By This Everyone Will Know

A sermon for the fifth Sunday of Eastertide given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on April 28, 2013.

Acts 11:1-18

John 13:31-35

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said,

“We must face the sad fact that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing ‘In Christ there is no East or West,’ we stand in the most segregated hour of America.”

Now it's a sad truth that Sunday morning worship across the nation is still the most segregated hour of America.

And it's not just by race.

Last week we sang “There's A Wideness in God's Mercy”

a hymn written in 1854 by Frederick William Faber, a Roman Catholic priest

“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;

“For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of our mind;

“There is grace enough for thousands.”

How scandalous it is that God's grace is enough for thousands, that God's love is broader than we can comprehend, that God's mercy spans the seas.

Now many of these old hymns were originally written with 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 verses.

And it was a wise decision on the publishers' part to cut them down to 3, 4, or 5.

But there's a verse in this particular hymn that I wish had remained.

But we make God's love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify God's strictness
With a zeal God will not own.

As someone once put it to me “God may accept everyone as they are, but as human beings we're not always so generous.”

“But we make God's love too narrow / By false limits of our own;”

This is what makes today's reading from Acts so significant.

Peter was a zealous person. We see this throughout the gospel stories.

And here we find Peter on the rooftop in Joppa.

Joppa was a port city right on the coast. It was a major trade center in ancient Israel.

Joppa is not a city talked about a lot in the Bible. But one thing caught my attention as I was reading about it.

The prophet Jonah.

Wanted to flee God's call upon him to preach to the people of Ninevah, a Gentile, in other words non-Jewish, city.

We read that “Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.”

And now a different prophet in a different time was praying on a rooftop in Joppa.

And on that Joppa rooftop, looking out at the sea and the port.

And he enters a trance.

And he sees the sheet.

Or something like a sheet, as he puts it.

“There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air.”

And he's told by a voice to rise, kill, and eat.

Of course, Peter's hungry. He hasn't eaten yet.

But Peter knows that this mix of animals included ones that were not allowed according to the purity laws of the Bible.

And so he instantly recognizes it as a test, and knowing the right answer, replies,

“By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”

and silence hung as the animals on the sheet remained.

But he heard the voice again and this time it was very confusing.

“What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

what God has made clean, you must not call profane.

We are labelers, we are namers.

We distinguish by calling one thing this and another thing that.

But these names are exactly that, words that we have created to describe that which God has created.

And so the voice in Peter's trance says – watch your labels.

They may have served a purpose in the past. But are they essential?

Or are they merely that, labels? Names given for the sake of distinction.

what God has made clean, you must not call profane.

And Peter said this happened three times. And the sheet was taken back up in the sky.

And no sooner had the vision dissolved and Peter returned to looking out at the port, the city, and the ocean. Than the doorbell rang.

And Peter sensed that this was no coincidence.

“The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.”

So he went with them to Caesarea, another port city to the north of Joppa.

From Joppa to Caesarea, according to Google, is 63 km or around 40 miles.

About the distance from Acworth to West Lebanon.

Peter was told when he got there how Cornelius, the man who had sent for him, had also received a vision – one that told him to find Simon Peter in Joppa and bring him to share his message of good news.

God was at work in Joppa and Caesarea, preparing the people for the Spirit.

Cultivating a work of reconciliation of Jew and Gentile.

So Peter spoke to them. And the became full of the Spirit. In the same way the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem had on the day of Pentecost.

There was no distinction. In Christ there was no distinction between Jew and Gentile, but one Spirit who gave life to all who turned to God in faith.

Whereas one prophet had fled the call of God in Joppa,

another in the same city answered the call of God

and God's grace overcame the wall of division.

Now Peter must've known that he would hear about this from his friends back in Jerusalem.

The news travelled back to them, that the heathens in Caeserea had been accepted by Peter into the Christian community.

We read that “When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’”

This is radical, Peter. You can't just go extending the boundaries of God's covenant without consulting us.

And so Peter told them his experience.

And how they had been full of the Spirit just as he and the other disciples had.

And he concluded: “If 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?’”

“When they heard this, they were silenced.

And they praised God.”

Sometimes we hold too strongly to the way we've always done things.

That we fail to hear the voice of the Spirit bidding us to rise up and do something different.

We need to be open to new ways that God's Spirit might be calling us to live out the good news.

In today's gospel we read Jesus' words to his disciples after he had washed their feet.

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’”

The good news is that through God's Spirit people are reconciled to God and to one another.

The division of neighbors,

the segregation that we actively impose

or passively allow to exist

God longs to break through.

Our traditions are good and for many of us they shine God's grace into our hearts.

But for some people who walk through these doors – they are a foreign language.

As a church we need to think seriously about how to make the good news most available to all people.

Because church is not about what I like or don't like.

The worship of God in Jesus Christ is not about personal preference.

It is about allowing the Spirit to remake us into a people who know God's love

and long to welcome others into that love.

It's about being a community that manifests that love in the way we talk to and about each other. And in how we live for and with each other.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

I think it's so easy for us to get comfortable with church that we forget that we are actively called to make the grace of God accessible for all people – even if that means going out of our comfort-zones.

And this can be as simple as striking up a conversation with someone you don't know or feel very different from.

Or it could be a church working together to reimagine what it means to worship God in Christ Jesus here in Acworth and now in the 21^st century.

This was the reason why we experimented with The Gathering. Trying to figure out how to do church in a different way – a way that makes more sense for younger people or people who haven't grown up in church.

And I hope to experiment some more. Learn from mistakes, but press on with the hope that God's grace will do a new thing in a new generation by the Holy Spirit who makes known God's love in and through us.

Peter was driven by the Holy Spirit to step outside his familiar community to bring the good news of God's grace to strangers of a different culture and language.

May we find the courage in the Holy Spirit to follow Peter's example.

And the most segregated hour might become the most reconciled hour as God's love brings healing on earth as in heaven.

“By this everyone will know that we are Christ's disciples, if we have love for one another.’”

In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.

Amen.