Scripture Reading: Acts 11:1-18
The first followers of Jesus were not a church the way we understand church. For them, the Hebrew Scriptures were God’s Word, the Jewish traditions and spiritual practices were the basis of faithful living, and they let the Spirit of Jesus guide them step by step from there.
From their Jewish background they inherited a strict divide between clean and unclean things – including clean and unclean people. The Jews were “God’s people” and all others were “Gentiles” – a word that literally means “the nations,” and no matter how good, God-fearing or respected a Gentile may be, in the eyes of Jews there was still always something second-class about them. This distinction ran so deep that both Jews and Gentiles accepted that they could never eat at the same table. To do so, would contaminate and undo the Jew.
The first followers of Jesus accepted that, until one day while Peter was visiting Christian communities along the Mediterranean coast, God arranged a meeting between Peter and Cornelius, who was a God-fearing man, but also Gentile. Like any good match-maker, speaking independently to each of them, God brought them together to talk, to recognize their common life as children of God, to sit down together and share a meal like brothers, and to celebrate their unity in the Spirit of God and of Jesus.
It was radical and world-shaking. When Peter’s friends back in Jerusalem heard about it, he had a lot of explaining to do.
The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’
“I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
"The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
“Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’
“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”
When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
Reflection
Thirty-five years ago – a lifetime ago now, I was applying for the job of ecumenical campus chaplain at McMaster University. It was a new venture for me. To that point, my only experience of university campuses had been as a student, and as a minister I had only recently begun to journey beyond the bounds of a very conservative and exclusive religious upbringing.
About 20 minutes into the interview, the chair of the selection committee asked how I felt about working with other religious groups on campus, including groups of other religious traditions. As an example, he mentioned that one year when the Muslim Student Association was having trouble booking an appropriate space on campus for their Friday prayers, the chaplain previous to me had arranged for them to have exclusive use of the Chaplaincy Office on Fridays for their prayers.
I was asked, “Is that something you would do, and support?”
I thought for a moment, went through all kinds of quick mental gymnastics about Muslims and Christians and God and right and wrong theology, and then said, “As long as nothing disreputable was going on.”
After a moment’s pause, the Chair of the Council offered the thought that maybe the only disreputable thing, would be if nothing was going on. If there was either no movement and sign of God’s Spirit at work among the students on campus, or there was and we were not ready to support and embrace the students involved in it – regardless of who they were, as brothers and sisters with us in the life of God.
Point taken. I
closed my eyes, and screwed up my courage for the rest of the interview.
A week or two later, I was surprised – very pleased, but also surprised, when
someone from the selection committee phoned to offer me the job.
In our reading this morning, we see the Jerusalem Council of the followers of Jesus wrestling with something they have heard. Peter, out on a tour of some of the communities of the followers of The Way of Jesus in cities and towns along the Mediterranean coast, has sat down to eat with Gentiles.
This was a severe breach of religious rules and spiritual boundaries, and the other members of the Jerusalem Council fear that Peter has brought disrepute on them all. They fear he is jeopardizing whatever good will they have been gaining among their fellow Jews. It’s been hard enough, given the way they have women in leadership roles along with men, their re-ordering of traditional religious practices, and their tendency to elevate apparent ne’er-do-wells to positions of authority.
Now, Peter has broken another taboo and crossed another line. He has acted out spiritual kinship across the boundary between Jews and Gentiles, and they ask him what on Earth he thinks he was doing.
It’s interesting that in the narrative of The Book of Acts, this now becomes the third time the story of what happens in Caesarea at the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, is told.
First, in Acts 10:1-23 there is the event itself, in which Peter is led by a dream from God to accept the invitation to sit down at table with so-called unclean people, and Cornelius – a centurion and ultimately unclean no matter how good he may be, is told by an angel of God to ask for Peter to come to his house. Then second, in Acts 10: 24-48, once Peter is at Cornelius’s house, he summarizes what has happened, explains to Cornelius, his family and friends, and the few Jews there with Peter, how momentous this is, that across the boundary that everyone thought to be eternally set by God, they are actually brothers and sisters together of The Way, members together of a singular family of God in the world. And now third, in Acts 11:1-18, Peter again recites the story of what’s happened, and repeats the same good news to his colleagues in Jerusalem.
It was obviously not an easy lesson to learn. Nor an easy experience to embrace. This crossing of long- and hard-set boundaries, and this more opened awareness of what it means to be “of God” in the world, was so radical and revolutionary that it took three runs through it for it begin to sink in and be embraced.
First, the actual experience of being led by God across the uncrossable boundary. Then the explanation to the folks who were there, about what this means. And finally the defense of it to your own friends and colleagues back home, to help them see it after the fact as being God’s good will.
It reminds me of what I heard about the decision of General Council in 1980 not to disqualify people from ordination to ministry just because of their sexual orientation or identity.
The decision was made by commissioners who actually saw and met homosexual persons who were obviously gifted and called to ministry by God, in many cases already practicing faithful, effective ministry under the radar of the sexual orientation police.
The meaning of the decision – what new things it affirmed, and what old things it maintained, was then fully discussed at the meeting with all present.
And then finally, there was the work – the same work Peter faced back in Jerusalem – of explaining to the folks back home why on earth they felt led by God to vote as they did, and to cross a boundary that many thought God himself had put in place forever.
And there are all kinds of boundaries like that – that we lean on to define who is in and who is out, what is acceptable and not, who is eligible to be counted as a brother and sister, a member or a leader, and who is not. Boundaries that God’s Spirit does not always recognize, nor stay within. Boundaries that followers of the Way of Jesus are encouraged by God not to put too much stock in.
There is an important spiritual liberty here that we are called to grow into. And at the same time, there are three things we are called to notice that this does not mean.
One is that this disregard of traditional boundaries and this openness to the Spirit of God in those who are “other” than us, does not boil down to an easy and careless universalism. It’s not that everyone is in, that anything goes, and that we’re just one big tent open to all.
What we are, are those who are gathered at the table of God, because of our shared belief in and commitment to The Way of Jesus, regardless of other things that may define and divide us in the world. And The Way of Jesus is quite specific. It’s the way of compassion and love, of service and self-sacrifice, of living towards justice and well-being for all, of inclusion and openness to the other, of caring or all the Earth and all life in it, of healing and reconciled relationship, of divine forgiveness and grace.
And quite frankly not everyone – not even all those who are religious or even Christian, are ready for that. Or open to it. Or committed to it. It’s those who are, who the angels of God tell us to embrace as spiritual sisters and brothers, regardless of whether or not they claim to be religious, and no matter what religious tradition has nurtured them and they still practice. Together we are companions and friends in The Way that heals the world, members together of the family of God and at the Table of God for the good of the world.
A second thing, is that who is and who isn’t part of this, isn’t up to us. Thinking he was the gatekeeper of God’s fold is the mistake Peter had to be corrected of, and that he encouraged his colleagues in Jerusalem to not keep making.
We don’t decide who is and who is not “of God” or “of the Spirit.” The best we can do is to recognize those who are when we see them or learn about them. And the way we know is by the affinity that God’s Spirit within us feels with the Spirit in them – provided we are moved by God’s true Spirit ourselves. And when we sense that affinity, we act on that knowledge. We find ways to affirm the unity of Spirit, to live with them as family, and work with them as partners for the well-being of the world.
And a third thing, then, is that it’s not all about the growth of the church as we know it. Recognizing others beyond us and beyond our boundaries may at times lead them to join us as members of the church for their own nurture and encouragement. But they may also stay just where they are and keep doing what the Spirit of God encourages them to do – remain distant cousins to us, but still partners in the Work, companions in the Way, family members with us at the Table of God – a Table bigger and more diverse in its place settings than any of us can imagine.
And maybe then, a fourth thing. We cannot simply assume that we are always and forever at that table. We, as much as any, have our ways of wandering from it.
And we, as much as any, are called over and over again, to come back to it. We as much as any are called by God to be opened to the Spirit wherever we are at the time, to live out the Way of Jesus as we are able, and no matter what place or position we have in the world, to live as people of God and of God’s good will for all the world.
Thanks be to God.
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