Who Was I That I Could Hinder God?

Acts 11:1-18

God loves without borders.

This was the phrase that echoed around in my head as I sat with this week’s Scripture lesson from Acts. The portion we just read is really the ending of an episode that begins in the previous chapter. Acts 10 tells of a man named Cornelius, a gentile and an officer in the Roman army, who was interested in following the way of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Cornelius had a dream in which he was told to seek out Simon Peter and listen to what he had to say. Peter also had a dream preparing him for this encounter with a “Gentile” in which he was invited by God to break sacred dietary laws.

Keep in mind that the early church, forming in response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is still a community of believers inspired and instructed by the scrolls of the Law and the Prophets. The Gospel is a movement and a murmur...not yet written down, much less collected, compiled, and edited. In other words, the communities talked about in the Book of Acts had no Book of Acts to reference. Obviously. As a foundationally Jewish community, the Law still played a major role in the identity of early-Christians, distinguishing them through faithfulness from the demands of citizenship in the Roman Empire. Will Willimon helps to explain how loyalty to dietary laws was a way in which the faith community resisted “incredible pressure to forsake the faith, drop one’s particularities and become a good citizen of the Empire (Willimon, 96).” “The issue, as it turns out, is not simply about ‘unclean’ food but also about ‘unclean’ people,” Willimon continues, the issue is about “who shall sit at our table (Willimon, 98).”

When Peter returns to Jerusalem, he is immediately criticized by believers who caught wind of his table fellowship with those considered “profane and unclean” by the purity code of holy law. “Why did you break the purity code by breaking bread with the Gentiles?” They wish to limit the scope of the Gospel in order to keep the salvation it provides from being “contaminated”. Peter summarizes his vision and visit as a means of teaching the transformative lesson of his experience: sharing the Gospel does not threaten the Gospel. Peter learned that the waters of baptism are much more likely to become contaminated if they are kept from flowing freely and allowed to stagnate.

It is understandable, given the great value of God’s love, that a community saved by and committed to serving God’s love would feel the need to protect and preserve it. Acts 10-11 reveals the irony of human attempts to “rescue” God’s salvation from human sin. God’s love is not hindered by our sinfulness, as Paul so boldly boasts in Romans 5: “The proof of God’s amazing love is this: that even while we were sinners Christ died for us.” God loves without borders, who are we that we could hinder God? The question for the church is “How do we celebrate, honor, respect, serve and witness to a love without borders?”

The criticism Peter faces from the church in Jerusalem is strikingly similar to the criticism Jesus faced from the scribes and Pharisees for the company he kept at table. He was accused of overstepping the bounds of the Law and the Prophets. But Jesus summarized the whole of the Law and the Prophets like this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” When confronted with the question, “but who is my neighbor?”--and I hope you understand that what was really being asked was, “who do I have to love and where can I draw the line?”--Jesus told a parable which essentially said: God loves without borders and if you wish to have the life God offers, so must you. When Jesus sat and ate with lepers and harlots and prostitutes and tax collectors he was demonstrating the same borderless love he proclaimed to his disciples when he broke bread with them at the last supper before his crucifixion: God has established a new covenant, a love without borders. Breaking-bread breaks barriers and builds community in which this transforming love plays a central life-changing role.

I cannot say enough to celebrate the ways in which God’s love overflows from the communion table to nourish the life of the church. Specifically, though, I love our community meals during which we share table-fellowship with those beside whom we might not worship every Sunday, but who, I believe, if asked would say they have experienced God’s love in our midst. Taste and see, God loves without borders.

Why do we take up a hunger offering to share with others around the world when we could use that same money to do things that directly benefit us? Because we worship and serve God by bearing witness a love that is without borders. The Book of Acts is full of stories of the church, guided by the power of the Holy Spirit, responding to the borderless love of God. And the mission of the church continues to be that of reconciliation, to respond and witness to the borderless love of God. The mission and ministry of those who serve God is unchanging in that it has always been changing, like a coursing river over time, overflowing the boundaries of culture and tradition.

God’s love is witnessed to in Scripture, but it is not fully contained there. How could it be? It is beyond the borders of words not to mention the borders of time. God’s love is eternal. We don’t know how to handle limitless love and can easily confuse the gospel of grace with a sense that “anything goes” in the love of God. “Anything goes” is far from the message at the heart of the Gospel, yet put yourself in the shoes of a first century Jewish-Christian and read the story of Acts 10 from their perspective. Can you understand where they are coming from when they criticize Peter for overstepping the bounds of scripture and tradition? There is great fear born out of confusing the borderless of love of God with the proclamation that “anything goes” in the love of God. “This is the way it sometimes is in the church.” claims Willimon. “If Jesus Christ is Lord, then the church has the adventurous task of penetrating new areas of his Lordship, expecting surprises and new implications of the gospel which cannot be explained on any basis other than our Lord has shown us something we could not have seen on our own, even if we were looking only at Scripture (Willimon, 98-99).”

The same proclamation upon which “all the law and the prophets” hang (“Love God, love neighbor”) is also the proclamation which sets the church free to respond to the borderless love of God in new ways. It is also a proclamation which allows the love of God to work outside of the borders of the traditional “church.” I hope that we are able to celebrate this when it happens without fear or without feeling the need to “stuff if back in the box.” So let us not be afraid to dream big about how our lives will let the love of God be shown. After all, who are we to hinder how the Lord of all creation will call us to respond to a borderless love?

References:

Willimon, William. "Acts" from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Preaching and Teaching. 1988, Westminster-John Knox. Louisville, KY.