 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Thursday, May 12, 2022 Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 11:1-18  Acts 11:1-18 Who belongs? 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?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth. ‘But a second time the voice answered for heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” Who really belongs? You will notice that this has been a perennial question from the very beginning of the Church. But the Gentiles – all the non-Jews of the world – were not simply different, they were gross. Vile. Despicable. They were the not-chosen. And the first believers, all Jewish, weren’t having any of this report about Gentiles coming to faith. They were appalled. Disgusted. And suspicious. And they didn’t want them. They simply couldn’t welcome such people. And they were certain that God didn’t want them, either. And they were wrong. Much of the New Testament reflects this difficulty, as the good news spread out from Jerusalem and unacceptable people embraced it and were blessed, without first becoming Jews.That was a scandal almost beyond our ability to understand.Certainly we can’t quite enter emotionally into the sense of revulsion that Jews felt for Gentile dogs.And that such people would presume to enter the fellowship of believers without even being circumcised or following the Law of Moses, without learning the Jewish scriptures or understanding anything at all of the faith that had sustained the people of God – it was unthinkable. Peter and Paul had to argue for their inclusion. And for Peter it took a dramatic vision to accept it. Eventually, though, the Gentiles became the majority of the Church and then began to reject the Jewish ones.Christians quickly came to see Jesus’ own people as the ungodly murderers of the Messiah, and a people that God had rejected. We see Paul in his letters struggling to reject that understanding, too. But? How do we understand this as relevant to our own culture and context right now? Who is in – and who is out?And who decides? |
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