Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 5, 2024

Out of Order

Joseph L. Morrow
Associate Pastor

Psalm 98
Acts 10:34–48

Adrian Maher was a one-time journalist in Los Angeles before he became what is known as a professional party crasher. In a book describing his adventures as an uninvited guest of Hollywood celebrities and film industry elites, he shared one of his favorite ruses. He would walk around the entrance checkpoint of a party with a Champagne glass from his car. Then turning to the guards, he’d say something like, “Oh, I’m not supposed to drink this out here, am I?” To which they accommodatingly replied, “No, you’ve got to come inside” (John M. Gliomma, “He Crashed Oscar Parties and Stole Paul McCartney’s Seat. But He’s Leaving the Scene,” Los Angeles Times, 4 February 2020). Maher was happy to oblige. I think there’s a part of each of us who, though we might feel out of place or uninvited, long to hear the words “come on inside.” The desire to be with the in crowd, to belong, is at the heart of our reading from Acts 10, as Peter asks the weighty dramatic question “Can anyone withhold the waters for baptizing?” Baptism is, in a sense, an invitation to a party, but as with most aspects of the Christian tradition, we have wildly different views on why we are at the party. 

One thing we do agree on is that baptism is a beginning —well, sort of. Specifically, it is for many throughout the Christian world the beginning of their formal acceptance into the community of the church. It also marks the church’s recognition of God beginning the work of salvation in us. Baptism can initiate a process of discipleship through which we journey from death to life, from hunger to abundance, from destruction to salvation. 

But that’s perhaps where the agreement ends, because for centuries Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians have been debating exactly where baptism fits in within the sequence of the Christian life. How much do you need to know in order to be considered a Christian? How do you embody your devotion to Jesus? Does baptism itself save you or is it a promise to do so? These are the kinds of questions Peter wants to address in Acts, because if you invite newcomers to a party, then you want to tell them what to bring and what to keep at home. You want to know who to keep off the invite list because they’ll cause a ruckus and whose presence will contribute to the conviviality of the occasion.

Peter arrived at these very prescient questions because he followed the movement of the Holy Spirit, which called him to Jaffa, where he met Dorcas and then Cornelius, a Roman soldier, and a lot of non-Jews or Gentiles of various stripes. These non-Jews were often curious about the message of Jesus, and Peter gets pulled into meal-sharing with them. The food on these tables goes against received tradition and law, but Peter falls asleep and has a dream that encourages him to partake. So he does. And the church changes forever. Yet Peter’s underlying fear is that it’s all happening too quickly. The Gentiles were crashing the party with the prospect of baptism, and it could endanger or derail the cause of Christ.

Peter’s fear isn’t unfounded. In the fifth chapter of Acts we read about an encounter that Peter has with two followers in the church: Ananias and Sapphira (and if any of you are aware of this story, then you might never ask again whether tithing involves gross or net income). Ananias sells property, the proceeds for which he intends to give to the church, but he holds back some of the money for himself. He gets confronted by Peter, who tells him in strong, clear tones:

“Ananias, … why have you lied to the Holy Spirit and kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.” (Acts 5:3–4)

Ananias drops dead in that moment. It’s an awful tragedy, which you could imagine Peter playing back in his head: maybe we took them in before they were ready. Baptism indicates a serious commitment to change one’s ways. And Ananias, it seems, was not prepared to do so. While he was likely baptized, his financial planning was not. Or put differently, he attempted to make his old ways of handling his money approved, blessed, and baptized by the church. But he could not take his old ways with him through the waters of baptism. He had to let them go. His refusal to do so cost him his life.

We too can risk carrying along destructive and death-dealing ways into our journey toward renewal and new life, baptizing the things, ideas, habits, ways of seeing the world that are not necessarily the things of Christ, rather than putting them to the test of Christian discipleship.

Peter wasn’t alone in his concern. The church of the third and fourth century — the one that endured periodic and severe persecutions before Christianity finally became the official religion of Rome — was extremely worried about imposters and the untested becoming Christians through baptism. So much so that, according to most accounts, the process leading up to baptism was long and thorough — more like graduating from college or basic training in the military than joining a church. In his book The Patient Ferment of the Church, Alan Kreider speaks of a three-part process leading to Baptism (Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, 2016). There is Evangelism, which involves finding a sponsor, and the Catechumenate, during which one hears scripture and studies doctrine until character is formed. Only then is one allowed to hear the gospel in the context of a worship gathering. And then there were exorcisms, where the evils of your old way of life were expelled in order to make room for what baptism would give you. 

I wonder what these early Christians — in particular, what Peter — would think of us in the Reformed tradition of Protestants. Here in this Presbyterian congregation, on the second Sundays of the month, you’ll typically find us, more times than not, dripping the baptismal waters over the foreheads of little ones who can neither add nor subtract or put two sentences together. We baptize those who are wholly unready for the rigors of the Christian life. And yet for us it is not a sign of their regenerated and fully redeemed souls but a sign that they have been loved into a journey toward wholeness, healing, and love. Baptism is a lifelong commitment to the stress test of letting gospel values live in a world that often stands in contrast and contradiction to those same values.

I say all this, though, thinking that there is something else that bothered Peter — and perhaps something that bothers us — even though our requirements for baptism appear less stringent. You see, Peter’s encounter with the Gentiles is this same song and dance, if you will, found earlier in the Book of Acts. After he heals a paralyzed man at the temple, he preaches to the public and the leaders of the Sanhedrin. Despite arguments from the leaders and a stern warning to stop preaching, Acts tells us, many people believed Peter and about 5000 joined their number. So Peter preaches to a Gentile crowd and gets similar results. Couldn’t ask for anything more? Wrong. Because in Peter’s eyes it doesn’t feel right. These are Gentiles, outsiders to a gospel whose ways are so far apart from the Jewish story that inviting them into the party would inevitably break rules or force the early church to change them. But whether we want to wait or not, sometimes the Holy Spirit has other plans. 

I want to tell you about Ai Chi Tsai, who was often forced into the outsiders view in during his life. Born and raised Taiwanese when his country was occupied by Japan, he eventually traveled to Japan, where he studied religion. It was a back-up plan, he noted years later, because his family was already too full of doctors. With a Japanese passport, he then secured passage to the University of Chicago, where he obtained a master’s in theology and met a group of Japanese Christians who would make his path cross with Fourth Church. Now Tsai wasn’t Japanese, but he was beloved of a local gathering of Japanese Christians who met on Oak Street. Perhaps they had an affinity, in that they were all outsiders in the US of that time. He cast his lot with this faithful but persecuted community. Eventually he married Ryo Marikawa rather than the marriage arranged for him in Taiwan. This congregation, Church of Christ, asked this outsider just out of seminary to pastor them. However, all this happened in the midst of World War II, and forbidden to gather, they needed a place to worship. 

In stepped Fourth Presbyterian Church. The story is often told in this congregation, but our pastor at the time, the Reverend Harrison Ray Anderson, pressed the congregation to offer the Church of Christ worship and community space. Despite much social pressure to do otherwise, Fourth Church’s Session affirmed their welcome. And Reverend Ai Chi Tsai was ordained in this building on November 8, 1942 (Ai Chih and Ryo (Morikawa) Tsai Family Collection, Densho Digital Repository, ddr.densho.org). I like to think that Fourth Church also experienced a conversion that day, listening to the Spirit by ignoring noise of the internment camps, the enemy alien status, and bigotry and seeing through the Holy Spirit a community that demonstrated deep devotion and whose Japanese tongue proclaimed the goodness of God in adverse times. 

But it’s a constant struggle to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit in letting down our guard and inviting others into the fullness of Christian community — into the mysteries and responsibilities of baptism. Harrison Ray Anderson would struggle with that as the civil rights era came to fruition, but for Ai Chi Tsai he would not withhold the waters of baptism, ordination, and fellowship. 

By our own measure, sometimes we baptize too early or we wait too long. Sometime in your own life you are going to withhold fellowship or extend fellowship too quickly. But if we listen to the Spirit, baptism and welcome will come right on time. And we’ll all find ourselves in God’s party — where the table of justice, peace, grace, and joy are open to us all. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church