“Say you love them … with a pig, a snake, and a vulture”
5 Easter C
Acts 11:1-18 / John 13:31-40
2 May 2010
Mother’s Day is next Sunday … so I suppose many of us will be out, this next week, looking, shopping, collecting something for mom which says “I love you.” Maybe flowers. Or a nice meal. Possibly a book or a magazine subscription.
I have a suggestion.
How about … a pig, a snake, and a vulture?
Hmn … “wouldn’t get very far with that one,” you’re probably saying.
But hey … it’s how God says “I love you” to us in our Acts reading today!
Well … though it’s not a direct gift of those “detestable” animals … detestable to Jews, yes, not Kosher, according to their dietary laws. We get the word that God’s Old Testament word against these beasts is set aside … and we get this word through the words of Peter – here recounting in Acts chapter eleven the events which actually occur in chapter ten … the story, retold here, first told after the words that ended our Acts reading from last week’s worship, “Meanwhile Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.”
Being a tanner is also considered “unclean” to the Jews … so if we realized that, we should have known something big was coming this week. As it does.
And our Gospel reading also has Peter figuring quite prominently … he is the one engaged in conversation with Jesus in these words from John, as Jesus gives the disciples … and us … the command to “love one another.”
We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s Peter who shows up in both readings; Peter has been showing up with great regularity these Sundays after Easter, right from Easter morning’s run to the empty tomb … to healing Dorcas in last week’s reading from Acts … to that fishing expedition a couple of weeks ago, after which Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”
That question of Jesus, “Do you love me?” … here, in today’s Gospel account from earlier in John’s gospel, which is, chronologically, going back in time … it is part of the Maundy Thursday happenings, before Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion … those three questions are prefigured, previewed if you will, in Jesus’ words to Peter, “before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.”
And Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s three-time denial soon to come … that’s the final bookend to our Gospel reading. Now, see and hear the first. “When Judas had gone out …” is how this passage begins. And so we see that Jesus’ command to his disciples, and to us … the new commandment, to love … is set precisely between betrayal and denial … between Judas and Peter … amazingly, in this setting, Jesus gives them, and us, this new commandment, to love one another.
What a strange place for a command to love! What a heart-wrenching, terrible place!
One of Jesus’ 12 closest friends, Judas, has just left the room, left his presence, to go to the Pharisees and scribes, to sell Jesus out, to turn him over to the powers of darkness and death. Another of Jesus’ friends, Peter, is told that he will deny Jesus three times, very soon.
And yet, here, Jesus says, in the midst of this betrayal, in the face of this denial, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.
It’s a word, a phrase, which can only be understood in the context of the theme of last week’s readings …especially, that word from Revelation … that Jesus is the “lamb who is the shepherd.” The Lamb of God, as John the Baptist says earlier in this Gospel account, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Bringing strength through suffering. Bringing hope from hopelessness. And from death, being raised to life.
In this, in this most opposite of opposites … the lamb who is the shepherd, the King who rules from the Cross, in this he, the Son of Man, has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.
It is yet another affirmation from Scripture that the Word of the Gospel, the Word of God For Us, is that lovely paradoxical word that God Loves Sinners … us … and wants to be with us … to bring forgiveness, hope, healing, and life.
And so, in the midst of this word … flowing from this word … from the One who lived his earthly life between betrayal and denial … from sin to sin … and died the sinner’s death on the cross … for us … in the midst of that word … comes his command to Love One Another.
Jesus puts his flesh and blood on this Love, for us … his command comes from the heart, the heart of one who would live it out very soon after he uttered these words “Love One Another.”
And so the story Peter tells in Acts, it is yet another conveyance of these words, a reminder to Jesus’ followers, of this kind of radical, self-giving love.
We may see pigs, snakes and vultures … but what Jesus really wants Peter to remind the “circumcised believers” is his - Jesus’ - command to “love one another.”
Pigs, snakes and vultures stood between the Gentile believers in Jesus, and the “circumcised believers” … the Jewish Christians who maintained that one had to observe all the Old Testament dietary laws in order to truly follow Jesus. If the Gentiles didn’t do this, they would not be counted as real followers of Jesus … they would forever be on the outside of the community of faith.
But Peter’s words to these “circumcised believers” – words to them about taking down the barriers … their barriers to faith, their barriers to community with the Gentiles … Peter’s words effected a change in them.
“Who was I that I could hinder God?” he says.
Who indeed?
Peter knew all about trying to hinder God.
When Jesus first told him that he would suffer, and die, and be raised, Peter’s response was “God forbid! This must never happen to you!” To which Jesus said in rebuke, “Get behind me Satan … you’re blocking my way.”
Then there was Peter’s living out Jesus’ prediction, in the words of today’s Gospel reading, when he did deny Jesus three times, as Jesus was on his way to the Cross.
Peter knew he couldn’t do this again. He knew what the outcome would be. God always wins.
The “circumcised believers” knew these stories too. That’s why they were silenced.
But not for long.
They came back with the right response.
“And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
They got “Love One Another” right.
For “Love One Another” … it comes right between betrayal and denial … from a posture of repentance … which is free and open to all, Jew or Gentile alike.
But more than that … repentance … turning around, acknowledging that we live with dirty hands and dirty hearts … confessing, being authentic about who we are and who God is, through Jesus, for us … showing, living out the truth of the Gospel … that God Loves Sinners … that is not just the Easter message of hope and promise and new life … it is the bedrock foundation of this community of faith, any community of faith which, who are claimed by Jesus and his between-betrayal-and-denial, death-defiant-way of loving one another.
For repentance … is the way of life, the life of Loving One Another.
Hear those words again, because they are crucial to not just our next forty years as a faith community, but even, our next forty minutes.
Repentance is the way of life, the life of Loving One Another.
We begin at the foot of the cross, confessing, turning around, being forgiven. Our posture, our attitude, is always to be one of repentance. Authentic, honest, true to who we are and Whose We Are.
We don’t point to ourselves first, we don’t blow our own horn loudly to all, saying how great we are, how many things we’re doing around here, how great is our building or our grounds or all our activities and programs.
All those are nice things, to be sure, but they are not The Main Thing.
And to outsiders … they can sound just as dividing … categorizing … and judgmental … as the Jews’ word about pigs, snakes and vultures sounded to those Gentiles.
Pastor Bill from Shepherd of the Valley out in Maple Valley has been running a series on his Facebook page this week, entitled “The Top Ten Questions the UnChurched – read, today’s Gentiles- are not asking.” So far, we’ve gotten “Which version of the Bible do you use?” and “What are all the things on your church calendar I can add to my already overloaded schedule?”
And he’s right.
Because The Main Thing the UnChurched … the Gentiles … those who know and see us, us, as their only connection to Jesus Christ, Christian faith, the Church … The Main Thing … for them … and for us … must be, has to be Love One Another.
And the only way we get there, to Love One Another … is through the intersection of betrayal and denial … and then, only in the posture, the lifestyle, the way … of repentance: confessing, admitting, authentic, honest, truthful, forthright … forgiven people of God.
Yes, I know, it doesn’t sound like a strategy for success, a fool-proof recipe for church growth, and bringing more people in to Nativity.
So call it, “reverse marketing” if you like.
Because truth … honesty … authenticity … is what we’re called to be about first.
Before “growing Nativity.” Before building up this institution. Before filling the calendar with events and happenings. Despite what “everyone tells us,” that’s not our primary focus.
But first … last … and always … we are called to live authentically as Jesus’ called, gathered, baptized, forgiven disciples … faithfully, working the ground of our faith deeply, honestly, passionately.
And living authentically, living truthfully, living in the posture of repentance … always, in all ways, pointing to Jesus, and his call to love … this will win out. Always.
We have Jesus’ word on it.
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
So confess … repent … and love …
… and repeat … and repeat … and repeat.
Amen.
