Acts 11:1-18
“No Distinction”
April 28, 2013 - Fifth Sunday of Easter

         I was the only white boy at the birthday party. I have no direct, clear memory of that fact, but my mother told me about it when I was older. I know about it because of her memory. It was second or third grade and we accepted an invitation to celebrate a schoolmate’s birthday. Evidently the birthday boy and all the other boys who came were African-American.

         I would like to think my heart is still that innocent second grader’s, oblivious to the race and color of those around me, simply accepting everyone as fellow human beings, as God’s children loved by Him. I’d like to think I don’t need a 2×4 vision over the head like Peter’s in Acts 10, where he’s forced by God to confront his prejudices regarding Gentiles and bring them the Gospel. I’d like to think I’m much further along than Peter was.

         But I distinctly remember losing that second grade innocence about race not more than a couple years later. I walked home from a school summer program with a craft I’d made. Another boy walked along with me, admired my handiwork, then grabbed it and ran off. And that time I did remember the color of the other child, the one who stole from me, and it was different from mine.

         Yes, I would like to consider myself innocent of racial feeling, but I know it’s not true. I still can find myself wary around people of other colors. Driving with my daughter a couple years ago through particular neighborhoods near her school in Chicago, I was uneasy for us to be the only white people around. And there are all sorts of other ways that kind of feeling arises in me.

         Our text for this week is the closing scene of one of the longer narratives in Acts. It takes up the whole of chapter 10 and then is recapped here in chapter 11. As Luke tells us the history of the beginnings of the Church, he clearly believes this event is worth a lengthy telling and even repetition. When similar issues come up again later, Peter referred back to these events in chapter 15, verse 7 to 9. This is a key event for the new Church.

         And as I tried to express by telling you about my own feelings in regard to race, it’s not just ancient history. This text addresses what is still a challenge for most of us. The challenge is the same one the Holy Spirit gave Peter in verse 12, to be with those who are different from us and “not to make a distinction between them and us.”

         Peter’s challenge came in stages. The first part was in the form of a vision, which Peter tells here in verses 4 to 9, almost repeating what we’re told back in Acts 10 verses 9 to 16. In a sleepy trance waiting for a meal to be prepared, he saw large sheet being lowered down from heaven filled with all sorts of wild creatures. He heard a voice telling him to “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.”

         He was a good Jewish boy. Peter had followed the dietary laws of Moses all his life. He had never eaten pork, never had a monster biscuit with bacon and sausage from Carl’s Jr. Likewise for all sorts of other unclean meats. He would not eat dormouse like the Romans did, nor have a bowl of turtle soup, nor bite into a bit of roast lizard. But here was a voice from heaven telling him to violate that law, that diet. So he protested as we read in verse 8, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”

         Then in verse 9 Peter repeated verbatim for the Jerusalem believers what God told him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Peter goes on to explain to them how in his vision this happened three times, the sheet coming down, his protest, God’s declaration that he was not to regard anything as unclean when God had made it clean.

         Three times the vision, then in verse 11, three men come to Peter’s door. God was conking Peter over the head, nothing subtle about it. That’s when the Holy Spirit told Peter what the point of all this was, as he tells them in Jerusalem here in verse 12, “The Spirit told me to go with them, and not to make a distinction between them and us.” Peter’s next challenge was to put the point of his vision into practice, to actually get up and go to a Gentile house and share the Gospel with them.

         But don’t get the idea that Peter’s vision was all just metaphor for accepting people of other races. Don’t think that it meant he could just waltz into this Roman centurion’s home, preach a little sermon, and then waltz out untouched by anything his Jewish sensibilities might regard as unclean and unhealthy. No, the third challenge for Peter was that he would be invited to stay for supper there at Cornelius’ home.

         We know Peter ate there with Cornelius because of our text here. It starts out with Peter’s fourth challenge in verse 3, which was that the Jewish believers back home in Jerusalem weren’t happy about Peter eating with Gentiles. They wanted to know what Peter was thinking when he sat down to eat. No good Jew would do that.

         Peter didn’t just need to overcome his own prejudices, his own upbringing that taught him that some people were dirty and that you didn’t associate with them and you especially didn’t eat with them. Peter had to deal with the prejudices of his own friends and fellow believers who questioned what he was doing.

         And that heavenly sheet full of creatures that weren’t kosher wasn’t just a picture or metaphor for racial prejudice. No, in order to bring the Gospel to that Gentile house, Peter had to sit down and swallow some spare ribs, or maybe a nice crunchy dormouse dipped in honey and poppy seeds for dessert like Romans enjoyed back then.

         Once again, I’d like to think I’ve got no problem here. I’m happy to sit down and eat most any sort of food. I could eat Italian tonight, Mexican food tomorrow, Greek food the next day and Chinese or Thai food the day after that and be perfectly happy, and some weeks I have. Lots of us as Americans have brought the world’s different foods to our table. But that’s just the problem.

         You probably know that many of our “international” tastes dishes are just Americanized versions of foreign food. Pizza, chow mein, Greek flaming cheese, nachos, and even tacos as we typically know them were all created in the United States and aren’t really what people in Italy or China or Greece or Mexico eat. We’ve brought the world to our tables on our own terms, in our own way, and we’ve often done that with people.

         Our new conference superintendent, whom we elected yesterday in Sumner, Washington, is Greg Yee. He’s a fifth generation Chinese American who himself had to learn to think about race and the Gospel in new ways. Greg did a question and answer session with pastors and he was asked about how the Covenant here in the Pacific Northwest could do a better job of being multi-ethnic.

         Greg said, “You know, for a long time we’ve operated with the idea that we just need to make more room at the table. Let’s make the table big enough to include everyone.” He said, “That’s not bad, but it’s still a matter of us opening up our table. But the Gospel says that we need to get up from our different tables and create a new kingdom Table together.”

         Greg is right. As Peter found for himself in the first century, it works on all sorts of different levels. Yes, it’s first and foremost about sharing the Gospel with people who are different, but it’s only truly the Gospel when we give up ownership of the table and sit down with other people in such a way that we are all equal before God. And that can mean literally eating together, eating each other’s food.

         Here in the twenty-first century we’re still with Peter figuring out what this all means. It’s hard, it’s complex. It was back then too. Turn to Acts 15 and the Jerusalem church is still working on it. Go further into Galatians and you find Paul taking Peter to task because even he still didn’t quite get it. We don’t have it yet either. All our American worries about immigration show us that Christians in our country are still trying to figure out what the Gospel means in terms of nationality and race and people who are different from us.

         I started out by telling you that as much as I’d like to think I’ve got a handle on it, that I don’t have any hang-ups about people over other races or nationalities. I know it’s not true. So I want to go on and say that I don’t have any big answers. There are no easy answers. Like that first church in Jerusalem we may end up disagreeing about things like immigration.

         Yet look where Peter pointed the Jerusalem church. It’s not a matter of figuring it all out, creating a plan that will reconcile all the differences between people. It’s about listening to the Holy Spirit. I repeat, in verse 12, Peter said, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.” That’s really the heart of the rest of what Peter has to say. Being with the Gentiles and bringing Christ to them was about what the Holy Spirit was doing.

         The Holy Spirit is the climax of Peter’s defense in verses 15-17. As he began to speak about Jesus to Cornelius and his household, the Holy Spirit came down on them, Peter says, “just as it had upon us at the beginning.” Peter means what happened to the apostles on the day of Pentecost.

         Luke devoted a long part of Acts to this whole incident. Dealing with racial difference, taking the Gospel to people  who are different, is not just a kind of add-on to the story of the first churches. It’s right at the heart of what God is doing, what the Holy Spirit who came down on Pentecost is doing. The coming of the Holy Spirit to Cornelius’ house is sometimes called the “Gentile Pentecost.” Peter saw it that way.

         The big question for you and I is there in verse 17, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” As Peter spoke those words to the church in Jerusalem, he implied they ask the same question of themselves. Who were they to object to Peter’s dinner companions? If God pours out His Holy Spirit on all people, the Holy Spirit promised and given through Jesus Christ, who is anyone to object to where the Spirit chooses to go?

         Who are we to hinder God? Let’s honestly confront our feelings about people of other races. It’s not just a matter of sliding over and making a little extra room for folks who are different from us. It’s getting up and going out of our way to bring them the Gospel, to sit down with them on their own terms.

         You all are wonderfully welcoming. Anyone who comes here, and I would say, anyone of any race, usually feels a warm welcome. Many of you felt it the first time you came and it’s why you are still here. We have a congregation that embraces some of the differences in God’s kingdom. We’re not all the same nationality. We don’t all speak the same native language. We’re not all the same color. Praise God! May the Holy Spirit keep on moving us to welcome each other like that.

         Yet our text today is calling us out, to get up and go and sit down in other places where our roles are reversed, places like that birthday party I went to in second grade. Let’s realize what distinctions we are making and quit making them.

         Those distinctions exist right here in our own neighborhood. Look northwest cater-corner across the intersection out there and you’ll see Churchill Village where many of the residents now are Hispanic. But it’s not just race. Look to the east and you will see subsidized apartments where many of our neighbors have some sort of handicap or at the least make much less money than most of us. Turn and face south and there’s Churchill Estates where the residents are older than most of us. And across the street to the west is a high school with a thousand young people younger than most of us.

         We don’t have to go far at all to find the distinctions. The question then is whether we will let them separate us from others, and from each other. Will we find ways to get up and go to where those others are and let them know that Jesus died and rose for them, just like Peter preached in Acts 10 to Cornelius and his family?

         Let’s keep making that welcome. As the campaign we’ve begun today suggests, we want everyone to be comfortable here. Not just us, but people who are different. That’s why we want to heat this building on cold nights and welcome in those who have no warm place to sleep. But I know Jim Kooiman would tell you that’s not enough. We’re not done with our distinctions if we’re just making room for a few mats on the floor and a table with some sandwiches. Will some of us go and meet the same folks where they usually sleep, where they often eat, under the bridge or at the Mission or even on a street corner?

         I’m excited that Greg Yee is our new conference superintendent. My prayer is that he will lead our conference, and lead our church, into new dimensions of getting rid of our distinctions. We’ve made a good start here at Valley Covenant. Let’s keep learning, keep facing the challenges like Peter did and learn how we can take some more steps, how we can get up like Peter had to, and go out where those different folks are.

         That’s what God did. Jesus came to us. He came to be with us ignoring the great distinction that we are sinners and He is perfectly holy. And it’s what God will do. In that great scene we read from Revelation 21, what happens? Heaven comes down to earth. God doesn’t just pull His people up out of their places to sit at a Table in heaven. No, the new Table, the new Jerusalem comes down to where we are, to this earth, to make it all into God’s kingdom. God comes to live here, “Now the dwelling place of God is with human beings, and he will live with them.”

         God comes to us. And in our Gospel text for this Sunday, John 13 verse 34, Jesus said “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” At least part of what He meant was being worked out there at Cornelius’ house. Quit making distinctions. Go to people who are different, like Jesus came to us.

         What can you do? Consider how you can make a connection with somebody different this week. Stop and talk to the panhandler on the corner. Visit someone in a retirement community. Work with little kids in Sunday School when you don’t have any of your own. Read the Covenant’s new resolution on immigration. Go meet your neighbor who’s from a different country. Plan now to go on our Mexico mission trip next year. Consider your own short-term mission. Listen for the Spirit calling you to go somewhere people are different, where you are uncomfortable.

         The result of it all is the kind of joy and praise they learned there in Acts 11:18, “And then they praised God saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” Let’s quit making distinctions and go and meet all those different people around us for Jesus’ sake. Then we can really praise God too.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2013 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj