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Cathedral Eucharist Sermon preached by The Venerable Howard Leigh, Precentor
Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2nd 2010
Readings: Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35

As I was reading the Acts passage for today, I remembered words from one of the books my children used to read: "I will not eat them in a boat, I will not eat them with a goat, I will not eat them here or there, I will not eat them anywhere…I do not like them, Sam-I-Am."
You may recognize this snippet from Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss’s comical poem about a refusal to eat an unfamiliar dish. Peter’s refusal to eat the foods lowered down to him on a kind of heavenly picnic blanket may strike us as faintly comic as well. But for Peter and the people he told about this strange dream, it was no laughing matter. The whole episode threw Peter into a state of consternation. This episode is, in fact, a pivotal event that would finally determine the identity and character of the church.
One clue to the importance of this story is its length: the author we now recognize as Luke devotes almost two chapters to it. It involves a trance, a vision, the Spirit and an angel: clearly, something is going on that is breaking new ground in the history of the people of God.
For Peter, the vision is disturbing. His aversion to the animals on the sheet goes way beyond the "ghastly" factor that most of us would associate with eating mountain oysters, huhu bugs, maggots and other delicacies at a Wild Food festival!. The unclean animals would have included shrimp, pigs, and rabbits, foods that most people around the world find quite tasty. The sheet full of creatures was an affront to Peter’s piety, not his taste buds, for it was God who had told the people of Israel to make a distinction between "clean" and "unclean" animals. The distinctions were spelled out for them quite clearly in Leviticus (11:2-28) and Deuteronomy (14:3-20). Making these distinctions was what had held them together as a people through the destruction of Jerusalem, the exile in Babylon, and all the pressures under the Roman occupation to assimilate to the pagan world.
So the command to "kill and eat" was not just a challenge to some arbitrary human-made boundaries—these were boundaries that everyone believed had been established by God.
The core beliefs that had shaped Peter’s life since earliest childhood were being challenged. How could God simply overturn the clear commandments of the Scriptures?
Peter caught on that his vision was not only about food but about people. He was able to say to Cornelius’s family, "You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I must not call anyone profane or unclean" (10:28). As we all know, after a transforming experience or revelation in our own lives, to explain our shift to family and friends can be a huge mission. Peter likewise had a lot of explaining to do when he got back to Jerusalem, as he told the Christians there all about his vision and the ensuing events and the conclusion he had drawn from the whole bewildering episode: "The Spirit told me…not to make a distinction between them and us…and who was I that I could hinder God?"
Peter made his case; at the end of his story, his critics were silenced. Finally they all agreed: "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."
It is hard for us to appreciate how world-shattering this realization was. It was recognition of a fundamental change in God’s relationship to humanity. In Jesus Christ, God had broken open the ancient covenant with Israel so the Gentiles, pagan, unclean people, could come in, too. God was opening the borders for the outsiders to come in.
The Spirit told Peter "not to make a distinction" between the recognized people of God, the Jews, and the Gentiles. Twenty centuries later, we take our designation as the people of God somewhat for granted, but we are, in fact, the beneficiaries of Peter’s acquiescence to God’s strange new initiative toward the Gentiles. It seems perfectly reasonable to us that the apostles would conclude that they should "make no distinction" between Jews and Gentiles. However, if we scratch beneath the surface just a bit, we might be disturbed to consider what it might mean for us to "make no distinction." After all, our life as the church seems so often to be based on making distinctions.

We have rules, too—rules about who can come to the altar, and what you have to do to become a member of the church or have your baby baptized, or be married. In the church, we make distinctions all the time. Some are sensible, practical and lead to new understandings and inclusion – others may seem to be downright exclusive and self-serving. Are we willing to struggle with these in our time and context?
At this Easter season we proclaim that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we now know that God makes no distinctions. "God shows no partiality." That became a central affirmation of the early Christian movement. "There is no distinction," Paul said, "all fall short of the glory of God." But all have access to the overwhelming grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The church of Jesus Christ is where the old boundaries are broken, and if you insist on maintaining them at all cost, Peter said, you could be "hindering God."
The church has struggled with this radical notion since its very beginning. Struggles over the ordination of women and more recently, sexual orientation, are just the latest chapters in an ongoing struggle over boundaries. These struggles are not going to go away anytime soon—we will probably always find something that will challenge our understanding of appropriate boundaries.
What are we to do when the Holy Spirit moves in startling and unexpected ways, challenging the boundaries we thought were fixed, "making no distinction" and offending our sense of propriety? Sometimes all we can do is give thanks for the Spirit’s movement and not do anything to get in its way.
May we remember this morning that we come to the Eucharist as recipients of the boundless mercy of God, who has defied expectations and opened the borders to us. All we can do is come in gratitude, bringing nothing of our own, but trusting in Jesus Christ to receive us and welcome us, feed us and sustain us, now and forever. Amen.