Creekside Church Sermon of May 6, 2001 "All Are One Since One's For All" Acts 10:34-43 Galatians 3:23-29	Rev. David Bibbee
Send this sermon to a friend

Last year I heard about a convenience store robbery. This robbery had a peculiar twist. The manager called the police to report that he had been robbed. He was closing the store when an armed man burst in demanding all the money. Fearing for his life, the manager complied.

When asked if he could give a description of the suspect, he said he could. A police artist prepared a composite sketch based upon the manager's description. As the sketch began to take shape, the artist noticed something odd. The picture bore a striking resemblance to the manager. When pressed by detectives about why the portrait looked so much like him, his story crumbled and he confessed to fabricating the story to cover his theft. Such a smooth move. He unknowingly indicted himself!

There is a theme I have not addressed very much, except in partial and indirect ways. It is the sin of racism. I justified it with the rationalization that racism is someone else's sin. The problem is the hatred and bigotry of the Klan, the Skinheads, and the whacko white supremacist groups spreading their venom over the Internet and on courthouse steps. Racism is the sin of corporate America which routinely passes over qualified persons of color to promote less qualified whites. Racism is the sin of financial institutions which deny mortgages to credentialed people for no other reason than their skin pigment. Racism is the sin of racial profiling done by police departments. Racism is someone else's problem… not ours.

But there is something else at work here. You'll remember how Jimmy Swigert ranted and raved about sexual immorality, even as he was engaged in it himself. Maybe I have not spoken much about racial prejudice for fear that like the convenience store manager, I might unwittingly describe myself.

It would be a genuine sign of failure as a church if we had members who were blatantly prejudiced. Most racist acts and remarks aren't blatant. Many are careless and many more are unintentional, but harmful just the same. As the novelist and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel put it, "I have learned that whenever a single human being is humiliated, the human image is cheapened."

Sitting in the pews behind stained glass doesn't make us immune. In Psalm 33 verse 1 it says we are blessed when we dwell in unity. But the enemy of unity is not just blatant ill will towards those who are different, or as the ancient prayer calls it "the sin of comission." Most of us are guilty of the sins of omission…the things which we have left undone and unsaid.

Early in my ministry I was visited one Sunday morning by a fellow seminarian named Anita. Anita was black. After worship I went to the class I was teaching. As I was about to begin, Larry, a guy who married into the church and was a rather crude, unrefined person asked, "Who was your chocolate friend?" I was sure I had misunderstood. No one in the church would say something like that, so I asked him to repeat the question. This time everyone heard. "Who was your chocolate friend?"

I was stunned. My first reaction was to get on him like stink on a skunk. Vent my anger. Make an example of him. But I didn't. I would feel better, but we might lose Larry's family. "I will work on him gradually," I told myself. "Some education and Bible study will turn him around." Later I heard of a pastor who wanted to measure the impact a sermon series on racial attitudes would make on his congregation. A survey was distributed before the series. The same was given afterward. To his dismay he discovered the church was more racist "after" his sermons. What happened? By simply addressing the issue he had taken the lid off the pot and exposed people to their deeper feelings.

"Who's your chocolate friend?" "My friend is Anita," I replied. I should have confronted Larry. The class should have said something. But there was only uneasy silence. Pretending not to hear. Looking away. Letting prejudiced words go unchallenged. Failing to do what was right. The sin of omission.

As the church we judge the world and speak tenderly to ourselves. But if we were like Jesus, we would speak tenderly and truthfully to the world, and judge ourselves.

The book of Acts is a record of lives changed by the thousands, and the lives of two people in particular…Paul and Peter.

Cornelius was a Roman Centurion. You know about the centurions… they were barbaric, brutal, and blood thirsty. Know one centurion, know them all. But Cornelius was a devout, God fearing, alms giving, praying Centurion. In a vision he was told to send for a man in Joppa named Peter…Simon Peter. Cornelius sent two slaves and a devout soldier…an interesting combination.

The next day while Peter was praying on a roof, his stomach began to growl. While he was fixing his lunch, he suddenly was in a trance. He saw a tablecloth lowered by four corners from the sky. In it were all kinds of creatures, and a voice said, "Kill and eat, Peter." "Lord, you know I can't eat these things. They're not kosher!" Peter replied. Three times God said, "Don't call what I have made clean, profane. I want to see your expression when you taste how good glazed ham is."

Peter didn't know what to make of it; not until the envoy's arrived and escorted him back to Cornelius. Peter arrived and met the centurion who was filled with the love of God and had filled his house with relatives and friends to meet Peter. Peter told them, "As a Jew I am not allowed to associate with you Gentiles, but God has told me to dispense with distinctions. I should not call anyone unclean or profane. But why did you send for me?"

When Cornelius said he had been told in a prayer to send for him, it was clear to Peter. He said to the Gentiles, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."

There is no way the races of the world will be reconciled unless the races which make up Christ's body are reconciled.

A historic event happened at the 1995 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination. The Baptists formally apologized and repented for the role they had played in justifying slavery and not challenging the culture of racism in the United States. It took 132 years after the Emancipation Proclamation for it to happen. Some said it was too late coming. Others said it was a hopeful beginning. You can't help but wonder how different the history of race relations would have been if the acknowledgement had been made sooner…let's say in 1956 following the lead of a Baptist man named Floyd Bryant.

Floyd described himself as a 63-year-old, white, dyed in the wool Baptist Southerner. In 1956 he wrote an article which was published in the Southern Baptist Review. He wrote: "Throughout the first 60 years of my life I never questioned but that Peter's confession that 'God shows no partiality to persons' referred exclusively to the differences among white Christians. Neither did I question that segregation was Christian, and that it referred to the separation of white and Negro people. Three years ago in 1953, these views were completely transformed. I became convinced that God makes no distinctions among people whatever their race and that segregation is exclusively by God in the final judgment. I exchanged the former views which I had absorbed from my environment for the latter views which I learned from the New Testament. I came to understand the meaning of Paul's plea, 'Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is good, and acceptable, and the perfect will of God.' (Romans 12:2)"

Would that God change our hearts like Peter's so that differences among people God deems "acceptable" would be pigments of our imaginations. Would that we, like Floyd Bryant, turn from what the world tells us and listen instead to God's word that transforms us by the renewal of our minds.

It's not an easy thing to do. In fact, it's beyond our power alone to do.

All of the sermons that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996 are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.

Sermon Search:



Exact phrase    All words (AND)    Any word (OR)