Easter 5C
Grace Cathedral Evensong
“Who was I that I could hinder God?” asked Peter of the observant Jewish believers in Jerusalem. It was a fair question, if rhetorical. Who are you that you could hinder God? Really, who are any of us that we can hinder God?
Peter and his listeners already well knew that trying to hinder God usually fails spectacularly. Consider Adam and Eve who abused the garden they had been given; Aaron who fashioned a lesser deity, Jonah who tried to flee God’s call. Even Peter himself, who denied Christ three times. The God of the Bible specializes in in transforming the recalcitrant, which was not news to the Jews in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, Peter felt the need to narrate his own conversion of heart: step by step, as the scripture says. His is a pivotal story in the early church’s mission to the gentiles, without which none of us would be here today. So it’s probably worth revisiting the details.
Recall that Peter had seen a vision of inclusivity—in the form of a sheet full of foodstuff—which convinced him that God’s generous gifts should not be cause for division. He followed the guidance of the Spirit, who assured him that there was to be no distinction between Jew and Gentile. He received confirmation of the message in the form of people’s praise: not of him, but of the God who welcomes everyone’s voice.
While I don’t believe any of us can really hinder God—at least not for long—I do think it’s still worth asking ourselves if and how we actually collaborate with God. Do you know who among your community are seeing visions of inclusivity, even now? Who is following the leading of the Spirit to the houses of those outside the fold of the familiarly faithful? Where is God being praised in the usually unheard voices?
Since I’m here at Grace Cathedral, I find myself thinking of your ministry in the Bayview Mission. You quite literally answered a call to go to a home outside of your neighborhood, showing up with compassion and solidarity for families in need. In my own community at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, we had a vision for a more radically hospitable church, and so for the past two years have been inviting refugees from around the world into our Sunday school classrooms to learn English. And St. Paul’s, the Choir School has welcome hundreds of children—many of them with no church background at all—into the musical traditions of the church. In many cases, their families followed.
This afternoon finds us assembled here, most of us in a church home not our own. It seems that someone—maybe Canon Bachman?—had the vision to send to Portland and call Canon Neswick, and send to Burlingame and Dr. Matthews. Three choirs, your voices bring good news and the praise to this and all the places you are sent! And I know it is the work of the Holy Spirit, because her trademark move is to move people outward from their known and familiar places, to push us past hindrances, and to make ‘us and them’ into ‘us’. Just as you three have become one for this choir festival. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of the sacred task of music—
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
