A Wide Table

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March 13, 2016 - 5th Sunday in Lent

Psalm 23

 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Acts 11:1-18

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3 saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” 4 Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, 5 “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. 6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ 10 This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.

11 At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. 12 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. 13 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; 14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ 15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 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.’ 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?” 18 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:  “A Wide Table”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could return to the good ol’ days?  You know, days before there were divided churches, days before politicians tried to trump one another with vitriol and hate speech.  Days before children rebelled and parents took out second mortgages to make ends meet; before technological addiction and racial tensions; before God became a cute idea to indulge in when you happen to be in a hospital room.  Ah, the good ol’ days.  But when was that, exactly? 

When weren’t there conflicts along religious and racial lines?  When weren’t there slippery politicians and wild kiddos who resented their parents?  When weren’t there people for whom God was a convenient idea, and when wasn’t the church herself a struggling social experiment in coercing enemies to break bread together? 

I’m reminded of those powerful words from Annie Dillard about the good ol’ days:

“There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time-- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature-- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”

The church – from her very beginning in Acts – has always been a flock of complicated chickens, starving for holiness while gorging ourselves on the mundane. 

Peter’s vision shows us that.  You see, the Spirit was wildly and abundantly poured on everyone – Jews, Greeks, male, female, slave, free, everyone.  But that was a hard thing for those Jesus-loving Jewish folk to comprehend.  You see, they had very clear rules about clean and unclean, chosen and not.  So, they stuck to their own kind, Spirit be darned. 

But Pete, he knew it shouldn’t be that way.  He had a fantastical foodie vision about eating all sorts of unclean creatures, with the voice of holiness very clearly proclaiming a central truth: “Do not call profane what God has made clean.” 

This truth was not left in the realm of theory – it was immediately put to the test.  Three men, presumably Gentiles, arrived, and they were to go into the same house, which meant of course, eating together.  The Spirit wove that vision into ordinary life in the faces of these strangers, and a second time, Peter was left with a central truth:  “Do not make a distinction between them and us.” 

We all know who “them” is, don’t we?  It might be different for each of us, but generally, “them” are people we see as so fundamentally unlike ourselves, we simply cannot reconcile those differences.  People with different skin color.  People with different ways of loving.  People on government benefits.  People who vote differently than we do.  People who practice faith differently than we do.  And that’s only within our own country!  If we look at worldwide differences, the “thems” are multiplied profoundly. 

And we know who “us” is, don’t we?  Us is who we see in the mirror.  Us is who we measure everyone else against.  Us is always, always, the norm – with any aberration from our pure standard falling away into “themdom.” 

But the Spirit, well, She was pretty fed up with this “us and them” business in the early church.  So Pete had his vision, and though folks were of course pretty sure he was going to ruin their fledgling faith with it, eventually a few of the faithful got on board, and preached the good news of Jesus Christ to Gentiles, too, those wildly unclean rogues.  (If they hadn’t, none of us would be here.) 

All of that started with a vision of eating.  Perhaps that’s what the church always should be – a place where all the us’s and all the them’s come together and, if only for a little while, lay aside their deeply-held hostilities and break bread together at a wide table. 

This reminds me of the story of the Christmas Truce in 1914 on the western front of World War I, in which German, British and French soldiers hit the pause button on war, and ate together.   I’m sure you’ve heard it.

British Army Captain Edward Hulse wrote letters to his mother about this amazing ceasefire — which he called "the most extraordinary Christmas in the trenches you could possibly imagine.”

At 8:30 in the morning, four unarmed German soldiers left their trenches to approach their British enemies, but were stopped by some suspicious British soldiers.  One of the Germans "started off by saying that he thought it only right to come over and wish us a happy Christmas, and trusted us implicitly to keep the truce," Hulse wrote.

Soldiers on all sides left their trenches, shared food, pictures of loved ones, and cigarettes.  They no longer made a distinction between us and them.  Did it last? Well, no.  You know that.  The pull of us and them is incredibly strong – made more so by all the external pressures pushing people to stay in their trenches on their side.  World War I would only end 4 years later, taking 16 million lives across Europe and the Middle East.

But for one incredibly holy day, these soldiers had the same vision Peter did.  For a day, they had a table prepared for them in the presence of their enemies by a Good Shepherd who valued every single, precious life.

What a delicious delusion, to dream of a world where “us and them” no longer exists.  We call that delusion something else, of course.  We call it the gospel: that in Jesus Christ, the world was and is reconciled to God and one another.  Nowhere is that gospel of reconciliation made more clear than at the Lord’s Table. 

Here, we are we.  We are children of God, and while all those other deeply held identities of ours matter, this identity matters more than any other.  We chickens, holy and profane, clean and unclean, are invited to a wide table, because all of us are God’s own. 

It is not too late to be the church.  It’s not too late to share this good news.  We are not too set in our ways, or too tired, or stretched too thin.  The world is not too far gone – the Spirit that was poured out at Pentecost doesn’t have an expiration date.  The gospel of reconciliation is not an irrelevant idea or an impossible dream.  It is a living, breathing reality, each and every time us and them is laid aside long enough to break bread as a we.

Thanks be to God!  Amen.