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All of a sudden, the Holy Spirit fell on everyone, even the Gentiles. No one was more surprised than Peter and the Jewish converts. Up to this point, they thought the risen Christ was a gift just to them. But now, with the baptism of Cornelius and this massive gift of the Holy Spirit, everything is turned upside down. What a surprise. And yet, when we think about it, that is not the first time God surprises his people. Scripture is filled with stories and examples.

The stories sometimes seem conflicting and contradictory. The biggest example was when Jesus died. New life was given to generations of people. Dying became rising. Death became life.

Jesus' ministry itself was often confusing. Prostitutes became heroes of the faith. Foreigners became even more saintly than did the religious elite. The poor and the outcast had a more distinctive advantage of membership in the new kingdom than did the scholarly and the faithful. At the time of Jesus' birth, God was initiating the unexpected as well. They had been waiting two or three centuries for the Messiah's coming. They were looking everywhere for him, and every time they saw someone eclectic and charismatic, like John the Baptist, they pondered whether he might be the one. The hope of his coming literally kept them alive through the exile and through oppressive times with Rome.

When he did come, they didn't recognize him. They did not recognize him because he came quietly instead of in a fanfare. They expected a Messiah that would liberate them from Rome. He didn't. He liberated them from sin, fear, and guilt. They expected a Christ who would perform all kinds of majestic feats, like jumping off the temple. He didn't. He fed the poor. He sat with children. He healed the broken. He stood by the lonely.

In the end they expected their Messiah to be a smashing success whereas, in their reality, he was a dismal failure.

It seems God never ceases to surprise us, turning things upside down, blessing us when we least expect it.

Several years ago, Theodore Parker Ferris told a radio audience in Boston, Massachusetts, how some of life's events and experiences remind us that life can be lost before it is ever really lived.

There are all kinds of examples: the sudden death of a child, years of unhappiness or illness that depletes most of life's energy, living in a home that has no love either to give or to receive. Sometimes a life can be so paralyzed by fear and disappointment that it never has a chance to break out and enjoy the best.

Listen to what one man wrote when he was only 32 years old. "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell."

Abraham Lincoln wrote those words. It doesn't sound like him, does it? The words remind us of another more important truth and that is, the Christian life, the life of faith, hope, and promise can be saved long after it seems to have been lost.1

Our story today, when God sent forth his Holy Spirit to all gathered, Jews and Gentiles alike, reminds us how generous and loving God really is. God's strongest desire is to save us, bless us, and restore life to the fullest.

Woodrow Wilson had a very difficult life in many respects, especially early on.

In the second term of his law school training in Virginia he had a nervous breakdown and during that period he wrote, "How can a man with a weak body ever arrive anywhere?" Later he married a wonderful woman and this is what he wrote to her: "You are the only person in the world with whom I do not have to act a part. To whom I do not have to deal out confidences cautiously ... My salvation is in being loved."2

You and I know of another love just like that and even more so. It is the unconditional, permanent love of Christ. It is a gift for the taking, a reality that only requires trust and an open heart.

One of the great spiritual writers of our time is Father Henri Nouwen, a priest devoted to helping Christians throughout the world understand how committed God is to save us and love us through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his little book, With Open Hands, he writes about how difficult it is for some people at different times to accept the free gifts of God and give up those things that constrict our hearts and minds. In the book, Nouwen tells the story about an elderly woman brought to a psychiatric hospital as an example of this resistant behavior.

She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and frightening everyone so much so that the doctors had to take everything away from her. But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up. In fact, it took two people to pry open that clenched hand. It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin if she let go. If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more and be nothing more. That was her fear.

When you are invited to pray, you are asked to open your tightly clenched fist and give up your last coin....

To pray means to open your hands before God. It means slowly relaxing the tension which squeezes your hands together and accepting your existence with an increasing readiness, not as a possession to defend, but as a gift to receive.3

Opening our hands before God, relaxing the tension, accepting our existence as a gift -- what a great way to live.

Let us pray with Father Nouwen.

Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with my empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me. And what you want to give me is love, unconditional, everlasting love. Amen.4

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1. T. P. Ferris, This is the Day (Dublin, New Hampshire: Yankee Publishing, 1976), pp. 231-232.

2. Ibid, p. 235.

3. Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1995), pp. 61-62.

4. Ibid.