Re-membering the Church--Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2025

 Sermon for Year C, Easter 5, May 18, 2025, SMHP

Scripture:  Acts 11:1-18

          Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”

          ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“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. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.

¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The 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. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.

          ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” ¹⁸When 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.”

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          “Even to the Gentiles…”

          How many know Fiddler on the Roof?

          Set in imperial Russia—what is now Ukraine—Fiddler tells the story of a family trying to live faithfully in a world that is growing and embracing modernity, even as it finds itself in the hands of a leader—the Tsar—who rules with an iron fist and only likes people who look, and act, and pray like him. 

          Tevye and his wife Golde have five daughters, all of whom are reaching the age of marriage.  It is still the custom to have marriages arranged by the parents and a matchmaker.  Even if you don’t know the play, you probably know the song, “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.”

          As their parents begin to arrange “suitable” matches for them, the daughters keep defying convention by falling in love.  The first to engage in this inconvenience is the oldest,Tzeitel, who wants to marry her sweet friend, the tailor Motel Kamzoil.  Her parents, however, have betrothed her to the widowed butcher Lazar Wolfe. After both of the young people plead with him, Tevye agrees to allow Tzeitel to marry Motel, but that decision leaves him with some problems, not the least of which is:  how to tell Golde that they are breaking with tradition (!).

          So he hatches a plan.  He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, and tells Golde he’s had a bad dream, knowing she will offer to interpret it.  In his dream, he shares, Golde’s grandmother Tzeitel comes, to say mazel tov for her namesake’s engagement to Motel, and then the butcher’s wife returns from the grave to make threats about what will happen if Tzeitel marries Lazar Wolf.

          Golde is persuaded by the dream, and Tzeitel and Motel get married and live happily ever after.

 

          Now, I’m not suggesting that Peter the Apostle made up The Dream of the Holy Tablecloth.  But if he did, I’m not mad about it.

          I mean, there he is—a traditional guy in a rapidly changing world that is in the hands of tyrannical rulers.  By the end of his story, just as in Fiddler on the Roof, the Emperor will tear that world apart.

In the chapter right before the place where we find ourselves this morning, Peter is in Joppa.  Joppa is a coastal town, up to that time best known as the place that Jonah escaped to, after being told by God to go to Nineveh.  In Joppa, he gets on a boat headed for Tarshish, and you probably know what happens next.  Big storm, Jonah overboard and swallowed by a big fish, nearly always depicted in art as a whale, as in the whale statue at the port of Jaffa, modern-day Joppa, a lovely area on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

So Peter’s in Joppa, and according to Luke (the author of Acts), Peter has this vision of all the delicious animals descending on a big cloth, and then some men come and take him to see a centurion named Cornelius in Caesarea. 

And he should have said “no.”  He says it himself a bit later in the chapter. Speaking to the crowd that gathers when he arrives in Caesarea, he says, “"You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”

I’m going to pause right here, because the importance of this phrase.  This is a definitive moment in the development of Christianity.  Perhaps the most important moment.  Up until now, the Way of Jesus was a sect within Judaism.  Now Peter is saying that it is for everyone—Jews and Gentiles. 

How do you think that went over?

Well, we know, actually.  How does our text begin? 

 

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”

 

Peter got back from his trip to the coast, and went to Church Headquarters there in Jerusalem.  He offered them his Parochial Report.  (Baptisms: 42, Offerings:  17 shekels, 55 denarii).

I can tell you that if I reported 42 baptisms to the ELCA on my parochial report, there would be great rejoicing.  But what did the “apostles and believers” have to say about Peter’s amazing efforts?  “Why are you eating with uncircumcised men?”

That is a rather bizarre question, two thousand years later, but I do want to linger on it for a moment, because this sort of thinking has been baked into the church for two millennia, and it’s important that we look at where it started and where we are now.  “Why are you eating with uncircumcised men?” they ask.  Whom do they believe is eligible to be part of this new religious movement, led by the “apostles and believers?”

Jewish men. 

Jesus came, healed, preached to, and loved on people from Gentile territories, women, people considered “ritually unclean,” and every other class and category of person—including-but-intentionally-not-limited-to “Jewish men.”  And still his church began as an exclusive organization limited to a fraction of the population.

Thanks be to God—and I mean that literally—it also began with leaders who were still listening to God’s call to carry the gospel to all people.  And whether Peter had a vision or just finally remembered what Jesus taught him—whatever happened, a dream was fulfilled.  Peter remembered, and the dream of Jesus Christ was fulfilled. Peter remembered, and I mean that literally as well.  He re-membered the church, from membership only for certain classes of men to membership for everyone—Jews and Gentiles.  Paul pushed the boundaries even wider—all the way to the Emperor’s back yard—and the church got re-membered again, closer and closer to the Beloved Community imagined by Jesus (and Dr. King).

In every generation, we re-member that church.  Because, and it is painful to say this, it really is, in every generation there are those who would ask why. 

“Why did you share the meal with the uncircumcised?”

“Why did you share the meal with women?”

“Why did you share the meal with children?”

“Why did you share the meal with gay people?”

Because that happens in every generation, it will always be part of our calling as Christians to re-member the church anew.  We’ve done that pretty well as a church, but there is always re-membering to do.

As a denomination, we’re getting better as well.  The Executive Director of my home area at the ELCA, Phil Hirsch wrote a recent article in our monthly newsletter encouraging us to encourage others to go into federal chaplaincy. To illustrate the need, he told the story of a naval base that had to fly in an ELCA chaplain to baptize a child, because one of the parents is transgender.  None of the chaplains assigned there would do it.

This story makes me sad, and angry, and proud, all at once.  I’m so glad that there was an ELCA chaplain available to serve that family, and so annoyed that it was necessary to find someone who wouldn’t withhold baptism from a child.

^“34I give you a new commandment,” Jesus said, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Friends, it is not easy to love as Jesus loved.  It goes against our natural inclination toward exclusivity.  But we have found a way to do it, and while it is easy to take that for granted, I want you to know that in so doing, you have re-membered the church, and that work is no less miraculous than what Tevye did for his daughter and Peter and Paul did for all the Galilean centurions and Philippian cloth merchants across the empire.

This work of re-membering is vital, in every generation, and even more so in times when our culture seems more inclined to build walls than tables.  Thank you, for the work you do here and elsewhere to invite people into God’s reign, rather than keeping them out.  Let us ever be dreaming and re-membering our church, and our world, anew.