The relationship between worship and belief has been summed up in the well-known Latin maxim lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of what is prayed is the law of what is believed. Belief follows practice. Belief, indeed, emerges from prayer and worship. The primary material of the creeds, of Scripture, and of any belief system is human experience and encounter with the Divine. Any system of theology is always a reflection on what God is already doing in the world. To put it another way, God is always on the scene first.
But for all our good intentions, we Christians usually think we are on the scene first. Humans are used to being in charge, and we too often believe that everything starts with us. We put ourselves in the position of the primary actor, usurping the place that belongs rightly to God. Without even realizing it, many Christians tell others to believe or to behave like them before worshipping with them. Our belief is the right belief, so if you don’t think like us, you are not one of us.
This way of thinking is not just limited to the Church. The history of colonialism has been driven by nations assuming that they should impose their way of being on other cultures, usually deemed inferior. One culture’s way of living is better than another’s, and so whoever wields the most power can make the rules.
When this mentality has infiltrated Christianity, it has led to much harm. It has fostered an underlying assumption that it’s the task of Christians to bring God to places where God has never been. The effort, it would seem, all lies in the hands of humans. God has been sidelined to the role of spectator, and we have asked God to cooperate with us. At our most arrogant, we have invited God to accompany us to places where we think God needs to go.
If any book in the Bible smashes this way of thinking to smithereens, it’s the Acts of the Apostles. Consistently throughout this action-filled book, there is one primary actor, and it is God. God sends the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the source and catalyst for what God is doing in the world. The Holy Spirit alights on people and empowers them to proclaim the Gospel. The Holy Spirit causes people to speak in tongues. The Holy Spirit inspires people to do lots of strange things so that others think they are either drunk or out of their minds. One thing is always true: humans are the secondary source to God’s primary source. God acts, and people respond. But when we think that we were on the scene first, God’s actions seem very strange indeed.
This is exactly what is happening when we pick up the story today in the Acts of the Apostles. There is no small degree of consternation among the early followers of Jesus about what has been occurring in recent days. Not only have the Gentiles accepted the Gospel, but no less a person than Peter has violated his usual practice by sharing table fellowship with Gentiles, disregarding certain prohibited foods. Peter himself is perceived to have betrayed his identity as a Jewish Christian by eating with Gentiles. And beyond all this, it seems incomprehensible that the Gospel news could be shared by both Jews and Gentiles. The converting message of repentance and new life in Christ is now available to all, with no distinctions.
It’s hard for us to imagine just how shocking this would have been. It’s just as shocking for us when the Church discerns that she is being summoned to follow a new course of action, especially one that has never been done before. It’s shocking for us to imagine that our belief system might not always have existed in its current form. Isn’t it shocking to realize that maybe we don’t have everything figured out? It was shocking for Peter’s companions to comprehend a shared fellowship with Gentiles who had very little in common with them, and it would have been shocking for Gentiles to conceive of sharing the same Gospel message with Jews. It’s all so very shocking, and yet it's only shocking if we forget that we constantly need to catch up to what God is already doing.
And without this realization, nothing makes sense. Peter has a vision in which he is told to disregard food purity norms. Peter is told by the Spirit to go to Cornelius and his Gentile companions and not to make a distinction between them and him. Peter is told to proclaim the Gospel to them. And then Peter sees the Gentile believers manifesting signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence when they speak in tongues. Peter is undoubtedly flabbergasted until he has a stark realization. He remembers the word of the Lord. John may have baptized with water, but you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit. Humans will move from the place of actor to passive recipient of God’s gift. The correct order will be restored, and God will be the one acting first.
But if we are used to making distinctions between them and us, then any attempt to ignore such distinctions seems dangerous. In its most evil form, it results in racially or ethnically motivated violence, as we’ve just tragically witnessed in yesterday’s shooting in Buffalo. Fear breeds suspicion in the Church, too. If the Church does something she has never done before, it often creates discord and is treated as a passing whim. Isn’t this the root of so much current Church conflict? If we admit that perhaps we have not always had all the answers, it’s an admission of failure. And if something seems alarming to us, then it can’t be of God.
Unless, of course, God has been on the scene long before we ever were. If that is so, then it’s our responsibility to figure out what God has been doing all along. But such a quest to find God in unexpected places can only begin with our own humble confession. Recall Peter’s own confession in the Acts of the Apostles: who was I that I could hinder God? It’s only through Peter’s own experiences with the power of the Spirit and those unlike him that he comes to see what God has been doing all along. Because Peter thought he was on the scene first, he tried to put up roadblock after roadblock to the Spirit’s initiatives. But when he realized that God had been there before him, and that God had always been on the scene, everything changed. And it changed for his companions, too. Their assumptions and expectations were disturbed by God, and they were reduced to silence.
The experience of Peter and the early Church is also a challenge to the contemporary Church. Even though we are preceded by a long history of God breaking in to reestablish himself as the primary actor, we usually forget it. Even though we know intellectually that God has always been on the scene of creation, we forget it. Every possible change is a threat to our way of being. Difference is seen as a threat to conformity. Innovation is viewed as the murderer of tradition. The new is a shallow bulldozing of the old. Unless it’s really true that God has been on the scene before us. Because then, it may not even be that God is doing something new. It only seems new because our vision is catching up to the vision that God has been paving for ages and ages.
And the real challenge is this: how do we know what is of God and what isn’t? How do we recognize a change as true and lasting as opposed to ephemeral and cheap? How do we hold to tradition while being open to the uncontrollable impetus of the Spirit? Once again, the Acts of the Apostles helps us out.
Amid all the surprising things that the Spirit was doing with Peter and Cornelius and the earliest Christian believers, if you read carefully, there is one constant. Going down to the root of it all, there was a primary foundation that supported a future of newness. There is always a primary source to our secondary source. Peter’s vision was not a random dream. Peter’s vision came about as the result of prayer. Cornelius didn’t hallucinate that an angel visited him. An angel came to him in prayer. The Gentiles didn’t fake speaking in tongues. They spoke in tongues as a response to the prayerful proclamation of the Gospel.
It is the presence and power of prayer that testifies to what we so often miss. Prayer reveals to us how God has been on the scene doing things long before we ever get there. God has always been on the scene, and it is we who respond to what God has already been doing. And if we keep this at the forefront of our minds, then maybe we will be a bit less surprised by God. It should indeed be no surprise at all that when we catch up to God, we find he has been on the scene long before we ever knew it. And this is the sublime gift that is available to all, with no distinctions.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 15, 2022