Sermon 5/6/07
Distinctions - Acts 11:1-18, John 13:31-35
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I often joke, and I’m sure you would agree, that if we don’t do anything else well at St. Paul’s, we certainly now how to eat well. If we could only communicate our love for one another through food, we’d be all set – the cream of the crop. I heard that one time, years ago, there was some church event here where we actually ran out of food. This was such a disturbing event in the history of St. Paul’s that we have never come close to running out of food at an event again. Members of our Evangelism Committee know I like to tease them about this – when we have a breakfast for new members, I try to encourage us to keep it simple – doughnuts and juice. But inevitably, doughnuts and juice also turns into milk and muffins and bagels and cream cheese and fruits and Danishes and so on. We eat well at St. Paul’s.
And, truthfully, food isn’t just food in the life of our congregation. The meals that we share together – be it the way we work together for the Harvest Supper, the fun we have baking pies together, the meals shared at monthly Men’s Club gatherings, the Lenten soup suppers, the potlucks we have, the receptions for new members and newly baptized persons, or even the meal we share when we join in Holy Communion together – these meals are holy and spiritual events. At least I see them that way – seriously. Sharing food with one another symbolizes a close relationship with those with whom you eat. Sharing food means sharing a bit of yourselves. It binds us together, makes us feel like family.
Of course, food also plays a big part in our religious traditions – throughout the Old Testament, major events between God and God’s people were remembered through meals, feasts. In the gospels, what Jesus ate and who he ate with was a frequent point of conflict. Food and our meal rituals are important. And this seems to be true across religious boundaries – all religious faiths I can think of have important festivals and rites that relate to food.
Food is important – not just for meeting our nutritional requirements – but food is important for strengthening our relationships. Some of you know that not only am I a vegetarian, but I’m also just a picky eater, and have been since I was a child. This makes for tough situations sometimes when I am being served food by someone. I never felt this more acutely than when I visited Ghana, West Africa during seminary. While we traveled just with our group, I could manage just fine and make due and refuse foods I didn’t want without consequence. But we spent an entire week of our stay living with host families. In most cultures around the world (including our own, to an extent), it is considered pretty rude for a guest to refuse food that is served, with, of course, exceptions for allergies and special diets and the like. I had communicated with my host family before my arrival that I was a vegetarian, which they graciously accommodated. But beyond that, I knew I would have to be ready to eat whatever was served to me. The food was served in huge quantities which I tried hard, but usually failed, to finish. Even the breakfast meal was huge, and I usually don’t eat breakfast. In fact, part of my daily breakfast consisted of some kind of cooked white beans. I don’t especially think of beans as a breakfast food. But I tried very hard to eat my beans. It took a lot of effort. One day I worked extra hard and managed to eat all of the beans that I was served. And the next day, I was served twice as many beans as usual! As I said, food is important in so many ways – we communicate using food, build relationships through sharing meals, and show how we feel about others using food.
So then, it should come as no surprise that food and how food was shared was a critical issue for the early church, for the disciples trying to figure out how to live and work together. And in fact, for the early church, food became a point of great conflict. Jesus and his disciples constantly were often at odds with the religious leaders of the day over appropriate rules about who to eat with, but the apostles were actually at odds with each other over rules about sharing meals. Let’s go back and take a look at this text for today, which gives us insight into this ongoing conflict.
The whole passage is sort of a flashback. Peter, apparently, has eaten with some Gentiles – the food the Gentiles would be eating would be forbidden to Peter by Jewish law, laws that had very detailed dietary laws, laws that centered on purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness. So some of the circumcised believers, the ones who are following Jewish purity codes, want to know why Peter has eaten with these people. And so Peter must explain himself, “step by step,” we read, and that is where he flashes back to describe what has caused this strange behavior in him.
He’s had a vision, he says. A large sheet, maybe like a giant tablecloth, was lowered from heaven by its corners. On the cloth were various kinds of animals, representing animals that Peter would not be allowed to eat according to Jewish laws, kosher laws. Surprising to him, he hears God’s voice telling him to get up and eat these forbidden foods. Peter refuses, insisting he would not eat anything unclean. But God responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This sequence Peter saw repeated in his vision a total of three times.
Right after this happens, three men appear who are Gentiles, and Peter feels the Spirit telling him “not to make a distinction” between himself and these men. So he goes with them and fellowships with them. In his heart, Peter finally understands his vision. He tells the questioning apostles, “I remembered the word of God . . . ‘John baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” And the apostles get it too, finally, after hearing Peter’s story: They praise God and say, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life!”
What, you might be asking, is it that they all seem to understand now from Peter’s strange vision? Well, as we encounter in this text and other texts in Acts and the epistles of Paul, Peter and the rest of the ‘original’ disciples and Paul and Barnabbas and the apostles working with them approached their ministry very differently. Paul, certainly a devout Jew, spent most of his ministry reaching out to those who were not Jewish – reaching out to the Gentiles. Paul had a complete conversion on the road to Damascus, and he was ready and willing to let go of all the old things in his life – so he felt free to tell others becoming Christians that they didn’t need to adopt all the commandments of Jewish life – they were new creations in Christ.
But Peter and company didn’t see things Paul’s way: Peter and the rest of the Twelve focused their outreach and evangelism primarily on those who were already Jews, viewing God’s message in Jesus as directed only or at least mostly for the chosen people of Israel. He thought that those who were not Jews who wanted to follow Christ should at least convert first to the Jewish faith, and then become Christians. The two sides spent a lot of time disagreeing over this topic, and ultimately agreed that each would focus on their own special area of ministry. But here, here is Peter’s own conversion experience. Peter has already converted his life to be a follower of Jesus Christ – here he has a conversion of a different nature, when his mind is opened and he sees the radical inclusive and all-reaching nature of God’s love and grace in Jesus Christ. In his vision, he’s told essentially that only God decides what is clean and unclean, and that what God has made clean, we humans have no right to reject.
To me, the verse that sticks out in this passage is where Peter tells the other apostles, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.” For Peter’s day and time, this was a huge statement. The Jewish faith was all about being a distinct people – and the Jews weren’t alone. Cultural differences created huge barriers between people. The Romans who occupied the lands hated the Jews because of their distinctiveness. People from neighboring villages didn’t get along with each other because they felt the distinctions between them were too great. Distinctions, differences, were the causes of wars and controversies and divisions. But Peter was beginning to realize that because of the new life he experienced in Christ, because of this love of neighbor that Jesus talked about – this new commandment of love for one another – because of this, distinctions were irrelevant.
Do you think we’ve changed a lot? This past week I was leading worship at the Extended Care Facility, and one of the women told me before the service that she was Roman Catholic. But, she said, “we all serve the same God.” I told her that of course I agreed. But I guess maybe that’s not a given. If we look around us, we’ll see many different kinds of Christians – United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, Quakers, Seventh Day Adventists – we’ll even see different kinds of Methodists – Free Methodists, United Methodists, African Methodist Episcopals – it would seem that distinctions are pretty important to us. And I’ll be honest. I love the United Methodist Church and Methodist theology. I like the things that make us distinct.
But actually, today I think most people are less worried about these distinctions between denominations. In fact, for better or worse, most people probably can’t even tell you the difference between United Methodists and Lutherans. But even if these distinctions don’t matter to us anymore, focusing on our distinctions still seems to be a problem – perhaps in more serious ways. We make distinctions all the time – Democrat or Republican? Pro-life or pro-choice? Native or immigrant? Black or white? Rich or poor? Educated or uneducated? Conservative or liberal?
As people of faith, as children of God – a trait we share with everyone – we’re called, like Peter, to remember – the Spirit has told us not to make distinctions between them and us. When Jesus calls us to love one another, he calls us to love Lutherans and Catholics, rich and poor, native and immigrant, liberal and conservative with the same unconditional love of God. We can appreciate the differences between us, but we should never let the distinctions divide and separate us. Because the one distinction that Jesus encourages us to have, the one thing that is most meant to set disciples apart is that they will be known by their generous and far-reaching love.
“And I remembered the word of the Lord . . . if then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believe in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Amen.