“Birds of a Feather”
Acts 11:1-18
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard
that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. 2So when Peter
went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3saying,
“Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” 4Then Peter
began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, 5“I was in the
city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like
a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and
it came close to me. 6As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed
animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7I also
heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8But I
replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my
mouth.’ 9But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God
has made clean, you must not call profane.’ 10This happened three
times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. 11At that very
moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were.
12The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction
between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the
man’s house. 13He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his
house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; 14he
will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ 15And
as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at
the beginning. 16And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had
said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit.’ 17If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when
we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” 18When
they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God
has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
I grew up near Pittsburgh, but not in Pittsburgh. So when we moved here, I was quite
surprised to discover the natives’ distaste for ever, ever, ever crossing a
river. And since we have not one
but three rivers to deal with in da burg, this stubborn reluctance creates an atmosphere
of not very well hidden parochialism that is evident on an almost daily
basis. I don’t know if people are
afraid that they’ll never find their way back home from yonder shore, or
whether they’re simply afraid of falling into the Monongahela.
It didn’t take long for us to realize that there are seemingly
impenetrable boundaries pretty much everywhere you turn here. Many of these barriers are, indeed,
created by Pittsburgh’s charming, yet challenging topography of hills, rivers, and
bridges. Worst of all, perhaps, is
the seasonal annoyance of road construction and those charming little orange
traffic cones that pop up as insistently as dandelions every spring.
But some boundaries are not geographical, yet are as
tenacious and toxic as weeds. Some
boundaries are deeply rooted in our brains and express themselves in ways that
usually escape our notice. We are
only vaguely aware of many persistent and sometimes poisonous boundaries in how
we organize ourselves in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families and
even our churches.
This isn’t only a burg thing. There is a compelling human drive to sort out and separate
ourselves by nation, tribe, age, language, race, religion, political
affiliation, class, you name it. And
you know it’s true. Everywhere,
you will birds of a feather flocking together because we feel more comfortable
and secure when we are hanging out with birds who reflect who we are or who we
imagine ourselves to be.
All kinds of laws have been enacted throughout history to
overcome our most damaging and unjust urges toward keeping other people out – desegregation
of schools, busing of school students, affirmative action, equal housing laws,
elimination of red lining certain communities in lending, etc. These laws help overcome some of our
most powerful prejudices. But the
urge to stay within a carefully drawn boundary is a powerful one, particularly
when we feel threatened, fearful or anxious. When the chips are down, and our stranger danger radar goes into
full red alert mode, we shut down bridges, seal the borders and dust off the
blueprints for our favorite kind of neighbor – a non-offensive fence to protect
us from “those” people, whoever they are.
Robert Frost
famously wrote: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Frost never does reveal what or
who it is who doesn’t love a wall, but we can be pretty certain it isn’t a
human being. Because there is nothing
humans love more than walls. There
is very little we hate more than crossing boundaries. Because crossing a boundary makes us vulnerable. Crossing a boundary means we may have
to give up something that makes us feel good. Crossing a boundary entails a grave risk to our own
self-understanding and our own comfort.
Something doesn’t love a wall, but it sure ain’t us. We are crazy about them.
After reading from
the book of Acts today, I suspect the “something” that loves to tear down walls
may be none other than the Holy Spirit. Because that unbounded and unafraid
spirit of God is certainly up to some serious boundry-breaking in this story
about Peter and his foray into Gentile territory.
The winds of swift
and certain change are blowing through this text, indeed through the entire
book of Acts. God seems to be
randomly pouring out the spirit of God upon people who live way outside the margins
of acceptable society. Last week
we saw this crazy outpouring of God’s healing in Peter’s raising up of Tabitha,
a poor widow barely scraping by as a seamstress in a small church of poor
widows in Joppa. Tabitha is lifted
up from the pages of Acts as somebody important to God – a woman described as a
disciple of Jesus simply because she takes care of the other poor nobodies in
her little nowhere church in Joppa.
But today, Peter
has crossed another kind of boundary and that crossing threatens to disrupt the
very core of the early church. Peter
is called before the church leaders in Jerusalem and called on the carpet for
breaking the dietary and purity laws that have shaped the lives of God’s people
since the time of Moses. Peter was
not only eating with the uncircumcised, but also presumably eating the kind of food
that would be considered unacceptable by the leaders in Jerusalem. You may recall that this was exactly the
kind of rule-breaking that was constantly landing Jesus in a heap of trouble
among the hierarchy in the synagogue.
In fact, Jesus had a habit of crossing well-established boundaries of
purity --- touching and being touched by unclean people, healing on the
Sabbath, and eating and drinking with the wrong kind of crowd.
So Peter wasn’t
blazing new territory in hanging out with Cornelius and his friends, but the
shift in the unfolding story of the early Christian church is perceptible and Peter
is the pivotal figure in this drama.
Peter is beginning
to see with the eyes of the prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist and with
the eyes of Jesus. Which is to
say, Peter is seeing through the eyes of God. These are wide open eyes that see the non –Jews and Gentiles
not as unclean and impure, but as beloved children of God. And this expanding and inclusive vision
for the church is brought into being by the Holy Spirit – the power Jesus promised
to Peter and all of the apostles when he ascends to heaven in chapter 1. Jesus says to them: “...you will receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
This vision from
God declares that it only God who decides what is clean and unclean and it is
that vision which frees Peter to minister in a new way. Peter is released from his fears about
what is pure and what is profane so he can cross over a seemingly uncrossable
boundary. Peter can move outside
the church of circumcised believers in Judea to the uncircumcised Gentiles in
Cornelius’ house in Caesarea. And
Peter makes the insiders in Jerusalem very, very uncomfortable. As far as they are concerned, the ends
of the earth doesn’t necessarily include unclean, uncircumcised people like
Cornelius. So they call in Peter
to explain himself.
One of the things I
have found to be reliably true is what changes people’s minds is not church
doctrine or theological arguments or even carefully constructed logical
rationales. Stories, not arguments,
open minds. You cannot argue
someone into faith. What moves people to a new way of being and thinking isn’t
tirades, but honest and open testimony. Over time, bit by bit, testimony about God’s love and grace
and mercy have always had an incredible power to open up minds and hearts. The process of “show and tell” is
powerful beyond the kindergarten classroom. It is in our deep and honest conversations with
one another that we learn to see and trust the transformation God has already
done in us.
Peter is called in to
the council in Jerusalem. But he
doesn’t attack his accusers. Instead Peter tells them a story about this vision
that came to him while he was staying with another outsider – Simon the tanner
-- whose very profession would render him unclean and unacceptable company for
any observant Jew. Peter carefully tells the story of how God spoke to him in a vision and
told Peter that God’s love extends beyond all the boundaries that Peter has
spent a lifetime observing.
The identity of God’s people is created by God’s love for them. It is God’s love that connects us to
one another and makes us clean. It
is God’s love that shapes who we are as God’s people, not our adherence to a
set of purity laws.
Peter tells the
story to his brothers in Jerusalem and in doing so he opens up for them the
same forgiving, loving, accepting space revealed to Peter by the power of the
Holy Spirit. Peter says, “If God
gave these outsiders the same gift he has given to us, who are we to reject
them? Who are we to say no to
their gifts? Who are we to keep
them out?”
I do not know why
it is that we are constantly flummoxed by the idea that the same God who gives so
much to us is just as generous with everyone else. I don’t know why we have such a hard time believing that the
same God who works among us is also working in places that we do not recognize
as holy. I do not understand
why it is we think we have cornered the market on all the goodness of God when
that well of goodness is an everlasting stream of mercy. The Holy Spirit moves like melting snow
flowing exactly where and when and how it wants to go. That flowing river of grace breaches
ancient barriers that have existed for so long that nobody can remember why we
built them in the first place. The
Spirit’s fire flares up, melting the hardness of human hearts, setting the waters
of God’s justice lose upon a world dried up and gasping for breath.
Peter says, who are
we to hinder God?
I met a man named
Joe this week who is a deeply faithful, rock solid Christian man with a
beautiful voice and a powerful testimony.
To hear him pray and speak about how God has worked in his life, and to
listen to his reading of scripture is a genuine joy. When I met him the other night, I noticed that Joe was
wearing surgical scrubs and after the meeting, I asked him if he worked in a
local hospital. Turns out that he
is a nursing assistant at AGH, working on the orthopedic floor. Joe has worked for AGH for more than a
decade, so he is well known by the staff and doctors on the orthopedic floor.
In fact, Joe said,
“They love me at AGH. They love me
so much that the doctors invited me to go out to dinner with them at Jerome
Bettis’ restaurant on the North Shore a couple of months ago.”
My husband and I
know a few orthopedic surgeons at AGH, so I asked Joe if the doctors we knew
were the same ones who invited him to dinner. Turns out, one of our very good friends was the doctor who
invited Joe to have dinner with him and some other folks from the orthopedic
floor. I asked Joe how the dinner
went. And he said, “Oh no. I didn’t go. I wouldn’t go to a dinner like that.” I was surprised by this and asked Joe
why he didn’t go? He said, “All
those doctors. I wouldn’t fit
in. They were eating steak. Drinking wine. I wouldn’t fit in there. Not with all those fancy doctors. I don’t belong there.”
A couple of people
who were talking with us started giving Joe a hard time – what? You skipped a free steak dinner at
Jerome Bettis’? Man, you are
crazy.
After everyone
left, I told Joe that the doctor who invited him to dinner was, in fact, one of
the nicest people I know. He
doesn’t drink at all. In fact, he
is an extremely modest, humble person, very close to his family, very faithful to
their church. Although he certainly
earns more money as a surgeon than Joe does as a nursing assistant, he’s an
extremely hardworking and frugal guy.
In others words, he is probably not all that different from Joe. In fact, I’m pretty sure this doctor
invited Joe because Joe is someone he values and admires as a co-worker and he
probably thought Joe might enjoy a nice dinner.
I didn’t have time
to dig more deeply into Joe’s rejection of the dinner invitation, but I’ve been
thinking about the many boundaries that he imagines might exist between him and
the surgeon. Class. Race. Neighborhoods.
Life experiences.
Fear. All of the
above? Maybe more. And I can understand his reluctance to
go somewhere where he may feel awkward.
Out of control. Not in charge. Not in the “know.” Yet if Joe had opened himself up to an
encounter with this “other,” who knows what he may have experienced?
How often do we reject God’s invitation to cross a boundary? I think we do it a lot.
True for me. True for you. The Holy Spirit must be black and blue
from all the times I have pushed back against its holy urging. All you have to do is look at how
divided our church, our city, our nation, our world has become to know that we
spend too much of our time burning bridges instead of building them. We are birds of a feather who would
rather clip our own wings instead of stretching them out to catch the breeze of
God’s spirit just waiting to lift us up.
In our baptism, we are reborn not to stay anchored where we are. We are born to fly.
Thanks be to
God. Amen.
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