Vision in a Sailcloth

Acts 11:1-18
The apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles were also receiving the word of God. Then Peter came up to Jerusalem and the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them?"
So Peter began to lay an argument before them: "I was in the city of Joppa praying and while in a trance I saw a vision. A vessel, something like a large linen sheet, came down from heaven, lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me. In looking at it closely I saw the four-footed beasts of the earth and the wild animals and the reptiles and the birds of the heavens. I heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter, kill and eat.'
“But I said, 'No way, Lord. I have never put common and unclean things into my mouth.'
“But a voice from heaven continued a second time: 'What God has made clean, you must not call common.'
“This happened three times and the whole thing was drawn up into heaven. And look, at that very moment three men appeared at the house where we were, sent from Caesarea to me. The Spirit told me to do with these men without making any distinctions. The came together with me and these six brothers also accompanied me to the house of the man. He told us that he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, the one called Peter. He will give words for you through which you and all your household will be saved.'
“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit embraced them just as it did us in the beginning. I remembered the words of the Lord as he said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' Now if God gave the same gift to them as to we who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I have the power to hinder God?"
When they heard this they praised God: "So God has also given the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

There are three important questions that we have to answer as individuals and as a church. The three questions are: Who are you going to eat with? Who are you going to be embraced by? And who are you going to follow? Now none of those is grammatically correct, and I know that there are some of us who care very deeply about that sort of thing, so let me rephrase the questions: With whom are you gonna eat? By whom are you going to be embraced? And whom are you going to follow? But really, don’t get too caught up in the whos and the whoms because the real question of today is: What are we going to be? Are we going to be people who are content or resigned to be what we have always been? Or do we really believe we can be transformed? Do we really trust that God can change us? Do we really understand what it means to be claimed by the Risen Christ? What are we going to be?

These are real questions for us because of the scripture reading that we have from Acts this morning. The story of Peter and his vision is one that was very challenging for the early Christian community to hear. It was a story that pushed them to think about the implications of Jesus’ resurrection. Now that Jesus was raised from the dead, it meant that things had changed, but they weren’t ready for all the change that was coming. It meant that they would now be a larger family that included not just Jews but also others – Greeks, Romans, Gentiles. It’s not always very comfortable when your family grows.

There’s the story about a young woman who brought her boyfriend over to dinner with her parents one night. They were planning to get married and as dinner ended the young woman’s mother asked her to help clear away the dishes. Then she went to her husband and said, “Find out what you can about this boy.”

So the father went with the boyfriend into the other room and he said, “So, what do you do?”

The young man said, “I’m studying philosophy and theology.”

This worried the father a little bit so he said, “Well, you know, my daughter is used to having enough a house and food to eat and to having the basic necessities of life. How will you take care of her?”

The young man said, “I will study hard and God will provide.”

“Well, how are you going to afford a beautiful engagement ring like she deserves?”

The young man said, “I will concentrate on my studies and God will provide.”

“And what about the children you may have? How will you take care of them?”

Again the young man said, “Don’t worry, sir, God will provide.”

After they had left, the mother asks the father, “Well, what did you find out?”

The father says, “He has no job and no plans, but the good news is he thinks I’m God.”[i]

It’s not always comfortable when your family grows and it wasn’t comfortable for the church. Because the problem with an open door is that…it’s open. And because it’s open, God can send anybody through it. Anybody. Even people we might not think ought to be coming through it. And not only that, but God will send us through it to meet the world out there.

Last week we talked about how Peter was living out his calling after Jesus’ resurrection. Peter was the leader of the Christian community, the one everybody was looking to for guidance on what they should do in this confusing period when Jesus was no longer physically present with them. Peter seemed to be picking up where Jesus left off – healing people, even raising people from the dead, like Tabitha in the story we had last week.

But even Peter was going to be challenged. Even Peter had some things to learn. Following the miracle with Tabitha, he stayed in Joppa, a seaside town some distance from Jerusalem. He was staying with a man named Simon the Tanner and while he was there he went up on the rooftop to pray, which would not have been as hard for him as it sounds to us who live with sloped roofs. The houses of Peter’s day were flat-roofed and many people used them as a regular part of the house, just as many people around the world still do.

So he was up on the roof praying when he begins to get hungry. I can imagine that he was starting to have images of his favorite foods. Clam fritters and collard greens with a ham hock, yeast rolls and watermelon rind pickles. Hey, you have your images and I have mine! Only this is certainly not what Peter was imagining. Or at least he would never admit to imagining this, because at least some of that would have been off-limits to him.

Good Jews did not eat shellfish or pork. These were considered unclean foods because of the Law of Moses. You can look it up right there in Leviticus chapter 11. Things you shall not eat: On land the no-nos are things like the pig, the hare, the rock badger, and the camel. Anybody been sneaking camel burgers lately? I remember when I was growing up there was a fast-food place in Charlottesville called Caravan, Home of the Humpburger. I think by these rules it would have not been kosher. Actually, greasy as that place was, I think by ANY rules it wouldn’t have been kosher! But then you also could not eat things taken from the water that did not have fins or scales. So fish were O.K. but jellyfish, clams, oysters, shrimp…these were out. And the list goes on. You can’t eat osprey or eagles. Bats are out. Locusts and grasshoppers are…O.K. Go for it. But there were also other rules about when unclean animals came into contact with other things. For instance if you had a gecko, which, even though it does television commercials, is unclean…if you had a gecko that died and fell got into a vessel – like an earthen jar, you would have to break the jar. Dead geckos were expensive even if they can save you 15% on your car insurance. You had to make or buy a new jar if they touched one.

All of this seems very archaic to us now but it was a powerful part of the Jewish faith, and still is for many observant Jews. It was a way of expressing that God has intentions for those who are set-apart. The children of Israel were supposed to look different from the rest of the world. They were supposed to make distinctions between things God wants and things God doesn’t want. It was not just in their beliefs; it was also in their daily life. All that they did, all that they ate, was supposed to be done in mindfulness of what God would have them do. They were a holy people and one of the ways they expressed this holiness was through these food laws.

Jesus had started to upset this understanding, though. He had started to break the rules. When some religious leaders chastised him for healing on the Sabbath, a day that had been set apart for rest, he told them that they had their priorities wrong. They were taking God’s gift of the Sabbath and making a rule out of it that took precedence over compassion. When they chastised him for letting his disciples take grain from a field on the Sabbath, he said, “Sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around.” When they questioned him for hanging out with sinners and foreigners and women, he reminded them that God’s love had no limits. Then he showed it by going to the cross. Jesus had already opened the door to change, but the disciples had still not taken it all in.

But I was talking about Peter on the roof, hungry. Well, he has a vision and in this vision there is something like a sailcloth coming down from the heavens. I say it was “something like a sailcloth” or a big sheet because it has four corners, but the first word that is used to describe it is “a vessel.” This is something meant to hold something. You put things in this thing.
What is in this thing is a collection of animals. Peter sees that there are four-footed animals and birds and reptiles. It’s a whole zoo there. Then he hears a voice that says, “Peter, get up, kill and eat.”

Peter’s first reaction is pretty understandable. “You know, I was hungry, God, but this isn’t what I had in mind. A little falafel would have been just fine. I didn’t think I’d actually have to go out and slaughter something. And from the looks of things on that sheet or whatever it is, there are some things on there that I’m not supposed to eat. I think I even see a gecko on there. You know we’re going to have to burn this sheet. I can’t eat from that.”

Peter must have thought this was the right answer. Just like he must have thought it was the right answer when he told Jesus at the Last Supper, “You’re not going to wash my feet.” This may be the new age inaugurated by Jesus Christ, but he was still a good Jewish boy.

God, it seems, was not playing by the same old rules, though. “Who are you, Peter,” the voice says, “to call profane something that God has made clean?” Something was changing and it is taking Peter awhile to see it. Everything takes Peter awhile. He does things in threes. Three times he denied knowing Jesus. Three times he had to profess his love for Jesus when he asked, “Peter, do you love me?” Three times he argues with this voice before the thing is taken back up into the heavens.

Then there are three guys who show up. Not in the vision, but at the door of the house where Peter was staying. Representatives of Cornelius, an Italian soldier who had feared God and who had been on the edge of the Jewish community. Cornelius had had a vision, too, and he wanted Peter to come to Caesarea, where he lived. So Peter went.

When he got the house the first thing Peter said was, “I’m not supposed to be here. Jews do not associate with Gentiles, much less visit in their homes. But I had a vision and in it God told me that I shouldn’t make that distinction anymore. What God calls clean, who am I to call it unclean?”

Cornelius shared his vision, too. Then Peter told the story of Jesus and how it revealed that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” [Acts 10:34-35]. The house was filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit and Peter baptized Cornelius and his whole family.

It was a great day…a great event. But Peter had some explaining to do. When he got back to the other disciples in Jerusalem, they had a lot of questions. Mainly they were disturbed that Peter had accepted hospitality from a man who had not been circumcised – the sign that the Jews had used to mark their being set apart. “You went to his house and you ate with them,” they said.

That’s when Peter pulls out his own questions…the same ones I started this sermon with. I hear these questions in his response to them. “Who are you going to eat with? I had a vision and in that vision God told me to eat food we had called profane. Cornelius had a vision and God told him to welcome me to his table. Both of these were from God. How could we not eat together? If God wants to prepare a table where all are welcome, God will do that.

“Who are we going to be embraced by? Cornelius’ household was embraced by the Holy Spirit.” That’s what the word is in the Greek. Sometimes it gets translated as the Holy Spirit “fell upon” them, but it fell upon them in order to embrace them. The word is used in other places to describe hugging. When Paul heals a young man who fell out of a window, he first embraces him. That’s what the Holy Spirit wanted to do with these disciples. That’s what the Holy Spirit wanted to do with Cornelius and his family. The Holy Spirit wanted to embrace them and there were some disciples who couldn’t handle that.

Finally Peter asks the question, “Who are we going to follow? We left our fishing nets and our tax tables behind to go walk behind Jesus. We went places where folks said we shouldn’t have gone. We developed relationships with people that folks looked down on. We upset tables in the Temple. And we saw Jesus turn the world upside down. Didn’t I say, ‘Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ [John 6:68]. Are we going to stop following God now? When it’s obvious that God is opening the door to the Gentiles and to the rest of the world, are we going to stop following Jesus now? And who are we fooling if we try to? If God is giving the Gentiles the same gifts that God gave us, who are we to hinder God?”

If the disciples were listening they might have remembered a story Jesus had told them about a man who did a foolish thing. It was an incredibly foolish thing to do. Before he died, he split up his estate and gave a large share of it to his youngest son, who was a pretty reckless, immature kid. He didn’t follow the rules. He didn’t know how to love his dad or to honor him.

So what he did next was pretty predictable. He goes off to a far country and blows the whole wad. Spends it all on wine, women, song, slot machines and video games. (He would have spent it on the last two if there had been such things.) He ends up broke and slopping pigs – pigs! Unclean – remember?

But he comes back determined to offer himself as a slave to his father, just so that he can had a minimal existence. But while he was still far off, his father comes out to meet him. This is really extraordinary how of the rails this father is! The father comes out to meet him and falls upon him, embraces him – yes, it’s the same word. And kills a fatted calf so that everyone can eat with this son. And everyone goes along with this ridiculous scenario because it’s the landowner who’s doing it. If the father wants to squander his estate this way, that’s the way it’s done. If the father wants to welcome this wastrel back and throw him a party, that’s what happens. And they all go.

Except the older son. Who stands on the sidelines and grumbles. Who will not give in to the father’s foolishness. Who will not forget the way things are supposed to happen. Who will stand apart and refuse to be embraced and refuse to sit down to eat with his brother and refuse to follow where the father is leading. Who will not love because the kind of love the father offers is too great to understand or control.

Do you think maybe the disciples remembered that story as Peter told them about his vision and his experience with Cornelius? I think they must have because after he shares this with them they say, “So God has given the repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles, too.” How amazing. Because when we find our place in the story we may start as the older brother, but we’ll never find our way to the table unless we recognize ourselves as the younger brother, too, making our way into God’s love out of grace and grace alone.

Who are you going to eat with? Who are you going to be embraced by? Who are you going to follow? We are going to be challenged to answer those questions as we move into the future. Many of us are going to be reading The Myth of the 200 Barrier over the next few weeks. It’s going to challenge us to think about who we are and how we structure ourselves for ministry. But I hope it also challenges us to think about these three questions because they lie behind everything we do.

When we come to this table we are coming with all kinds of people. Around this table are people from all times and places who have found life in Jesus Christ. Here are Peter and Cornelius. Here are Julian of Norwich and Eleanor Nicolls and Linwood Walker and all the saints who have preceded us. Here are refugees in the Sudan and children in Iraq and soldiers in the field who are searching for God in the most difficult situations. Who are we going to eat with?

Who are we going to be embraced by? Will we huddle with our fears against the darkness, or will we allow ourselves to be embraced by God’s Spirit that casts out fear?

Who are we going to follow? Because God is going to do great things. God is going to prepare a feast. God is going to change the world. And we are invited to follow. Thanks be to God.

[i] Adapted from beliefnet.com, http://www.beliefnet.com/dailyjoke/DailyJoke.aspx?QID=9300