How many of you sitting in this church this morning were born Jewish? This has been a big argument in the Jewish community, you know? “What makes a person Jewish?” My rabbi friends tell me what makes a person Jewish is being born to a Jewish mother. How many of you were born to a Jewish mother? Raise your hands. Nobody? Well, then, let me explain why you don’t really deserve to be here today.

Long ago, God chose one people out of all the peoples of the world. They were the children of Abraham through Isaac, through Jacob, through Joseph. They went down into Egypt and were enslaved. But God liberated them from slavery and brought them into the wilderness around Mount Sinai. God made a covenant, an intentional relationship freely entered by both sides, with all of them and all their descendants to follow. This was the covenant promise: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” They all agreed. “You will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” which meant God chose them to mediate God’s presence to the rest of the world (Ex 19:1-6).

What a birthright! What a gift! It was a privilege to belong to the holy people of God. But with all the benefits and blessings such a relationship offered came certain obligations and expectations. Among them were clear rules about avoiding contact with “those people” who were not part of the one true holy people of God. You didn’t eat at the same table with them, you didn’t eat the foods they ate, you didn’t follow their customs, you didn’t welcome them into your home, you didn’t welcome them into your holy spaces, and you certainly didn’t let your children marry them. In fact, as much as possible, you avoided all contact with them. Instead, you kept yourself pure, uncontaminated, unentangled with their evil ways.

God’s people called “those people” who were not God’s chosen the hagoiim, in Hebrew, in Greek, ta ethnoi, “the ethnics,” “the nations.” It meant “not from our nation,” “not from our race,” “not from our faith,” “not our kind.” It’s like our word “foreigner” which means “everybody but us,” and may include “those people” from distant lands like China or France, though I’ve heard it applied here in Texas to people who came from New York City. But we usually translate hagoiim and ta ethnoi, these biblical words for “not God’s people” with the word “Gentile.” That’s what all of us who were not born Jewish are, you know. Turn to your neighbor and tell them, “You’re a Gentile.” Just in case they didn’t know. That’s us. That’s all of us. We’re Gentiles. We were not born into the holy people of God. Their God and their story and their covenant is not ours to claim. Why, you and I have as much right to claim we’re Martians as to claim we’re God’s people!

Over the years God’s people often failed to live up to their end of the agreement. They would be the first to admit it. They broke the rules. They mixed with Gentiles. They worshiped Gentile gods. They adopted Gentile ways. They followed Gentile practices. They lived by Gentile values. And they paid the price. They lost their way. They lost their identity. One group of Gentiles after another marched through their land, burned their cities, and plundered their wealth – the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Assyrians, until finally, with the Babylonians, they even lost their land. They went into exile. They almost went into extinction.

When they came back from exile, they vowed to be pure this time and to avoid the evil Gentiles as much as possible. Some of them believed, if they could only be pure enough, if they could only be obedient enough, they might finally just be worthy of God sending them the Messiah, the perfect King, to lead them into their age of glory. How long they had waited, how patient they had been, still persecuted, still abused by Gentile powers – the Persians, the Greeks, the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, and now the Romans, each evil empire worse than the one before, the ruthless, arrogant, imperialistic Romans the worst of all.

Then, in the most unexpected moment in the most unexpected way, the Messiah came. Or so some of them believed. He was born to a poor family in Galilee. Nobody expected that. He was resisted and refused by their rabbis, teachers, and rulers of the Jews. Nobody expected that. They turned him over to the Romans to be crucified. Well, you might expect that from the Romans, but nobody expected God would let that happen to the Messiah, not in a million years. But God did allow it and then God raised him from the dead. Nobody, I mean nobody, expected that. Now he is gone again, but he has sent his Spirit among them. They can tell when the Messiah’s Spirit comes upon people by the way they talk, by the way they act, by the way they love. It’s a beautiful thing to see this transformation happen and it’s undeniable when you see it. They have just begun to spread the word about all this to their fellow Jews, the holy people of God, that at last! at last! at last! God has sent the Messiah, Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee, when the strangest thing of all happens.

I want you to see this. I want you to know I’m not making this stuff up. Open your Bibles to Acts chapter ten. If you didn’t bring a Bible, use one of the Bibles in the pew. Acts 10. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, then chapter ten. You with me? I’m starting at verse 9.

Simon Peter, fearless leader of the Messiah’s closest friends, is praying on the rooftop of Simon Tanner in Joppa about lunchtime, when God sends him this vision of all those nasty, smelly, greasy ethnic foods the Gentiles eat which good kosher Jews like Peter avoid because, well, the Bible tells them so. Baked ham, lobster salad, crawfish etouffe, fried shrimp, oysters on the half shell, barbecued pork ribs, Peking duck, rattlensnake steaks, alligator stew – like the nightmare of some iron chef. “Dig in!” God tells Peter, and when Peter objects (Verse 14! “No way, God! You know I’m kosher. The Torah tells me so.”), God says, “Peter don’t you be calling ‘dirty’ what I’ve called ‘clean!’ And who do you think wrote that Torah in the first place?” This happens three times. Three times Peter sees the vision. Three times God says, “Dig in!” Three times Peter says, “No way!” Three times, God says, “Don’t you be calling ‘dirty’ what I’ve called ‘clean!’” This is the same Peter denied Jesus three times, the same Peter Jesus asked three times if he loved him, remember? I guess three is the magic number when it comes to Simon Peter. He’s a slow learner.

Back to Acts 10! Verse 16: three times this vision happens, and then poof! It disappears. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. Three guys sent from Cornelius up Caesarea way. Now Cornelius is a Gentile, one of those “ethnics,” not one of God’s holy people. He’s one of “those people.” In fact, he’s a Roman! In fact, he’s a Roman soldier! In fact, he’s a centurion, commanding officer of about a hundred troops of the occupation. The three guys tell Peter an angel told Cornelius to send for him. So Peter the kosher Jew goes up to Caesarea with his posse to the house of Cornelius, the Gentile Roman Centurion. Verse 28: Peter tells Cornelius and his posse loud enough for his own posse to hear, “You know I’m not supposed to be here. It’s against our law, that is, it’s against the Torah, the Bible, the word of God for a Jew like me to hang with a filthy Gentile like you. So why did you send for me?” Cornelius tells Peter he had this vision from God telling him to send for him. Finally Peter gets it. Look at verse 34. Peter says, “I get it! God shows no favorites, but in every ethnos anyone who fears God and does what is right is okay with God.” Then he tells Cornelius and all his household about Jesus, his cross, his resurrection. He preaches the gospel to them.

But look here, look at this! Here’s where God surprises everybody! Verse 44: “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word” – meaning Cornelius and his whole posse. That’s right! Gentiles receive the Spirit of God’s Messiah! Peter’s posse, Jews like him who believe Jesus, the Messiah has come, can’t believe their eyes and ears. Verse 45 says they are “astounded.” But it’s undeniable. The evidence is right there. They hear it in the way they talk. They see it in the way they act. They can tell by the way they love. The Spirit of Jesus has come upon Gentiles, too.

Truth be told, they don’t want to believe what they see and hear. It’s more than a surprise. It’s a shock. Gentiles included among the holy people of God? It goes against their scripture. It goes against their history. It goes against their expectations. It goes against their beliefs. Gentiles are the enemies of God and of God’s people. God’s people look forward to God punishing and destroying their enemies, not including them in God’s grace. It goes against their deepest prejudices. After all that’s happened, they really don’t like “those people” and the last thing they want to do is to have to start thinking of them as “our people.” They don’t want their worst enemies to receive grace any more than we do. But they can’t deny what they see and hear. Peter asks, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” No answer is reported. This question is met with silence. Nobody says a word. They can’t say “yes,” but they don’t want to say “no.” It is God’s doing.

We should pause at that; they certainly did! The Gentiles – the “not God’s people” – outsiders, foreigners, “those people,” you and me – are now included in the holy people of God. As 1 Peter 3:10 celebrates: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” We don’t deserve to be here. We have never deserved to be here. We have no claim to be included among God’s own people. We are still the, uh, “adopted” children at the family picnic, as it were. And we must never forget that whenever we’re talking about who deserves to be welcomed into our God’s holy spaces and who does not.

God brings the Gentiles into the family, and it’s such a big deal, the story is told twice in the book Acts, the first time when it happens and the second time when Simon Peter, fearless leader of Jesus’ closest friends, is dragged before the church leaders in Jerusalem to explain why in the world he would do such an unholy, unrighteous, unscriptural thing as baptize Gentiles into the church. Look over at chapter eleven. Peter tells them the whole story and when he’s finished, he says, “If then God gave them the same gift that (God) gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" Acts says, “When they heard this, they were silenced.” Same basic scene we saw in chapter ten. They look at each other in that pregnant silence. What can they say? The evidence is before them. They have no choice. So Acts says, “they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’” You can tell they aren’t too happy about it. And we know from Paul’s letters and the other writings of the early church, they kept arguing for several generations about it before they finally had to give in and include the Gentiles as equals in the church: equally beloved, equally saved, equally blessed. God was doing it and the evidence was undeniably clear in Gentile hearts changed and love shared and the unmistakable presence of the Spirit of Christ in Gentile lives.

Now I am wondering today, where are we in this story? Are we “those people,” those Gentiles who don’t deserve to be there, but who have been included by God anyway and have received the Spirit of Christ even though some of God’s people don’t want to believe it and tell us it’s against the Bible and against the tradition and against the rules? Well, then I say, be the evidence. Show them by your words, by your actions, by the way you love that the Spirit of the living Christ dwells in you! They don’t want to believe it. It goes against their understanding of scripture. It goes against their history. It goes against their expectations. It goes against their beliefs. More than anything else it goes against their deepest prejudices. So it may take them a generation or two before they are convinced, but this is God’s doing and eventually they’ll get it. They may be dense. They may be slow learners. But if God’s in it, they’ll have to get it eventually.

On the other hand, is it possible we have become like those first century Jewish Christians in this story, assuming we are God’s beloved and “those people,” however we define them, are not? Do we believe God does play favorites after all, and we are it? Do we make fun of those people who ask “What would Jesus do?” because we don’t want to ask “What would Jesus do?” because more than anything else, we don’t want to do it? Have we become like those excluding, abusing, prejudiced people we so dislike?

A mother was making pancakes for her two sons, Tommy and Mark. The older boy was six and the younger four. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Mom saw the opportunity to teach a lesson. She told them, "If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake. What do you think he would want you to do? I can wait.’” The boys sat in stony silence. They knew the right answer. Then Tommy turned to his younger brother and said, “Mark, you be Jesus!”

I guess that’s our impulse when it comes to loving the people we don’t like, when it comes to including the people we prefer to exclude, maybe because they excluded us first. Let somebody else be Jesus for a change. But no, Jesus says, “You be the evidence that my Spirit lives within you and among you. You show them by the way you speak and behave, you show them by the way you love them that my Spirit dwells in you.” How else will the world ever believe it’s true, that Jesus, the Christ is risen and hangs with a group of Gentiles like us on the corner of 22nd and Guadalupe in Austin, Texas? Would anybody believe that by looking at our lives? Has the Spirit of the risen Christ fallen upon us, really?

Let all who have ears, hear the word of God. May we pray?

Spirit of the living God, fall fresh upon us. There are those who say we don’t belong among your people because we have said you love people of all races - and both genders - regardless of their orientation - regardless of their station in life – regardless of their past mistakes and struggles and failures. They don’t think we understand you. They don’t think we know you at all. But we have experienced your Spirit among us. O Lord, who plays no favorites, make us the evidence of your inclusive love. Fill us with your Spirit in these days. Let us live by your Spirit so that all people might see by the way we speak and the way we behave and the way we love Christ is risen and dwells among a people in Austin, Texas. Amen.