May 6, 2007
5 Easter, Year C
The Very Rev. Mark B. Pendleton
Christ Church Cathedral

God is No Flip-Flopper

For lovers of presidential politics, this past week has been like the start of the pre-game show to the Super Bowl. A crowded field of candidates arrived – 17 men and one woman – to the first nationally televised debates. To those who are not so enamored with this early, front-loaded, cattle-call feel of today’s political scene, well then, for you this is going to be a long campaign.

One of the key criteria for assessing candidates in modern American politics is whether, in the eyes of the general public or the media, someone running for election sticks to long-held convictions or do they shift positions and change their minds over time. Today it seems like the worst thing a politician can be called is a “flip-flopper.” There are even bands of professional hecklers who go from event to event to hold up and clap together flip-flop sandals to make their point and rattle the nerves of the opposing candidate. In today’s climate, those who want to get elected will have their own words thrown back up at them on every previous position they have spoken on: the war, abortion, taxes, stem-cell research, global warming and immigration. The skilled politicians have a way of dancing and dodging around the questions just enough to convey how they sincerely believed a certain way in the past, yet at the same time profess that their recent change of heart shows that they are flexible and open to new thinking.

Politicians are easy targets for criticism, yet they are only mirrors of the people they represent: you and me. How about us? When it comes to taking a position on the big issues of the day that impact our faith and our world: where are we? Do we listen to what others are saying at work or at school to make up our minds? Are there times when we simply change our mind? How often do we find ourselves in the middle – not firmly identifying with any one position?

Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles begins with this: “Now the apostles and believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him.” To our ears, it seems hard to believe that some of the people who knew Jesus personally could have said: “Why did you go to the uncircumcised men and eat with them.” One would think that new converts would have been welcomed. But they weren’t. Peter was criticized for eating with gentiles. How quickly they forgot that this was the same criticism made of Jesus by his detractors.

Throughout the Book of Acts we see an emerging push and pull between the two centers of power in the early church. There were the followers of Jesus centered around Jerusalem led by James, the brother of Jesus. The other group is led by Paul, the great messenger to the non-Jewish world. Peter is in many ways a bridge builder. He interpreted one group to the other. In chapter 15, when things were really heating up between the two sides, it was Peter who stood up to those in Jerusalem and told them how God was giving the Holy Spirit to the gentiles, and “has made no distinction between them and us.” He preaches (Acts 10:34) at a pivotal moment that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

In his defense of his own work in spreading the gospel far and wide, Peter seems to be doing his best, as in a modern presidential debate, to speak in respectful terms to his traditional base in Jerusalem and yet also reach out to the undecided and the independents. He shares with them the vision he had while spreading the gospel among the gentile community in Joppa, west of Jerusalem not far from the coast. This rather strange vision of a large sheet coming down from heaven filled with all kinds of animals. The message he receives from God is this: “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter protested, which he often did. But the voice from heaven said: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Was this vision primarily about dietary laws – which animals were kosher – or was the message larger? The early Christians were wrestling with an all-important position that would determine their success or failure in communicating the gospel to the larger world.
For the good news to spread, the early believers came to see that they could no longer cling to old ways of seeing the “other” as largely unclean and unlike them. This was a tremendous and painful shift in thinking, because for centuries matters of purity and separation from others allowed this traveling band of wanderers to settle and become the people of Israel. The people of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were never the largest ethnic group in the ancient world. The kingdoms of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece and then Rome were always threatening at their door. The Exodus, the building and rebuilding of the Temple and then its various destructions, the exile, the return to Jerusalem and then the re-occupation of Judea and Galilee by foreign armies – all put pressure on the community. To maintain their unique faith in a world where there were countless religions, the people of Moses, Elijah and Isaiah took seriously matters of identity.

The conversation around Peter’s vision is important for several reasons. For one, it shows us how believers have long wrestled with the question of how inclusive the gospel should be. How big should the tent be? How much do people who are already members of the community have to bend and stretch and accommodate to others who do not share a common history, culture or values? As we organize ourselves as a church, what are the rules that should be followed and which are the ones that in time can change and be discarded? I contend that these questions are still with us, as we decide who and what is viewed as clean or unclean, profane or polite. In our church and our society we are debating about who is worthy and entitled to be included, insured, educated, protected, blessed, ordained. Yesterday I attended a rally at Bushnell Park advocating for universal health care, an issue that many people of faith are concerned about in a wealthy nation as our own.

There may always be the keepers of tradition and identity on one side, and the pragmatists and innovators on the other – and a lot of people in the middle. There will always be leaders and followers in the society and the church whose reaction to change and diversity and uncertainty will be to build walls, circle the wagons, pass laws, draft communiqués, and give more power to less people so “they” can keep “us” in line. We live in an age when it is far too easy and common to view the outside world with fear and suspicion. How would Jesus want us to live in such a complex world? Well, he told us, actually.

As he gathered with his followers on night before his death, Jesus shared with those present and passed down to us those things that we must do. “Little children, he said, I am with you only a little longer. Where I am going you cannot come. I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” If and when we do this, others will know we are followers of the risen Christ.

What is the one thing that is non-debatable, non-negotiable, and not culturally flexible? Love. David Hawkins writes in his book, Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior: “Loving is a state of being. It’s a forgiving, nurturing, and supportive way of relating to the world. Love isn’t intellectual and doesn’t proceed from the mind; Love emanates from the heart. Love takes no position, and thus is global, rising above separation. It’s then possible to be ‘one with another,’ for there are no longer any barriers.”

In an uncertain, scary, complicated world, we may not always be certain about what to think on a whole range of issues both large and small. And we may also not know what role our faith and our church plays in the debate. But on this day, I hope we can hear that God’s priority remains unchanged even as our world, our views, and our opinions change. God has made no distinction between them and us. All are loved. All are forgiven. All are worthy. All are welcome.