Redrawing the Circle of God’s Grace and Welcome
May 6, 2007
Jay Bartow, Pastor
First Presbyterian Church of Monterey
Texts: John 13:31-35; Acts 1:1-18
How is it that we on the West Coast of North America, geographically, historically, and culturally distant from the world of the Jews and their Holy Scriptures got grafted into their faith story? Today’s reading from Acts tells us how the groundwork was laid for a Jewish message and messiah to become universal and accessible for all the peoples on earth. This story is still being played out in our time, and the question is whether we can discern the grace and welcome of God at work in our world. If we fail to see aright the wideness of God’s mercy we may cancel out what God means to do in our time. And if we blur the line on what is central to the Christian message we may mislead people and make it hard for them to learn what it truly means to follow Jesus Christ into life abundant and eternal.
The story is so important that Luke tells it three times in his account of the Acts of the Apostles in Chapters Ten, Eleven and Fifteen. Peter went up on the roof of a house in Joppa a town on the Mediterranean Coast. It was noon and a meal was being prepared and Peter fell into a trance in which he saw a sheet descending from heaven with all kinds of animals on it, many of which it was not lawful for a Jew to eat, but a voice can from heaven saying: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter said, “No Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came again and said, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” This happened three times. (Acts 10:9-17)
The vision upset Peter, but while he was pondering the meaning of it two men sent by Cornelius, a centurion of the Roman army, knocked on the door where Peter was staying and said that their master had also had a vision when he was praying, in which he was told to send to Joppa for a man named Simon Peter. They said that their master was a good and God fearing man, spoken well of by Jews, even though he was himself a Gentile. Peter had been told by God to accompany them and so he went with them thirty miles up the coast to Caesarea accompanied by some fellow Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah. When he arrived Cornelius welcomed him and Peter went into his home, even though such fraternization with non Jews was prohibited. Cornelius asked Peter to tell him what he had been commanded by God.
So Peter opened his mouth and said that he perceived that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God. Peter went on to speak of the good news of Jesus who taught and healed and did good, but was crucified, dead, buried and then rose again and commissioned Peter and others to preach the good news and call them to believe in Jesus and find forgiveness in his name. Here we have a very succinct account of what the Gospel is. Cornelius and his friends and relatives are all ears and all of a sudden they start speaking of the mighty acts of God in different tongues just as the Jewish followers of Jesus had at the day of Pentecost. Peter and his colleagues are amazed, and Peter asks: “Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And that is what they did.
We pick up the story when some Jewish believers in Jesus take Peter to task for having table fellowship with Gentiles, breaking the Jewish law. Peter tells them what happened and asks, “If then, God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:17) That seemed to satisfy their initial objection, but the issue resurfaced again and again in those early years because the Jews had so much invested in those peculiar practices and prohibitions that set them apart from other peoples that they couldn’t conceive of them not being essential for everyone who would follow God aright. To this day such practices define Jews, just as prayers at set times and in a certain direction, fasting a month during Ramadan, pilgrimage to Mecca, giving of alms, and confession in one God and Mohammed as God’s messenger define Muslims. Followers of Jesus will be known by one thing: that they love one another as he loved them. Such love is the natural fruit of receiving the unconditional love and grace of Jesus Christ. What we eat or don’t eat, what direction and time we pray, what holy city we travel to, are not important or essential. Whom we love and how we love are.
Remember what Jesus asked Peter in last week’s text? Peter do you love me? Peter said, “Yes, you know that I love you.” “Tend my sheep and follow me,” is what Jesus said, and that is precisely what Peter is doing here. In the process he is discovering that the flock of Jesus includes all manner of persons that Peter would not have expected. So what do we make of this? We might come to the assuring conclusion that we are not outcastes, that whatever our background and the mistakes of our past, that the grace and welcome of God are there for us if we will but turn toward Jesus Christ who is full of grace and truth. Perhaps that is not hard for you to believe, but I think there are times when it is hard to believe we are so loved. Promises broken, plans left undone, harsh words spoken, kind words left unsaid, resources squandered. You and I know the list of shortcomings only too well. Jesus Christ came to us while we were yet sinners. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,” is what he said. Can we believe that? I pray we can even if we have to say with that father who asked healing for his son from Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief.”
The other conviction this text urges of us is that there are all manner of persons in need of hearing of the grace and welcome of God, and how are they to hear unless someone tells them and how can one tell, unless one is sent? ( Romans 10:14-15) Whenever followers of Jesus have dared to do that, wonderful things have happened. That is how the ancestors of many of us, the incredibly violent northern European Scandinavians, Irish, Celts, Franks, Angles and Saxons came to a new way of life. In our own time we see thousands of devotees of Jesus among Hindus in India who do not see themselves leaving Hinduism, and yet do see themselves following Jesus. Where in the Bible does it say Jesus’ followers would be known by a label? For cultural and historical reasons and animosities it may be virtually impossible for many to see themselves becoming Christians because they associate that name with animosity toward and rejection of them. They think that if they become Christian they must eat meat, something that literally makes them sick to their stomach. You see how certain practices that have nothing to do with following Jesus can be attached to Christianity and effectively exclude people whom God loves.
It took a while for Christians to realize that the practice of slavery impeded loving others, slave or free, as Christ does. By the Seventh century A.D. slavery was no longer practiced by Christians. With the dawn of the Imperial era slavery reared its ugly head once again, and it took the courage and conviction of persons like William Wilberforce and Charles Finney and other abolitionists to abolish slavery first in the British empire and then in America. Unfortunately, de facto slavery still exists in our world, and people of faith have work to do in bringing it to an end. No one is a commodity to be sold at auction or manipulated as a puppet.
This text in Acts and my own experience ministering with and being ministered to by persons who are gay or lesbian in the community of faith is spurring me to re think the Presbyterian Church USA’s position forbidding ordination of such persons unless they are celibate. When you see the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of such persons in ways that lead me and others to love and serve Christ, what do you conclude? I am reading again the few texts that speak of homosexuality and looking again to see if the texts say what I thought they did. We know that there was a great deal of promiscuity in the Greco Roman world, much of it associated with religious cultic activity. Are the Biblical prohibitions of such activity applicable to faithful same sex relationships? That is but one of many questions I am asking, and I hope we can have an adult education class looking at this issue in which we can discuss, listen, pray, and seek God’s guidance for us as individuals and as a congregation and denomination. The experience of the Holy Spirit at work in persons and places we had not anticipated changed Peter’s theology and practice. It was not an easy or even a very steady change; Paul had to call him on refraining from table fellowship with Gentiles when he was criticized by some Jewish believers for not keeping kosher. But eventually Peter and other followers of Jesus found the wherewithal to reach out beyond their comfort zone, to redraw the circle of God’s grace and welcome.
Coming to the table of our Lord is one of those times when we see Christ’s welcome most clearly. At the Last Supper there was a Zealot named Simon who was ready to kill Roman occupiers, and there was Matthew who collected taxes for Rome. And there was Jesus, the one reality that Simon and Matthew had in common, a reality stronger than that which divided them. Today our children have baked bread for communion and they share with us at the table. Children came to Jesus and he welcomed them and bid us learn from them what it means to embrace God’s reign. Their understanding of the meal will grow as they partake, just as yours and mine does. They belong to Jesus just as we do, and they are fed by him that they may be his shepherds in their own way at school, at home, on the playground or wherever God leads them.