Unclean

Introduction

The Kiss Still Works

Brennan Manning tells a story in his absolutely stunning book “The Ragamuffin Gospel” about a doctor sitting with a patient after surgery.

The doctor had to remove a tumor in the young woman’s face, but to do so needed to cut a nerve that controlled the muscles in her mouth, which left her disfigured and crooked.

The doctor tells the story of what happened next:

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “It is kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with God. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Manning, Brennan. The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (pp. 106-107). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The reason Manning tells us this story because he believes (and I think he’s right) that this has been the work that God has been up to since the dawn of time.

God reaches in to our brokenness, our frail state.

God contorts himself to match us.

And God does it all to make sure we know that the Kiss still works, that we are loved by our creator.

And yet, we resist, don’t we.

Today’s story is ultimately a story about God showing us that the kiss still works, and holding up for us the ways that we as humans all too often get in the way.

Bible Breakdown: Repetition is the Key

Try to imagine it with me now: There’s a conflict in the church.

The Gentiles- Non-Jews

In the Jewish understanding of the world, there were essentially two groups of people:

Jews, who had the right blood line, the right family origin

AND the right religious traditions and customs.

And then there were the Gentiles, who are...

Everyone else.

They did what we humans are incredibly good at doing unfortunately:

They made categories for in and out.

If you’re Jewish, you’re in.

If you’re Gentile, you’re out. So sad!

Because Jews were so worried back then about their religion falling apart, they made sure that NO ONE associated with the Gentiles.

You didn’t hang out with the Gentiles.

You didn’t make friends with the Gentiles

You didn’t do anything with the Gentiles.

It’s often easy to forget, but Christianity started out of the Jewish religion.

So much so that up until this point in the book of Acts, we still haven’t come across the word “Christian”

These are Jews who are followers of the way, but they still consider themselves Jews.

So in this story in Acts, the leaders of the Church are angry with Peter.

The offense isn’t that Peter preached to them...

It’s not that Peter dared to give them the Holy Spirit.

It’s not that Peter had misused resources in evangelizing.

It’s not that Peter had done something outside the bounds of their theology at the time.

It’s that he would dare to sit down and eat with them.

Their argument in verse 3 is very clear:

“You went into the home of the uncircumcised (a rather gross way to describe Gentiles) and at with them!”

How dare you show them hospitality?

How dare you welcome their hospitality toward you?

How dare you spend any time at all with this group?

How dare you show them any love or grace?

Peter doesn’t argue…he tells a story

There were a lot of bad ways for Peter to approach this.

He could have gotten defensive

He could have tried to present a rational argument

Side note: This never works when the person you are dealing with is having an emotional response

Facts will almost never calm someone down who is responding from their feeling center.

He could have just said something like “God told me it was ok!”

But instead of presenting an argument, Peter tells his story.

I have long been saying that our stories are powerful, that they are useful, and that they serve a purpose.

Peter has caught this.

He knows that his story has a certain power to it, so he’s going to use that, rather than some sort of debate or argument, to help his opponents see what’s going on.

But, it turns out, he’s not the only one.

Luke has told this story twice in Acts, so we need to pay attention.

While this story happens to Peter, it’s Luke who is the writer of Acts.

Luke has made an interesting artistic decision here.

If you look back just a little bit to Acts 10, you’ll notice that Luke tells us that this story happened.

He tells us about the sheet, he tells us about the animals, he tells us about the vision, he tells us about the Holy Spirit.

And then here in Acts 11:1-18, by having Peter recount this story, Luke is essentially telling us the same story twice, back to back.

On the assumption that parchment wasn’t cheap, we have to assume that Luke did this for a very specific reason.

He wanted us as his readers to hear this story, and then to hear this story again immediately after.

It’s because this story is kind of wild, kind of radical, and kind of important to wrestle with.

This is a vision of God changing God’s mind

Through the Torah, we have some very specific laws about what the Jewish people were allowed to eat.

No pork, no shellfish, no reptiles.

Side note: I’m not sure who was attempting to eat any of the reptiles out there…but...

These are the laws that we have come to know as Kosher.

These laws come to us from the Torah.

Tradition states that the Torah is what Moses brought down from the mountain on those tables.

In other words, the Torah, including the Kosher laws, come straight from God.

God is the one who called some things clean, and some things unclean.

Which is what makes Peter’s vision so radical, and potentially offensive.

He is given a picnic blanket with all the unclean foods.

Wild birds, reptiles, shelfish, the whole deal.

And God says “Go to town!”

Peter’s a good Jew, so he says “No way, I’m not breaking the rules that YOU GAVE US!”

And God says “Never consider unclean what God has made pure.”

God gave the rules.

Shelfish are out of bounds

Birds of prey are out of bounds

Frogs are out of bounds.

God took the rules back.

Rise, kill, and eat!

Don’t tell God what’s clean and not.

God will tell you.

This creates an interesting problem and consideration:

God changed God’s mind?

I thought God was the same yesterday, today, and forever?

How could the rules change?

And more troubling...

How do we know what rules still apply, and what rules don’t?

The Arc is always toward more acceptance, forgiveness, welcoming, and love

A Bible professor I studied under in seminary told me once that if something is changing in the Bible, it’s not God.

It’s God’s people.

So when you look at the entire Bible, if you started in Genesis and worked your way all the way through, you’d start to notice things.

As the Bible starts, it’s very restrictive.

The beginning of the Bible is all about what you can’t do.

What you can and cannot eat

What you can and cannot wear

Where you can and cannot go to the bathroom

And, most importantly for us today, who you can and cannot associate with.

But as the story of God and God’s people continues through the Bible, you start to see more openness and welcome and inclusion.

There’s a reason we as Christians eat bacon!

There’s a reason that we don’t think twice about wearing our poly-carbon blends

The truth is that God didn’t change.

God was giving us what we could handle at the times we could handle it.

But the thing to keep in mind here, because this can become a pretty slippery slope, is that it’s a one way street.

The arc of this movement is always toward more welcoming.

The arc of this movement is always toward more grace.

The arc of this movement is always toward more love.

God never says “Hey, you should love these people” in one place only to take it back a few pages later.

Instead, especially starting in the New Testament, God is always saying “Hey, you ought to think about opening yourself up to this group more.”

You ought to think about inclusion more.

You ought to consider what you might be calling unclean has already been made pure by me.

Which again, as a rational and logical argument can be kind of dangerous, right?

Which is why Peter shares it as a story.

And that story seems to have hit the Apostles and the other Christians in just the right way.

The Believers Change their Mind too

God opens Peter up to change his mind about Gentiles.

Peter goes and visits these Gentiles and welcomes them in to the fold.

And Peter is overwhelmed at what the Holy Spirit of God does in their midst.

He asks it this way: Once I saw what was going on, who am I to stand in God’s way?

And now that they’ve heard the story, so have these believers changed their minds.

They’re on board.

They don’t want to be the ones who stand in God’s way either.

They let go of what they were holding on to

Luke doesn’t exactly tell us what happens next, but for this to really be effective there’s another piece these believers are going to have to do.

And it’s not easy!

For actual generations, thousands of years really, the Gentiles were not to be associated with.

Now, thanks to the Holy Spirit pushing Peter, the Gentiles are brothers and sisters.

These Jewish Christians are going to have to let go of something they’ve been holding on to for thousands of years.

That’s not exactly easy!

I wonder what it is that we might need to let go of?

Apprentices

What (or who) might we consider unclean what God has made Pure?

This is a difficult question!

No one wants to admit we’re wrong.

But at the same time, it’s not hard to imagine the groups that we might put in this category, or at least acknowledge that the church has put in this category through their history.

There was a time, and in fact still in certain churches, where women are not permitted to be in any kind of teaching, leadership, or authority role.

There was a time, and in fact still in certain churches, where African American folks were unwelcomed.

There was a time, and in fact still in certain churches, where immigrants of any legal status were viewed as second class congregants.

There was a time, and in fact still in certain churches, where LGBTQ folks are not welcomed to even set foot inside the door.

There was a time, and in fact I think in most churches, where Transgender folks are misunderstood, derided, and loathed.

And just like the early church, folks have stood on both certain cherry picked scriptures, and their tradition, to justify wanting to keep those folks out.

And yet, I really have a sense that the Spirit is asking us the same thing that the Spirit was asking Peter:

How can we call unclean what God has called clean?

You will never ever look in to the eyes of someone that God does not love.

It’s impossible!

So we need to ask the same question that Peter was asking at the end of this story:

Who am I to stand in God’s way?

Who am I to stand in God’s way of women in leadership?

Who am I to stand in God’s way of reconciling all the races of the world?

Who am I to stand in God’s way of loving LGBTQ folks?

Who am I to stand in the way of anyone who is in the midst of transitioning?

Who am I to stand in the way of what God is doing in the world?

Be active in changing our minds.

Some of this will require much of us.

There’s a bumper sticker out there that drives me kind of crazy.

“Coexist.”

And you can see here the different religious symbols all together.

Some people are offended at the idea of these religions coexisting, but I have the opposite tact.

I’m offended that coexist is the best we can do.

Likewise, I think some of us take a “coexist” mentality to the categories of folks I just named.

If a woman pastor is here, that’s great.

If a black person walked in the room, I’d be fine with it.

If a gay person stumbled in to our church, I’m sure I’d behave myself.

But once these early Christians changed their minds about Gentiles, they got active.

They sent Paul out as their great evangelist.

They worked in countless communities to spread the Gospel.

They actively got on their feet and got to work.

And in fact they did such a good job, that unless you have a specifically Jewish ethnic background, none of us would be here without their efforts.

We’re all Gentile Christians.

It’s because of them that we are here.

So we need to be equally as active.

Who is God inviting in to this space?

Who is God calling to be part of us?

How is God calling us to get out in to our community and find new people to be here?

I used to do this challenge with my youth groups in the past...

But as I was working on this sermon I realized that adults are really just older kids…so maybe this challenge would work just as well for all of us.

Who can you reach out to and bring to church next week?

I promise, I’ll work up a great sermon for you!

But actively reach out to someone in your orbit that you can bring in.

Know why we’re doing this

I want to be clear here

Such an invitation isn’t so that we can pad our worship numbers.

Such an invitation isn’t for the pastor’s ego.

Such an invitation isn’t to keep the budget up.

We reach out to everyone in our community for one simple reason:

There are so many in our world who have been told over and over again that they are deformed.

They are broken.

They are unwanted.

They are damaged goods.

We reach out to everyone in our community because God is desperate to show them that the kiss still works.

God is desperate to show them that they are loved.

God is desperate to give them a place where they belong.

God is desperate for us to be that place.

Never, ever, call unclean something that God has made pure.

That includes our neighbors, our friends, our enemies,

And it includes you and I.