"Who Are We to Hinder God?"
Acts 11:1-18; John 13:31-35
If you haven’t read through the whole book of Acts, I encourage you to
do so, to get the overall narrative.
Most of the first half of the book of Acts is concerned with the
Jerusalem church. Then there’s a
geographical movement in the story, away from Jerusalem, as the gospel spreads.
In Acts chapter 8, an
angel of the Lord sends Philip to a wilderness road where he ends up
interpreting the book of Isaiah to the Eunuch.
When they came to some water, the Eunuch asks, “What is to prevent me
from being baptized?” According to the religious rules and customs, there was a
lot to prevent him being baptized, but nevertheless Philip baptized him.
Saul has been
zealously persecuting the disciples until his life-changing encounters-- with
the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and then with Ananias, who laid his
hands on Saul and something like scales fell from his eyes, and he was able to
see things differently.
In Acts chapter ten,
Luke tells how the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was seeking God, had a vision
in which an angel of God told him to send for Simon Peter…and how Peter
received a vision that challenged his ideas about what it meant to be a person
of faith.
The church was
growing. But including the Gentiles
brought a crisis in the life of the church.
It’s hard for us to appreciate the
intensity of the controversy that’s summarized in the story we just heard. After all, what’s the big deal about eating
pork or other unclean animals? But to
the early church, it was a big deal.
Jesus was a Jew... and his first followers were Jews. Although Jesus had challenged some of the
religious traditions to the point where some in the religious establishment
wanted to have him executed-- the early church really hadn’t questioned the
authority of the taboos of the ancient purity and holiness laws.
According to Jewish tradition, it
was unlawful for Jews to enter a Gentile house... or receive Gentile guests... or eat with them. Peter was an observant Jew, and he’d taken
these regulations for granted and observed them all his life. But then he has an experience that
challenges his understanding. He
receives some heavenly visions that forbid him from counting as unclean
anything that God has made clean. Peter’s understanding of what it
means to live faithfully has been changing.
In the lesson we heard last week from Acts, we heard that Peter stayed
in the house of Simon the tanner, who would have been considered ritually unclean
because he worked with the carcasses of dead animals.
The Spirit leads him to Cornelius,
and he discovers that God has been working on Cornelius too. As he shares the good news of peace in Jesus
Christ, he sees the Holy Spirit fall upon all who hear the word.
Peter says, “Can anyone withhold the
water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit, just as we
have? So he orders them to be baptized
in the name of Jesus Christ... and he
stays with them for a while.
Now, the apostles back in Jerusalem
and the believers in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word
of God. When Peter went up to Jerusalem,
the circumcised believers criticized Peter, saying, “Why did you go to
uncircumcised men and eat with them?”
It seemed very clear to what God
required of them. For many centuries,
their religious tradition had taught them that to be a “holy” people means to
be separate... and to have very clear,
distinct boundaries between their community and those outside the
community.
According to the purity codes of
their tradition, something was “clean” if it fit wholly and neatly inside
particular categories. For example, in the purity laws in
Leviticus 11, the people of Israel are told that they could eat “any animal
that has divided hoofs and is cleft-footed and chews the cud.” Camels and rock badgers and hares and pig
didn’t fit into this category, so they were “unclean” and forbidden.[1]
The Levitical laws spelled out in
detailed terms that certain things were totally unacceptable in Israelite
culture, and therefore an “abomination:” things like eating unclean
food... idolatrous practices... not keeping the Sabbath… and magic, to name just a few. The
Holiness Code prohibited a long list of things that included the cross-breeding
of animals and the mixing of grain or fibers. The Code was equally clear that
children who curse their parents should be put to death.[2]
Those of us who routinely eat ham or
multi-grain bread… or wear cotton/polyster fabric blends have a hard time
comprehending just how controversial these changes were for the early church. These
rules were part of the time-honored religious tradition, and for many faithful
people, it was really gut-wrenching to think about breaking them. Did you hear Peter’s revulsion when he heard
God’s command? “By no means, Lord; for
nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”
Yet, in the Acts story, we hear how the
church learns from the Spirit and changes.
The early church in Judea comes to accept Gentiles into the faith
community. They realize that they’re
going to be in relationship with people they’ve always avoided because they believed
them to be unclean. They decide that the
church should minister to them, and they send Paul and Barnabas out to work
with the emerging congregations.[3]
God had a new vision for the church
and what it means to be God’s holy people.
The God who created the world is disrupting the boundaries humans constructed. The Spirit continued to challenge some of the
traditional beliefs and taboos... as
“the word of God grew and multiplied”[4]
and reached to the ends of the earth.
Through Jesus, God gave us a new
commandment: that we are to love one
another, just as Jesus loved us.
Through John, God gave us a vision of a new heaven and earth, and said,
“I am making all things new.”
Before
Peter baptized them, God poured out the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles. God’s spirit is ahead of us, leading us, and
working in and through us, despite whatever dividing walls we may have
constructed. This is good news, considering how often we get things wrong, and
how often we persist in making distinctions between “us” and “them” based on
race, language, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, our fears,
and other differences, real and constructed.
“The Spirit told me to go with them
and not to make a distinction between them and us.”[5] The Spirit counseled Peter to accept what
had already been true about God: God
does not show favoritism.
God does not show favoritism. To be honest, we might be resistant to that
idea. Haven’t we at some point longed to
be the favorite? “I was Dad’s
favorite.” “Mom loved me best.” Has that made us feel special? But God does not show favoritism. God loves all of God’s children.
We are living in a time of great change in our society and in the
church—a time that a lot of folk experience as scary or confusing. And
yet, I’m becoming more and more convinced that following Jesus isn’t
complicated. Jesus came to came to live
among us, full of grace and truth, to show us the way of self-giving love.
As
Elizabeth Johnson wrote: “Jesus could not be clearer: It is not by our theological correctness, not
by our moral purity, not by our impressive knowledge that everyone will know
that we are his disciples. It is quite simply by our loving acts -- acts of
service and sacrifice, acts that point to the love of God for the world made
known in Jesus Christ.”[6]
I
agree with Dr. Johnson. Jesus was very
clear what the greatest commandments are, and they’re about love. It’s clear that we are called to show that we
follow Jesus by how we love people.
Now, it’s clear that we are called
to love one another. But nobody said it
would be easy. Look around you at the people sitting here in
the pews. Do we see any perfect
people—people that are always easy to love?
People who are always perfectly loving?
No. None of us is perfect. We all have our little quirks... and warts.
In this community, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. But the vessels are imperfect and maybe a
little cracked in one way or another. God
isn’t finished working on any of us yet.
The good news is that God has
created each and every one of us in the image of God... and gifted each of us for some kind of
special ministry. We’re not here to try
and make someone else into our image of what we’d like them to be. We’re called to love one another into being
more and more fully the person God created and gifted us to be.
I’ve probably shared this story with you before, but it’s a wise story
and bears repeating.[7]
There was a famous monastery, which had fallen on hard times. In better times, its many buildings had been
filled with young monks... and its big
church resounded with the singing of chant.
But now it was nearly deserted.
People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer. A handful of old monks shuffled through the
cloisters and praised God with heavy hearts, because they could see that their
order was dying.
On the edge of the woods near the
monastery, an old rabbi had built a little hut.
He would come there from time to time to fast and pray. No one ever spoke with him. But whenever he appeared, the word would be
passed from monk to monk: “The rabbi
walks in the woods.” And for as long as
he was there, the monks would feel strengthened by his prayerful presence.
One day the abbot decided to visit
the rabbi, and to open his heart to him. So after the morning Eucharist, he set
out through the woods. As he approached
the hut, the abbot saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, his arms outstretched
in welcome. It was as though he had been
waiting there for some time. The two
embraced like long-lost brothers. Then
they stepped back and just stood there, smiling at one another with smiles
their faces could hardly contain.
After a while, the rabbi motioned
the abbot to enter. In the middle of the
room was a wooden table with the scriptures open on it. They sat there for a moment in the presence
of the book. Then the rabbi began to
cry. The abbot could not contain
himself. He covered his face with his
hands and began to cry, too. For the
first time in his life, he cried his heart out.
The two men sat there like lost children, filling the hut with their
sobs and wetting the wood of the table with their tears.
After the tears had ceased to flow
and all was quiet again, the rabbi lifted his head. “You and your brothers are serving God with
heavy hearts,” he said. “You have come
to ask a teaching of me. I will give you
this teaching, but you can only repeat it once.
After that, no one must say it aloud again.”
The rabbi looked straight at the
abbot and said, “The messiah is among
you.”
For a while, all was silent. Then the rabbi said, “Now you must go.” The abbot left without a word and without
ever looking back.
The next morning, the abbot called
the monks together in the chapter room.
He told them he had received a teaching from “the rabbi who walks in the
woods” and that this teaching was never again to be spoken aloud. Then he looked at each of his brothers and
said, “The rabbi said that one of us is
the messiah!”
The monks were startled by this.
“What could it mean?” they asked themselves.
“Is brother John the Messiah? Or
Father Matthew? Brother Thomas? Am I the messiah? What could this mean?”
They were all deeply puzzled by the
rabbi’s teaching. But no one ever
mentioned it again.
As time went by, the monks began to
treat one another with a very special reverence. There was a gentle, whole-hearted, human
quality about them now which was hard to describe-- but easy to notice. They lived with one another as ones who had
finally found something. But they prayed
the scriptures together as seekers who were always looking for something.
Occasional visitors found themselves
deeply moved by the life of these monks.
Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the
prayer life of the monks. And once
again, young men were asking to become part of the community.
In the first few centuries in the
life of the Christian church, the faith spread like wildfire, in spite of the
fact that professing faith in Jesus Christ could be dangerous. It was observed that people outside the
church would look at the people inside the church and exclaim, “See how they love one another!” And they would want to be a part of this
community of love.
Imagine it! The people gathered here learning to treat
one another with such love that people outside the church notice! Imagine our reputation spreading: “Littlefield Presbyterian Church-- that’s
that really loving church—the church where everybody loves one another!”
Imagine it!
So be it.
Rev. Fran Hayes,
Pastor
Littlefield
Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
April 24, 2016
[1]Lev. 13; 14:33-57.
[2]Lev. 20:9
[3]Acts 11:21-26
[4]Acts 12:14; 16:5; 19:20
[5] Acts
11:12
[6]
Elizabeth Johnson, “Commentary on John 13:31-35.” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2830
[7] I’m not
sure of the source for this particular version of this story. It appears in slightly different versions in
various places. I think the first time I
heard it was years ago in an early edition of M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (1978).
