Sermon 5/9/04
All in the Family - Acts 11:1-18
(view lectionary notes for this passage)
We don't spend a lot of time focusing on the book of Acts, probably not in our personal study, and certainly not in our community examination in church. There is so little of the Bible dedicated to the teachings of Jesus, what he said and did, that it seems difficult, for me at least, to focus in on any reading but the gospel on any given Sunday. But during these couple months, our other scripture lesson highlights the book of Acts, and I'm urged to pause and take a second look. After all, the book of Acts is a book about what it means to be the Church: beginning with Jesus' ascension into heaven, Acts follows the forming of what will become the Christian Church. We follow Peter and his growth and leadership as the Rock of the Church; We meet Paul, experience his conversion, and see him voyage around the Ancient World as he spreads the good news to any who will listen. We see the early Christians struggle and argue and try to figure out how to be community and disciples. So in many ways, the book of Acts is our book, a book of trying to be church - it is our story. So today, let's take a look at the message that this passage from Acts has to offer to us.
This particular, unique Bible passage holds a special place in my heart, not because it is one of my favorite stories, but because I often hear from others that this passage explains why I should eat meat and abandon my vegetarian ways. So, as a vegetarian, I have to take an extra close look at passages like this and see exactly what they are saying, since I don't believe they really have much to say about our diet at all, meat, vegetable, or otherwise! Fear not, I won't try to convert you to a meat-free diet, at least not during my sermon time! But this is a passage that is certainly about conversion - personal, powerful, life-changing, church-changing conversion.
So let's go back and take a look at this text. 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 them 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 Paul 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. But Peter didn't see things Paul's way: Peter focused his 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. Peter and Paul spent a lot of time disagreeing over this topic, and ultimately agree 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 the credit of Peter and the apostles, they're willing to accept this message and this vision from God and they change their behavior accordingly. And thank God that they do. If Peter and those like Paul who had vision for the extent God's message could reach and spread had not shared the message of Jesus with any who were not Jews, how many of us would be sitting here today? Probably very few of us could trace their religious heritage in such a way.
But what does this all have to do with us? Today we celebrate the Festival of the Christian Home. Coinciding with Mother's Day, this special celebration seeks to recognize the variety of shapes and forms of family, and the special unity of the Christian family as well. This celebration goes perfectly with our text, I think, as we envision what it was like for Peter to realize in a moment of epiphany how great and how wide God's understanding of family extends beyond our own limited interpretations. Obviously, we believe that God's message is for everyone, or else we ourselves would not be able to be here? We'll tell anyone about Jesus. We no longer see a distinction between Jew and Gentile - here in the United States, at least, aside from some awareness of religious turmoil in the Israeli-Palestine region, these distinctions have relatively little meaning for us. Is this, then, a lesson we've got down?
As I hope you know by now if you've been around the past few weeks, the United Methodist Church just closed it's General Conference, the gathering every four years where decisions are made about the polity of the United Methodist Church. This conference is the usually the only time we United Methodists make it into the secular news media, unfortunately, and it is usually because of reports of the continuing struggle of the church with issues of human sexuality. The latest CNN headline I could find about our church was: "Methodists split over gay issues." Surely, our denomination is about much more than this, and General Conference deals with many other important issues. But this interpretation by secular media does accurately indicate that there is division within the United Methodist family.
There are other family struggles too: For example, our church is global - we have members in Africa, the Philippines, Europe, and all around the world. But every time General Conference meets, we have to be reminded to slow down so that translators can do their work, or to make sure that we don't only look at issues from the United States perspective. We continue to work on issues of racism, after apologizing four years ago for the way we have treated the African-American members of our church family throughout history. Observers who check up on how our conference runs make notes that men tend to speak more than women, that clergy speak more than lay, that older delegates speak more than younger delegates in our church family. Committees have to be ordered to have configurations with specific percentages of clergy, lay, men, women, young, old, ethnic minorities, and non-US members, because without these safeguards in place, we tend to end up with homogenous committees, full of other people who look, think, talk, and act just like we do.
It seems, perhaps, that Peter's lesson is one we could stand to struggle with too. We are the Body of Christ - we are the church family, and God has created, blessed, and cleansed each one of us through the gift of grace, free to all. Like Peter, we are called to wonder - who are we to hinder God? What God has made clean, we are called to love and cherish. So today I invite you to look around your church family. Who is here? Who needs still to be invited in? Who in your church family needs to know that you share in Christ's Body with them? Who needs to know that they are welcome?
The power of the message of Jesus Christ is that the message is for you, and for me. For the rich and the poor. For Africa, for Europe, for Asia and Australia. For East and West, for North and South. For all of God's beautiful, created, and cleansed family. How will you share God's love? Amen.