What God Has Made Clean

Acts 11: 1-18, NT page 130 Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit feel 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 God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” Sermon Memphis has been in the news recently. Last Wednesday in the Daily Herald was an article about the park naming committee who is looking over citizen suggestions for new names for three Memphis City Parks that were (quote) “stripped of their Confederate identities.” These three parks that are currently without a name were previously known as Forrest Park, Confederate Park, and Jefferson Davis Park. Forrest Park so named because it contains the grave of Confederate cavalry officer Nathan Bedford Forrest. Reported among the six pages of new names suggested by Memphis citizens that the park naming committee is looking over were, “Better Future Park” and “Welcome Center Park,” as well as “Two Dead Flies Park,” which tells me that some people are taking this process lightly while many others are not. The Klan is rallying, as are the counter protestors, and the police are frequently in full rally gear, because so many in Memphis know that what is at stake here is not the name of a few parks but the future of a city. In the same way, we might read this passage from Acts and wonder why Peter seems to be in such trouble, having to explain himself to the circumcised believers who were criticizing him asking, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” “What’s the big deal – he just ate with them?” you might ask, but that’s like saying, “What’s the big deal, just name the park.” The identity of the Church is on the line here, particularly the authority of the leaders in Jerusalem was on the line, and in the preceding chapter of Acts Peter’s own identity seemed to be on the line as well. If the Church goes accepting Gentiles left and right without first calling them to live under the Jewish Law given by Moses that dictates diet and lifestyle – if they can just become Christians without giving up their Roman ways than the Church risks losing its Jewish Roots, and what’s worse, it seems as though this radical change has occurred without Peter asking anyone’s permission in Jerusalem. The men from Caesarea take Peter back to a home that any Jew would have called unclean – and Peter just goes without Jerusalem’s endorsement. As he debated with himself in Acts chapter 10, deciding whether or not to go to this gentile’s house, to eat food that he wasn’t used to eating as his vision suggested he should, he is referred to interchangeably as Simon, the name he was given at birth, and Peter, the name given to him by Christ. He is faced with an uncomfortable situation, and as he decides what to do he vacillates between the two names as though he were deciding who he would become – Simon the fisherman or Peter, the rock that Christ’s church was to be founded on. This is the decision that so many have to make – go away to college and risk losing the approval of family who never graduated high school. Some fall in love with another that their parents might never accept, and so a hard choice has to be made. Others leave the friends they grew up with to make a choice all their own and what they end up losing is the same thing that Peter risks losing here. What Peter was willing to do by going with the three men from Caesarea and not making a distinction between them and himself, went against everything that Peter had always believed about who is clean and who isn’t, who can be trusted and who can’t, who he should be seen with and who he shouldn’t be seen with. The apostles and believers in Judea have to call him on it – they thought he’d gone off the deep end, and surely they wondered: “What’s next Peter? If we don’t have to worry about the Law of Moses any more, if we can go eating whatever we want, can we also just do whatever we want? If you are eating with Romans today in their roman houses who knows what you’ll be doing tomorrow, maybe eating with dogs out of their dog bowls.” They wanted him to be preaching what they thought, what they had all been told, he should have been preaching. That the church up in Joppa needs to play by the rules decided here in Jerusalem, but the Holy Spirit was there causing Peter to question all that saying, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This is a hard lesson for the world today. So many earthly authorities will say that new people are fine, new ideas are fine, just so long as things don’t really change. Sure, give the new employees a vote, just so long as we still hold the reigns. Of course we should listen to the dissenting voices, but let’s just listen to them without taking seriously what they say. When word of these Gentile converts reaches Jerusalem, the problem is not that they converted; the problem is that they were allowed to convert by the authority of the Holy Spirit and not with the approval of the believers in Jerusalem. Suddenly the ones who had grown used to holding power aren’t in charge – and while by the end of our scripture lesson everybody is just fine, don’t be surprised if the process isn’t so easy anywhere else. Memphis struggles with naming three parks – some are saying you can’t re-write history, others say the time of racism must come to an end, and we’ll just have to wait and see if any park is left by the end of it. So often it’s a call to one or the other – Jefferson Davis Park or Better Future Park – but what happens to the Church is that the Gentile changes the Jew and the Jew changes the Gentile, and because neither wins out and neither loses and the Church grows and prospers. It could have been different – the Jews in Jerusalem could have tightened their grip on the power that they had and slowly strangled all that they had worked for. The Gentiles might have taken their Good News and forgotten where it came from, leaving Jerusalem in the dust and losing their roots in the process. In the same way, Jefferson Davis Park can go on being Jefferson Davis Park regardless of who it offends and Better Future Park can talk about some better future pretending that the past never happened. But here Scripture shows us another way with the acknowledgement that if there is to be a future it must be a future forged together, for Peter was better because, while he remembered where he came from his heart was open to where he might go. I pray that you will do the same – not forgetting who you are and who you were raised to be, but able to walk out into a new and uncertain future led by the Spirit. Honoring your past while realizing that mistakes need to be fixed and not ignored, not letting wrongs be wrongs forever but working to make them right. And for whatever great gifts your parents pasted down to you, so also they passed down traditions that must come to an end. For Peter it was the Law that divided Jew and Gentile, but whatever it is for you, do not be confined to the patterns of your birth, instead let the Spirit lead you to new life. Amen.