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The Radical Hospitality of God
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| 5/6/2007 |
Just Another Sermon on the Radical Inclusivity of God,
as illustrated by Acts 11
Preached by the Rev. Timothy B. Safford
Christ Church in Philadelphia, May 6, 2007
In the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles, we see the Christian Church in its earliest, most perfect, and probably most idealized form. There are no buildings, doctrines, vestments and rituals; just the power of the Holy Spirit giving the preached Word of God the power to transform death into life, the lost into being found, the captive to be free, the lame to walk, the blind to see and the hopeless to hope.
Who was to get this gift: some or all? And, to whom are we going to give it: some or all? In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we hear preaching that explodes the myth of “us and them, we and they.” We are they.
In Acts 10:1, we hear of Cornelius, a Roman soldier of rank, prestige and honor. He’s wealthy, owns slaves, and may have gained all he had through pillage and plunder. He would’ve been, to the faithful and observant Jew, which includes the disciples of Jesus, a person of derision, maybe disgust, and possibly hatred for participating in the oppression of Israel and the economic exploitation of the people for the glories of Rome. So, Simon Peter must be quite surprised when God makes clear that Cornelius is loved by God, too, and there is nothing that Cornelius or Simon Peter can do about it.
Shortly before God arranges an introduction of Simon Peter to Cornelius, God gives the well-meaning-yet-often-befuddled Peter a vision of a four-cornered sheet full of animals that would make Peter unclean if he even touched them, much less ate them. Or so the religious laws of the faithful dictated. Peter may not follow the rules, but he certainly knows them. “Kill, and eat,” a voice says to Peter, and he assumes it’s a test from God. He has not done well in his immediate past on these tests, so he’s prepared. “By no means, Lord,” Peter says, “for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” I wouldn’t doubt it, and Peter probably is awaiting a mystical slap on the back; instead Peter’s, and the religious’ world is turned upside down. The voice says, “What God has made clean, you shall not call profane.”
What becomes clear when Peter meets Cornelius, and preaches to him the good news of the Risen Christ is that God has made Cornelius, too, and it is not for Peter to call Cornelius profane. In God’s economy, the lost are just as made by God as the found. Clearly, as the Acts of the Apostles makes abundantly clear, the ones who are being saved by Christ are not to stand still waiting for the lost to come to them. The saved are the shepherds who leave the 99 found sheep and search for the one who wandered away. No, check that. In Acts, the shepherd is the one who goes looking for the sheep that were never in the fold.
Peter is sent to Cornelius, not the other way around, and he preaches a sermon whose pages are already worn and ripped from constant use. But Cornelius is the first Gentile to hear it. I will mention here (for it soon becomes important in Acts 11), that Peter, as a faithful Jew, bears the mark in his flesh signifying the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, demanded by the law given to Moses, and that is circumcision. Cornelius is uncircumcised, so no matter his righteousness or powerful conversion, he will remain permanently unclean being uncircumcised if judged by the law of Moses. You can see where this is going, a tectonic shift is underway:
What God has made we shall not deem unclean, circumcised or not.
I will say here that the biblical passages whose meaning is found in understanding circumcision and that rite’s necessity for inclusion into the community of the faithful makes me uncomfortable because it reminds us that even the great passages that reveal God’s inclusive nature are written as if only one half of the human race--those circumcise-able—matter.
Cornelius and his entire unclean cohort receive the Gospel message with abandon, like the people of Nineveh did when Jonah prophesied, and the Holy Spirit pours in and blows through their unclean lives just as surely as she does ours. “The circumcised believers,” Acts 10:45 tells us, “were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.”
Every time the verb astound or the noun astonishment shows up in scripture, pay close attention, because chances are there is an example of God acting in our lives as God wants, not as we want God to act.
Anyway, to get to Acts 11, news gets to the Bishops and Standing Committee back at Diocesan headquarters (let’s poke a little fun at ourselves) that even the Gentiles, yes the Gentiles, can you believe such a thing, have accepted the word of God. Naturally, they assume that Peter has lowered his standards rather than that the Holy Spirit has extended God’s boundaries for being included in God’s love. I can hear these authorities of old in the modern parlance of “we need to keep Rite I; why print the leaflet? we can’t lower our musical standards; etc., etc.
So, Peter is called back to explain himself. “So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised criticized him,” meaning the question that is about to come is one in which Peter’s answer may determine his fate. He is being tried by this council as Jesus was by the Sanhedrin. “Why did you go and eat with the uncircumcised?”
Peter, what will your answer be? Will you give the same sort of answer that you gave to God, that you would do nothing so profane, or will you speak the gift of the truth that there will be no outcasts among those whom God has made? Will you deny the Risen Christ, and contravene the Holy Spirit, as you denied your suffering Lord in the courtyard, or do you finally have some backbone?
You’re right, these are not questions of Peter, but of you and me. Will we tear down the barriers that surround our churches that keep those whom we label profane from even peeking into, or will we insulate ourselves with comfort, homogeneity and culture and just wait to see who might wander in on our terms?
Peter knows that the true answer is the wrong one; he is willing to risk, finally, all that he has. Jesus told him to take up the cross and follow him, and now he does. It is not exactly Luther’s, “Here I stand” speech. He hedges his bet by saying that denying the purity codes and religious laws and going to the Gentiles was all God’s idea, reminiscent of Jonah’s attitude about going to Nineveh. But Peter adds this detail, when the equivalent of Jonah’s whale began to escort him to Cornelius: “Three men were sent to me from Caesaera” (to which we’ll add what the text implies, unclean men, uncircumcised Gentile men) “and the Holy Spirit told me to go with them, and not make a distinction between them and us.”
Did you hear it? The Holy Spirit told. . . .go. . .do not make a distinction. . . between them and us.
What God has made, we are not to call profane. God has made us all.
It is not clear from the text if Peter is being persuasive before his tribunal. He sounds a bit desperate, as if his judges are all sitting there with stone faces, ready to give the order to gather stones. Peter explains the power of the Gentiles’ conversion, not caused the water of baptism, but the fire of the Holy Spirit, with which the members of the tribunal have personal experience.
But then, Peter stops, finds some courage, and then, I imagine, calmly speaks the truth that life with God is not about hoarding, but giving; not about fencing in, but going out; not about seeking safety, but taking risks. Peter rests his case with, “If, then, God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to hinder God?”
And the tribunal was silenced, until one, and then all, praised God, and thereby admitting that all they thought about law, purity and inclusion had been turned over like the money changers’ tables in the Temple. The last were first, and those hungry for the transforming love of God were filled, and the rich of certainty, sameness and control were sent empty away.
Like an activist judiciary that makes laws with its rulings, the court issues a unanimous opinion: “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
I think that means that if even the Gentiles get it, we all do. Repentance is not earned through coercion, humiliation, guilt and fear of damnation. Repentance is a gift that will heal the broken places, replenish the dry places, and bring light to the shadows of our soul so that we might have life, and have it abundantly.
My fear is that we who are called to testify to the gift of life keep it from them who need it by erecting barriers visible and invisible. The Christian Church is too much like the bank that promises a free gift with every checking account. As with prize-giveaways that promise “no purchase necessary,” we know what happens to our name and address so we can be contact later if we win. “No strings attached” is woven into every net we cast.
I hope this illustration helps make my point and close this sermon. Recently, I lobbied in Washington DC with Carol Anthony on behalf of a piece of legislation titled “The Matthew Shepherd Act” which expands existing hate-crime legislation to include gays and lesbians among the many racial/ethnic/gender groups currently protected under existing hate-crime legislation. I understand that many reasonable persons conclude that “hate crime” legislation may not protect people better than traditional statutes, and others argue that hate-crime legislation may even hinder prosecution of crimes. But when Matthew Shepherd was beaten in Larramie, Wyoming, and tied to a fence and left to die, and the evidence showed that the rage of those who beat them was fueled by Matthew being a gay man, the crime could not be considered a violation of his civil rights because who Matthew Shepherd was not included in the statues of the nation always seeking to draw the circle larger and live out its creed better that all of God’s children are created equal and have rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I lobbied out of my beliefs, fueled by my Christian faith, that if there is legislation that includes citizens of certain category, it should also include GLBT citizens. Many law enforcement authorities agree that such expanded definition of hate-crimes legislation will help protect other gay and lesbian youth and young adults from suffering the same fate as Matthew Shepherd. We here in tolerant Philadelphia may not realize how often gays and lesbians are targeted for hatred and violence. The “Matthew Shepherd Act” has proven to have wide bipartisan support, and it has passed the House of Representatives.
Carol and I lobbied with some 200 other clergy that day--rabbis, imams, buddhist monks and sufi mystics, too. We weren’t the only religious group lobbying that day. Other Christians were visiting legislators’ offices to lobby against the Matthew Shepherd Act. They would leave behind a poster styled on the old Western “Wanted” posters. “Wanted for Hate Speech” the poster blared across the top, and the picture below was a cartoon image of Jesus with his mouth taped shut. There argument was that if this legislation passed, they could not preach that homosexuality was a sin before God, effectively silencing the voice of Jesus. Jesus, the poster asserted, would be prosecuted and thrown in jail, guilty of hate speech. Of course, the legislation would do no such thing. Christians can preach all day at a gay man, but they may not beat him and leave him to die.
Separate from whom is right or wrong in this public policy debate, I want to assert that the passage we have from Acts 11 contradicts such prejudicial thinking. If we were to remove the word Gentiles from the Acts passage and replace it with gays and lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people, would not Peter’s testimony be the same: “The Holy Spirit told me to go with them, and not make a distinction between them and us.”? Considering the incontrovertible testimony to the faith and perseverance of gay and lesbian Christians, and the largess of their under-appreciated contribution to the Church over the centuries, would not the verdict of the court be: God has given even to the gays and lesbians the repentance that leads to life!”?
But there’s the rub, I suppose. Many Christians who don't agree with me believe that gays and lesbians have not shown the repentance that leads to life. They feel called to lead them through repentance of their sexual identity to heterosexual life.
But, how can a person repent from that which is unchangeable? I am pretty sure that none of us can repent from our determined nature that comes right along with the belly button. I cannot change my heterosexual nature, nor can the homosexual change his or hers.
Which is not to say, I quickly add, that I do not need lots of repentance for the way I live as a heterosexual. If as a straight, white, married male, I use the inherent privilege and advantages of that identity to persecute, exploit or defeat my brother and sister of different race, gender, national origin, and sexual orientation, then I need just as much repentance as anyone that the church has constructed barriers to keep out because they have yet to repent of the unchangeable nature God has given them.
It is an arrogance to believe that a certain Christian within the walls of a Church needs more repentance than a possible Christian on the outside of those walls, and a further arrogance for the walled-in Christians to dictate to the walled-out potential Christians what kind of repentance they need to come through the church gate.
The passage from Acts simply explodes this arrogance and convicts those who hold it with Peter’s words, “The Holy Spirit told me to make no distinction between them and us.” And, it seems abundantly clear to me that if we somehow lose the arrogance and lower the drawbridge over the moat so that there is actually an easily accessible path into the church, we aren’t to wait for “those people” to come to us. We’re to not only go to them, we’re to tell them we are them in our testimony of life that comes through repentance.
I am not saying that my gay brother isn’t in need of repentance. I am saying that I need repentance, too, and God doesn’t grade on the curve, nor make distinctions between the amount of repentance each of us needs. God’s forgiveness always overflows the repentant vessel.
I believe I am right, but I try to hold gently. As Paul tells us, we all discern God’s truth by looking into a mirror that hangs in a dark room. In other words, when seeking God’s truth, we admit that we base it mostly on our own image of ourselves, and even so, we do that more on belief of whom we think we are, rather than a honest view of ourselves. Later, we do not know when, God will reveal God’s self to us face to face, in light, without mirror to hinder. All we have in the meantime is the gift of love which bears all things, is patient, and rejoices not in hatred, but in goodness. With this Godly love, Jesus taught, we are simply, purely, to love one another, as we have been loved by God.
For a community that proclaims that God’s love is offered without condition, the challenge to us is not how I or you can prove each other wrong, but how we can live in the community of the Body of Christ, even in tension, and allow God to remake us all.
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