Saint Peter Contemplates Who Gets In
Acts 11:1-18
“Weirdos Welcomed”
One of the Lutheran Church’s best pastors and thinkers is Nadia Boltz-Weber.
If you were to meet her you might be taken aback by the fact that she sports tattoos clearly visible on her arms and has an over-all smokie, gothic look. Like the rest of us she has more than a few faults that she readily admits.
I have heard her speak a couple of times and on each occasion she wowed the audience with her wisdom and wit. I even had the pleasure of acting as her host for a synod conference that I used to chair and found her delightful.
Pastor Bolz-Weber’s claim to fame is her founding of a Lutheran church in Denver called House for All Saints and Sinners which she described as “a little indie boutique of a church” that attracts people who might never feel comfortable in a traditional congregation. A congregations like Our Saviour.
I’ve been to off-shoots of churches like this and while I have found them interesting to sample I also knew that over time they would not be my cup of tea. The constant Sunday after Sunday trendiness would leave the traditionalist in me longing for something more constant.
After House for all Saints and Sinners had been featured in the Denver Post Pastor Bolz-Weber felt conflicted as more and more people came to visit the church. Experiencing what would make most churches ecstatic the congregation and the pastor became troubled. Their problem was that the visitors weren’t at all like them.
If you were to meet her you might be taken aback by the fact that she sports tattoos clearly visible on her arms and has an over-all smokie, gothic look. Like the rest of us she has more than a few faults that she readily admits.
I have heard her speak a couple of times and on each occasion she wowed the audience with her wisdom and wit. I even had the pleasure of acting as her host for a synod conference that I used to chair and found her delightful.
Pastor Bolz-Weber’s claim to fame is her founding of a Lutheran church in Denver called House for All Saints and Sinners which she described as “a little indie boutique of a church” that attracts people who might never feel comfortable in a traditional congregation. A congregations like Our Saviour.
I’ve been to off-shoots of churches like this and while I have found them interesting to sample I also knew that over time they would not be my cup of tea. The constant Sunday after Sunday trendiness would leave the traditionalist in me longing for something more constant.
After House for all Saints and Sinners had been featured in the Denver Post Pastor Bolz-Weber felt conflicted as more and more people came to visit the church. Experiencing what would make most churches ecstatic the congregation and the pastor became troubled. Their problem was that the visitors weren’t at all like them.
Here is how the visitors were described by Pastor Bolz-Weber:
[They] were a bunch of people, baby boomers who wore Dockers and ate at Applebee’s, who had driven in from the suburbs to consume our worship service because it was neat and so much cooler and more authentic than anything they could create themselves. It felt horrible and I became angry.1
Do you see the irony here? The people that Pastor Bolz-Weber and her congregation were trying to exclude were people like us - you and me - because we weren’t like them. In their world view we would be the outsiders and they would be the insiders. Hard as it may be to believe for those of us gathered at Our Savior’s we would be a threat to their way of doing things. They would be afraid that our traditionalism would eventually triumph over their free-spirit creativity.
In one way or another this is a problem that has been around for the church since the time of Saint Peter’s first missionary journey. He would understand the conflict perfectly.
In one way or another this is a problem that has been around for the church since the time of Saint Peter’s first missionary journey. He would understand the conflict perfectly.
The great saint has been is a roll. By the eleventh chapter of Acts he is walking around preaching the gospel, spreading love, healing the paralyzed simply by walking near-by, even raising the dead. He’s so popular that even outsiders - people who had no connection to Judaism or Jesus - were inviting him into their homes for a little coffee and conversation. Peter accepts the invitation of one of them named Cornelius who is a Gentile, for a little gab and grub.
For this act and because the church has always been the church Peter gets hauled before the council of First Church Jerusalem.
He is greeted not with a parade to celebrate his faithful discipleship and his amazing acts of healing and hope. He is greeted with consternation and condemnation for defying the fundamentals of his Jewish tradition by eating with Cornelius and his household.
[His accusers] express deep concern that Peter has lost perspective and ignored the divine imperative not to associate with, much less to engage in table fellowship, with those who were unclean.2
The key to understanding this passage is that we are the outsiders.
Just as the good people of the Church of All Sinners and Saints saw the Docker wearing and Appleby’s eating visitors as threats the church council of Jerusalem saw gentiles as dangers. To the Jewish mind we are still and will always be gentiles. So both groups would look askance at us.
Just as to a faithful Jew we are gentiles and to the faithful at Pastor Bolz-Weber’s church we are just too normal. In either case we - Yes! You and I - would be the interlopers that both groups might be tempted to exclude. We might have remained on the outside were it not for Peter’s vision.
When he gets called back to Jerusalem to face the music his first response is that this was not idea. This was God’s idea, he explains.
Just as to a faithful Jew we are gentiles and to the faithful at Pastor Bolz-Weber’s church we are just too normal. In either case we - Yes! You and I - would be the interlopers that both groups might be tempted to exclude. We might have remained on the outside were it not for Peter’s vision.
When he gets called back to Jerusalem to face the music his first response is that this was not idea. This was God’s idea, he explains.
I fell into a trance and saw a vision: Something like a huge blanket, lowered by ropes at its four corners, came down out of heaven and settled on the ground in front of me. Milling around on the blanket were farm animals, wild animals, reptiles, birds—you name it, it was there. Fascinated, I took it all in.
“Then I heard a voice: ‘Go to it, Peter—kill and eat.’ I said, ‘Oh, no, Master. I’ve never so much as tasted food that wasn’t kosher.’ The voice spoke again: ‘If God says it’s okay, it's okay.'3Then he asks the key question to that first century church, House for All Saints and Sinners, Our Saviour, and every church in Christendom. “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?”4
If God is speaking and an eclectic group of people are gathering in a coffee house and singing songs that would never make it into any mainstream church’s hymnal, who are we to argue.
If God is speaking to a middle class group of people like us who wear nice clothes to church - dockers, sports jackets, suits, wing-tips, Topsiders - and whose restaurant of choice may be TGIF rather than Applebee’s, who is anybody to object?
If God is speaking to charismatics waving their hands and speaking in tongues or Quakers sitting in silence waiting for that same Spirit to move, how can anybody stand in God’s way?
If God is leading anyone, by any means, to a repentance that leads to life, who is anybody to argue?
This is a message that needs to be heard by everyone who thinks they have it all together and that there are others that don’t. This message of exclusion is one that reaches from the wealthiest of the wealthy to the poorest of the poor and it is one that divides rather than unites people who have been called to proclaim the Gospel.
Not long ago I was asked to serve on the board of a Lutheran Campus Ministry at the prestigious University on the North Shore where the seminary I attended was located.
Because their congregation was made up exclusively of college and graduate students who were incurring enormous debt to get an education the ministry was always scrounging for money.
There was a Lutheran church on the south side of town and another on the north side with no place to worship anyplace near what was called the “ministry center.”
As with most board meetings the conversation was more about money than ministry and I got to thinking about people I knew.
I thought about the young couple who had twins under the age of three who weren’t particularly faithful not because they didn’t want to come to church be but because even if they started getting ready for church at 8 A.M. by the time they got their children dressed, ready, strapped into their car seats, removed from the car seats because one of them had to go to the bathroom, and stopped them from fussing the only worship they could attend was the 5 P.M. “last chance mass” at Saint Monica’s.
What if we told them there was a “ministry center” with preaching and a full Eucharist every Sunday that they could walk to and would welcome them?
I thought about the older person with the broken hip who might have lived three doors away and who couldn’t drive yet but who could hobble over? Wouldn’t it be great to reach out to them?
I thought about how good it would be for the students to worship and fellowship with people who were not like them.
When I spoke my thoughts aloud it was like I was facing same people who Peter faced at the First Council of Jerusalem.
The pastor’s response was (And how I wish I was making this up!): “As long as they are not weirdos.”it’s okay.’
I thought she was kidding and said, “Hey! Hey! I’m a weirdo and I resent that remark.” The lack of laughter told me that she was not joking in the least.
In some places people who might need the Gospel that leads to life must live up to some arbitrary standard that we are creating on the fly - before they can join the fellowship. They are welcome so long as they are not “weird.” A stipulation that would exclude not only me but almost everybody I know or would choose to be associated with.
It’s a hard lesson to learn but every time we exclude anybody we hinder God.
In some places people who might need the Gospel that leads to life must live up to some arbitrary standard that we are creating on the fly - before they can join the fellowship. They are welcome so long as they are not “weird.” A stipulation that would exclude not only me but almost everybody I know or would choose to be associated with.
It’s a hard lesson to learn but every time we exclude anybody we hinder God.
I think my pastor, The Rev’d Shannon Kershner, who serves Fourth Presbyterian in downtown Chicago is closer to catching the spirit of Peter’s vision.
From the outside, with its location on the Magnificent Mile, Fourth looks like it would only serve the best and the brightest, and it does. However, on any given Sunday there are also the least, the lost, and the lonely sitting in the sanctuary. At coffee hour there is not only the well quaffed who you would expect to be there but also people who have everything they own in their backpacks.
Here is what Pastor Kershner said when she preached on this text.
Here is what Pastor Kershner said when she preached on this text.
God takes our boundaries; God takes our stereotypes; God takes our rules; God takes our expectations; God takes all of that and often God looks at ... it and says, No. I don’t have favorites. Your limits, your litmus tests, your fears—none of that limits me. I embrace whom I embrace and guess what, God says, I have got really long arms.5For me, my fellow weirdos, and weirdo wanna-bes the idea that God has long enough arms to reach across any artificial barriers that might be created is good news.
For all of you who have ever felt excluded in any way the idea that we have all been embraced by God’s love is good news too. It is nothing less than the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - the Gospel that leads to life.
Don’t you think?
____________
1. Nadia Bolz Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint. (New York, NY: Jerico Books, 2014), p. 178-187.
2. Gary W. Charles, "Acts 11:1-18. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture," in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C. ed., vol. 2 (Louisvill, KY: Westminister-John Knox Press, 2018), p. 249-250.
3. Acts 11:5-9 (MSG) [MSG=The Message]
4, Acts 11:17. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
Shannon J. Kershner, "Hindering" (Sermon, Sunday Morning Worship, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, April 24, 2016). http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/042416.html
5.
No comments:
Post a Comment