Scripture:  Acts 10:34-43

It is well known and established that I am a huge Star Wars fan, so it sometimes comes as a surprise to some that I am also a fan of Star Trek.   They are very different takes on science fiction, and I clearly think there is room to really enjoy both.  However, I was not always a Star Trek fan.  What really pulled me into Star Trek was the reboot movie starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk that came out in 2009.  Initially I liked this movie because honestly it has a lot more in common with the action and high adventure of Star Wars than the cerebral, hard sci-fi of classic Star Trek.  However, watching that movie led me to wanting to see more Star Trek. Thanks to streaming service I could, and that is what I did. Series after series, movie after movie.  I expanded into reading Star Trek novels and playing Star Trek games.   Within three to four years, I went from not caring much about Star Trek to considering myself a  big and invested fan.  This probably would not have happened if it were not the 2009 movie.   

In 2015, a local movie theater was doing a screening of my favorite Star Trek movie: The Wrath of Kahn.   We attended one of the showings with a group of people, one of which was a big enough of a Trekkie that she had a star trek uniform.  Before the movie started I was talking with her, and we were interrupted by some guy behind us saying something to the effect of “why are you wearing that?”

It was said with a derogatory tone, full of vitriol.  Capturing our attention, we turned to him, and he immediately apologized.  He saw that she was wearing an original series uniform.  He had initially mistaken it for a uniform from that 2009 reboot movie, and he was concerned that she was not a “real fan” of “real Star Trek”.   I guess in this guy’s view anyone who liked the new Star Trek movies, the ones that pulled me into Stark Trek, did not count.  They were not real fans.  They did not belong.   He was apparently so concerned about this that before he realized he mistakenly misidentified the uniform he was going to call out a woman he had never met.  This guy was looking to be a gatekeeper.   Gate keeping is when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access to a community or identity based on their standards.  Unfortunately, gate keeping happens a lot.  For instance, if you are a diehard fan of a sports team then you have likely heard someone else complain about “bandwagon fans”. 

Unfortunately, gatekeeping has long been a problem in faith as well.   From close to the very beginning of Christianity have been people who have appointed themselves as gatekeepers who spend a lot of energy and effort to determine who is adhering to doctrinal purity and meeting their arbitrary standard.  It is somewhat odd that this has been a reoccurring problem in Christianity, because this is an issue that was hashed out at the very beginning of the Christian faith.   In the very beginning, there was a real question about who salvation was actually for.  For Peter, this question was definitively answered in this morning’s scripture.   There are no outsiders to God’s love, and sometimes for people to experience it we need to get out of the way. 

It may seem obvious to say that salvation through Christ is for everyone today, but that was not so clear in the first century.   The question, “who is grace for?  Is it for the Jews or for everyone?” is a question that is addressed in the gospels, in Acts, and in several of the epistles.  Again, the answer seems obvious to us today, but if we try to place ourselves in the context of the first Jesus followers, we can see how it becomes less clear quickly.  We need to remember that Jesus was a Jew.  The apostles were all Jews, and all the members of the early church that formed in Jerusalem were Jewish.  The God that Jesus called Father is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of the twelve tribes of Israel.   Especially when compared the religious attitudes and culture of the greater Greco-Roman culture, Christianity did have more in common and probably felt like an offshoot of Judaism. 

This becomes clearer when human tribalism comes into play, because the Jewish people of the first century made a clear distinction between Jews and Gentiles.  The key difference is that the Jews were God’s chosen people and the gentiles were not.  The Jews followed God’s law outlined in the Torah to maintain ritual cleanliness and the gentiles did not.  By the time of the first century this had developed that Jews were not to eat with or even associate with gentiles so that they did not become unclean by transference.  There was a strong “us and them” sense in first century Israel and it was strongly enforced by cultural forces.   All indications are that at least for the first several months, the early church- those who followed Jesus- followed these same cultural lines, and salvation through Christ was only presented by the disciples to fellow Jews.  

This all begins to change in Acts chapter 10.  This morning’s scripture comes from closer to the end of that story.  It began though with a gentile who honored God but had not converted to Judaism, reaching out to Peter.   To prepare Peter for this encounter God gave him a vision which communicated the greater truth of God’s grace for all.   Peter goes to Cornelius’ house.  His encounter there begins to change Peter’s heart and mind.   Peter expresses as much in this morning’s scripture.  In verse 34 when he begins to speak, he says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.”  

 Peter then goes on to give a recount of the basics of the gospel message that he himself was a witness to.  The message, the good news had not changed, what changed was Peter’s understanding of it.  He began to realize that the good news was not just for one people group.  It is in this scripture that he realizes that when Jesus said, “I will draw all people to myself”, that Jesus really meant all people-not just his people.  This morning’s scripture is when Peter realizes that he needs to get out of the way, open the gates, and not hinder people coming to Jesus.  While we stopped at verse 43, this culminates in verse 47 when Peter declares about Cornelius and the other gentiles, “surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water.”

In the narrative of the bible, this morning’s scripture is the turning point where the good news truly starts being proclaimed for all.  This morning’s scripture is only the first movement though.  Starting in chapter 11 the narrative of Acts begins to turn from the acts of Peter and the other original disciples to the acts of Paul as the apostle to the gentiles.   The book of Acts records how the good news of Jesus Christ was shared with Jerusalem, then all of Israel and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth.   This was the plan of Jesus laid out at the beginning of Acts, and that plan always included extending grace to all the peoples regardless of their ethnic or religious origins.  It is in this morning’s scripture that Peter begins to grasp that even the gentiles can be saved, this is where he realizes the fundamental truth that God does not show favoritism and there are no outsiders to God’s love.   

Even though Peter began to move in this direction the issue between Jews and Gentiles and salvation in Christ comes up again in Acts.  It is also an issue that Paul wrote about extensively in several of his letters.  While the issue does eventually get settled, it does not take long before for the followers of Jesus were once again asking who salvation is for. 
Looking back on our Christian history, we have done this in very formal ways.  Sometimes Christians have attempted to divide themselves into the right kind of believers and the wrong kind of believers, but most often we make walls between believers and non-believers.  Historically, these walls are not formal declarations, but they are beliefs that are held up by cultural norms.  We create expectations of how we think good Christians are supposed to act, but often these added expectations are based more in what makes us comfortable and less in grace. 

There can be an expectation that to follow Jesus someone has to dress a certain way, talk a certain way, vote a certain way, or hold a specific set of cultural values.  This is a form of gatekeeping; it is trying to define who salvation is for.  When this happens, then people who do not fit the mold, the people whose identity falls outside the lines are left to feel that church is not for them, Chistiantiy is not where they belong, or Jesus is not meant to be their savior.  Our preferences, our sensibilities, and our comfort can get in the way of people getting to Jesus.  Stories of church hurt, stories of people who have had communities of faith hurt them, by communicating they do not belong are far too common. That is not how it should be.  Friends, if our personal preferences, if our comfortability is getting in the way of people getting to Jesus, then we must get out of the way.    God does not show favoritism, and neither should we. 

Our baptism liturgy does a great job of reminding us of this. It always begins with “through the sacrament of baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy church.  We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit.  All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.”  As this morning’s scripture proclaims, “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Salvation and the forgiveness of sins is a free gift offered to all people.   To receive this gift does not require anyone to have it all figured out.  No one has to meet a certain threshold of good actions or specific behavior before God will accept them.  That is true for each and every one of us, and it is also true for everyone else out there as well.  We should not expect other people to have conform to a standard that we create to be accepted.  The good news that we believe, the good news that we are supposed to proclaim is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  There are no asterisks or exceptions to that good news.  God sent Jesus because God’s love was for everyone.  God does not show favoritism.  There are no outsiders to God’s love. 

In this morning’s scripture Peter first realized that God’s love was for the gentiles as well as the Jews.   Today, we need to more fully realize just what it means that God love everyone.  We all have our own personal preferences, we all have our own viewpoints of what we think is best, and we all have people that we tend to be more comfortable with.   While that is a true, may we not let our personal preferences hinder the gospel.  May we not stand between people and Jesus.  May we not gatekeep the good news.   May we realize that every person we will ever interact with is a person that God loves so much that God was willing to give God’s son for.  If God loves them that much, then perhaps we should as well.  May we open the gates of God’s love wide.  For the early church the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the non-Jews in this morning’s scripture was confirmation that there is grace enough for the Jews and the gentiles.   That is still true today.  There is grace enough for everyone, so may we boldly go and share the good news of Jesus Christ.   

Scripture:  John 1:1-18

One of the mainstays of fan conventions are celebrity meet and greets.   For a fee, fans can get a chance to be face to face with the actors who portrayed their favorite characters, get an autographed headshot, or even take a picture with them.   These meet and greets are incredibly popular, and they often sell out.   The more well known the actor the more they can charge.  For example, Mark Hamill, who is most well known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, charged $400 for an autograph at a FanExpo in the United Kingdom this summer.   While that is on the high end, there were still plenty of fans willing to pay it because Luke Skywalker is an iconic, childhood defining character for a whole lot of people. 

Given that people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to spend a few moments with Mark Hamill, a bit from the Jimmy Kimmel show that aired a couple of weeks ago was surprising.   In this segment Mark Hamill stood on his star along the Hollywood walk of fame.  He was dressed in plain clothes, including a T-shirt with his picture and name on it.  Despite that the segment shows not a single person recognizing him.   At one point a person dressed in a Star Wars costume is shown interacting with him but not recognizing who is in front of him.  One the one hand it is kind of surprising.  Given all the people who visit the Hollywood walk of fame it seems at least one person would have recognized one of the stars depicted on it.   However, on the one hand it makes sense, because no one was expecting to see Mark Hamill, and they never thought they would pass by him on the street.   It is a humorous segment, but it also sheds some light on this morning’s scripture. 
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Verse 11 of this morning’s scripture states that Jeus “came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”  This is a point that the gospel of John makes throughout.  The religious leaders, the ones who knew all of the messianic passages from the prophets, the ones who should have recognized the incarnation of God, largely missed it.   Just like fans missed Mark Hamill in the Jimmy Kimmel segment because how they encountered him on the sidewalk was the kind of encounter they were expecting.  

This morning’s scripture proclaims that Jesus is the light of the world and that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”    We celebrate that the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We celebrate that God is with us, but the reality is that many people on this world still miss it.  The light has come, but there are many who still only see darkness.  The light of the world has come, and we get to help people see it. 

Each of the gospel writers sought to tell the story of Jesus to a specific audience with a specific emphasis they wanted to communicate.  For instance, the gospel of Matthew puts more effort than the other gospels on establishing that Jesus is the Jewish messiah who fulfilled prophecies. The gospel of John puts more emphasis than the other gospels on the divine nature of Jesus.   The gospel of John seeks to establish that not only is Jesus the Messiah, not only is Jesus the son of God, but that Jesus is God incarnate.   This is why the gospel of John does not start with a birth narrative like Matthew and Luke.  Instead, it starts with “In the beginning” and it establishes that the word was with God and that the word was God.  The gospel of John makes it clear in this opening section that this Word that is the light of all humanity, and that the word became flesh in the person of Jesus.  

The incarnational nature of Jesus, that Jesus is fully God and fully man is a core belief of Christianity.  Yet it is one that has always courted controversy.   In the first couple hundred years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, there were several people who floated alternate ideas than the incarnation.  The hang up for these people was that if Jesus was truly God, and suffered on the cross, then that means God suffered on the cross.  The idea of a suffering God bothered the people of the ancient world.  While the church fathers eventually got this doctrine hashed out in the Nicaean Creed, the incarnation is still a belief that can trouble people today, and it is still a belief that some can have a hard time accepting. 

To help teach this concept there was a story written by Louis Cassels in 1959 and then featured by Paul Harvey in 1960.   This simple story entitled, the Parable of the Birds, does a great job at explaining why we need the incarnation.   Once upon a time there was a man who was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, and he dealt with others with integrity.  Despite being a man of morals, he was not religious.   For him, there was a major hang up he had.  He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

"I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, “But I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. So, he stayed while his family went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries get heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read the newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another — sort of a thump or a thud.

When he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the shed in the backyard.  It would provide warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat and trampled through the deepening snow to the shed He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in.

 He figured food would entice them. So, he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow. He made a trail to the brightly lit wide-open shed. To his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.

He tried catching them. He then tried shooing them into the shed by walking around them waving his arms. But they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted shed. And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To the birds, he reasoned, “I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…that I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how?
Any move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm shed. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear, and understand."

At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind. And he stood listening to the bells proclaiming the birth of a savior he sank to his knees in the snow. "Now I understand," he whispered, "now I see why you had to do it."

Like the birds, all of humanity is shivering in the cold.  Our sin has cut us off from the warmth, light, and love of God that we were created to experience.  Only God is big enough to save us from ourselves.  Yet we are not big enough to understand God, and only another person can lead us to the warmth, light, and love of God.  To be saved from our sin we need both God and human.  We need the Incarnation.  We need Jesus, the light of the world to show us the way.  
I realize that for many of you, perhaps most of you, on this day I might be preaching to the choir.   Verse 12 of this morning’s scripture states, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”  I realize that many of us here are those who have received him and believe in his name.   And yet, there are so many people who are still lost in the darkness.   There are so many people who do not see the light that we see.   Even though the light has come into the world, even though the world was made through him, there are still so many people that do not recognize him.  We cannot compel anyone to believe, but we can help them see the light that is already there.  

We can see a good example of this on most nights.  While it is possible, it takes a lot of cloud cover to hide a full moon.   There are times when the moon shines brightly enough to bring illumination to the darkness of night.   It does not matter how bright the moon looks in the night sky, it is still just a rock in space.   The moon is incapable of generating any light on its own.  The illuminated moon we see at night is only possible because the moon reflects the light of the sun.  Moonlight is reflected sunlight.  In the same way, our lives should reflect the light of the world.  As Christians we should reflect the light of our savior, of God’s only son, into the world.  In the depth of night, the moon acts as the intermediary that continues to reflect light into the dark world.  In the same way, we as Christians should reflect the light of God’s love into the world. 

We cannot save anyone.  It is Jesus who does that.  It is through Jesus that grace and truth come.  The light has already come, so we are not the light, but we can reflect the light.   There are so many people who are lost in darkness, there are so many people who are hurting and alone.  There are so many people who need Jesus.   If we truly want to see transformation in this world, if we honestly want to see souls saved, and disciples made.  Then we must go to the places where there is darkness still, we must go to where there is brokenness, we must go to where there are troubles, and then we reflect the light.   We follow the example of Jesus.  We love the hard to love, we serve others above ourselves, and we have compassion for those who often only experience judgement.   This morning’s scripture boldly proclaims, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”   If we want to see real transformation in this world, in this community, then we prove it by reflecting the light from the Son in the dark corners of our neighborhood.   We light it up, and in doing so our loving actions will show people Jesus.   

People often miss what is right in front of them, because they are not expecting to see it.  Perhaps one of the reasons why so many people have not yet found Jesus is because they are not expecting to find him.  They are so accustomed to the darkness, coldness, and lack of hope that is found in the world that they do not expect the hope of salvation, the warmth of God’s love and the light of Christ.   This morning’s scripture established a fundamental belief, that Jesus is fully God and fully man.   For those who do believe in his name, this morning’s scripture also contains a powerful promise: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  May we believe that is true, and may that belief fill us with an unbreakable hope.  May we take that belief beyond the walls of this building out into this community.   May we reflect the light of Jesus the son, the word of God was with God in the beginning, who through him all things have been made, and who is God- may we reflect his holy light into Rensselaer and light it up.