In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Ah the church!  It’s somethin’ else, isn’t it?  I’m not talking about Grace Church . . . at least not yet . . . I’m talking about the Church with a capital “c” . . . the Christian Church . . . the Episcopal Church.  It’s somethin’ else, isn’t it?

You may have noticed that in the readings chosen for the Easter season, there’s a great emphasis on the Book of Acts.  There’s a good reason for this.  Following the Resurrection of Christ, something amazing began to happen:  those rag-tag followers of Jesus came together – filled with the Holy Spirit – and the thing . . . the association . . . the organization that we now call the Church was born and began to grow.  The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is the story of that birth and subsequent growth.  That’s why the Sunday readings in the Easter season emphasize this particular book:  we need to remember where we came from . . . how we came to be sitting here today.

The community that’s described coming into being is amazing . . . the power of the Resurrection to transform people’s lives is astounding . . . and today’s story is an especially good example of that.  In ancient Israel there were few boundaries stronger than those between the Jews and the Gentiles.  Israel survived as a people for hundreds – for THOUSANDS of years – by drawing strict distinctions between themselves and the other peoples – the Gentiles – who surrounded them.  These distinctions were enforced by a great many commandments about ritual and behavior . . . laws that especially focused on dietary practices:  Jews and Gentiles could not share a table.  A significant portion of the most important Jewish Scriptures is concerned with these rules and commandments.

And remember, Jesus and his followers were good, observant Jews.

Yet, today we hear a story of Peter – first among the disciples – sharing a table, sharing food, with Gentiles.  I’m not certain I can relay to you how shocking this would be to Jesus’ followers.  Perhaps if you imagine Katherine Jefferts Schori and Rowan Williams having a lovely dinner with Osama bin Laden, AND welcoming him into the church, then you can picture how shocking Peter’s action was.  (If you’ve laughed, it’s because you think my example is absurd . . . but think about how you’d feel if this REALLY happened, think about how unbelievably shocking you’d find this . . . and you’ll begin to understand how Peter’s friends reacted to his actions.)

So, naturally, when Peter returns to Jerusalem, the church calls a meeting and demands that Peter explain himself.  He does so by telling them about his vision of the sheet and the animals . . . he tells them about hearing a voice from heaven saying, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  It seems that God is demanding that customary distinctions not be kept.  Peter tells how the Holy Spirit fell on a group of Gentiles, just as it fell on the disciples in Jerusalem.  And so how could Peter try to hinder the work of God and bar these Gentiles from the church?  God is commanding a radical inclusivity.

The real miracle of this story may not be Peter’s extraordinary vision of God’s inclusive love and Peter’s change of heart.  Nor may it even be the action of the Holy Spirit.  The real miracle of this story may be what occurs in verse 18, the last verse we head this morning.  After Peter explains what has happened to his friends they are silenced.  Now we all know that this kind of silence – a silence that comes when we have no more to say about a particular subject – can hold all sorts of meaning, including disagreement and anger.  But in verse 18 we hear that Peter’s friends, after absorbing all he’s said in silence, “praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’”

The real miracle of this story is not Peter’s change of heart, nor the action of the Holy Spirit to include the Gentiles in the church.  The real miracle is the early church’s acceptance of God’s radical inclusivity . . . the early church’s ability to drop their understanding of how the world works, to drop their pre-conceived notions, to drop their prejudices and accept even their enemies into the church.  Ah, the church . . . it’s really somethin’ else, isn’t it?

Of course, the problem is that today so many people’s experience of the church is so radically different from what is described in the Book of Acts.  And I’ve been wondering about this.

If you read the descriptions of the early church closely, you may find yourself asking, “Really?  Was it really so perfect?  Was it really so miraculous?”  On the one hand, I find myself answering such questions with, “Well, yes . . . I expect that it was pretty miraculous, pretty perfect . . . how else could the Christian movement have spread so rapidly throughout the ancient world?”  And then I find myself arguing with myself, saying, “But, come on, what about what we hear from the apostle Paul?  The early Christian communities that he describes were always squabbling, misunderstanding, getting it wrong . . . of course they weren’t perfect, just as none of us humans is perfect.”  So what’s goin’ on?

Well, I wonder if it has to do with point-of-view . . . with the way the subject is being looked at.  I don’t believe for a second that we’re being told untruths in the Book of Acts . . . but I do suspect that we’re being told the story through the eyes of faith.  We all know that people can describe the same event quite differently . . . family holiday stories are often quite different depending upon who is doing the telling.  I will describe someone I can’t stand one way, while that person’s best friend will describe him or her quite differently.  The spread of Christianity in its early days was, in fact, miraculous, yet it was also messy and dirty and filled with arguments and fights.  How the story is told depends on who’s doing the telling and their point-of-view . . . and the author of the Book of Acts was clearly filled with faith.

So . . . all this said, how do YOU look on the church?  It’s easy to see the flaws, isn’t it?  I can’t open a newspaper these days without finding yet another story about the sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church.  Fortunately, the squabbles in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church about women and gay people are fairly quiet for the moment . . . but I imagine that they’re quiet ONLY for the moment.  Here at Grace Church, things are pretty good . . . there are no serious disagreements or fights, at least that I’m aware of.  We’re getting along pretty well . . . of course, it WOULD be nice if there were a few more voices joining us to praise God . . . a few more hands to help with the work would be welcome . . . and, of course, certain concerns would be eased if only we could win the lottery!  It’s all too easy to see the problems – both small and big – in the church.

But what if we tried looking with the eyes of faith?  As horrific as the sex abuse has been, and as dreadful as the institution’s handling of this sin has been, it seems to me that the Holy Spirit is blowing through the Roman Catholic Church right now, offering the opportunity for repentance and renewal.  I’m also certain that the Holy Spirit is at work in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church.  And I KNOW that the Spirit is at work here at Grace!  How else can I explain my experience here that the right person always seems to show up unexpectedly at exactly the right time?

Another way of talking about this is to use a fancy Latin term, sub specie aeturnatus, which can be translated as “under the view of God.”  I think the author of the Book of Acts saw the Church this way, with the eyes of God.  How else could he look at what sounds to me like a messy, volatile vestry meeting – Peter’s friends confronting him about his work with the Gentiles – and see the transformation of the church into the radically inclusive community it’s called by God to be?

Perhaps we should try to look at our own parish and the wider church this way more frequently.  Seeing with the eyes of faith does not mean putting on rose colored glasses, or purposefully ignoring problems and challenges, but it DOES mean trying to look through God’s eyes.  Perhaps then, we too, will see the Kingdom of God breaking into this world through the results of a vestry meeting.  Perhaps then, we too, will see Parkville as being filled with our brothers and sisters.  Perhaps then, we too, will see Christ in every person walking through the church door.  And perhaps WE will come to be seen as the church without prejudices, without barriers, without walls . . . the church with the doors wide open to all.

Ah the church, it’s somethin’ else, isn’t it?

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