thought of as an Easter reading, but it is.  And it speaks well about how the rest of the world can discover Jesus.

      The first Christians were Jews.  They had grown up in homes that taught them from the time they were tiny about God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth.  They knew that they were special in God’s eyes.  They were God’s children.  And as God’s children there was a Law that they had to obey.  The Law had many smaller laws that were complicated and demanding. They were not easy to follow, but that was their life—following those laws.

      Part of the Law they had to keep was about what was clean and what was not clean.  There were clean and unclean animals.  There were even clean and unclean people.

      The clean animals were good.  They were fine for eating and for bringing to the temple for sacrifices.  Unclean animals were not good for eating or even touching.  Of course, they could not be sacrificed in the Temple.  They had to be avoided.  If someone touched an unclean animal or any dead animal they were considered ritually unclean for a period of time.  That meant they could not break bread, could not eat, with their family for a fortnight.

      The same thing went for people who were not Jews.  They were Gentile dogs.  A Jew couldn’t associate with Gentiles.  They couldn’t break bread with them.  They couldn’t enter their homes. Gentiles were unclean.

      Today’s scripture in Acts, Chapter Ten, begins with a Roman soldier, a centurion, who was a God-fearer.  That means he believed in the God of the Jews, but he had not converted to Judaism  He was a man known for his good works, and he was well-loved by all in his community.  He prayed regularly to God, and one day God told him to send some men to a town called Joppa and find a man named Peter.  He was to bring Peter to his home and listen to his message.  Cornelius followed that command and sent three men.

      Over in Joppa Peter was visiting Simon the tanner.  He had gone up on the roof and was praying when he realized he was quite hungry.  Suddenly he had a vision of a large sheet dropping down out of heaven.  On it were many animals—four-footed creatures, lizards and birds---all of them unclean animals.  A voice came telling Peter to kill and eat.  But Peter assured the voice that he had never eaten an unclean animal. The voice told him that ‘what God has made good, he must no call unclean.’  This same thing happened three times, and then the sheet was taken up.

      While Peter was considering this surprising vision three men appeared in the yard below; they were asking directions to Simon’s house.  Peter told them they had arrived, and they wanted to know where Peter was. Peter came down to meet them, and he learned of their mission. They spent the night there.

      The next morning they started off to Caesarea to Cornelius’ home.  When they arrived Cornelius met them.  Peter discovered that Cornelius had invited many from the town to come hear what Peter had to say.  Peter was beginning to understand how all this was fitting together.  He realized that the message about the unclean animals also applied to people. What God has made good, he should not consider unclean.

      Peter spoke to Cornelius and the crowd. ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.’ (Acts 10:28)  And he went into the house and began telling all who had assembled about Jesus.

      He told them all about Jesus:  his ministry; his healing, and preaching; his many miracles, and his suffering and death.  Then he told them about Jesus’ resurrection.  He had seen Jesus alive!  So had many others—all those who would be witnesses for Jesus.

      As Peter was preaching and sharing the wonderful news of Jesus, suddenly the Holy Spirit fell upon the people, and they were filled with joy.  They began to speak in tongues, the same way those in the Upper Room had spoken in tongues the day of Pentecost.

      Peter had not even finished speaking when the Spirit came upon the people.  Peter recognized the work of the Spirit when he saw all the people who were obviously filled with great  joy.  He baptized them that very day.

      Did you see the Easter event?  Did you see what was happening to the people?

      Surely they had different experiences from the disciples. Surely they were not in the same emotional place that Jesus’ followers were right after Jesus’ death.  Surely there were not in terrible grief when they heard the message about Jesus’ resurrection.

      How could they have the same experience of joy and gladness that the first Christians had?  They didn’t have the pain and the grief to overcome, but they were touched even so.  Their ordinary lives had been changed by the message of the good news that God had done in Jesus raising him from the dead.

      Isn’t that true for each of us?  We didn’t have the same experience that the first Christians had.  How have we come to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior?  Is it the same Easter experience that they had?

      Cornelius and his friends were different from Peter and those other Jewish Christians, yet there was something that was the same.  Peter noticed it immediately, even as he was still speaking.  Even as he was telling them about how Jesus had risen from the dead something happened among the listeners that told him that they, too, were among those that God had touched with the Good News.

      The people’s hearts had been quickened by the Holy Spirit.  They had been touched by God’s love; they were thrilled about the news of God’s acting in this Jesus of Nazareth, and they believed in him.

      When these things began stirring in their hearts, when they were beginning to believe in Jesus, something new began to happen inside them.  They were changed.  They were beginning to be new creations that Paul tells us about.  ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.’  (2 Cor 5:17)

      That’s what Easter is.

      Yes, Cornelius and his friends were in a different place from where the disciples were on Easter Day.

      Not everyone come to faith in Christ with the same context or experiences.  Cornelius and his family and friends had an entirely different world from which they heard the good news of what God had done in Christ.  Yet they certainly came to faith in Christ, even so!

      And not everybody comes to faith suddenly, unexpectedly in an AHA! Moment.

      Some of us might be able to clearly state the moment when we found ourselves trusting Jesus for our lives and our salvation.  There are many who can say the day and the hour when things all came together for them.  And that is a great moment.

      But there are others of us for whom that coming to faith was much more gradual.

      Isn’t that the way it often happens for us?  That works for other important items in our lives, too.  I’ve heard you can equate falling in love with your spouse-to-be with coming to faith in Christ.  Some people see the one they will eventually marry for the first time, and they know unequivocally that this is the right person for them.  He is Mr. Right; or she is Miss Right.  One moment they had no idea who they might like to marry, and the next moment…they knew.

      But others didn’t know quite so quickly. For them the relationship grew gradually, until one day the realization came to them that they had found the person and it was someone they had known for some time.   The love felt by the two different ways of discovery is still the same. 

      In that same way for some of us we have come to faith in Christ more slowly, over time. We knew Jesus first, maybe, as a friend, a constant companion.  Later we learned of his sacrifice and the meaning of his sacrifice.  And later still, we may have realized that Jesus has called us, and that we now have a relationship with Him.  It is now the most important part of our lives.  It is what guides us through our days.  Jesus called us to follow him even when the going gets tough, and we find we wouldn’t do it any other way.

      I can actually point to a moment when I accepted Christ into my life.  It was a Thursday the week after Easter in 1975.  I had been reading a book about being Christian, and the last line in the book ended with a challenge:  ‘What are you waiting for?’  (meaning, ‘what are you waiting for to give your entire life to Christ?’

      I read those words as I closed the book, and the words haunted me.  Sure, I knew Jesus.  I had known that Jesus was my close friend all my life.  He was my companion wherever I went, but I hadn’t thought about giving him everything, until that book pointed it out to me.  So I did pray that day on my knees in the laundry room.  (I was snapping and folding diapers for the kids, so I was already on my knees.)  When I said the prayer giving all of me to God and asking Jesus to fill my heart with his love, I had a most remarkable experience.  The Holy Ghost filled me!  I stood up and I was in love with the world!  I was dancing around the house and the yard.  I really was full of the Spirit!  Then!  It was funny!  I began remembering things I had sort of held on to that I should have let go—stuff like grudges and stupid things that needed to be forgiven to others.  Those things flooded in on me the next three weeks, I think, but as I remembered whatever it was I asked the Lord to forgive me for the thing and I was filled again with His love. 

      We each have different ways of realizing Easter.

      I heard about a young man; I’ll call Jim. He thought he had it all.  He was a successful college student, a nice-looking man.  He was a good swimmer, maybe even an Olympic hopeful.  But he didn’t have Christ in his life.  He spurned faith in Christ, and maybe was a bit proud of not being a ‘Christian’.  He did, however, agree to join a couple of school friends at a Christian concert that week.  He heard the speaker bring the message of Jesus dying for his sins on the cross, and how Christ’s sacrifice provided him the invitation to heaven.  He didn’t accept Christ that night when the invitation was given to come forward.  He scoffed at it. 

      But somehow he couldn’t shake the message.  This man, Jesus, had hung on a cross, for him.  That’s what the speaker had said.  He had suffered a terrible death on a cross for the sin of the world.  He shook his head and couldn’t understand how that could be.  And, he remembered, Christians say that he rose from the dead.  He was alive; he was resurrected.  That means he could not die ever again. 

      Jim couldn’t shake that.  He was absorbed in that thought.  It was evening.  The moon was out.  It was actually a pretty, full moon. He decided to walk over to the gym where the pool was and take a swim.  It might take his mind off all those thoughts.  So he put on his swim suit, and went out to the pool.  It was dark in the pool room, but there was light coming through the wall of windows that covered the pool.

      Jim decided to jump off the high dive.  He climbed the stairs and walked out onto the diving board.  He took his place on the board, and turned around to prepare for his entry into the pool.  As he turned around and lifted his arms out for his dive, he saw his shadow playing on the wall.  What he saw gave him a great start!  Jim saw a man, his arms outstretched; naked, standing tall, as if on the cross.  Jim knew it was his own shadow, but he couldn’t shake the obvious similarity between his shadow and the figure of Christ, hanging on the cross. 

      Jim’s thoughts were racing, and he couldn’t think about his dive. Instead he was thinking about the man who he was looking at, hanging on the cross.  Something broke within Jim—his pride, his determination to do things his own way.  And he realized that what he had heard about this man Jesus meant something important to him.  He realized that he believed in Jesus, and he knew that Jesus had suffered on the cross for him, too. 

      Jim knelt down, right there on the diving board, and he gave his life to Christ.  ‘Take me Jesus as your child, as your disciple. Help me to be your follower. Thank you for your love and your sacrifice; thank you for forgiving my sin; thank you for giving me a new life.

      And the lights in the pool room snapped on!  The janitor had come into the room and snapped on the lights.  He looked up to the board and saw Jim.

      And Jim looked down ….and saw the pool…empty.  It had been drained earlier that day, and had no water in it.

Copyright © 2009 Marjorie Palmer. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written permission of the author.

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