Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

Throughout his adult life, and more so in his death on the day after he sat at a table with his closest friends, Jesus made visible the presence of God. This is what Jesus means when he said (in third person) that he has been glorified and God has been glorified in him (John 13:31). As Christians, even as Christians, this is not something which we can do; only Jesus can glorify God and be glorified by God in this way; but we can bring glory to God, and God can glory in us and glorify Christ through us in a different way; the way of love for one another (John 13:35).

This little speech from Jesus immediately follows Judas’ departure from the table, and immediately precedes Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial in response to Peter’s bold claim of undying (and death-defying) loyalty. Betrayed by everyone around him in the moment Jesus’ teaching is not about faithfulness as loyalty but worship as mutual love.

On the cross Jesus revealed the fullness of God. In his crucifixion, in the six hours that Jesus lived upon a Roman cross at the instigation of the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus inhabited the greatest act of God’s self-disclosure that has ever been seen.  Having loved his own who were in the world he loved them to the end is what we read of Jesus in John 13:1b. This is not just the end in terms of Jesus’ death (his end); but also the end in the sense of the extreme or the completion. Jesus loved his own until it was finished, until it was full, until it was done; until the uttermost of doing and there was nothing left to do, or be, or show. So when we jump back fifteen hours or so and find Jesus at the table with his eleven mates, and we hear him say you also should love one another it hits hard. Do unto others and I have just done unto you. Do you think you’ve seen love in action? You think you know greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life and what that means; well, “hold my chalice”.

The death of Jesus was a tragedy, a horrible error on the part of the leaders of the world at that time. A cowardly provincial governor, a corrupted national priesthood, an irreverent puppet king, a mislead holy people; a murdered saviour. When the whole of society lost the plot so hard that it went beyond pear shaped, (it dumped everything like a bucket of dysentery and went limp), God responded with more love and deeper love and stronger love. When the world went low, God went high by going below and lifting up from beneath. The world put Jesus in a grave; God went lower and raised him from the dead and brought all of Sheol back with him for good measure. One man was killed and billions of women and men were saved, saved by love, and “…on that cross as Jesus died the love of God was satisfied”, and so it was. Since love had done all that love could do, as love had allowed itself to be murdered rather than fight back against the unwitting, so love’s redeeming work was done; finished, completed, satisfied.

That is the story we are called to proclaim, and that is the love we are called to display. One is utter foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews, (and the biggest ever case of “yeah-nah” to the Strayans); the other is an utter impossibility. This is why we, like Peter in Joppa and then on his way back to Jerusalem to tell his “nah-yeah, actually” story of the doings of God in the house of Cornelius, need the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit leads Peter to love Cornelius and all in his household; however this love is not about affection or emotion or fuzzy “love you mate” beery hugs, but about obedience and respect. The love of God that satisfies is the love that includes, the love that recognises the outcast as entirely the one whom God has included and welcomed home, and so should we. I mean, just look at the story from Acts 11. When the Christians leaders in Jerusalem ask Peter why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them (Acts 11:3), he replies a voice answered from heaven ‘What God has made clean you must not call profane’ (Acts 11:9), and as I began to speak the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning….and I remembered the word of the Lord (Acts 11:15-16). When those Christian leaders heard this testimony they were silenced, [a]nd they praised God. (Acts 11:18). Perhaps for the first time the apostles, the eleven plus Mattathias (and minus Judas Iscariot), realised that Holy Spirit does what God wants in God’s ways through God’s means and that the Church does not control the activity of the Lord. The Church, even the apostles themselves, is the central means by which God works in the world, but God will work around us if God cannot work through us, and God will work in front of us and without us where God wants to show us something new. Holy Spirit is allowed to act independently of the Jerusalem group Peter, James, gentlemen; Holy Spirit is your Lord God and not your personal possession or private tap-in generator. I don’t need to tell you that, because we can read it here in scripture, but when God did a new thing in Joppa God took the time to show the Christians what had happened and that it was God’s work in God’s choice because they had never seen it before.

We see the final expression of this in Revelation 21:1-6 on the last page of the Bible. (Okay, so that is dependent upon how small your font is and how many study notes you have, it’s third-last page for me.) Jesus who loved the world to the end, and whose Holy Spirit loved the Gentiles and filled them just Spirit had upon the Church at Pentecost, beyond the end of days and in the fresh day of the Omega with the Alpha, the Zed with the A, the “Amen” with the “In the beginning”, Jesus will have all Creation united in place. Jews, Greeks, Romans, Strayans, rocks, sheep, lions, and whomever else is there, will be in the new Jerusalem and forever The Father will be with them and be their God (Revelation 21:3 alt.) I will be there, Peter and Cornelius will be there, James and the men of Jerusalem, and Mary and the women, and all of Christianity for all of days, and the faithful of Israel will be there, and God will not have turned anyone away because of race, or gender, or diet, or ordination, or anything else that once would have excluded someone from the temple. Everyone gets in, everyone is welcome and will be welcomed; that’s what the love of God did at the cross, at the centurion’s house, and in the New Jerusalem. The fulfilment of God’s promise is a welcome established in love and dripping with delight in welcome.

With all of this assured by The Word Incarnate, (it is the teaching of Jesus himself), recorded in The Word revealed in scripture, and hopefully conveyed accurately with the Word revealed in preaching, we can see what is going on in Psalm 148. Praise God everybody and everything! Sun, woman, light, comet, angel, tree, wallaby, rain cloud, let them praise The LORD for he commanded and they were created (Psalm 148:5). More stuff, monarchs, monsters, mountains, maidens, monsoons, mandarins, mosquitos, mallee bulls and milk herds let them praise the name of The LORD for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and Heaven (Psalm 148:13). Love has won, sin has been conquered, hatred and indiscretion and misunderstanding and racism and misogyny and anti-Semitism and xenophobia and confusion have all been overcome in the death and resurrection of the Son, The LORD, the One who is Love. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 148:1a, 14c)

This is the framework for all that we are as Church, it is the source and the meaning of our identity. We are the sign of God’s boundless love to the created Earth and the inhabitants of our nation(s). We are also the recipients of that same love, for which we cry out our praise and gratitude, our admiration and our exaltation.

For the Word of The LORD who tabernacled amongst us, who died at our hands, was raised for our salvation, and lives in us for his glory: thanks be to God.

Amen.