Discovering God All Over Again
The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on Sunday, January 8, 2023.
Discovering God All Over Again
by Ernest Boyer
Today’s reading from Acts tells a remarkable story. Of course, the Bible is chock full of remarkable stories, but this one from Acts is less well-known. It tells of the continuing transformation of that most unpredictable of Jesus’ followers, St. Peter. This is the same St. Peter, after all, who was the first of Jesus’ disciples to recognize him as the Messiah but then, at the crucial moment, betrayed Jesus not once but three times. This is also the Peter, though, who at Pentecost, boldly addresses the crowd of those who were amazed by the other disciples speaking to them in their own languages and tells them of the resurrection. Then too it is the Peter who does not at first support Paul in his efforts to baptize gentiles without requiring them to convert to Judaism. That’s Peter for you. Back and forth he goes. First he’s strong, then he’s weak, then strong then weak. And now here he is again with one more change.
It all begins with a Roman soldier named Cornelius. Cornelius was a centurion, that is, a commander in the Roman army. The thing is, although not a Jew, Cornelius was a devout believer in the Jewish God. He was what Jews at the time called a “God fearer.” That meant that he was a gentile, but he attended Jewish worship. One day Cornelius had a vision, though. An angel appeared to him and told him to send for a man named Peter. Cornelius did what he was told, but when the messenger arrived at Peter’s home, Peter at first rejected him. After all, the man was a gentile, Peter thought. He was unclean. What did he have to do with the gospel?
But then Peter, too, had a vision, one that made it clear to him that there was now no such thing as clean or unclean, so reluctantly Peter went, and when he arrived he was greeted not only by Cornelius but by all his relatives and servants too. It is at that point that Peter gives the speech that forms today’s second reading. “I now truly understand that God shows no partiality,” Peter begins,” but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.”
Peter then goes on to explain the gospel to Cornelius, and as he does, all of his gentile listeners become filled with the Holy Spirit in a way that astonishes not only Peter but all those Peter had brought with him. Here is the evidence, he realizes, that it is indeed exactly as he himself had just said! God really does show no partiality! All truly are welcome! Everyone. This encounter didn’t just change Cornelius, then. It changed Peter too. It converted him to a deeper, fuller understanding of the very gospel that he thought he was bringing to others.
Peter isn’t the only one who finds himself converted by the process of trying to convert others. Such a thing isn’t rare at all. In fact, it happens whenever two people — or two groups — who are truly open to each other are able to connect. Let me give you another example. It’s from one of my all-time favorite books. Its title is Christianity Rediscovered, and it’s by Vincent Donovan.
Vincent Donovan was a Roman Catholic priest who was ordained in the 1950’s, determined to become a missionary. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he spent 17 years in East Africa as a missionary to the Masai, a tribe of fierce warriors. The Masai are one of the few African tribes that has never been defeated. They have never been conquered — not by any other African tribe nor by any European invaders either. Tall, slender, and proud, to this day they wander the plains of their tribal lands carrying their shields and long spears with an unmistakable air of invincibility as they hunt game and guard their herds of cattle. Western culture, technology and agriculture have very little value to them. The very idea of farming is repulsive to them. Their life is as warriors and herders, and as far as they are concerned that life has everything they could need or want.
Despite their fierce appearance, the Masai are also an extremely hospitable, generous, affectionate, gentle and religious people. They are firm believers in one God and yet they are also plagued by fears of evil spirits. Fr. Donovan thought at first that their conversion to Christianity would only require time and patience. He established a school, arranged for medical care, and began a careful process of evangelization only to watch the years slip away with no apparent change whatsoever. In fact, the few individuals who did convert to Christianity were invariably ostracized from their tribe so that they soon became lonely and depressed with the result that they eventually gave up on their Christianity and returned to their former ways.
Fr. Donovan was no quitter, though. Far more important than that, however, was that he was also a good listener, one deeply sensitive to and sympathetic with human differences. He had long ago discovered that the Masai language had no word for “person” or for “creation, or “grace,” or “freedom,” or “spirit,” or “immortality.” And yet, the more he allowed himself to become fully immersed in Masai thought and tribal life, the more he began to see how rich and complex that life was and to learn from it. In the end, he began to wonder whether Christianity really had anything to teach these people after all. In fact, he began to fear that Christianity was just too intertwined with Western culture to be relevant to them. Was that true? Despite beginning in the Middle East, had Christianity become by now so inseparable from European culture that you could not have one without the other? The thought devastated him because he had come to love not only the Masai themselves but also the way of life that was so much a part of them. Did Christianity really have nothing to give them? It was at this point, after years of missionary work, that Fr. Vincent Donovan entered what can only be described as a “dark night of the soul.” He experienced a profound depression and crisis of faith.
In the end it was his many friends among the Masai who came to his rescue. One day he was speaking to a Masai elder about faith and belief, for example. At this point let me quote Fr Donovan himself:
[The elder] pointed out [Fr. Donovan writes] that the word I had used to convey faith was not a very satisfactory word in their language. It meant literally “to agree to.” I, myself, knew the word had that shortcoming. He said “to believe” like that was similar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and his fingers took part in the act. We should find another word, he said. He said for a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap … And as [the lion brings down the animal he’s been pursuing]… the lion envelops it in his arms …, pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion [hunts, the elder continued, and it is how we need to believe, not from the distance like a white hunter, but by throwing ourselves into it with everything we have like the lion. This is what it really means to believe.] This is what faith [truly] is.*
Fr. Donovan stared at the elder in silent amazement.
“We did not search you out, Father,” the elder then went on. “We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. [Instead] he has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.”*
“That’s it, Fr. Donovan thought. “That’s it. God is the Lion. God is the Lion of Love. We don’t search out God. God searches us out. And God is here. God has always been here. I need only to point that out.”
From then on everything changed for both him and the Masai. Rather than going from person to person in order to convert them one at a time, Fr. Donovan began to go from village to village and tribe to tribe in order to convert whole communities. As he entered a village he would ask if he could address the people who lived there and talk of God. “Of course,” the elders always said. “Nothing is more important than that.” With this, the entire tribe would then gather. They would all come, every single person — the elders and the youth, the young warriors and the family men, the nursing mothers and the young girls, the grandfathers and grandmothers, the countless flocks of children. All would sit in rapt attention and together they would talk for days and days, everyone taking part — all speaking and listening, all asking questions, all offering opinions.
After that, Fr. Donovan would leave and the entire community would discuss all that had said without him present. Some tribes would then decide to become Christian and when they did, the entire tribe would come to be baptized together so that no one was left out. Other tribes decided not to convert. But that was OK too, because Fr. Donovan knew that God was there as God had always been. God was a lion, and lions can wait and watch. For those many Masai who did convert, though, the change was deep and profound. And yet, in some ways, Fr. Donovan’s re-conversion went even deeper. The Masai had helped him to find a new and richer faith — a fuller faith — a faith quite different from the one he had brought with him to Africa. It was now a faith with the heart of a lion — that is, a faith with the heart of the God who had sought him out in the first place — the heart of the God who seeks us all and is with every single one of us, embracing all those of every nation to love as he loves. Vincent Dovovan called his book Christianity Rediscovered. Like Peter after his encounter with Cornelius, the Christianity he rediscovered was his own. AMEN
*Donovan, Vincent J.. Christianity Rediscovered (pp. 76-77). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.
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