We can’t imagine the hate. We can’t imagine the mistrust,
the whispers, the clandestine meetings devoted to the expulsion of these
ungodly oppressors from their native land. We can’t imagine the heartbreak of
seeing the Temple destroyed, of seeing the second vision of God’s glory laid in
ruins. We simply cannot imagine the seething rage that first century Jews felt
toward the Roman authorities in Judea. And the first Christians, still a sect of
Judiasm looking for purpose, saw God incarnate flogged by roman whips, hung
upon a Roman cross, and pierced by a Roman spear. We can’t imagine the hate,
the mistrust, the whispers, the fear.
Our
reading from Acts doesn’t give us any reason to suspect that there’s anything
out-of-place here. The Holy Spirit is working in the gentiles. That’s what the Holy
Spirit does. If it didn’t we wouldn’t be here, but it did, so thank God.
That’
however, is not the whole story. What the reading for this week lets us in on is
the end of this particular story. We’re seeing the last 15 minutes of the
movie. It has a happy ending. We kind of know who the characters are, but we
have no idea how we got here. Here’s what we missed.
Cornelius,
a Roman Soldier, who believes in the God of the Jews, gives generously and
prays frequently, sees a vision telling him to send for Peter who’s currently
staying in a seaside town called Joppa, in a tanner’s house. The next morning
he sends two slaves, who he gained through his military success, and one of his
subordinate soldiers to Joppa to look for Peter. So two slaves, taken captive
from their conquered homeland, and one of the soldiers, who did the conquering,
start down the road searching for the Saint.
While
they’re on the road Peter, tired of the smells of drying skins and the ammonia
needed to tan them, goes to the roof for air and for prayer. Lunch is far from
being ready, and Peter, who is quite hungry at that particular moment, falls
into a trance. The ammonia might have had something to do with it.
A
white cloth falls from heaven, held by its four corners. On that heavenly
spread lies every animal, every fish, every reptile, and a voice says to Peter,
“Get up; Kill and eat.” Peter knows better though, “I can’t eat this. It’s
unclean.”
The
voice responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
As
the vision fades the slaves and the soldier arrive, asking for Peter, and no
doubt terrifying the tanner. The Spirit speaks a final word to Peter, “Go with
them.”
And they leave together.
When
Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house Cornelius’ whole household is gathered, where
Peter says to the gathered crowd, “You yourselves know that it is
unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown
me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I
came without objection.” He continues to preach the word of Christ crucified,
and then in the midst of the sermon the Holy Spirit is outpoured on the Gentile
believers there. The Circumsized believers look on in dismay. Clearly the
Spirit is contravening everything they knew to be true.
What
they knew to be true were the catagories of clean and unclean. That simply
being in the presence of those who ate the meat of animals with uncloven hooves
was problematic. Not to mention the fact that this was a household of the
oppressor. This was not just a benign Greek. This was a Roman Centurion. The
enemy in every conceivable way. This was so outside of everything they knew.
They
knew the commandments. The same way we do. We know the big ten by wrote, and we carry the rest with us, emblazoned
into the back of our minds. These are the hard and fast lines that are not to
be crossed, and like the ten commandments they come with a whole host of other
statutes, those things we cast in big bold terms as “God’s law.”
If
you’re like me, however, you tend not to do so well with commandments, with the
hard and fast rules. If you’re like me (and I can say this because the Bishop’s
not here this time) you have a bit of an anti-authoritarian streak. Just
hearing the word commandment makes you a bit edgy. The reading from first John
definitely hit me like that. “For the love of God is this, that we obey his
commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of
God conquers the world.
His
commandments aren’t burdensome? Really? “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Seems to be a pretty tall order. And that’s Jesus’ commandment that’s the one. That’s the one we have to live into. It’s not
burdensome? Have you ever tried loving
people, John? It can be burdensome.
Remarkably burdensome.
The
fact of the matter is that commandments are loaded terms, with long and tired
histories of abuse and misappropriation. The idea of “God’s law” gives us
pause, not because we’re opposed to God’s truth, but because “God’s law” has
been used as a weapon, arbitrarily wielded against those who we would oppress
or demarcate as other. It seems like this story of the earliest Apostles would
give us reason to take the commandments with a grain of salt. After all, the
Spirit gave Peter a vision that ran directly contrary to what the “law” had
contained for ages. The spirit and the letter come directly into conflict here.
Don’t they?
No.
They don’t. If for no other reason than when Jesus said “Love one another as I
have loved you.” I’m inclined to believe that he meant it. If we have
anything to gather its that Peter, one of the select group of people who heard
this in person, was, much as we are, not doing a very good job of it. If the
spirit is truth, like John seems to think that it is, then the work of the
spirit will always be the work of the truth, and in this case the truth is that we are to love one another.
Peter
was to love Cornelius as Christ loved him. The vision that he saw was not about
food, however nice it is that we can now eat bacon, it was about Peter’s
hesitance to love those who had for thousands of years been deemed “unclean.”
The Spirit moved Peter to expand the boundaries of God’s kingdom broader than
Peter thought they should go. The Spirit moved Peter to live into Christ’s
commandment. Despite the hate, the mistrust, and the fear, Peter must love.
Because “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
We
do ourselves a great disservice to think that these catagories don’t exist for
us today. Clean and profane. Good and bad. Proper and improper. Educated and
Uneducated. Christian and Athiest. Gay and Straight. All these terms keep we
Christians from loving the way we are called to do. The way the Spirit moved
Peter to. And while we lament dwindling numbers in the Church as a whole we
continue to prop up these categories. We continue to demarcate ourselves based
on criteria that are as arbitrary as the categories of First Century Jews seem
to be to us today. Categories that Peter moved past in order to preach the
Gospel of Christ and to see the Spirit outpoured on those who we would categorically
deny it to before.
The
Spirit is moving always to love more than we think we can or should. In the
words of the great Anglican preacher John Wesley we are to “Love with the love
that is long suffering and kind, with the love that is patient, with the love
that thinks no evil, that covers, believes, and hopes all
things.” The spirit is pushing us to love in the hopes that God’s most Holy
Spirit will pour out on those who we never imagined could receive it.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we can imagine the hate, the
mistrust, the heartbreak, the whispers, the fear. Maybe, like Peter, the spirit
is calling us to move beyond it.
Hear What the Spirit is Saying to the Church.
Amen.
