All Things New (Easter 5 C)

 

“All Things New”
Easter 5C
15 May 2022 8:00 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

This week we saw a sad event for our close siblings in Christ, the United Methodists.  They are no longer United.  Their denomination split in two over the question of inclusion of Gays and Lesbians. Though they announced an “amicable split,” a “friendly divorce,” I fear they are just putting on their best face hoping they can avoid the scandalous spectacle we Episcopalians and “Anglicans” have given the world over the last two decades: bitter mutual reproach and costly law suits over properties and trademarks that have deeply wounded the body of Christ. 

 

Schism and mutual anathema have always been a feature of Christianity, and the Judaism from which it sprang, unfortunately.  That’s why the New Testament talks so much about the importance of unity and mutual love.  Schisms result from a very high-quality problem.  They come not from apathy or casual indifference to faith and its demands.  They come from people who care all too deeply about trying to do what’s right. 

 

Today’s story from Acts tells about the first great conflict among the first Christians: how, or even whether, to include gentiles in what had been an all-Jewish affair.   It is part of a retelling of that conflict found in Acts chapters 8-15.  Since the story has much to say to us today, let me review it for us. 

First, there is the unusual and one-off case of Philip privately sharing the Gospel with the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26ff).   This guy is not only a gentile, but also has a physical impairment that the Scriptures specifically taught should prevent full participation in the worship of God’s people (Lev. 20:20).  The culmination of the story is the Ethiopian Eunuch’s simple question, “Here is water.  What is there that possibly keeps me from being baptized?”  In the new economy of grace in the wake of the resurrection, what scripture taught as an insurmountable impediment is no longer an obstacle at all.   

 

Then in chapter 9, we meet a fire-eating Jewish legalist named Saul who has been persecuting his fellow Jews who identify as Christians because in his view they have abandoned Scripture and monotheism.  On his way to arrest some of these, he encounters the risen Lord on the road and becomes a Christian himself (more on him later).  

The real turning point is in Acts 10.  Cornelius, a Roman Centurion, is senior NCO of the Italian Cohort, a famous military unit known for its harsh suppression of anti-Roman nationalists, including at times Jews.  Yet he is a believer in the one God, one who has not converted to Judaism by being circumcised, or observing Jewish the dietary laws.  Cornelius prays, reads scripture, and gives to the poor.  In a dream, an angel tells him that his faith and alms have drawn the attention of God, who wants him to go and find someone named Peter, living near the beach in Joppa.  He sends messengers to set up a meeting. 

 

Meanwhile, Peter takes a noon-day nap and has a dream of his own where he sees a giant picnic cloth.  On it is every kind of animal, most of them forbidden as food by the Hebrew Scriptures.  A voice tells Peter to butcher some of the animals and eat their flesh.  Peter is understandably reluctant, “I’ve always tried to keep God’s commandments, and I don’t want to start disregarding them now. I try to keep kosher, like Scripture says.  Those creatures are unclean. They’re disgusting.   I can’t eat them.  You’re testing me, right?” 

 

Place yourself in Peter’s position.  Think of something you have always been taught is wrong, is condemned in scripture, and you find revolting. The dream is telling you to go ahead and pursue this. 

Relentless, the voice replies, “Don’t call unclean what God has declared clean.”  This happens three times, and Peter wakes up, disturbed by the nightmare.  Right then, the messengers from Cornelius arrive.  The synchronicity is too great for Peter to ignore. 

Peter knows that even meeting with Cornelius is a contaminating act according to strict interpretation of scripture. His ‘kind’ is “unclean.”  It’s the written Word of God that makes the distinction.  But Peter, shaken by that dream, agrees to meet Cornelius.  It turns out Cornelius  wants to know about Jesus and how he came back from the dead after being put to death by, who else, Roman soldiers.    

Peter begins his explanation to Cornelius and his companions, with “I’m beginning to understand that God doesn’t play favorites.”  He goes on, “no matter what nationality, anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.”  As Peter continues telling about Jesus, the Holy Spirit falls on those gathered, even on the gentiles (Acts 10:45), Astounded, Peter declares, “can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he baptizes them without first requiring them to become Jews.  Unlike Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, this group baptism is done in public. 

 

In today’s reading from Acts 11, other Christians hear of this and react in horror.  “But, but—you have to be circumcised and observe Torah to be part of God’s people!  That’s in the Bible!  What you have done, Peter, overturns everything we know about clean and unclean, proper and improper, moral and immoral, holy and profane. Shame on you!” 

 

Peter does not react by arguing or trying to shame his accusers in return.  Nor does he simply ignore them, hoping they will somehow go away.  He takes the initiative and goes to them, and takes time to explain things, as the story tells it, “step by step.”  Wisely, he simply tells them his experience—something that no reasonable person will argue with—and says what has happened to him to change his mind from where he once was and where those criticizing him still are.  He honors their own concerns by being careful to include the details of his dream vision: “Lord, I can’t eat that stuff because it’s against your commandments and I’ve tried since I was little to keep them.  I can’t eat it because it’s disgusting.”  But then he adds: “But the voice of God said, ‘call nothing unclean that I have made clean and nothing profane that I have made holy.’” 

 

Peter then tells his accusers what finally convinced him to baptize them without benefit of circumcision or keeping kosher: the Holy Spirit clearly had fallen on those gentiles, just like it had fallen on the Jewish Christians on the day of Pentecost. God was already active in their lives, just as much as in the lives of Jewish believers.  The critics see the point, and accept Peter’s decision in the matter. 

 

After today’s scene, the Book of Acts continues the story:  Saul, now going by his Roman name Paul, goes out in several different far-flung places to explain about the risen Lord.  He succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, especially among those gentiles who liked to listen on the sides at Synagogue.  Large congregations of Gentiles become the mainstay of the Church. 

 

And so in chapter 15 of Acts, the Church must meet and figure out in Council how to manage the new reality, Gentiles as Christians.   They are clear in accepting the newcomers as gentiles and not requiring them to become Jews even as they ask that they respect a few basic standards they believed were imposed by God even on Gentiles just after the Great Flood. 

 

The inclusion of the Gentiles—that great unexpected and, at the time, anti-scriptural, overturning of past prejudice—is a great theme of the Book of Acts.  And here’s the thing:  the Book of Act sees such inclusion as the inevitable, direct consequence of Jesus’ resurrection.    The Resurrection of Jesus changed the world for his followers.  All things were made new.  Jesus in his life had proclaimed the arrival of God’s Reign; God raising Jesus from the dead showed that the Reign had indeed come.  As so we have to live as if the Reign of God is already here.  This includes God’s great banquet for all peoples at the end of time, as described in today’s reading from Revelation.  This includes all people being priests and prophets.   Jesus’ disciples re-evaluated everything in light of the Resurrection. Their contemplation of the Beauty that raises the dead to life made them quickly see the universality of God’s grace, and the impermanence of human barriers, even when enshrined in holy writ.    

 

In this, there is a moral for us today.  Quoting scripture can get in the

way of following God.  When someone says “the Bible says,” we need to reply, “and what else does the Bible say?”  We need to put ourselves inside the Bible narrative, and ask, “what is God calling us to do here and now?”   We need, instead of seeing the Bible as a rule book and a compendium of answers, to focus on the questions the Bible encourages us to ask.  We need to remember the words of Jesus: “God … is God not of the dead, but of the living” (Matt 22:32). 

 

The resurrection of Jesus changes everything for us.  All things made new! If we are to follow God’s call, we must stand ready to witness to the truth of God’s action in our lives and in the lives of others, especially those different from us.  With Peter, we must reach out and get to know the unfamiliar.  We must “go” with them and learn to see the hand of God in their lives.  Then we must go to those who criticize, us and explain gently, “step by step,” what has led us to see God’s hand at work in our fellow human beings.

 

It is a matter of faith in our risen Lord. All things made new! In Christ, there is no white or black, slave or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile, gay or straight, cis or trans, conservative or progressive.  In Christ, we are one body, because we eat one bread, and drink one cup. 

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.