May 19, 2019
Scripture: Acts 11:1-18 and John 13:31-35
My oldest nephew is 12
½ years old now. When he was born, I was
living out of the country, and so I didn’t get to meet him until he was about 6
weeks old. I remember meeting him for
the first time, and holding him, and feeling like my heart was going to
explode, it was so filled with love.
When my sister was
expecting her second child, 2 years later, I was staying at her house the week
of her due date and the week after. When
she went into labour, I stayed back at the house with my almost-2-year-old
nephew while my brother-in-law drove my sister to the hospital. I remember thinking that there was no way in
the world that I would be able to love this new baby as much as I had loved the
first one. But later that afternoon,
when I took my nephew into the hospital to meet his baby sister, and I held my
niece for the first time, it was the same feeling all over again – like my
heart was going to explode, there was so much love there.
And the most amazing
thing is, that I didn’t love my nephew any less. Rather than dividing my love between the two
of them, the total amount of love that I had was doubled. And now that I have 5 nieces and nephews –
all of whom I got to visit last week – I have 5 times as much love in my heart
as I had when the first one was born.
There is just as much love in there for the youngest as there is and
always has been for the eldest.
(With 4 out of the 5!)
And isn’t that the way with love? It’s not a zero-sum game, where you have a limited amount of love and you have to decide how you’re going to divide it up, and how much to give to whom. No – love is something that is gradually unfolding and expanding; always increasing; always being known in more and more ways.
And I think that it’s
the same with God’s love, with the love that is God. Just because God loves another person doesn’t
mean that there is less love for me. I
think that the history of the universe is a history of God’s love always
unfolding and expanding and being made known in more and more ways.
In our scripture
story, the story of Peter is a good example.
What do we know about Peter?
·
fisherman
·
called by Jesus
to fish for people
·
didn’t
always “get” Jesus’ message
·
Peter =
“rock on which I will build my church”
·
“Who do
you say that I am?” “You are the Messiah,
the Son of the Living God.”
·
denied
Jesus 3x
·
was
forgiven by the resurrected Jesus 3x
In all of the time
that Peter and the other disciples spent with Jesus, they heard his message of
expansive love again and again. Jesus
spent time with people who were normally excluded by society – tax collectors,
lepers, Samaritans – and he saw that Jesus’ love reached even to them. Peter heard Jesus’ final plea, on the last night
of his life, shortly before he was arrested, that they were to love one
another. This final plea that we heard
at our Maundy Thursday service, and that we read again this morning in John’s gospel. In the final moments of Jesus’ life, this
message of love was what he wanted to leave his disciples with. Love was all that mattered in this moment.
The story that we read
today from the book of Acts takes place in the future. Jesus has died on the cross; Jesus has been
resurrected and interacted with the disciples; Jesus was raised up to heaven 40
days later; the disciples received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, 10 days after
that. And then the disciples were left
trying to figure out how they were going to live their lives as followers of
this Jesus, the Messiah, even though they could no longer see him. How were they going to continue to make this
expansive and expanding love known to the world?
Spoiler alert –
because the Holy Spirit was involved, this message of love spread like
wildfire!
The earliest church
was centered in Jerusalem, the same place where Jesus had died, had been
buried, had risen from the dead, and later had ascended into heaven. From there, the disciples shared the message
of Jesus, and we have stories in the book of Acts of thousands of people being
baptized in a single day.
And then we come to
today’s story. Up until this point, the
early church was an offshoot of the Jewish synagogue and temple. It was people who had been born Jewish, who
had been circumcised as Jewish, who followed all of the Jewish laws about diet
and clothing and customs who were being baptized. And the assumption was that if a non-Jewish
person wanted to be baptized, first they would have to become Jewish – they
would have to be circumcised if they were male, and they would have to follow
all of the laws outlined in the Torah.
But then Peter has a
dream. Yes, this same Peter who had been
with Jesus up until almost the very moment of his death, this same Peter who
had been forgiven by the risen Christ, this same Peter who had heard all of the
teachings of Jesus while he was still alive – this same Peter has a dream. And in this dream, Peter hears God telling
him that God has made everything ritually clean or pure. There is no need to separate the “us” and
“them” any more – “we” who follow these rules, and “you” who don’t.
And as soon as he
wakes up from his dream, the message from God is put to the test. Peter is called to a non-Jewish home where
the men weren’t circumcised and where the dietary laws weren’t followed. He is invited to preach, which he does; and
as he is preaching, he watches the Holy Spirit descend on to all the people
gathered there. And then Peter baptizes
the whole household. No call for
circumcision; no instructions on how to follow the Jewish dietary laws – only a
call for the water of baptism. And as he
is reporting back to the other disciples, he says, “God was there. God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit. Who am I to stand in the way?”
God’s love was
unfolding and expanding in that moment.
Peter’s understanding of God’s love grew that day. God’s love isn’t just for the “in-crowd” – it
is for everyone.
This reading calls us
to question ourselves honestly – who is in the world that we might think is
outside of God’s love? Is it people who
follow different religions, or people with no religion at all? Is it people who vote for a different
political party? Is it people who take
us for granted and abuse us? In 2019 I
have to ask, is it people who would deny rights to the LGBTQ+ community; is it
people who oppose gun control; is it people who want to block refugees from
crossing borders? In your heart of hearts,
who is it that you think is outside of God’s love?
It’s a tough question
to ask ourselves. I may have just
revealed what my answer would be in the list I gave above. We are so good at dividing the world into
“us” and “them” whether it is by dietary laws or by political parties or by
religion.
But this God who is
love keeps on pushing us, prodding us, nudging us by the Holy Spirit to
increase our understanding of love, to grow in how we know God’s love, to have
our eyes open to the ever-unfolding, ever-expanding nature of God’s love.
For if God’s love is
there, who are we to stand in the way?
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