May 13, 2007 Des Moines

Acts 11:1-18

Ripping Holes in the Circle

Have you ever been to a concert during which something special happened? Perhaps it was the fieriness of the strings or the piercing clarity of the horns; perhaps it was the poetry of the vocals or the hypnotic breathiness of the reeds; maybe it was the flash of chemistry between the musicians, but whatever, it was captivating and arresting – not simply for you, but for everyone present, because when the music finally reached its final note, nothing could be heard but the receding holiness of the experience. And only after silence – only after the moment had been fully absorbed and savored – did the room finally erupt in applause. Have you ever been a part of a spellbinding moment like that – when the celebration had to wait for the silence?

That is something like what must have happened when Peter finished telling his story to the skeptical Christians in Judea. Initially disapproving, as they listened to his description – as they found themselves gradually drawn further and further into the experience – their separation slowly diminished, and by the time Peter spoke his final word, their richest response was silence. Silence, and only then applause.

In one sense, Peter’s “radical innovation” – the inclusion of the Gentiles – was nothing new at all. In the 12^th chapter of Genesis, in God’s covenantal commissioning of Abraham, God had proclaimed that “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Chosenness, as it turns out, was always about being the means of God’s special love, never about being the sole object of that love. But every child, I suppose, wants to believe that Mom loves him or her the best. We seem to come last to the table of welcome, rather than first. Left to our own devices, we wait until every other alternative is exhausted.

But God, we might have noticed, doesn’t wait. Sometimes getting a gut-full of divine patience, every now and then God simply cuts loose and rips the circle wider. We can hold onto our little tattered fragments if we choose, but before long it’s hard not to notice that there turns out to be more gaps in the circle than guards; more doorways in the community than walls.

But as I say, those who ought to be the first to proclaim it seem be the perennially last to see it. Jewish-Christian history has tended to be a tale of narrow passage, with the faithful prone to force every impulse through a knothole of regulation. I suppose the pattern is understandable. So much of our teaching has been forbidding. We are far better acquainted with the “thou shalt NOTs” than with “slide over and make more room.” We have gotten way more experience with purging than imagining – with staying clear than clearing the way. Didn’t Jesus say, after all, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it” (Matthew 7:13). And again, “…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14). The 19^th century Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard went so far as to characterize what he saw as “The joy in the thought that it is not the way that is narrow, but that narrowness is the way” (Edifying Discourses).

Purity has always seemed like the dominant concern. “Don’t touch this.” “Don’t eat that.” “Do this on this day, but don’t you dare do it on that one.” In what might be considered a touch of biblical irony, it is the 11^th chapter of the book of Leviticus that serves as a kind of parallel universe to this 11^th chapter of Acts, for there is the definitive list of all the creatures of air, land and sea that are considered unclean.

Divided hooves and cloven feet and chewing cud are the significant markers to which the faithful should pay attention, fins and scales and insects walking on all fours. Certain animals, certain birds, certain creatures of the water and creeping insects and anything that might or might have come into contact. Pish! Bing! Bang! Unclean. Rules, rules, rules, rules, rules.

It all reminds me of a scene in Paul Newman’s classic movie Cool Hand Luke. Luke has been arrested, convicted and sentenced to two years in a prison camp. During the intake process, Luke and the other newcomers are given an orientation of sorts. First from the man in charge whom everyone is required to call “Captain.”

“For your own good,” the Captain tells them, “you’ll learn the rules. It’s all up to you. I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean SOB. It’s all up to you.”

And then from the guard known as “Floorwalker” as he issues basic supplies and dishes out the rules: “Them clothes got laundry numbers on them. You’ll remember your number and always wear the ones with your number. Any man forgets his number spends a night in the box. These here spoons you keep with you. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. First bell is at five minutes of eight. Last bell is at eight. Any man not in his bunk at eight spends a night in the box. There is no smoking in the prone position in bed. You smoke, you must have both legs over the side of your bunk. Any man caught smoking in the prone position in bed spends a night in the box. You get two sheets. Every Saturday, you put the clean sheet in the top, the top sheet in the bottom, and the bottom sheet you turn in to the laundry boy. Any man turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box. No one will sit in the bunk with dirty pants on. Any man sitting in the bunk with dirty pants spends a night in the box. Any man don’t bring back his empty pop bottles spends a night in the box. Any man loud talking spends a night in the box. You got questions, you come to me. I’m responsible for order in here. Any man don’t keep order spends a night in the box.”

For many, that sounds a lot like the church. It all begins to feel like walking a precarious tight rope over a bottomless pit – one misstep, one inadvertent sneeze that throws you off balance and you are tragically, eternally lost. A razor thin ribbon of rules from which any variation, this side or that, spells certain destruction. If it feels like that sometimes to us – we good independence- minded Americans with a penchant for taking rules – or leaving them – as they suit us, how much moreso might it have straight-jacketed someone like Peter for whom such teachings would have served as the training wheels for living any kind of life that might be described as good and decent and faithful. It’s amazing to me that anything could break through that religious armor. And to be sure, it wasn’t easy. As Peter tells the story, God had to tell him three times to enlarge his understanding; three times to do something that, for everything Peter comprehended up to that point, was patently and plainly against the law.

Except, as it turns out, it wasn’t. Whatever the purpose of all those restrictions, whatever the intention of all the do’s and don’ts, it wasn’t, after all, to cast aside and disregard whole categories of people. “Get up,” the voice of God commanded Peter in the presence of all those prohibited foods, “get up and eat. What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” “Get up,” said the voice of God, and reach out to what turned out to be not food at all, but people.

According to Peter, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 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?”

The same Spirit manifested among them, just as among us. “And who was I,” asked Peter, “to discriminate, where the Spirit did not?” Who, indeed?

It seems like that word would be good news to all who hear it, but throughout Christian history it has been among the most challenging to embrace. We have clung tightly to our prejudice through the ages, requiring almost supernatural force to pry our fingers loose. But in every generation God has reached down and ripped holes in the circle, inviting outsiders in. They didn’t change, only the shape of the line previously drawn to keep them out. The people outside the line didn’t change; only the receptiveness of those inside who learned to move over to make more room.

In every generation the Spirit moves in ways we had previously believed to be unthinkable. In every generation. It gives us pause to reflect, perhaps, on the shape of the lines that we have drawn – on who is “in” and who is “out”, and on what section of the line the fingers of God are even now beginning to pull. Where, if you listen carefully, might you hear the sound of some long-held righteous understanding tearing?

When first they heard about it, their immediate reaction was silence – perhaps stunned, perhaps powerfully overwhelmed, as when the music, compelling and hypnotically present, releases its final note. Silence. And then applause.

And then a new world was clapped into being.