I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Have you noticed as I have that there is not a lot of one another-ness around these days. There is a lot of me-ness, and we-ness, both usually offered in the cause of separation, not unity. There seems to be a definite dearth of “I and Thou”-ness in the world today
But, truth be told, we human beings have always been better at ex-clusion than at in-clusion. We are pretty good at assigning people to categories that separate them or some dimension of them from ourselves or from the category that we have assigned ourselves. We are good at it today and they were good at it back in the early days of becoming church.
The reading from Acts represents a cataclysmic shift in the early church. Until that trance and vision of Peter’s, the mission of the church was limited entirely to the House of Israel. It was to the Jews that God had come in Jesus of Nazareth – and only to the Jews. Indeed the gospel was intended only for “good” Jews, those who observed the Law and all the individual laws that made up the capital L Law.
Peter’s world is bound by all those laws that are found in Leviticus or in Deuteronomy …You shall not eat any abhorrent thing... Any animal that divides the hoof … and chews the cud, …you may eat… the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. And the pig, … is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses. Of all that live in water… whatever has fins and scales you may eat… You may eat any clean birds… And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten… You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to aliens residing in your towns for them to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God…
The life of a Jew bound by the Law and their associations limited only to those whose lives were also bound by the Law. The redemption and salvation God wrought in Jesus limited to the House of Israel bound to God by the Law and Covenant.
But in his trance God gives to Peter a whole new understanding of the Incarnation and of Jesus commandment to love one another. Who constitutes the “one another” part takes a quantum leap. Peter enters a whole new world. It now includes all those whose ways are foreign and alien to a good Jew or a good disciple of Jesus. It is the world, it is the Good News that includes you and me, the world that let’s all God’s people in.
What God has made clean, you must not call profane. That covers just about everyone and everything. It’s all in; there is no out. You have heard the expression “beyond the pale”, well there is no pale, there is no boundary to place others beyond. Peter says, “Who am I that I could hinder God?”
We hear the voice of God in the vision received by John, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them… It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” – the beginning and the end of everything and everyone.
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
So the question for us today is, how are you doing with that? How’s your loving of all God’s creation coming? Are you loving all God’s people? Working on it, or have you thrown up your hands because it seems impossible – seems to be a truly impossible way to live? What is the message the world is getting about your discipleship of Jesus Christ as they look at the testimony of your behavior? Could you be hindering God? If so, who are you that you should hinder God?
It can be pretty tough to “love your neighbor as yourself” given the neighbors we have been given. Some are just not all that loveable, are they? Some are just too different – their behavior different, their values different, their experience different, their looks different, their lifestyle different, their language different, their customs different, their culture different – just too different.
Walter Brueggemann suggests, We might consider our contemporary “purity codes” that find “impure” all those unlike us. In dominant culture that could include Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, illegal immigrants, gays and lesbians, poor people, aging people—all those who do not meet our expectations of “productivity.” In other words, any people who think, eat, or live differently from how we do, or with whom we just disagree.
Thomas Freidman wrote this week, Much of our politics today is designed to make people stupid, confused and afraid of change.* You know that it is pretty hard for a democrat to believe that a republican could have a good idea – and vice versa. Pretty hard for a red state person to have much good to say about those elitist liberal blue state folks. Pretty hard for blue-staters to have much good to say about those Tea Party red-staters.
It is true that those feelings exist, but it is also true that there are other feelings, other influences, other urges that work just as automatically, but for love. And it is here in the community of Jesus, in the common life, prayer, and work of the people of God. It is here that we are exposed to the possibility of being able to love the Jesus way. It is here that we will find others who also are willing to make the attempt with us - not in spite of who we are - but rather because of who we are and whose we are.
It is here that hostility, is unacceptable and declared to be sin. It is here that there is healing and forgiveness for the unwanted hostility that is in each of us. It is here where we find support and encouragement as we move out into the neighborhood, and the marketplace, and the home, and the workplace and the playground to seek and to do the will of God. Jesus has told us how important it is for the world to see and know the truth.
* Thomas Friedman, The NY Times, 4.28.2010
