Hearing the lesson from the Book of Acts this morning, it might be easy to overlook the fact that it is one of the most important passages of the New Testament, some have even said: One of the most important passages in the whole Bible. Indeed we have here, again, quite a strange story with Peter telling about his vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven, and in it he sees all sorts of animals: wild beasts, reptiles, birds of prey. And then Peter said he heard a voice telling him to “Kill and eat“. And Peter tells the story as indeed being of the utmost importance to himself as it should be to his hearers, bringing him and encouraging them to take radical decisions about the church and about who is going to be included in their communion.
So what is going on?
Well, Peter is back in Judea from his trip to Caesarea, and he meets with other followers of Christ who have stayed in Jerusalem and they accuse him to have been spending some time and sharing food with Gentiles, “uncircumcised men” that is non-Jews, pagans of Greco-Roman culture. Now we have to notice that the people confronting Peter in our passage aren’t “Jewish leaders”, religious authorities of those who rejected Jesus. Rather those people are other fellow believers, disciples and Apostles of Christ. We need to understand that, as the Church was born, all followers of Christ so far were Jews. The church is, if you will, like a cult or rather maybe like a charismatic movement inside the official Judaism. Anyone could join in the church, but they would have to become a Jew to be able to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. I know, this is very counter intuitive for us, and that’s why I am taking the time to explain, otherwise we cannot make sense of this passage. So how do you become a Jew? Well, there are two fundamental rules: If you’re a man, you have to be circumcised and you have to follow the food regulations, eating kosher, and one of the main rule about eating kosher is refraining for eating certain animals called unclean. We all know that Jews don’t eat pork, but it also includes others: Rabbits, horses, camels, all reptiles, predatory birds and more. And so of course, having these rules in place made it impossible for Jews to share a table with people from other cultures and other religions. It’s like going to the steakhouse if you’re a vegan, or meeting at the bar if you have stopped drinking alcohol. They just wouldn’t do that. Out of respect for their religion, and also out of disgust, in the same way you can be repulsed by certain types of food if you have intolerance, just the sight or the smell of it makes you sick. By extension, most Jews wouldn’t hang out with Gentiles anyway. When you don’t share a table, you just don’t have that much in common. And because pagans fed on unclean animals, some suspected that Gentiles were themselves unclean. So now we understand better the anxiety of the “circumcised believers” (as our text puts it) when they learn that Peter, their faith leader whom Jesus has put in charge of everything, has done just that: Been to the house of Gentiles and shared their food.That’s why to justify himself, Peter tells them about this vision where three times God insists that Peter just go ahead and eat those animals God has decided to make clean. That’s where we are today.
And so this is it. this is why we don’t have to be a Jew to become a Christian. The Jews who started following Jesus heard, through Peter, that God didn’t require anymore circumcision and abstaining from non kosher food to be part of God’s people, to receive, as our text puts it: The gift of the Holy Spirit and the repentance that leads to life, that is the forgiveness Christ’s death and Resurrection has brought to us. That’s also why, when you open the Old Testament and you have all those pages of rules and regulations around what is clean and unclean, you know you don’t need to do this anymore. It wasn’t Peter’s idea, it was God’s idea. I think it is quite striking in the story that actually Peter’s first reaction is to disobey God. When God asks Peter to go ahead, kill and eat, Peter says: By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth. And this is so Peter, isn’t it? The same Peter who told Jesus he wouldn’t be crucified, the same Peter who refused Jesus would wash his feet, the same Peter who has such a high idea of God and such a respect for his religion he had a hard time just doing what God asks him to do. It’s not just that he did not like that, it is that to him it was awful, disgusting, repulsing: You, touching my dirty feet? You being tortured and dying on the cross? And me eating a snake or a vulture? Now we don’t know if he ended up doing that, what we know is that it made it okay from whomever, whatever their diet, to become Christian.
Now we understand a bit better the story, what does it mean for us? Yes indeed, we don’t need to be circumcised or refrain from pulled pork sandwiches to be Christian, but that’s hardly the point because we all know that. But I notice a couple of things in our passage that we may want to think about.
1 – I am quite taken with the way God pushes Peter, and this at least three times, to accept or endure things that repulse him.Disgust is a strong, wild emotion we don’t like to talk about because it’s embarrassing. I guess it’s here for a reason though, would it be only to prevent us from being poisoned or contaminated by all sort of things. The problem though is when it comes to people, and when we start “to make a distinction between them and us” as Peter says. This is actually what the Spirit told Peter to stop doing, stop doing a“distinction with them”. In fact, the disgust Peter felt may have been about the food the Gentiles ate but it may also had extended to them who ate that kind of food. And it would be easy to say we don’t do that, but don’t we? Our aversion towards certain customs, lifestyles, sexual orientations, politics, diseases, handicaps, food habits, hygiene habits, can very well get in the way of our human relationships, christian hospitality and hinders this commandment to love Jesus has given one last time to his disciples in the Gospel we have just heard. Finding excuses, refusing invitations, disappearing when things get tough, judging, drawing a line between “us and them”. Jesus asks his disciples to overcome their prejudices in the same way he did. He, also, was accused to share the table with sinners, touching the lepers, engaging with people who were called unclean. We talked at Bible study how hard it can be to engage with homeless people. In a way it’s easier to give them money and drive on. But it requires much more of us to stop and try to make a connection, to try to find this common ground of humanity where the Holy Spirit is at work.
2 – I think it is important to notice that in spite of all the responsibilities Jesus has given to Peter, God is not done with him yet. Some commentators have called what Peter is going through an “on going conversion”, some theologians talks about it as sanctification. We have our whole life to come closer to God’s heart and to God’s will for his people, and we also have a whole life to learn to love each other better, in spite of all the things that could divide us. It is quite problematic, to say the least, for Peter and the circumcised believers to come to a new understanding of their Scriptures and their rules. It’s something we need to hear in our churches where maybe we are not so literal about the Bible, butwe cling very much to our traditions and our way of doing things: What is it that we do that don’t make sense anymore or is not helpful for others? Who are the people we need to go to and how can we best receive them? In the Book of Acts, the church is inseparable from its mission, it is indeed an “on going conversion“, an “on going movement“ towards the world. When we look at our sanctuaries, it is full of history, but what about what’s happening today? Will we leave behind only our anecdotes and pictures, our flags and windows, our minutes and reports, or will we also share our stories of experiencing the living God the way Peter and so many others did?
3 – One of the things we don’t see in our passage but that is very fundamental to what happens with Peter is the conversion of a man, a Roman centurion named Cornelius. We have an outline of the story in our passage today, but if you read Acts 10, you will have a much better understanding of the story. Here it is: There was this man, it says, who was devout and God fearing, who gave to those in need and prayed to God regularly. And one day he had a vision, and an angel said to him that his prayers and gifts have pleased God and God is asking him to send for Peter in Joppa and bring him back to his own house (We understand that Peter has to come so Cornelius would receive the baptism and the Holy Spirit). This is the reason why Peter had his vision in the first place, to understand it will be okay for him to enter the house of a Gentile and include him in the communion of the followers of Christ.Now if we think about it, it is amazing that it isn’t Peter’s faith that started it all, but the conversion of an outsider and a pagan, a man who did only one thing, the right thing: leading a life of prayer and charity, loving God and loving his neighbor, and it opened up the doors to God’s grace for thousands, millions and even billions of people after him who, though not of Jewish descent, became Christians. People like you and me. Of course it was something that God wanted to do anyway, but do we believe that indeed our personal piety can open the doors of grace for countless others? Do we believe that God is waiting for a few faithful people so God can bring conversion and healing in the world? I was watching recently a documentary about monks and they said they chose this life not just to save themselves but because they trusted their prayers and sacrifices would bring blessings on other people as well. They said they have no proof of that but they needed to trust it because this was the reason why they were doing what they were doing.
Do we believe that our personal life of faith matters and makes a difference, even if we don’t see it? And if we believe that, what prevents us to do even better?