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First
Reading: Acts 11:1-18 The wonderful lesson from the book of Revelation tells of a time when there will be no outcasts and all people will know God’s presence because God will dwell in our midst. However, in this not-yet time that we live in, most of us have had the experience of being on the outside looking in. The summer between eighth and ninth grade, my parents had a bright idea—I should go to summer school. I would learn to type and I would be out of their hair for four hours a day. The only trouble was that I did not know one kid at the old Appalachian High School and my accent would make it obvious from the first that I was not a local. I braced myself to endure the class as best I could. To my surprise and delight, they took me in. If anything, I got special attention for being new. They ate lunch with me, invited me to parties, took me home to meet their families, commiserated with me when it was my turn to receive the attention of our teacher-tormentor. I learned the local culture, joined the summer band, visited the Baptist church, found a girl or two to pursue. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is having to account for the special treatment he has given to some people on the outside. He has admitted to sitting down to table with Gentiles! We have to remember how important table fellowship was to Jews and to early Christians. Eating together said, “We are family”, just as eating together around the altar today in church says, “We are family.” Peter has been eating with people who don’t look like the rest of the family! Their table is not a Kosher table. What is he thinking? Peter says he did not make this decision lightly. He knows that table fellowship is a big thing. He has not been careless about who he eats with. God has shown him that these people are to be included in the Covenant! He shares the story of the dream he has about the big piece of canvas coming down out of heaven full of animals, many of which it is not kosher to eat, but he hears a voice saying, “Peter, rise! Kill and eat!” He knows he is not going to do this – until he realizes this is GOD’S voice he is hearing. And then he wakes up. While he is still sitting there, shaking his head and trying to decide what to make of these disturbing images, three Gentile men arrive at his door and invite him to the home of a man who is not only a Gentile, but an officer in the Roman occupation forces. (This is the Iraqi holy man being invited to come have a visit with the American MPs—not something he would do willing.) Normally, Peter would not go, but he cannot help feeling that there is a connection between his dream and this event, so he gathers six of his companions, and off they go. He meets the centurion, Cornelius, who is just as puzzled about all this as Peter, and who has had an interestingly parallel dream. Peter begins to preach and the centurion and his friends immediately begin to speak in tongues. He baptizes them and stays with them for a time, presumably to teach them. What I wonder is how, short of having strange dreams, you and I can
be as welcoming to outsiders as Peter was. How do we do this individually
and as a community? Christians who know their own tradition well will be more accepting of others than those who have shaky foundations. Many of us have been touched by Rabbi Micah Greenstein’s openness to us, and his interest in how we practice our faith. I’m convinced he can do this because he is so well grounded in his own tradition. He has discovered, I suspect, that anything he learns from people of other faiths will only enhance his own relationship with God. In the Episcopal Church right now we are struggling with the question of just how diverse we can be and still be one Body. I do not dismiss the struggles of those who want us to be in agreement on issues, but I think we will accomplish more by going deeper into our own tradition than trying to purge it of those whose thinking is incorrect. At the same time, we struggle with how to pass along the faith to our children. If we teach them well, we will be confident, when they begin to explore other traditions, that they know who they are and where they come from. But frankly, we have not expected nearly enough (at Calvary and in most Episcopal churches), and our children are going out into the world ill-equipped to deal with the challenges they face. When Peter has his dream experience and confronts the Gentiles who want to be let into the Church, he does not see this as a call for Jewish Christians to abandon Jewish dietary laws. Rather, he is invited to consider the possibility that some Christians (who will eventually become the vast majority) do not need to follow this part of his tradition. Both as individuals and as a church, I yearn for us to be like a ripe peach—soft on the outside and increasingly firm on the inside until you get to our solid core. There is hospitality and then there is imperialism. Hospitality says there are no outsiders – everyone is welcome. On the other hand, I once read a classic example of Christian imperialism in a 1950’s church brochure that said, “We see that you are good and generous people, so, whether you realize it or not, you are Christians already.” In contrast, Henri Nouwen says that practicing hospitality changes us as much or more than others: “Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears, to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler.” He goes on: “Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas.” One of Calvary’s core values, we say, is Forgiveness. Being a community of forgiveness does not mean being a community with no standards or no boundaries. But it does mean knowing that none of us is here because of our qualifications. Rather, we acknowledge that we are all included despite our failings. The Church is easy to get into—and it needs to be that way—but for those who accept the invitation, the challenges are great. The Prayer Book says bluntly that we are expected to “work, pray, and give for the spread of God’s kingdom.” It does not make the church more welcoming if we forget to ask these things of one another. One of our neighbor churches has a billboard that proclaims it to be “the perfect church for imperfect people.” That’s a great vision. I wonder what they think that involves. The Church may be the one place in our society where we do not get to choose our companions. What we don’t dare tell newcomers ahead of time is just how imperfect their neighbor in the pew is likely to be. In the Gospel today, Jesus tells the disciples that he is going away. Generations to come will not get to have the sort of relationship with him that they have had, will not get to experience the kind of love Jesus has for the first disciples unless they can see it expressed in the love they have for one another. This agape love is not something soft and undemanding. Like Jesus’ love for them, it is a love that triumphs over wrong, a love grounded in forgiveness, a love that conveys to those who receive it both acceptance and respect. Jesus did not say, “Be whoever you want.” He said, “ I give you a new commandment. (Read—this is a challenge – get ready – no one has ever had to do this before in quite this way.) Love one another. Just as I have loved you, love one another.” And how did Jesus love them? With passion, with forgiveness, and with great expectations! Copyright 2004 Calvary Episcopal Church First
Reading:
Acts
11:1-18 Second
Reading: Revelation 21:1-6 |
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