Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, November 15, 2015, the 25th Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Acts 10:9-17, 23-35
I remember hearing or reading somewhere about a teaching philosophy that was anti-coloring books. Evidently, the idea was that children should only be given blank sheets of paper and crayons rather than coloring books with their prescribed boundaries and images. Because a blank sheet of paper allows the child to create her own images. This, it seems to me is an interesting idea.
However, I grew up with lots of coloring books and with many photocopied (more precisely, mimeographed) sheets of paper in school to color. And I distinctly remember the moment in third grade when I discovered the technique of outlining my coloring book pictures with black. I think I copied the idea from the girl sitting next to me. I have no idea why I remember this so clearly, but I do. It seemed very exciting to me to be able to manage this technique, using the thick, waxy line to highlight the other colors I’d chosen. And there was this sense of accomplishment for having so clearly demonstrated how well I’d stayed in the lines. It seems to me that there is something we learn as we grow up about staying in the lines—that it’s a good thing. A goal to be reached.
And maybe it’s a stretch, but it seems to me that this is connected to an accumulated understanding of that very central human issue of what’s “in” and what’s “out,” WHO’s “in and who’s “out.” As we grow and develop, this issue of being in or out is vitally important and quite often affects who we become and how we relate to the world and to other people. Being “in” is the goal. Our very existence becomes obsessed with these questions of lines and boundaries and inside and outside.
We gradually learn to relate to other people in terms of the contours of what delineates them: conservative, liberal, religious, atheist, Republican, Democrat, poor, rich, extrovert, introvert, sensitive, thick-skinned, black, white, gay, straight, old, young. Even in this post-modern, deconstructionist, relativistic age, there's just something about drawing lines around things, something that seems to soothe our anxieties and to give us a sense of security.
Whatever the reason for it and regardless of its appropriateness, it seems that we learn from childhood to value coloring inside the lines, even highlighting the lines; we are taught to think this way. This, of course, is nothing new. Throughout the ages, tribal loyalties and practices have carefully and often violently drawn stark lines between whole groups of people. We see it in our text today as Peter baldly states that it is “unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile.” We see it in our own country in many forms: through things like racist lending and real estate practices that actively work to keep groups segregated[i]; through the often hateful rhetoric around immigration policy; through instances in which people still worry about bringing the person they love home to meet the parents for fear of the reaction. Written and unwritten laws still exist that make it difficult to “associate with or to visit” someone outside the lines of our own “kind,” however that is defined. And all these things are a modern form of tribalism; some based firmly in privilege, all based on prejudice and fueled out of fear and hatred. In moments such as this, following a brutal, inhuman terrorist attack, the impulse among many is to draw the lines even more starkly and thickly.
Throughout the ages, religion has made a name for itself as a force for drawing lines, for separating people into “us” and “them.” It’s ironic since most religious traditions have love, peace, and compassion among their core tenets. But within the framework of a narrative or set of teachings and practices that claim ultimate truth, within the context of religious life, there will always be those who cannot hold the balance between truth claims and human freedom. There will always be those who believe that judgment, exclusion, and violence against people who are “outside” the boundary of right belief or practice, however that is defined, is not only acceptable but required. Some argue that, because of this, all religion should be abandoned, since religion itself is the problem. I counter that perversion of religion is one problem among many that plague the human family. Such a perversion is what we see in the ongoing terrorist violence that claims Islam as inspiration. As Pope Francis said, killing hundreds of people in Beirut and Paris who were simply going about their lives has no religious justification. It is simply inhuman. What is the faithful response for people like us who believe that religious impulse and practice can be a positive force in this broken world? I turned to the text chosen for today to seek an answer.
The extraordinary story from Acts that we have heard today finds Peter, the close disciple of Jesus, having a vision. That vision includes “heaven” being “opened,” (a traditional sign of God’s presence) and through that opening a pile of “all kinds” of creatures is lowered before Peter. When he is encouraged to eat, his response reflects the Jewish laws around clean and unclean foods; certain animals were always considered unclean and others were only clean or “kosher” if prepared in a prescribed way. When Peter refuses to break these rules, the divine word comes: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Let’s pause for just a moment on that word, “profane.” Profane can be defined as simply non-religious or secular. It can also be defined as disrespectful of orthodox practices, irreverent, ungodly, sacrilegious. In short, “profane” is that which is understood to be separate from or disdainful of God. //
Peter remained puzzled about the vision until he receives and accepts the invitation from Cornelius to travel to Caesarea, a largely Gentile city, and to meet with the people there. At that time, Gentiles were seen by Jews as separate from or disdainful of God—as profane. Once Peter arrives, his vision begins to make sense and he proclaims, “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” …God crashed Peter’s “pew”! God moved into Peter’s comfortable and familiar way of thinking and relating to other people and not only rearranged the furniture, but created new paths and tore down walls. God opened Peter’s mind and heart to understand that Gentiles—the “profane”—are to be welcomed and embraced. God crashed Peter’s pew not only through the vision Peter received, but also through the person of Cornelius. We are told earlier in Acts 10 that Cornelius “was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God.” (10:2) Long before Peter arrived, Cornelius knew and loved God. And so in that mysterious way that things happen sometimes, the two people meet up and something truly sacred happens: Peter and Cornelius share who they are with one another, they share their stories of how they came to be in that place at that time, they share their experiences of God, they meet as two humans who are trying to be more human, more faithful, more alive. Certainly their lives were never the same.
Peter didn’t expect God to be there when he arrived in Caesarea—because that place and “those people” were outside the lines of God’s people. But what Peter learned—and we learn with him—is that God always colors both inside and outside our lines. God is always out ahead of us, always at work in the lives of those who may appear to be lost or far away. God is always present and at work in the lives of those who are different from us or distasteful to us or scary to us. God’s grace is available and at work everywhere. God doesn’t draw lines around sacred and profane, in and out, us and them. We know that even those who live on the other side of the world, those whose cultures and experiences are radically different from our own are human just like us. “They” are like “us” and we are like them. We are all just trying to find our way, to sort out our questions, to discover what our life is for, to love and care for our families, to experience love, to survive hurt, and all the rest. And God is with us—all of us—in the struggle, offering us love and mercy and life—grace!—that we can choose to receive or not. Sometimes we may not even be aware of God’s presence or of the way that grace is at work. Frederick Buechner talks about “being caught up by the way of life that [Jesus] embodied, that was his way.” And he suggests that “it is possible to be on Christ’s way and with his mark upon you without ever having heard of Christ, and for that reason to be on your way to God though maybe you don’t even believe in God. A Christian is one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of whom to thank.”[ii]
Our text today ends with Peter’s words: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” As Buechner reminds us, for us who call ourselves Christian, Jesus’ own life shows us the way, shows us what is “right.” Friends, this is the line we should pay attention to—the contours of what a “righteous”—that is, truly human—life looks like. Jesus was not driven by fear, revenge, pride or greed, but rather was fueled by love, compassion, and mercy. Jesus loved God and loved every person he met—even those who betrayed, denied, and killed him. Jesus did justice, loved kindness, and walked humbly with God (Micah 6:8). Jesus brought hope, healing and liberation to the poor, suffering, and oppressed. Jesus never—not once—perpetrated violence against one of God’s children and his whole life was about tearing down the dividing walls of hostility in order to bring peace and reconciliation (Ephesians 2:14).
We don't live in world without lines. The life we have been given is not a blank page on which we create our own pictures. Rather, the life we have been given is imprinted with the lives of other human beings, with the particular contours of history, struggle, friendship, regret, tragedy, creativity, real differences and all the rest. Our world is marked by violence and terror and pride and hatred that continue to rage across tribal, religious, cultural, and national lines. It was into this world that Jesus came, scribbling vibrant, iconoclastic colors all over the page. The lines may have still been there, me/you, black/white, Jew/Gentile, gay/straight, us/them, but in Christ, the lines were all part of one picture, one humanity; a humanity that Christ came to restore, to reconcile, to make new.
Our call in the midst of all we face—the grief, confusion, rage, inhumanity—is to try to be and to become more human, more like Christ. Our call is to be human with other humans, to make space for grace, to recognize that God is present everywhere, working for good in the world. Our call is to understand that from the earliest days of “church” God has made it clear that absolutely all are beloved of God, that all the separating lines we draw simply keep us from welcoming a potential friend and an even fuller experience of God’s saving grace, love, and power. Why would we deep drawing those lines? Why, in God’s name, do we keep drawing those lines?
The only line we should pay attention to is the one that forms the shape of Christ, that shows us the picture of what it looks like to be truly human, the vision of our own full huma
[i] See many articles on this topic, among them: http://www.epi.org/blog/from-ferguson-to-baltimore-the-fruits-of-government-sponsored-segregation/; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
[ii] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p. 16.
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