God Is Not an "Acceptor of Faces"

Acts 10:34-38

Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show
favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”

God Is Not an “Acceptor of Faces”

Gut reaction time. I’m going to show you two logos. As quickly as you can, I want you to raise your right hand if you prefer the company on the right, your left hand if you prefer the one on the left. I’m not going to say their names; I just want you to see it and react.

Ready? Go.

McDonald’s or Timmy’s?

Ford or Chevy?

Apple or Samsung?

Pepsi or Coke?

Why are you able to make such split-second decisions? A logo can capture the whole context of a company. You begin to associate it with the advertisements that you see on TV or the web. You can recall your personal experience with the product. And, in an instant, your mind is already made up; you know which one you like and which one you don’t.

Whether you realize it or not, we do this all the time with almost everything we see. Brands, sure, but streets and houses and dogs and people too. Just seeing your face triggers memories for me – experiences that we’ve shared together, opinions that I’ve formed about you based on those experiences. So, from the moment I see you I have an impression of you.

That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise; I’m not telling you anything new. We’re just wired that way. But our nature makes what Peter said in our Second Lesson so remarkable:

“I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.”[1][2]

God doesn’t look at your face and make an immediate judgment about you. He’s impartial. He doesn’t play favorites. Quite the opposite, actually, he treats all of us equally. He levels the playing field, which is especially interesting when you realize that Peter is saying this to Cornelius.

Peter was a Jew. Cornelius a Gentile. We talked about the difference between them last week – how God had separated the Jews from everybody else, every other nationality on earth, to set them apart, to make them distinct and different, to the point that just before our lesson begins, Peter says to Cornelius, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile.”[3]

If you thought there’s inequality and prejudice today, it’s nothing compared to what Peter and Cornelius lived with. There were rules that prohibited Peter from even entering Cornelius’ house! And yet, here he is, in that house, saying, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.”[4] There may be barriers between people here on earth, but not with God.

Honestly, this is something that Peter should have known all along. Over and over in the Old Testament – for centuries – God said the same thing. We heard it in our First Lesson for today. In speaking to the promised Savior, God says, “I, the Lord… will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles.”[5]

It was always God’s plan to be impartial, to love everyone equally. So, it’s surprising that Peter didn’t always know that, but it’s almost just as surprising that Cornelius did. Peter says, “You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.”[6]

Evidently Cornelius knew his Scripture. Remember, Cornelius is a Gentile. In fact, he’s a Roman centurion – a foreign soldier. He had no business believing in Jesus or knowing the Bible, but he did, which should tell us something.

First of all, you never can tell who the good news of Jesus will reach. It may be the last person in the whole world you would expect, but when they hear it they latch on to it and believe. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit and he works miracles in people’s hearts.

Secondly, you can never know God’s Word too well. Peter was a lifelong believer. He grew up in the hope of salvation. He walked with Jesus and had the Messiah as his Master and teacher. And yet, he still needed to be educated and was still learning things about God that had been clearly taught for hundreds of years.

If you had seen Cornelius, with the Italian haircut and Roman robes, you might not expect him to be a believer like Peter, but God is not an “acceptor of faces.” He doesn’t make a judgment call based on our outward appearance. And it’s a good thing too.

Do you ever look in the mirror and not like what you see? I do. I want my midsection to be thinner and my hair to be thicker. I never want to see acne anywhere again and these little grey hairs sneaking through my beard don’t instill all that much confidence in a positive self-image.

But it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s not being able to meet your own eyes in the mirror after giving into temptation for the umpteenth time. It’s not wanting to look at yourself after the way you treated the people in your life, or the way that you neglect your God. It’s the guilt you feel saying the dinner prayer out of habit even though there’s sin you haven’t confessed to God yet; how can you ask him to bless your food when you treat his law like garbage?

We can be so wired to form an opinion about something from a look, that looking at ourselves can fill us with self-loathing and shame. And, yeah, God says that he loves everyone equally, but the words can be so easily forgotten or shoved aside.

I think that’s why Peter doesn’t just stop with an appeal to Scripture when he’s talking with Cornelius. Everything we need to know is in this book. I could start so many sentences to you the same way Peter does to Cornelius: “You know the message…” “You know what happened…” Sadly, though, knowledge isn’t always enough to make a difference, and words aren’t always convincing. That’s why God acts.

Peter says, “You know what has happened through the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached – how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”[7]

After making a general reference to the good news of peace in the Old Testament Scriptures, Peter draws Cornelius’ attention to current events as a demonstration that God does what he promises to do. God promises peace? Peter speaks of baptism.

We read about it in our Gospel Lesson for today, when Jesus went to be baptized by John in the Jordan River. John was out there preaching a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He warned people about not being sorry for their sins. He encouraged them to confess and receive God’s forgiveness through this ceremonial washing with water.

That’s why John was so confused when Jesus came to be baptized. Jesus didn’t have any sins to confess. He didn’t need forgiveness. Unlike any of us, Jesus was perfect. God could look at his Son and beam with pride just seeing his face.

But Jesus insisted on being baptized anyway, in part, because of what we read in Acts 10: “…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil.”[8]

When Jesus was baptized he was set apart for a special mission – to show the impartial, unbiased love of God to this world. He did that by traveling around and curing diseases – giving sight to the blind, letting lame men walk again, even raising the dead. To see them, most of those struggling, hurting people were the “undesirables;” but God loved them all, and Jesus cared for them.

But “healing all who were under the power of the devil” doesn’t just refer to sickness. It refers to sin too. It refers to you and me. We were under the power of the devil; we still struggle against him to this day. But Jesus came with the Holy Spirit and power and has healed you from sin – not just with his verbal promises, but with action and in baptism.

God shows his impartial, unbiased love through baptism. Just think about who gets brought to be baptized. It’s not the powerful or popular. It’s not the worthy or wealthy. Most of the time it’s a baby who can’t even hold his head up on his own. No baby has done anything to earn God’s love, but he gives it anyway. He sees all our sin, but he loves us anyway, because our God is not an “acceptor of faces;” he’s a lover of sinners and he loves each of us equally.

I don’t think it was intentional, but I do like the fact that when you go out to the baptismal font and see all the stones with our names on them underwater, you have to look really hard to be able to read them. The point is, the focus of baptism is and always has been Jesus. Anyone can be brought to those waters and receive the same promised forgiveness. Black, white, yellow, red. Man, woman, old, young. Sinners all. But sinners washed and cleansed and forgiven by Jesus.

God is not an “acceptor of faces;” he is a lover of sinners. He says as much in Scripture, and he shows it in his sacraments, where you can know personally that God’s love for you is impartial and unbiased. He’s not deterred by any of your defects. He saves you purely for his love’s sake, which means that none of us is exempt or disqualified. Together we are baptized in the name of Jesus and together we are recipients of his grace.

May you be like Cornelius and faithfully study God’s Word, but as you do, may you also be like Peter and continue to learn what that Word means for your life, washed clean of your sins and united with your fellow sinners under Christ by water and the Word. Amen.

[1] Acts 10:34

[2] Interestingly the Greek word that Luke uses (προσωπολήμπτης) means “acceptor of faces” if translated hyper-literally. In other words, God doesn’t judge the book by its cover.

[3] Acts 10:28

[4] Acts 10:34

[5] Isaiah 42:6

[6] Acts 10:36

[7] Acts 10:37,38

[8] Acts 10:38

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The Christ-Child Reigns in Might and Mercy

Isaiah 52:7-10

7 How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”
8 Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
together they shout for joy.
When the Lord returns to Zion,
they will see it with their own eyes.
9 Burst into songs of joy together,
you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
10 The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
the salvation of our God.

The Christ-Child Reigns in Might and Mercy

Isn’t it weird how we celebrate Christmas? Christmas Eve is the big event. That’s when the kids sing. That’s when the visitors come. That’s when we blow the doors off with the organ. But what is Christmas Eve other than the day before the important day? Christmas Day is when we celebrate Jesus’ birth! If there’s ever a time when the seats should be packed and we shake the rafters with our rejoicing, it should be today. But that’s not the way it works.

Now, I’m not about to step onto my self-righteous soapbox and preach against the people who aren’t here today. The day we celebrate Jesus’ birth doesn’t matter. We don’t know when he was born, so we can celebrate it be December 24th or June 2 for that matter. The day doesn’t matter. That we worship does. So, let’s put aside any quibbling over dates for today, and instead think about what makes these two days different. Why do we have two services within 12 hours of each other?

Maybe an oversimplified answer could be that Jesus has two natures. He is both human and God. Last night was mostly about the human side of Jesus – how God worked through human history to bring Mary into this world and send Joseph to care for her so that God’s Son could take on human flesh and blood. Last night was about the manger and the shepherds and this baby boy born to bring peace to the earth.

Today is mostly about the divine side of Jesus. Sure, he may have looked like your ordinary baby; he was born under ordinary circumstances; he didn’t have wings or a fiery aura around him or legs like bronze. To see him you wouldn’t suspect that there’s anything special about him. But today, with every one of our Bible Lessons we see how Jesus is so much more that what he seems.

That long passage from Hebrews goes on at great length about Jesus’ superiority. He may have looked like a lowly baby on Christmas Day, but he is greater than the angels, worthy of our worship, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. In other words, the Son of Mary, really is the Son of God. He is fully God, without any exception or caveat.

John’s Gospel says something similar. Whereas Matthew and Luke both begin with Jesus’ human ancestry, John begins with the divine. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John gives us a peak behind the curtain of what Jesus was up to before that was his name. We see him at Creation wielding God’s almighty power. He’s described as the light that shines in the darkness - all as a reminder that he is far more than just a baby in a manger.

But what I’d really like to spend some time thinking about this morning is what Isaiah writes in the 52nd chapter of his prophecy, because it serves kind of like the bridge between the human and the divine.

If Jesus is the Word that was with God and is God, if Jesus is begotten of the Father from eternity as we confess in the Nicene Creed, then that means that for the vast majority of human history, the pre-incarnate Christ – Jesus, before his birth – was invisible to the human eye. He existed. He was active. You could even make some sanctified speculation about Jesus appearing to human beings in the form of the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. But Isaiah makes a promise that in his day would have been unbelievable:

The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

All the ends of the earth will see him. The immortal, invisible, all-holy God confined himself to the very real body of a baby boy. As John puts it in his Gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” That’s the miracle of the incarnation – Jesus in human flesh and blood – both God and man in one.

And Isaiah tells us why: “When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.”

Isaiah speaks of Zion and the ruins of Jerusalem. He’s writing to real people at a real moment in true history. The Jews had been defeated by the Babylonians. Their cities and towns were destroyed, not least of all their capital city and the home of the Temple of God. They were living in exile and longed to return home.

To these people Isaiah speaks of comfort and joy, but not so much in terms of restoration as redemption. Isaiah isn’t making the promise that Jerusalem would be rebuilt and the Jews would return to autonomy. He’s talking about forgiveness for our sins.

That’s why Jerusalem was in ruins to begin with. Prophets like Isaiah repeatedly warned the people to repent and return to the Lord, but they didn’t listen. They put it off. They scoffed at the notion that there was anything in their lives that needed changing, so they didn’t, and they suffered because of it.

In that context, when you hear Isaiah say that the Lord will lay bare his holy arm, it’s kind of a scary picture. What is he rolling up his sleeves to do? Strike the sinner down? No, Isaiah says that he brings salvation to the ends of the earth.

What a God we have! When he sees people ruined by their own sinfulness – when he looks at us who are scarcely better than the people of Isaiah’s day – he doesn’t find creative ways to punish us. He doesn’t delight in striking us down. Instead he uses his considerable power to save us.

Think about that for a second. John tells us that Jesus created the universe; he has almighty power! All he has to do is say the word, and it happens. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is greater than the angels. And what does he spend that power and might to do? To save you.

He didn’t look like much, lying in the manger, but that baby was the true Son of God sent on a mission of mercy to forgive your sins and give you eternal life in his name. Imagine what he could have done with all that power. He could have brought peace between nations. He could have done away with war. He could have reversed famine and poverty. He could have cured all diseases with the snap of his fingers. But what was more important – and much more difficult – than all that was your salvation, i.e. taking up human flesh and blood, to live and die for your sins, and to rise again to give you life forever.

That’s why the Son of God was born of Mary. That’s why Peace came to earth at last that chosen night. That’s why we rejoice when we see the feet of those who bring good news. Because Jesus reigns supreme. In might and mercy he has won your salvation. Rejoice this Christmas morn and on whatever day you remember God in man made manifest. Amen.

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