Now the apostles and the 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, saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?"

This, it seems, is the way it has always been.  God expands the range of people who can be called God’s people.  God breaks down barriers that have allowed some religious in-group to separate themselves from some group of “others” who didn’t previously get to ‘belong.’  Some of the old in-group get with the program –  but always some object.

This tension was present within the people of Israel when they returned to the promised land from their years of exile in Babylon.  One group, intent on preserving the spiritual and ethnic integrity of the returned exiles while they rebuilt the temple and city walls, sought to purify religious and communal life from any possible pagan influence –  to the point of  forcing Jewish men to divorce their Gentile wives and to send them and their children away. [1]

But another group of Jews at this time saw things differently.  They told the story of Ruth:  a Gentile woman who married an Israelite – and ended up becoming King David’s great-grandmother. [2] 

They told also of the prophet Jonah, famous for more than his sojourn in the belly of a big fish.  Jonah tried to run away from God’s call to preach to Nineveh – a pagan city renowned for its violence and pride.  Jonah’s was afraid – as in fact happened – that God would be merciful to these foreigners, instead of destroying them as Jonah thought should happen. [3]

In the New Testament, Mark and Luke tell of when the disciples proudly say to  Jesus that they had seen someone casting out demons in their master’s name – and had forbidden him from doing so, because he wasn’t following them.  Jesus is sharp in his reply:  Do not forbid him; for he that is not against you is for you. [4]

And, of course, there is the famous tale in which Jesus uses a Samaritan – one of the group that mainstream Judaism despised as a heretical and unclean – as the  example of neighborly love that all should imitate.

Now in the Acts of the Apostles comes the moment when God unequivocally welcomes  Gentiles – non-Jews – as full-fledged members of the people of God.  Peter comes off as the eventual hero of the story --  the preacher who in violation of every precept he’d been raised with goes to the home of the Roman Centurion Cornelius and baptizes him and his household.  Peter defends this inclusion of the Gentiles to the Jewish-Christian leaders back in Jerusalem when they object and eventually carries the day.  

But Peter needed some pretty heavy-handed direction from God to get the point:  it took his vision of something like a large sheet coming down from heaven,  being lowered by its four corners; [full of] four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air.  [When he] heard a voice saying, `Get up, Peter; kill and eat.' [he] replied, `By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.'  But a second time the voice answered from heaven, `What God has made clean, you must not call profane.

It took this happening three times for Peter to hear the Spirit say he was “to make no distinction between us and them.”  [5] 

It is a good thing for us that Peter did.  Without the inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God, we wouldn’t be here, and Christianity would likely have remained a tiny sect within Judaism, if it had survived at all.

God is in the business of inclusion, not exclusion;  God’s love is wide, not narrow. As we will sing at the Offertory:  

In Christ there is no East or West,

 in him no South or North … [6]

 

There is an obvious corollary to this truth about God’s love:  If that wide, all-embracing, inclusive love is what God is about then it is what Church needs to be about, too.  

 

In Christ there is no East or West,

in him so South or North…

but one great fellowship of love

throughout the whole wide earth.[7]

Jesus makes this clear in today’s Gospel when he speaks to the disciples:  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 

Historically, of course, the track record of the church in inclusion is not noticeably better than that of our biblical forebears.  Whenever there is movement towards greater inclusion at God’s urging, there is also resistance along the way, often in the name of God.  Still, in recent decades, our own Episcopal Church has made movement on the path to reflecting God’s inclusive love more fully.

Not only have we ordained women for over 30 years, the two senior leaders of the Episcopal Church -- Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori and President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson -- are both women.  This stands in some contrast to our mother Church of England, which is still struggling to allow women to become Bishops as a recent article in The New Yorker detailed. [8] And back on this side of the pond, we have also slowly become more open to the gifts for ministry that our gay and lesbian members have to offer.

In the wake of the stringent immigration bill recently signed  in Arizona, Bishop Kirk Smith has offered his solidarity and that of the churches of the Diocese to the Spanish-speaking community in his state.[9]  So, too, the Governmental Affairs Office off the Episcopal Church, following General Convention resolutions, has long been urging Congress to adopt comprehensive immigration reform legislation to deal with the complex economic, legal and family issues of immigration in more welcoming and less draconian ways. [10]  This work of extending the inclusive love of God to the stranger and alien in the land is, for me, not a distant matter:  right now, my cousin in Colorado is facing the possible deportation of her hard-working loving Latino husband.

Still, its relatively easy to talk about how God’s inclusive love should be lived out somewhere else.  To do so closer to home is always more challenging.  It is especially challenging when there are barriers to the full welcome and inclusion of others of God’s people of which we might not even be aware.

Blessedly, St. Francis is a racially diverse community of faith --  that is pretty easy to see when you walk in the door.   But there can be subtle ways in which we may communicate a less welcoming message than we would want.  

One of my General Convention colleagues recently posted the following observation on-line.

Years ago there was a wonderful video … about the Eucharist.  The video begins with threshers coming across a field of wheat -  then [moves] onto people grinding the wheat and kneading the bread, then baking [it].  Grapes are harvested, then made into wine and … poured into a vat. People gather around a table and the bread on a platter and wine in a large cruet and cup is placed on the table.”  

I love this video [except] for one BIG drawback --  all the people doing the work of making the bread and the wine are people of color/Latino and those gathered at the table to enjoy the bread and wine are (it appears …) white/Anglo. 

So there is a subtle message in that depiction of the Eucharist... probably unintended … [which says to the people of color]:  you are good enough to do the hard work but not good enough to enjoy the results.

In what other ways do we - church - culture - give out that message and to whom?  [11]

That question’s gotten me wondering about a variety of things in our life at St. Francis.  Take the language of our worship.  I heard not long ago that our recently retired Bishop Romero had a goal that Spanish would be used to some extent in the worship of every congregation in the Diocese.  His point, of course, was that  would make us more welcoming to the growing Latino population in NJ -- including in our area.  I’ve thought that maybe the next time one of my colleagues offers a course in liturgical Spanish, I should take it --  and the we could all take lessons from Cynthia and Rebeca, so we could learn to pray in a language other than English.

Or consider the risk inherent in every church community -- like St. Francis -- that values the love and care we share with one another.  Such mutual care is without doubt very real here and it is a good thing.  But as we care for one another, and as we go about our life in the ways that we’ve become used to, we can quite unconsciously send a message to guests and newer members that they aren’t really part of the in-group at the heart of the parish.

It always takes an intentional effort to see your own church community from the perspective of an outsider, to recognize which practices are really welcoming, which -- unintentionally perhaps – are off-putting, and then to change them.  Deacon Marge raises some interesting questions about this in her article in the May Communiqué which I hope we will read and take to heart.

Then there is that act of open-hearted welcoming love that may well be harder for us Episcopalians than it was for like Peter to respond to God’s call to share the gospel with Gentiles.  I’m talking about inviting a friend, neighbor, co-worker or family member to come to church with you --  to go out of your way to tell the people in your life that God’s love as lived in The Episcopal Church just might be for them.

We will need to do all these things are more if we want this parish to grow.  But in the end, seeking to live in these ways is not primarily about growing this church.  As I said last week, God is the center.  Its not about us, its about God.  We are called to live out the inclusive, welcoming love of God in Christ in order to bear witness to Jesus’ love and God’s power in our lives. As Jesus said in the Gospel, By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

That’s our job – to make sure that everyone who walks in these doors or who sees us on the street or whom we invite to worship knows that there s something special abut us, but simply that we are disciples of Jesus --  and that the rich, broad, welcoming love of God that Jesus brought to this earth embraces them.

 

The Rev. Jack Zamboni                                                                                                                                                                      May 2, 2010