I
recently read about a book
by Tony Horwitz called Confederates in the
Attic. It’s about Southern
re-enactors and their attitudes about what they still call the War Between the
States. He interviews a man named Chris from
The Civil War? A "simpler
time?"
Well,
that’s a stretch, but
I do understand his longing for simplicity, don’t you, and stability for
"the good old days," which actually weren't that good but we remember
them that way. Change is hard. Someone has said, "All change - even change
for the good - is experienced as grief." I understand that. Just when I
finally figured out how to program my VCR, they invented DVD’s. Change is
inevitable, constant, and increasing, so at a certain point, we just want
things to stop changing and stay the same for a while. I think that’s why
some people especially resist any change in the church.
We
want our religious traditions
to be the same yesterday, today, and forever. So we get on our high horses.
"We’ve never done it this way" becomes "it isn’t
right to do it this way," and we even find Bible proof texts to back us
up. I can’t tell you how many times back in the 60Ős when youth started
wearing their hair longer and longer, I heard church people quote 1 Corinthians
11:14, in the good old King James, of course "Doth not even nature itself
teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" But now
I realize, it wasn’t the hair; it was the change
they objected to.
I
think a lot of the problems in the world these days have to do with people not adjusting well to the diversity
of people who are brought into our lives by our modern communications and commerce.
We live in a shrinking world. Just this week somebody reflected to me what hard
work diversity is. It’s so much easier just to stick with your own kind.
It’s so much more affirming to think of your own kind as the best and
everybody else as something less, and we find religious explanations for why
God loves us best.
Imagine
how Simon Peter felt. This
story is told twice in Acts, once when it happens and once when Peter reports
it. Two chapters in a row, Acts 10and Acts 11. The
Bible only says "You must be born again" once (John 3:3). A single
time it tells us "For God so loved the world that he gave his only
Son" (John 3:16). You won’t find "what does the LORD require of
you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
anywhere but Micah 6:8. These are all important words from God. But this story
is so important, it gets told twice. When I was a child, if my mother told me
to do something two or three times, it was either because it was very important
or because I hadn’t done it yet or because she knew I didn’t really
want to do it at all.
Peter
is on the roof top at dinner
time. He’s praying, but he’s hungry. Suddenly, God sends him a
vision. A table cloth drops down from the sky filled with all kinds of exotic
fare: oysters on the half shell, barbecued shrimp wrapped in bacon, crawfish etoufee, broiled lobster, honey roasted ham
(wait…those would be in my vision).
But Peter does see all the things he can’t eat. Food
that isn’t on his diet. The Bible tells him so! The Lord says,
"Dig in, Peter! Bon appetite!" And Peter
says, "No way, Lord! You know that’s not kosher!" Kind of funny
isn’t it, Peter quoting scripture to God. God says, "If I call it
clean, don’t say it ain't." (Well, God
wouldn't say ain't, because we all know that God
speaks with perfect grammar and in complete sentences and in Hebrew.) The story is repeated twice, but God shows
Peter this vision three times!
I’m
a little nervous about telling you this. This story puts a radical subversive idea in front of us: God
contradicts the scripture! Peter wants to follow the letter of the law. He can
quote God chapter and verse that says he can’t eat those foods. All his
life it has been that way. It has been that way with his people all the way
back to Moses. But God tells Peter "never mind what I said; do what I
say!" Now I know that’s no big deal to folks who say, "Who
cares what the Bible says, I’ll do whatever I want." But I believe
the Bible is the standard by which we measure what we think God is telling us
now. Without the Bible, we don’t know about God’s love. Without the
Bible, we don’t who Jesus is, what he did for us, what he taught us about
God. Without the Bible we have no sacred story to gather us as a community.
Without the Bible, we have no clear, consistent guide for living. Without the
Bible, we can’t sing "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible
tells me so," so don’t say to me, "Who cares what the Bible
says?" I care! But what do we do
with this twice told, repeated vision where God tells
Peter, "Forget what the Bible tells you; do what I’m telling you
now?"
The
point of the vision
isn’t the menu, of course. It’s the source of the menu. It’s
whose table we share and with whom we share our table. These are the foods the
Gentiles ate, and one of the reasons Jews didn’t dine with Gentiles in
those days. Gentile was a word that meant "not Jewish, not one of
us," but it came to mean "strange, foreign, dirty, repulsive,
abusive, oppressive, evil." The Greek word for "Gentile" is
ethnos, from which we get our word "ethnic." So it’s a word
with racial and cultural meaning, as well as religious. A kosher Jew
didn’t sit at the same table with those "ethnics." A kosher Jew
didn’t deal with those ethnics anymore than was necessary in order to
avoid being tainted by them.
At
the point where this happens in
the book of Acts the good news of God’s forgiveness and acceptance and
inclusion through Christ has gone to Jews from around the world at Pentecost.
It has gone to the Samaritans and the Ethiopian Eunuch. But Acts ten and eleven
are a turning point in the story of the Spirit-spread gospel in Acts, a turning
point in the history of the gospel church. This is where the gospel goes to all
of us ethnics, to all of us who are not Jews and cannot claim God’s covenant
promises, to all of us with our strange customs and costumes and culinary
concoctions who weren’t heretofore included in the people of God because
the Bible said we weren’t included. God has to convince Peter to reverse
almost two thousand years of tradition. That’s why it takes God three
times to convince Peter. But, hey! You remember how many times Peter denied
Jesus and how many times Jesus asked Peter if he loved him. Three! Maybe this
is where Peter finally gets around to obeying Jesus’ thrice told command
to "Feed my sheep."
Three
times Peter has this vision
of the un-kosher feast, then immediately somebody’s knocking at his door.
There stand three of those ethnics, sent from one of the worst ethnics of them
all - at least to the Jews of that time - a Roman! And on top of that, a
Soldier! And on top of that, a Centurion named Cornelius. And the Spirit tells
Peter to welcome them. Peter lets these three ethnics spend the night in his
own house. Not kosher! The next day he goes with them to
Now,
I ask you, who does that
"anyone" leave out? Peter tells these
ethnics about Jesus, the Spirit comes upon them, and all of them get baptized.
"I truly understand that God shows no partiality," Peter says,
"but in every gentile anyone who fears (God) and does what is right is
acceptable to (God)" (Acts 10:34-35).
The
bigwigs in
They
don’t really want to say it. You can hear the reluctance in their voice. In fact, when Peter
finishes testifying they are quiet for a long time. We all stand in that
silence waiting because our whole spiritual future hangs in the balance. It is
in that silence … where they don’t want to go … but where
they cannot deny what God has done. And finally they just have to go ahead and
admit it out loud: "Then God has given even to the ethnics the repentance
that leads to life."
It’s
still a hard change for us
to make. "God loves everybody." That’s the good news, because
it includes each of us, whatever our ethnicity or micro-culture or identity may
be. "God loves everybody." That’s the bad news, because it
includes people we don’t like or who make us uncomfortable or who may
even scare us. Whatever our ethnicity,
whatever the peculiar combination of nature and nurture and predilections and
preferences that make us each unique, our pain is the same. Our sorrows are the
same. Our mortality is the same. And for the most part, our dreams are the
same. Our longings are the same. Our prayers are the same. But most
importantly, we are all beloved of the same God. Why can’t we learn that?
Why can’t we act accordingly? Among the many lessons of grace, I think
that’s what this table is supposed to teach us. When the church says, "We are all
sinners here," but then decides some sinners can’t be here, when the
church says "God loves everybody equally," but openly excludes and
insults certain kinds of people, does the world hear our words or our actions?
But
I haven’t answered that one disturbing question. What about the Bible? Would God ever
contradict the Bible? Well, yes. That is, God contradicts our understanding of
the Bible. God contradicts our misapplication of the Bible. The Bible has been
used to endorse slavery, segregation, war, sexism, child abuse, and in our day,
the exclusion of gays and lesbians. But the Bible doesn’t finally support
any of those awful things. I don’t think it’s kosher to quote a
verse here and there to exclude and abuse people when what is really happening
is our resistance to change because diversity is such hard work. Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday, today, and forever," but we aren’t.
We’re supposed to change for the better. We’re supposed to let the
Bible change us for the better rather than using it as an instrument to avoid
change altogether. And why would we avoid change unless we are so arrogant and self-righteous as to think we’re
perfect and our understanding of the scripture must be perfect?
I
think we have to stay open to God giving us new visions, new understandings of the old, old story, new
directions to spread
the good news. "A new commandment I give to you," Jesus
said, "that you love one another" (John 13:35). I guess that’s
not so new any more. But it still seems radical. I’m not sure the whole
church has understood Jesus’ vision yet, that instead of dividing us, God wants us to come together. God wants us to embrace
the diversity God has created. Love seems to me the ultimate word of God, the
final measuring stick, on how we apply the scripture.
We
sing Jesus loves me, this I
know, for the Bible tells me so. But some people still don’t think
everybody has a right to sing that. If God welcomes everybody, who are we to
turn them away? But it’s not easy. It’s a change, and change is
hard to take. I wonder, who is God calling you to
include in your circle of love today you might just not want to include?
Don’t you realize, we wouldn’t be here
ourselves if God hadn’t decided to ignore the Bible and to invite all of
us ethnics to the table? So come to the table today, but catch the vision, too.
Maybe there are some changes God wants us to make. If we would all just obey
Jesus' command to love, the world would truly be a simpler place.
May
we pray?
Lord, we ask that you would help us
to hear your word and do your word. But keep us open, too, to the corrections
of your Spirit, who would show us where we’ve been wrong, who would open
our eyes to new visions, who would turn our words of
love into deeds of love in Jesus’ name. In Jesus’ name, we come to
his table now. Fill us with the peace of your presence. Show us how we are
loved, that we might love in return. And accept our gratitude, that you have
included all of us ethnics in your feast of grace.
Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa