The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
At first glance, today's Bible readings don't seem to have much in common. It
feels almost as if they are snippets of Scripture that the Prayer Book compilers
couldn't figure out any other place to put. They seem almost random choices.
But if we look below the surface and think about the way the readings reflect
off one another and enlighten each other, a pattern becomes visible. That
pattern is an essential part of Christian teaching, teaching that helps us to
put on Christ, as St. Paul says, and to fulfill our Baptismal vows of
following in Christ's ways because we have taken him as our Lord and Master.
The first reading is from the Book of Acts. It starts out with telling us,
almost causally, about how Peter was changing: changing from a strict, almost
fundamentalist, letter-of-the-Law kind of guy into a person who had finally
grasped Jesus' way of thinking, looking at the reasons underlying the Law of God
and incorporating the reasons, rather than the letter, into his life. Peter was
at the home of Simon the Tanner. That may not seem anything special to us, but
remember that the "letter of the Law" made it clear that anyone who had to do
with dead bodies was unclean in the eyes of the Jews. A tanner's business is to
make leather. That means skinning the dead bodies of animals and scraping the
fat, hair and tissues off the animal's skin, then soaking the skin in various
solutions to transform it into leather. Once made into leather, the skin had to
be stretched and pounded and scraped more until it became flexible enough to use
for shoes, capes or other things. In short, a tanner could not possibly be
ceremonially "clean". A tanner would always be looked down upon by people who
kept the Law strictly, just because he had to work with the skins of dead
animals. It didn't matter how carefully the tanner observed the feasts and fasts
and the hours of prayer, how good a person he might be, how generous to the poor
or needy...he was "unclean" just because of his work. All of us have memories
about being warned of people who are "not quite nice" or who were "not our sort
of people." That's the way a tanner would be regarded under the Law of the Old
Testament.
And yet, here Peter was, staying at the home of Simon the Tanner, so they
must have been good friends. Obviously, Peter was following in Jesus' steps,
associating with people just because they were people who needed to hear about
God, or people who loved God, never mind if they were "clean" or
"unclean"...never mind if they were "our kind of people" or "not quite nice
people" or whatever. Just stating where Peter was and who he was visiting was
clearly a lesson in itself for the early Christians who would read Acts.
But God is not content with telling us something once and letting it go at
that. God knows that we have emotional hang-ups on different
subjects...something that is still true of all people, everywhere. Just
mentioning a person's race, religion, occupation, sexual orientation, parentage
or home town is enough to demonstrate that! So God drove home his point, and
underlined it, by sending Peter the vision we read about today...the vision
about all kinds of animals, whether or not they were regarded as kosher by the
Law, being permissible to eat. And we know that Peter, who was still learning to
follow Jesus' ways, protested: Lord, I've always kept kosher! I can't eat
those critters! It wouldn't be right, according to your own Law! But God
insisted, driving his point home. Yes, Peter was still learning Jesus' ways, but
he still let his habits do his thinking for him sometimes, maybe most of the
time,. Don't we all? And so, God's voice repeated: Take and eat!
We must have a kind of sympathy for Peter when we read this. We all know what
is "right" and "wrong" according to the way we were brought up, or what our
mother taught us, or what our friends think and do. But very few of us have
taken the time and trouble...and the discomfort...of sitting down to really
think through these questions of right and wrong. We all tend to go by feelings,
and by habit, and by what our friends and family think. Thinking for ourselves
is hard work, and changing our lifestyle to agree with our careful thinking is
even harder, and makes us feel uncomfortable. Maybe our family or friends will
laugh at us, or even worse, reject us. We will be different from our crowd, and
that won't feel good. Yes, we know it's the thing we should do, but..... Yes, we
have more than a bit of sympathy for poor Peter as God drove home his point.
God, however, wanted to be absolutely sure that Peter understood clearly:
everything and everybody that God made was acceptable to God. No, not
everything people do is acceptable, but the people themselves are acceptable.
The things God put on this earth for our use are always acceptable too, whether
they make our insides feel queasy or not. The psalm today underlines that point.
This was a lesson that Peter, chosen by Jesus to lead the band of disciples that
was growing into a new church, simply had to learn. And so God continued the
lesson.
A messenger arrived, a messenger from a Roman centurion, Cornelius. A
centurion was an Army officer, roughly equivalent to a captain or maybe a
short-tail colonel, a lieutenant colonel. A man of authority and discipline. A
representative of the hated Roman empire. And, what was worse in the eyes of a
good Jew, he was a Gentile, a non-Jew, one who did not keep God's Law.
The messenger stated clearly that Cornelius had had a dream and as a result
of that dream, urgently requested Peter to come to visit his home.
Good, Law-abiding Jews would go out of their way to avoid having anything to
do with non-Jews. They certainly would not want to go to a Gentile home, with
its idols and pictures of false gods, and its food that had been offered in
sacrifice to those false gods like Mars, Venus and their ilk. This message must
have been very unwelcome and very upsetting to Peter.
We will never know if Peter went to Cornelius because he was afraid to
disobey the centurion, or because he'd heard that Cornelius was half-way
convinced to follow the ways of Judaism, or because God prodded him to go. But
he went.
Peter must have been very surprised when Cornelius asked for baptism for
himself and all his family. Up to that point, the followers of Jesus had been
Jews who had decided that Jesus' teachings of God's reasons, which were the
underlying basis for the Law, made sense. But here was a powerful Gentile, who
had no reason that Peter could see for wanting to be a follower of Jesus,
begging urgently to be baptized into the company of the Followers of the
Way...not only for himself but for all of his family and household servants. It
was simply unheard of.
And God kept on pushing Peter. So Peter baptized them all, after teaching
them what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. They couldn't get enough of
hearing about Jesus and his teachings.
When Peter went back to join the other disciples, he apparently had quite a
hard time justifying his actions...explaining his vision...telling about his
hearing of the voice from on high. We know from Paul's letters to the churches
that from time to time, Peter kept having problems breaking away from legalistic
observances of the Law and following the ways Jesus had taught about what
underlies the Law, the way God sees right and wrong, the problems of clean
versus unclean, kosher versus forbidden foods, and the like. In fact, Paul and
Peter had quite an argument about it, later on.
But we know, too, that when God decided to make it clear to Peter, the leader
of the Followers of the Way of Jesus, that ALL people are acceptable to God and
beloved by God, that it was no longer necessary to preserve the kosher rules
that separated believers from non-believers, that it was God's wish and will
that Peter take the faith into the world of Gentiles and pagans, and teach them
God's ways...Peter finally learned, and changed his life to live according to
this lesson God had taught him...even if he backslid now and then.
The reading from Revelation gives us a picture of what it will be like
someday, when we have all learned this lesson. And John's Gospel tells us more:
we, like Jesus, must give up something important to us...our lifelong habits and
prejudices...to bring this glory to God and to his church. We may not need to
give up our life on the cross, as Jesus did, but in a way, surrendering habits
and prejudices is giving up part of our life...and this is required of us, to
glorify God, and make the New Jerusalem possible.
Which brings us down to a difficult question: have WE all learned to accept
ALL of God's people as our sisters and brothers, loved by God as much as he
loves us? Of course, like Peter, we will all fail now and then...but have we
learned the lesson?
Amen.
