Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 11:1-18
If we're honest today's lesson from Acts will hit us where it hurts, it will confront and challenge the very ground of our being--and it should. The lesson is a strange one, I've not seen it often in Sunday school curriculum or VBS programs. I've not often used it in Adult classes and forums. It is said that maturity and in particular spiritual maturity is marked by an ability to live with paradox--to hold and balance two possibly contradictory ideas or notions at once. And so our lesson today challenges us as the church to do just that.
Pity the poor church. We are in a bind. In order to be faithful to the gospel of Christ, we must have boundaries, there must be limits to what somebody can believe, or disbelieve and still be a Christian. It's fair to have doubts, but it is not fair for us to gather here on Sunday and say, "Jesus Christ is Lord," while at the same time having most of our members believe that Jesus is just a nice person who went about doing good in the first century. So we ask questions when you join. We have a creed that we all stand and affirm. We believe the Bible is the cradle of Christ that it brings to us the word of God. There are limits.
In our first lesson today we have presented a picture of Peter grappling with limits. Think for a minute about this man Peter who figures so prominently in the gospels. He's a fisherman, not known for being a careful thinker but once he's got something he is unswervable. Now Peter, along with all the other disciples was Jewish. He followed the rules--he kept the strict dietary laws of the faith. Don't make the mistake of thinking that Jewish dietary laws--laws telling you what to eat and what not to eat, therefore with whom to eat and with whom not to eat--are silly. Israel has endured centuries of scorn and persecution by it's pagan neighbors by lovingly adhering to those laws. Laws about food were not only clear in scripture they were a life and death issue of Israel.
But in a vision at Joppa, when a sheet was let down--a sheet containing all sorts of animals--Peter caught sight of the limits of his limits. The limit of his limits. The voice said "Rise, kill and eat."
Peter had indignantly replied that he had never been guilty of eating "unclean food" But the voice and the vision came to him three times. Three times it said "Rise kill and eat!"
When he awoke there were men sent to him from a Roman army officer, Cornelius. A gentile, a member of the very army that now so terribly oppressed an occupied Israel. Peter went, met Cornelius and was surprised to learn that the risen Christ had sent him there. He baptized Cornelius. He ate with Cornelius. Peter saw that the vision and voice were not so much about unclean food as they were about unclean people. "Don't call anything I have created "unclean" said the voice.
Now, I believe in the necessity of proper distinctions, proper boundaries. When people join this congregation we ask them certain questions. We can't be all things to all people. We can't mean anything people want us to mean and still be the church. Proper distinctions must be made.
And yet, here's this story of Peter's vision. We are like those apostles in the church in Jerusalem who asked Peter, "What were you doing going to those unclean, oppressive Gentiles? Who gave you the right to eat with them, to baptize them?"
In his defense Peter told them about he vision. Such intermingling was not his idea. It was an idea so bold, so disruptive, so unsettling, it had to come straight from God. Peter told them that through the vision he had learned that what God had given to them as Jews in Christ, God had given even to the Gentiles.
It came as a shock, Israel, which had been chosen, and which had suffered terribly down through the ages precisely because of its closeness, for Israel to be told that God's promises were also to be given to the Gentiles. It was quite a shock.
Luke says, as he ends this story, that everyone at First Church Jerusalem "glorified God" when they heard Peter's story, when they heard that the saving grace of God had gone even to the Gentiles.
I wonder was the church glad or afraid that God's glory had, once again leapt over our narrow boundaries to embrace a wider vision, a broader grace? As Our lesson from Revelations this morning says "See I am making all things new!" Now today is music Sunday and it seems to me that Peter's experience in Acts might have some fitting examples for us. Music is no small thing in our church. Some few Christians might have found it possible to worship God, to celebrate Christ without the joy of song but throughout history they would be few and far between. It just seems that spirituality and music and song go together.
No one expressed this connection better than Martin Luther as he said, The riches of music are so excellent and so precious that words fail me whenever I attempt to discuss and describe them. In summary, next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. Music controls our thoughts, minds, hearts and spirits. The precious gift of music has been given to man alone that he might, thereby, remind himself that God has created man for the express purpose of praising and extolling God. A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being...he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.
Martin Luther believed that music in general, and congregational singing in particular, has the power to drive away evil spirits and make people happy...it induces people to forget all wrath, unchastity, arrogance and other vices. Music for Luther was a powerful proclamation of the Good News. "When we sing, " Luther proclaimed, "we pray twice..."
Music for us is sort of like the cherished food laws of the Jewish people. -It is integrally bound to our love and praise of God.
Curios then that for the past many years we have been engaged in what has been called "worship wars". A significant battle in that war is an understanding of the proper music for worship. Perhaps like Peter we need a vision. Perhaps we need to catch sight of the limits of our limits.
John Bell is a songwriter and song collector. He's a minister of the church of Scotland, a fellow of the Royal School of Church Music and a member of the Iona community. In a recent interview he was asked, Someone once said that congregations that only want one style of music want only one kind of person. He responded, "And if you have only one kind of person, you are able to see only one kind of God. He went on to tell this story;
I recall meeting a musician from El Salvador, William Ramirez, and asking him to teach me a song from his country. He gave me the text in Spanish, which I translated into English so I could try to fit the English text to the Hispanic tune. When I looked at the words I saw that they were far too political--all about corrupt judges and corrupt courts. Then I discovered it was Psalm 94."
"By teaching me that song he opened me to the witness in the Psalms of God's preferential option for the poor and of God's engagement in matters of social justice. Otherwise I would not have known that. What other gifts--theological and musical -might we receive from songs being sung in Japan or Peru or Zimbabwe?"
And so we have a new hymnal. Like any human creation it has its flaws. But one of its strengths is inclusion of hymns from all over the world. As Mark Mummert says, "This hymn section will sound like what the church looks like: a multifaceted jewel of diversity and complexity...The music of this book represents the song of the many peoples of the church in a changing world. It invites us all to sing the song of the "other" not because of a marketing strategyor an outreach program but because the incarnation is heard as a more outlandish truth when one encounters the countless languages, harmonies, rhythms melodies and tonalities of the song God gives the world to sing."
So today perhaps we are like Peter, catching sight of "the limits of our limits", challenged to reach out beyond our boundaries, to step out from our comfort zone and "sing a new song."
Amen