April 28, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

The Distinctions We Make

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 148
Acts 11:1–18

We who confess Easter are recruited to move in generous love across all the boundaries of “clean and unclean” . . . citizens and immigrants, Jews and Muslims, gay and straight, rich and poor. All are invited to sign on for the “new earth” that will match the “new heaven” that comes through specific acts of neighborly generosity.

Walter Brueggemann

About ten years ago, I attended the Jackie O exhibit at the Field Museum. I hadn’t been such a fan of Jacqueline Kennedy, but a few people had told me it was a good exhibit, so a friend and I decided to see for ourselves. What I learned about Jackie Kennedy that day was how much of a cultural ambassador she had been whenever she and her husband traveled to another country or whenever they hosted heads of state at the White House.

Jackie Kennedy was always known for her style. People watched what she wore. People wrote about what she wore. People talked about what she wore. But what I learned at the exhibit was that when she and President Kennedy traveled, for example, to Mexico, she intentionally chose a wardrobe that would pick up traditional bright Mexican colors and styles. When they traveled to Canada, she had her designers choose just the right red for her coat or her dress—exactly the red worn by the Canadian Royal Police. The styling of the clothing for the Canadian trip picked up hints of the mounted police wide belts against a just-the-right-red coat or dress. What I had assumed was much ado about nothing regarding style and clothing and designers instead was the result of decisions Jackie Kennedy made to help her fulfill the role of cultural ambassador. She chose to wear clothing that would convey a respect for the other nation. She chose to wear clothing that would convey that she had been observant of the customs of the nations visited. She dressed herself in an attempt to show she was knowledgeable and observant and respectful of the customs of others.

Because she had mastered a few languages, she conveyed the same sensitivity and respect with languages, too. To the French heads of state or their spouses, she wrote in French. To the Spanish speakers, she wrote in Spanish.

I came away from that exhibit with a sense that Jackie Kennedy had been ahead of her time in reaching across national boundaries, breaking through national identities. She accomplished her task with the tools available to her at the time: clothing and language.

In today’s story, Peter is a cultural ambassador, too, but what helped him accomplish his role was food and sitting at the table and accepting the hospitality of people who had strange and unacceptable customs about food.

The story of what happened to Peter is told three times in the book of Acts. The repetition tells us this was an important story in the early church. It is repeated so that those listening will get it. It’s one of those stories we should lean forward to hear because it is a story about “them” and “us.” Martin Marty says, “Few issues trouble humans, including Christian humans, more than knowing who are ‘we’ and how we are to relate to the ‘others.’ That’s what this story is about. Who are we and how are we to relate to those others?” (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts, Roger E. Van Harn, ed., p. 575).

And so Peter has this fantastic dream—a vision. He sees a sheet lowered down as if from heaven, and it’s loaded with all sorts of creatures—animals, beasts of prey, creepy reptiles, and birds. He hears a voice that tells him to get up and kill something on that sheet and eat. And he replies, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” The laws to be observed about food by a Jew, even a Jewish Christian believer, were spelled out. The creatures in Peter’s dream were not on the OK list, were considered unclean. The voice speaks again, and says, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” It is helpful to know that the word profane literally means “standing outside of the temple.” What God has made clean, you must not call unworthy and relegated to outside the temple doors; you must not call profane or repugnant.

This happened three times—the voice urging Peter to kill and eat—and then everything in the vision, the sheet and all of the creatures, are pulled up again into heaven. In my imagination, it looks a little like the lowering and raising of a Murphy’s bed, except with all sorts of creatures sprawled all over the mattress. As soon as the vision disappears, men come, wanting Peter to go with them, back to Caesarea, to the house of a Gentile. It’s Cornelius’s house. The story tells us that Peter felt that the Spirit told him to go, even though going to the home of a Gentile and eating at the table of a Gentile would have been against Jewish law. He went, at the Spirit’s urging, even though he knew he would be grilled by the church leaders when he returned.

To sit at table with Gentiles put Peter’s ritual purity and standing at risk. And yet the Spirit told him to go. And when he did, he told the story of the good news of Jesus Christ, and when he told that story, everyone in the Gentile household heard the message of Jesus, and when they heard the message of Jesus, the Spirit fell down on that household just as profoundly as it had fallen on the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus.

And when the Spirit fell upon those Gentiles, the church was changed forever. Because you and I sitting here—most of us with absolutely no Jewish lineage—are the result of Peter’s listening to the Spirit. Putting himself at risk. Crossing over unacceptable boundaries. We are the result of Peter’s cultural ambassadorship.

Martin Marty says that this story in Acts is about the controversy of commensality. It is a word that means sharing the table, the mensa, with someone else. Marty references a moment of history after the Civil War when the question arose as to whether free blacks and whites of the same denomination and creed would be in the same congregations. Oh, yes, said most white congregations. You can keep coming just as you did in slave days and we will keep reserving the balcony seats for you. But the line was drawn at the Lord’s Table and at church suppers. That’s where the hospitality stopped. According to Marty, the problem of commensality—who shared the table—was bad after 1865 but was much worse in the days of Peter and the first disciples. Jesus was often in trouble for eating with tax collectors and prostitutes and the unwashed, but we could assume that those people were Jews at least. Peter’s action was a worse violation. Gentiles were unclean in every way, uncircumcised, filled with food that was considered dirty.

This is the story of the gospel being spread. It is the story of Peter realizing that custom and tradition and distinctions between groups—distinctions about who is in and who is out—aren’t part of God’s design. Peter’s willingness to change his mind about food prompted him to change his mind about people.

I’ll bet there are people you can think of, if you are really honest with yourself, that you wouldn’t want coming up to this communion table. Many Catholic churches still don’t let openly gay and lesbian people take communion. What about NRA supporters? Or women wearing the Muslim burka? How far would your hospitality extend?

As we look around our church, we probably should examine ourselves, our space, our rituals, our customs. We don’t set out to overtly exclude, but who is not here? Who is not at our table? Who is not welcome, consciously or subconsciously, at our functions?

We are too sophisticated to call certain groups of people unclean, but we sure don’t like babies crying in church, nor do we reach out much to the heavily tattooed. What kinds of customs and rituals do we have that keeps them away, keeps them outside the temple? How could we more intentionally cross some boundaries to reach out?

Dorothy Day, a Catholic woman who started the Catholic Worker and fed homeless men and women day after day after day, once said, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” I doubt we can change our minds about those we find strange or different or unclean or ritually impure unless we spend time at table with them.

I’m reminded of my first call to serve a church. It was a church that had the reputation of being far more conservative in theology than this church. I was always on the more liberal continuum there. But during the nine years I was there, I worked hard to “get” what they meant and how they spoke and used theological terms. And I worked hard to lead worship in a way that could be heard, using language they could understand, but also using that language in ways that were true to my own theology. A more liberal church like ours judges conservative churches and their music and the way they speak. And they judge churches like ours, too. If we could sit at table with one another and eat one another’s food and learn about one another’s language, we would learn that the Spirit has blessed them and us, even when we don’t agree on all points. Perhaps we could become the beloved community Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to.

I recently listened to a podcast interview of Krista Tippett interviewing Congressman John Lewis, the long time congressman and noted leader in the early civil rights movement. He spoke of the nonviolent movement and how they studied and prepared—studied and prepared themselves to maintain nonviolent behavior even if they were called names and even if they were beaten and even if they were arrested. They trained themselves and called themselves to love, even those who would be their oppressors, and according to John Lewis, they kept being reminded that those who oppressed them were also children of God, loved by God, just like they were. So even in the ugliest of times, even the oppressors weren’t unclean or unacceptable in the eyes of those being beaten. He reminisced about Martin Luther King Jr. advising them, encouraging them, telling them they must never lose hope, never lose hope, never give up, never give up even on their white brothers.

Thank God Peter went to Cornelius’ home. Thank God he decided not to make distinctions between those people and his people, because if he hadn’t gone, and if he hadn’t preached there, you and I would not be sitting here. Thanks be to God for this table we share. May our prayer be that none of us hinder God’s efforts to expand the guest list.