Sermons at St. Francis
Don't you just love conversion stories? Tiger Woods, Britney Spears. Courtney Love was on Letterman earlier this week and her entire time with Dave was taken up with her story of downward spiral, rehab and what it is taking to keep her clean and sober. Conversion stories shout at us from the tabloids as we are checking out at Safeway. Then we have "Celebrity Re-hab", where celebrities in recovery are filmed 24/7 and the producers edit the footage to give viewers the juiciest meltdowns.
We find it all so entertaining were it not for the eventual realization that these people are real human beings who have gotten their lives into a terrible mess and they have personal struggles of herculean proportions. We are reminded that you can be rich and miserable just as easily as you can be poor and miserable.
But nonetheless our attention is always drawn to conversion stories. And I understand why. I am always waiting for the happy ending. I am always waiting to see how people have turned their lives around. And that can indeed be inspirational.
Take twelve-step meetings. People get up and tell their stories of struggle, triumph, and oftentimes failure. But they keep coming back. And that is inspiration for others who are struggling in solidarity with them. One day at a time. Or take the stories of coming out, not only from LGBT people but from their families or people like me that gives new meaning to the hymn verse, "I was blind but now I see."
Our first lesson today from the Book of Acts is a conversion story. Although, contrary to the usual take on this narrative, this is not about the conversion of the Roman military man Cornelius, but about the conversion of one of Jesus' most passionate disciples, Peter. We hear almost nothing more about Cornelius in the Bible, but a whole lot more about Peter - about his travels, his dynamic preaching of the Gospel, about how he compromised himself. What happens to Peter in Acts 10 and 11, decides the whole future of the Christian Church. Luke devotes as much space to Peter's conversion as he does to Jesus' passion story. Peter, from childhood, as had his parents and as had generations of grandparents before him, had it drilled into his head that what defined you as a Jew was circumcision and not eating meat from an animal with cloven hoofs. Why? For what reason? There is no reason; it's in the Bible. But in this complete turnaround of everything that defined him as a Jew, Peter is told by God to sit at the table with these Gentiles and eat this unclean meat. God is saying to Peter, "Get Over It!"
And why did Luke, the Greek-speaking Jew and follower of Jesus put this story in his account of the history of the early church? It's pretty obvious. For the sake of the Gospel's outreach to the whole world, God calls the Jewish people in the church to accept what they thought of as impure. In simple words: TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS. If they couldn't accept eating this food themselves, they should at least give those who wanted to eat it the freedom to do so without judging them as sinners.
Now I am sure that there were plenty among Peter's friends and family who disagreed with his conversion that it was OK to eat meat that was unclean. I'm sure many said of the Gentiles who wanted to be in the church, "Don't misunderstand us, we love the sinner, we just hate the sin."
Hopefully, Peter said what many of us have said in response to that tiresome canard: "Nonsense. The sinner is his sin and in your eyes it is an abominable one. What you are saying is not from God, it is from you. And you are just plain wrong." Peter had been converted. But as Paul reports in his letter to the Galatians, Peter slipped. When Peter was in Galatia (in what is now modern day Turkey), chatting it up with Gentiles of every stripe, he ate with them, shared their food and regaled them with first hand stories about Jesus. But when some of his Jewish friends showed up from Jerusalem, he wouldn't sit with the Gentiles and wouldn't eat their food. His conversion suffered a relapse.
And those of us who have had the experience of being born again by believing in Jesus as our Savior know that doesn't make one perfect. Being baptized doesn't mean you are forever clean. The Christian traditions that emphasize the conversion experience, like the Baptists and the Pentecostals, will be the first to acknowledge that. But that is not to discount the validity of the born again experience for the people of those traditions. For them it is the opening chapter of their journey in the Christian faith. But not for me and not for many of you. The opening chapter in our journey is our baptism. A baptism that took place when we were infants. We didn't understand the Gospel, but we experienced it in Baptism. Just as we experienced the loving arms of the parents who held us, but didn't know them. That was my conversion experience into the Christian faith and it was built on from there. And for 75 years, it has held.
We also know that for every genuine conversion, there are a dozen bogus conversions. Some of the bogus conversions are simply misguided; others are destructive. For when we are frightened and feel cornered in our lives, we will foolishly choose destructive conversions. We recall Timothy Leary's conversion mantra: "Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out." Ah, yes, drugs, wonderful drugs: LSD, downers, uppers, gin, scotch and wash it all down with beer and wine. We sometimes turn to pills or alcohol to dull the pain of reality. But all we do is make ourselves sick. And reality still stares us in the face. Doesn't work. Destructive conversion. Or maybe we send out feelers to religious ideas that promise us deliverance, but in the end give us only a new form of fear and slavery. Religious cults. Misguided conversion.
The Hutarees, whose members were arrested in Michigan during Holy Week, present themselves as Christian warriors. Their mission, according to their website is "Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive." Their anti-government plan was to kill police officers, then attack the funeral procession and kill more people, thinking that this would start a war against the government of the United States. An appalling distortion of Christian beliefs, Christians cringe when they see quotes from Jesus used to support such paranoid anti-government violence. Just as Muslims cringe when they hear the rhetoric that calls for the destruction of the United States. And Christians should also cringe when they hear Christians quote the Bible and offer reparative therapy to "cure" people of homosexuality. All of this reminds us that there are limits to acceptance of religious diversity. Liberal Christians are reluctant to argue with people who identify themselves as Christian, simply because they say they are Christian. If you say you are a Christian, aren't you a Christian? Well no. Christianity is not infinitely elastic in doctrine and practice. After all, Jesus did say, "not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Once we have come to depend on drugs, alcohol or religious cults, we come to believe we need their power in order to survive. Those who get drawn in to bogus conversions be they misguided or destructive need to ask themselves: "Is this from God? Or is this from somewhere else?
Jesus reminds us that we should be careful about teachings and practices that parade themselves as Christian, but are anything but. On the positive side of that question, we need to pay attention to the clues that tell us God is always hanging around our lives, sometimes on the periphery, sometimes in our faces, sometimes in our dreams. And sometimes when we are reminded of our baptism, like this Eastertide when at the beginning of each service we feel the water on our face.
When we are frightened, we need to pay attention to God and Jesus' promises in today's Gospel, "I will be with you." The old joke about a tourist asking a native New Yorker, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall: PRACTICE!!," applies here. This is a time to practice the scales of faithfulness, so when God puts the music in front of us, we can play it.
These practice scales are prayer, church going, Bible reading and interaction with other Christians. We never know what the piece of music is going to be that is going to get to us and give us that moment of clarity. In the Church, we call that putting yourself in the position of being open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus says, "the Spirit is like the wind, we don't know where it comes from or where it is going."
And finally, let us take on the mantle of courage that the forgiveness of sins by the grace that is in Jesus Christ affords us. Because of Christ, we are freed from the accusations of our conscience and society. So we can be unafraid to look reality in the face, including our own death, and not shrink from it. Let us not go down the road of suffering in silence where we can moan, whimper and complain.
And that's another problem with conversion experiences. One big moment of seeing the light - whether conversion to belief in Jesus, realizing that Gentiles belong in the church, coming out or deciding to get sober - is not a single moment but a process. How many times have you heard that coming out is a process….staying sober is a process? Well, following Jesus is a process, it's not just a one-time conversion.
And that means we cannot allow ourselves to be suckered into easy answers to messy problems. As the great statesman, George F. Kennan said,
"There seems to be a curious American tendency to search, at all times, for a single external center of evil to which all our troubles can be attributed."
He reminds us again that a good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to our problems. Let's blame Goldman Sachs. Let's blame the Republicans. Let's blame Congress. Let's blame the Fed. Let's blame the Pope. Whether we are talking about our personal problems or global problems, how about spending our time and energy fixing the problem, rather than fixing blame?
How about fixing the problems with the institutional church of which we are a part rather than fixing blame? That's what our congregation sought to do 20 years ago; that's what Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries and Lutherans Concerned have done. We knew we were in it for the long haul. By looking reality in the face and with God's help, we got it fixed. And we never neglected to play the practice scales of prayer, church going, Bible reading and Christian community.
So continue to be inspired by conversion stories. Be thankful for the day you had your conversion, assuming it was not misguided or destructive. But remember, it is not the end game. Don't be surprised if, like Peter, your conversion doesn't hold. Hang in there with the tools that generations of Christians have used to get through their lives. And heed these words from Martin Luther:
"This life, therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on."
AMEN.