Andrew
Zimmern of the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods” lists ten of his top most
bizarre foods that he likes. Among
them are: Mixed grill udders and intestines from Buenos Aires; Donkey skin
stir-fry coming out of Beijing; Pork brain tacos, viva la Mexico; and Horse
mane Sashimi from Japan especially good with a bit of ginger and soy
sauce. “Fatty Awesomeness”, he
says.
I, on the
other hand, am not so adventurous when it comes to eating meat or seafood. As a general rule when I am in a
foreign country I become vegetarian during the trip and it suits me just
fine. I’m more black and white
than Zimmern, I know what is delectably acceptable or not, at least here in the
States and by my convictions.
Simon
Peter saw it my way too until a very vivid trance came along and God showed him
a new reality. We are back to the
Narrative Lectionary now that the Easter readings are over and we will be
sojourning in the Book of Acts and the Epistle of Romans for a while.
The Book
of Acts shows us how the early apostles struggled to define and build ‘church’
but really, when you take a closer read it is more about how God, through the
Holy Spirit, worked through the early Christ followers to determine what the
church should look like and to make it into what God wanted it to be. And God wanted then, as is now, a
diverse, inclusive community based on faith and love. That’s evident all over scripture and in today’s reading.
By now in
the Book of Acts, Jesus has ascended into heaven and the disciples, now
apostles are left to their own devices.
But the Holy Spirit comes to them and instills in them the a spark of
divine holiness by which they are to go out and tell everybody, every nation of
every persuasion and tongue the really great and saving news of Christ. And so
they do.
Converts
were increasing day by day, like the speed of a locomotive. Peter takes the lead healing beggars
and bringing the good news, but there was conflict and persecution. There always is when something new is
emerging. Butterflies work real
hard to get out of the cocoon and chicks peck and peck before the egg
cracks.
Now
Cornelius was a good man, a Gentile man, an esteemed centurion of the Italian
Cohort of the Roman army. His
story is significant because he will be the first Gentile to be converted to
this movement of Christ followers who eventually become ‘the church’. Up until now they were converting their
own.
Caesaria
was the seat of the Roman government for Judea so you might expect Cornelius to
be aligned theologically towards Rome since the Emperor was viewed as the ‘son
of god’. Yet the Bible says Cornelius was devout and charitable. He prayed often and was fervent in his
prayer. A good man stuck in a bad
system.
Well it
was just about 3:00 in the afternoon and an angel comes to Cornelius. Here we go with the visions! The angel affirms his piety and tells
Cornelius to send two men to Simon Peter in Joppa. Now Joppa and Caesaria are on the Mediterranean coast just
about 35 miles apart from one another and they still are to this day.
So he
chooses two slaves and one good and devout soldier to go, and at Noon they
journey south in the hot sun.
While they were on the dusty road Peter, in Joppa, goes on his roof to
pray. And now it’s his turn for a
vision; he goes into a hunger induced trance. This is where is gets really good!
Peter sees
the heavens open up and a sheet being lowered by its four corners and inside of
the sheet are all sorts of creepy creatures, slimy reptiles, and birds of the
air, all together wrapped up. He
is told to kill and eat anything from the sheet! Yummy! This is like Andrew Zimmern coming to the parsonage
with a mixed grill platter of udders and intestines and insisting that I
partake of a few. NO! I will NOT eat udder – not cow udder,
nor goat udder, nor sheep udder, nor any other udder that is my neighbors. Let me be clear. I will not eat udder. It is unclean in my book of food rules.
Well Peter
is instructed not once but three times to kill and eat and after the third
time, the vision ended just as quickly as it had come. What you need to know is that this food
in the sheet, it’s all unclean for him to eat according to Torah and law. Peter, was a bit puzzled by this but
firm in his convictions of who could be a Christ follower and who could
not. Jews and God-fearers in,
Gentiles out. Gentiles –
tref! Unclean!
That’s
until the three men from Cornelius came to him and brought him back to Caesaria
to enter Cornelius’s home to talk and for hospitality. This is when Peter gets it. Here was a Jew in the home of a Gentile
and that wouldn’t have been acceptable.
All the while God’s up there thinking, mission accomplished!
Pete’s
convictions change and so does his heart.
He was insistent that the first followers had to be subject to
circumcision through the Abrahamic covenant like all Jews until he realized
because of this vision, that God’s covenant is much larger than that and God’s
love is much wider than we can ever know. You see he hadn’t made the connection
yet that his vision about food wasn’t really about food. It was about people. It was about God
insisting that this new fangled way to worship called the church is to be
diverse in all ways. Not only Jews
but Gentiles too.
We are
reminded in Galatians:
In
Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free,
male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common
relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you
are Abraham’s famous “descendant,” heirs according to the covenant promises. –
Galatians 3: 25-29
I think we
get that right? Anyone can walk
through our doors and be accepted and welcomed with the love of Christ. Believers and skeptics, black and
white, affluent and impecunious, gay and straight, fully abled and partially
abled, the addicted and the sober, the housed and homeless. God wants us all, and there is plenty
good news to share all around. We get that.
What I
want us to look at today is Peter and the change of conviction that he had
which lead to a change in his heart.
He went from wearing metaphorical blinders on to having a wide open
field of vision. He did a 360 in his
thinking about who can become a Christian, and I say thank goodness for that
because we wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t.
Sometimes
we get stuck with our convictions without even knowing that we have become
impervious to other points of views or other ways of doing things, or even the
movement of the spirit. Convictions, of course, are those
things that you hold to be true, that are so firm in your mind that no
persuasive fact can make you change the way you think. While we all have convictions and to a
certain point we need convictions to know what we believe in and what we stand
for, they can get in our way of compassionate thinking when they become rigid
and unyielding.
When was
the last time that you changed your mind on a core conviction that you
hold? What moved you to do
so? At the heart
of this passage is a radical willingness to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit
even when the Spirit leads you away from what you thought was right. Peter
changed and because of his change, inspired by the Holy Spirit, the church
changed drastically. It grew and
brought the saving grace of Jesus Christ to more people. To you and to me.
God may be changeless, but today God’s church needs to
embrace transformation in order to carry out the mission to which we have been
called and that is showing people that life conquers death, forgiveness is
abundant, that we are to love God and love one another. The message is clear, that any person,
every person can be filled with and is deserving of God’s grace.
The context of church has changed once again. God has
lowered the sheet filled with new delicacies, Zimmern has set before us a
platter of yummy udders. Taste and
see! Are we willing to see anew
where God is trying to lead us? It
might just take us getting out of these four walls to do so. It might beg us to engage our
creativity in ways that our wildest imaginations have never even thought
of. And maybe that is the church
of tomorrow.
Perhaps, ‘we’ve always done it this way’ will give birth to
‘we’re willing to give something new a try’ for the sake of the church, for the
sake of the Gospel, for the sake of our ever changing children and youth who
cry out for acceptance and love, and yes, church but in their own way.
They will have young convictions that one day will have to
change too but let us, for now, model for them a willingness to follow God’s
spirit into the beyond based in faith and guided by God’s light and love. Taste and see.
Amen!
