Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 5, 2024: Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17; Psalm 98
Today’s readings focus on inclusion, community, and friendship: these are things the Church talks about a lot, but does not always act on. In Acts we hear Peter preaching to a mixed audience of Jewish Christians and Gentiles. A big controversy among the followers of Jesus in the early years was who could be a part of the movement. Jesus was a Jew, and his disciples were Jews. He presented himself, and his disciples understood him, as a fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures. Was his gospel only for the Jews? Or for everyone? Paul had always been preaching to the Gentiles, but Peter was the apostle to the Jews. Peter was not as conservative as some, who held that to be a Christian you had to be circumcised and keep the rabbinic laws. But he still maintained a separation between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. The final agreement for inclusion is recorded at a Council in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15.
In today’s reading from Acts, we hear the end of the story where this is in play. The story actually starts with Cornelius, a Roman officer in Caesarea, having a vision of an angel, who tells him where to find Peter, who is staying in the nearby town of Joppa. At the same time, Peter has a vision: he is hungry, and the vision is of many creatures, with the command to “kill and eat”. Peter asserts he has never eaten anything unclean. The voice tells him that “what God has made clean, you must not call profane” (10:15). When Cornelius’ men come to find him, he hears a voice from God telling him to go with them. He goes, along with some of the believers in Joppa. At Cornelius’ house, there are the members of his household and others.
Almost the first thing Peter says at Cornelius’ house is “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.” (10:28) Cornelius asks to hear “everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us”. So Peter unfolds the Gospel, from John the Baptist, to the ministry of Jesus, to his death and resurrection. While Peter preaches, the Holy Spirit descends on his listeners, even the Gentiles, who were speaking in tongues and extolling God. So Peter orders that they be baptized. The answer about inclusion at this moment ended up being simple: if the Gentiles could hear the Gospel, they could be baptized. Peter had learned that he “should not call anyone impure or unclean” (10:28). Cornelius was changed, but so was Peter.
In the Epistle, we are reminded of our community with other Christians: if we are children of God, we love all the other children of God. And then in John’s Gospel, in his final instructions to his disciples, Jesus commands them to “love one another as I have loved you”. He continues, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
This is all difficult. It is very difficult to love all of God’s children. Furthermore, we are much more likely to be willing to lay down our lives for our families, not our friends. Many of us have close friends about whom we care deeply. But I would be surprised if many of us think of ourselves as being willing to die for them. What we do is talk about friends who are “like family”. We try to incorporate close friends into family. But Jesus calls out friendship, a chosen relationship outside the structures of society, as central. His disciples are not a pseudo-family, they are friends.
What would it mean to elevate friendship to the highest level of importance? What would it mean for the church not to describe itself as a family, but a group of friends? What would it mean for us to accept that we should be willing to die not for our families, but for our friends? What would it take for us to accept the challenge to love all the other children of God? What would it take for us to actually welcome everyone in our churches? Probably as much as it took for Peter to accept that Cornelius and his household and friends should be baptized!
But it is possible. It was possible for Peter, so it is for us. For, as the Psalm reminds us, we can “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things.”