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This sermon is about smashing barriers, deconstructing borders, and following the Spirit where she leads as she pushes the church and individuals into greater and widening practices of God’s love for all people. This sermon is about the Kingdom of God.
As we begin to consider the dismantling of barriers and borders, I want us to think about people’s paradigms and frameworks for understanding our world. We all have a paradigm or framework that gives meaning to our lives, determined largely by culture, religious belief, or individual preference. The way we see the world is rooted in our understanding of who God is and what it means to follow Jesus.
God hopes that we continue growing, learning, and transforming throughout our lives, and yet, we know that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, we become stuck or plateau.
Why does God allow that to happen? We become stuck because God loves us and entrusts us with free will, which means God grants us the freedom to grow or not.
In the book of Acts, we’ve been following Peter’s transformation as his paradigm has shifted again and again and again. It shifted around that charcoal fire on the beach when he encountered the resurrected Jesus. And today, we see it shift again as Peter visits the home of Cornelius the centurion, a Gentile and therefore an outsider who is unclean.
While visiting Cornelius, Peter goes into a trance and has a vision. He sees heaven open up and a sheet come down, and on this sheet are all kinds of animals—four-footed animals as well as reptiles and birds. Peter hears a voice say, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
Peter protests, saying, “I’ve never eaten anything impure,” to which the voice responds, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This whole scene repeats three times and the sheet disappears.
Before we dive into more interpretation of this strange vision, it’s important to remember Peter’s upbringing, his culture, and his worldview. Peter was raised Jewish in a culture that lived and breathed by the purity laws. People were neatly divided into two categories: clean and unclean/Jewish and everyone else. And under no circumstances did you ever consider eating with those who were unclean or entering their homes.
Peter had his framework for understanding the world. And he had an experience which disrupted this framework. The Spirit led him into greater practices of God’s love and, as a result, he found more freedom, embraced radical inclusion, and encountered complexity.
We have examples of this kind of paradigm shift throughout history. One that comes to mind is the story of John Newton. Do you remember his story? John Newton was the former slave trader who became a Christian abolitionist and is the author of Amazing Grace.
Newton began with a worldview that accepted the dehumanization of others. But over time, that framework shattered. A near-death experience at sea sparked a spiritual awakening. He began to take his faith seriously—yet even then, his transformation was slow and conflicted.
Gradually, as he engaged Scripture, listened to abolitionists, and allowed God to reshape his conscience, he changed. He left the slave trade, publicly repented, and used his voice to condemn the system he once upheld. In 1788, he wrote, “It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.”
Newton could have clung to pride or fear. Instead, he chose growth. He let truth reshape him. His story reminds us that even those deeply formed by unjust systems can be transformed—if they stay open to the Spirit’s leading. As his worldview shifted, so did his life—toward freedom, inclusion, and complexity, all rooted in God’s love.
I have one other example from my personal experience. As a cis-gendered person, meaning I identify with the gender assigned to me at birth, my paradigm for most of my life was one of a gender binary—something you don’t question, an either/or. However, my life experiences in the past five years or so have caused me to grow and transform this paradigm, helping me to see the world with more freedom, inclusion, and complexity than before.
I have changed because of my relationships with people who are transgender. I love and care deeply for members of the trans community. I have learned that I don’t have to understand, and will never understand, what it feels like to be trapped in the wrong body. And, at the same time, I can have compassion and love for those who do.
I see the image of God in my siblings in Christ for whom the horrors of dysphoria are something they cannot escape. I have witnessed firsthand the power of gender-affirming care and the euphoric joy that comes from transitioning into the person God made them to be.
I have worked to keep an open mind and heart—rooted in God’s expansive love—and that compels me, as a cis-gendered person, to treat members of the trans community with the same dignity and respect I afford to others.
And it’s more than that. I am trying to be an ally of the trans community, fighting for equality, access to medical care, and working to break down the stereotypes and fear. Why do I do this? I do this because God’s expansive love, coupled with my personal experience of disruption, necessitates action.
And thus, we circle back to freedom, inclusion, and complexity.
Think about a time in your life in which you have encountered disruption—a time when your paradigm shifted, your worldview was shaken. When has the Spirit led you, maybe kicking and screaming, into greater practices of God’s love? Maybe it has been around issues of race or gender, maybe it was around birth control or a woman’s right to choose, maybe you are struggling today with issues of privilege, entitlement, or access to resources.
Just reading the newspaper is enough to show us that a lot of people are experiencing disruption. Their worldview—our worldviews—are being challenged every day by those who see and experience things out of a different paradigm.
No matter what framework we have, we do have a choice. In that moment of disruption, as Rob Bell puts it, you have a choice to “either ignore or deny or minimize your experience, or you open yourself up to the very real pain of leaving that way of understanding behind” (166).
It’s terrifying and exciting and freeing all at once. Where might God be leading? Which people, which experiences, what situations do you minimize or condemn or judge because they don’t fit into your framework? Is God perhaps inviting you into a practice of wider, embracing, abundant love? It is scary. But once you push through that fear, there is a sweet taste of freedom.
It takes courage to embrace disruption. Wherever you’re coming from, whatever your framework, don’t deny or ignore the disruptions. Let them come!
As Bell writes:
“Don’t panic when the room spins, because you’ve seen something real and life-giving and beautiful and good and hopeful that doesn’t fit in any of your boxes. It’s okay. You’re not the first. That’s how it works. That’s how we grow” (167).
So when the Spirit shows up with a vision that unravels your certainties, or you have an experience that disrupts your framework, may you have the courage to follow—into disruption, into transformation, and into the ever-widening, border-breaking love of God.