This is the text of the sermon I preached at Greyfriars Church of Scotland, Lanark today. It is based on the lectionary readings for the day: Ps 148, Acts 11:1-18, John 13:31-35, Rev 21:1-8.
Human life is full of contradictions and ironies. We are steeped in contradictory thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. One place where we see this is in the idea of belonging. We want to feel we belong to our community – we want to feel wanted – we don’t want to be isolated and marginalised – yet very often it is ourselves that put up barriers that exclude. We want to be part of the crowd while asserting our own individuality. What often happens as a result is that we form in-groups for people that are broadly like ourselves and outgroups for the rest. The ingroup then represents a sort of collective individuality that stands against the wider community. The ingroup typically defines itself in identifying marks in terms of narrative, language, behaviour, and symbolism that set it apart from others. It hardly needs to be said that such ingroup/outgroup identity sometimes leads to conflict. When taken to an extreme, our tendency to exclude others leaves us feeling very lonely indeed. The ingroup becomes ever more narrowly defined – take the history of the church is Scotland as an example – and so smaller and smaller. We’re desperate for the fellowship of others even as we drive them away.
Belonging is a major theme in today’s readings. While I shall refer to the other readings, I want to concentrate on Acts 11:1 – 18. The background to the passage is a row about circumcision that we also meet in the Epistle to the Galatians. The issue was that some Jewish Christians were insisting that Gentile Christians had to be circumcised as they had been if they were to be saved – if they were to truly belong. This was an ongoing debate during the time of the apostles. Afterall, Christianity was initially a Jewish cult that was presented as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Understandably, Jewish Christians were very jealous of their unique identity, of which circumcision – and a whole load of other distinctives – was a part.
In Acts 11, we find Peter criticised by what Paul in Galatians calls “the circumcision group”. In our passage, Peter is criticised for hanging around with the uncircumcised. “You went to the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them” (v. 2). We learn from the previous chapter that it was the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion and so a Gentile. What those opposing Peter are saying, in effect, is that the uncircumcised are unclean. In eating with them, Peter had made himself unclean. And because they were unclean, they were excluded from fellowship not only with the other believers but God himself.
Galatians tells us that initially, at least, Peter agreed with them. Gentile believers must be circumcised or else they cannot be saved, it was argued. Paul, who wrote Galatians, was angry with Peter: “I opposed him to his face,” he writes, “because he was clearly in the wrong”. But it seems that the thing that had been most effective in changing Peter was the vision we read about in Acts. In Ch. 11, Peter is recounting a vision he saw prior to inviting Cornelius and the two other men into his own house.
In the vision, Peter sees “something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. I looked and saw four footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat’” Peter’s response is that he has never eaten anything unclean while God’s is “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean”
The implication is obvious: the uncircumcised men with whom Peter ate were not unclean. They were clean because God had made them clean.
How do we apply this to ourselves? As I said in my introduction, we all tend to exclude. We want to hang around with people that are like us: people from the same social group, people with similar interests, people whose politics we share. We find this in the world outside the church, but we also find it in the church. Sometimes we exclude others in the life of the church, as the members of the circumcision group did. We define ourselves on sectarian lines, denominational lines, theological lines. Worse, we question whether others can be Christians because of what they believe or the way they act. “How can he be a Christian? He’s not a progressive.” Or “How can she be a Christian? She’s not an evangelical”. Or how can anyone that votes Tory, Labour, SNP, or whatever, be a Christian? In my own Free Church tradition, Christians used to be held as those that did not do all manner of things. We find the same thing in other conservative traditions. Christian didn’t dance, play music, go to the pub (although drinking was never a problem), especially on a sabbath. Thankfully this is no longer the case. But it’s very like the outlook of the circumcision group in Paul’s day as well as the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. It wasn’t so much that the things other people did were wrong but that true believers were different and had to be seen to be different.
I’m not sure the Jewish believers though that literal circumcision was so important in itself – they understood from the Old Testament that it was the heart that mattered – but they did believe that becoming circumcised was what any genuine believer would want. No one in the Free Church of my student days believed that salvation itself depends on not attending the pub; but it was inconceivable to some that any genuine Christian would want to be there. So, they were excluded those they considered “worldly”; such people weren’t to be thought of as genuine Christians. In today’s church, while we don’t often argue of whether Christians should go to the dance, there are other reasons why Christians exclude. It could be disagreement over aspects of theology, or some contemporary issue related to politics. Or what about inclusion? Christians are falling out over LGBT rights. Might I suggest that regardless of our position, none of these things are as important as our attitude to Jesus, our Saviour?
How do we challenge this? In Peter’s case, the vision taught him that God does not show favouritism; that he accepts all people who love him and do what is right. The previous chapter tells us that as Peter talked about Jesus to Cornelius and the others, the Holy Spirit came even upon them and that they spoke in tongues and praised God. The excluded were brought into the fellowship of those included as recipients of the grace of God.
Paul challenges this more theologically by drawing us to the cross. In truth, he’s ruthless. He tells us that that were insisting that Gentile believers be circumcised make the cross pointless. Why did Jesus die, he asks. He died to save us from our sins. If we’re saying that to be truly saved, we need also to be circumcised, then we’re robbing the cross of its power. “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”. For Paul the death and resurrection of Jesus are everything, the way of salvation for all that trust. There is no room for peripherals. In Christ, we have everything necessary for salvation. To the Galatians he is saying forget about circumcision. It is nothing; Christ is everything. To us he is saying forget about the shibboleths, only Christ matters. As we read in Romans: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved”. That everyone is without caveat, without equivocation. We have no right to exclude as Christ’s anyone that professes their faith in him.
There’s another way. It’s the law of love. In John 13:34, we read this: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”.
I mentioned that identity was important to the Israelites at the time of Jesus. I’d argue that many of the Levitical laws, some of which seem rather arbitrary, are largely about identity. You knew who was Jewish because of how they dressed, by what they ate, by their elaborate rituals, by the company they kept. In my Free Church days, a similar rationale was provided in support of the various shibboleths I mentioned. “You need to look like a Christian”. People will know you’re a Christian because you don’t do this or that. But Jesus says something rather different. He says people will know you belong to Christ because of your love for one another. It’s a practical love, a sacrificial love: As I have loved you. Love does not exclude; it embraces. It recognises difference and celebrates difference. Ultimately it is self-giving.
It is patient, it is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
We should not exclude others because God loves them as he loves us.
I want to end on a more difficult note with the passage from Revelation 21:1 – 8. In the first instance, we learn about the new heaven and new earth and the Holy City, the new Jerusalem.
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first earth has passed away, and there was no more sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”
We read of the people of God prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. We read that there will be no more death and that God will wipe away every tear. All those that love God will inherit this. But there is also a note of exclusion.
Actually, there is a word of exclusion in the words of Jesus in John 13 where he tells the disciples that he is going to a place where they cannot follow him. Of course, he means his death on the cross for sin. There is a place we cannot go because only Jesus can go there. He took that road that we might not have to.
But here in Rev. 21, we learn of another exclusion even in the midst of inclusion. We learn that “the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the idolators and all liars” will not inherit the new earth and new heaven. There are difficult issues here, but I want to suggest that it is possible to exclude ourselves from what God offers us in the gospel. It is possible to exclude us from his love and everything that means. And that’s why we’re invited to the wedding banquet to join the heavenly bride. “Who ever believes on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
There is a lovely expression in Ps 148: “He raised up for his people a horn [a king – ultimately Jesus], the praise of all his saints, of Israel, the people close to his heart”. “The people close to his heart”. As we praise Jesus today, we are not excluded if we will come – we are all encouraged to join in the praise of all the saints. If we have excluded ourselves, let us do so no longer. As God’s people, you are the people close to his heart. He loves you as he loves all that love Jesus and he will love you forever.
Unconformable Views 