Even the Gentiles [Easter 5C - Acts 11:1-18]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Acts 11:1-18

 

Even the Gentiles

 

I’m not sure one can truly understand this story from the book of Acts unless you first understand the story of Jonah.  I don’t mean the big fish part.  I don’t mean the stuff they put in illustrated Children’s Bibles.  I mean the real reason Jonah ran away to Joppa when God gave him orders for Ninevah. 

 

At first it is a mystery; the reader can’t actually know why Jonah refuses the mission because the book does not immediately tell us.  And so we are, initially, left to speculate.  Ninevah was the capital of an enemy empire.  And so at first it seems like maybe Jonah is afraid of what will happen to him there.  The city was infamously wicked and violent.  It was a scary place.  And for Jonah, a foreigner, it would have been especially scary.

 

But it turns out, that’s not it.  Jonah’s reason is not clear until the fourth and final chapter of the book that bears his name.  Only then do we discover the real reason Jonah refused to do his divine duty.  He was afraid – but not of the people in Ninevah.  Sure, they were wicked; and yes, they were violent.  But that’s not it.  There was something else – something that frightened Jonah more than even scariest characters in Ninevah.  Jonah was afraid that if he went and did his job, God would forgive the people. Spare them.  Save them.  Even love them.  And, more than anything, Jonah did not want that.

 

After the big fish incident, God gave Jonah a second chance to say yes.  And Jonah only needed to be swallowed by one fish to learn his lesson.  And so this second time a resigned Jonah agrees to a preaching tour in the Assyrian capital of Ninevah.  And unfortunately for Jonah, he is successful.  After Jonah relays God’s message, like a good prophet, and the people repent and God decides not to punish them, Jonah angrily confronts God, saying, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”  And, make no mistake, it was not intended to be a compliment; this was an accusation.  Because Jonah did not want God to love those Gentiles.  But Jonah knew, deep down, that God did.  And it made the prophet so angry that he begged for death.  Jonah makes it abundantly clear that he would rather die than live in a world in which God loved his enemies.

 

When God sent the prophet Jonah on that mission to the Gentiles, Jonah, thoroughly disinterested in the idea, initially escaped to the city of Joppa.  And that might sound familiar, because that same city makes an appearance in this reading from the book of Acts.  And that is no coincidence.  Peter was in Joppa when God approached him with a similar mission – to minister to some Gentiles.  But because Peter was already in Joppa, he had nowhere to go and hide.  He was stuck.  And so instead of pulling a Jonah and making a run for it, Peter accepts the mission on the first ask.  Peter didn’t need three days in a fish to help convince him. 

 

Rather, Peter needed a repetitive dream.  As the book of Jonah tells us, God can be quite persistent; in this story from Acts, God keeps dropping that visionary blanket until Peter runs out of rebuttals.  But the persistence pays off.  Because when the strangers show up at the door, Peter just goes off into the unknown with them – no questions asked. 

 

And what we learn from the story, this story in Acts, is that hundreds of years later, hundreds of years after Jonah visited Ninevah, God was still gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. 

 

And just as God remains the same, so do people.  Because when the other believers find out where Peter has been and what he has been up to, they are not happy.

 

Now you might think that is a strange reaction.  Peter oversaw something like a Gentile version of the Pentecost miracle.  He watched the Holy Spirit sweep through that house with his own eyes.  He baptized Gentiles into the Jesus’ movement with his own hands.  Roman soldiers, citizens of the occupying Empire, enemies were transformed by the love of God.  It is a watershed moment in the history of the Church.  The doors to the Church opened to people like me and you on that very day, on the day Peter shared the good news of God’s love at a house party in Caesarea.   

 

You would think the other Christians would throw Peter a ticker-tape parade.  But they do not.  The other Christians in today’s story are not excited about the things that transpired.  Quite the opposite actually.  Peter returned to share the good news and was met with harsh criticism.  Those Jerusalem Christians did not even want to share a table with Gentiles, let alone share a Holy Table with them; and more than that, they did not want to even think about sharing the heavenly banquet table with them for all eternity.  

 

And yet they knew, deep down, like Jonah, that God was going to disappoint them.  They knew God was going to love those Gentiles.  And, worst of all, that meant that God was going expect them to love those Gentiles too.  And here comes Peter to rub that love in their faces.

 

People of God have a long history of messing this stuff up.  We have a long history of trying to restrict the love of God, of trying to limit God’s mercy, of trying to make the kingdom of God into an exclusive, gated community.  People of God have a long history of barring the doors to the Church.  Remember, in the story of Jonah, a story written some twenty-five hundred years ago, the prophet wanted God to destroy a city of 120,000 people.  Because to him that was better than having to share God’s love with people he did not like.  How could God possible love him and them, us and them?

 

The world of first century Judaism was pretty binary.  There were Jews and there were Gentiles.  And if God loved both groups, well, that covered everybody, all of the people.  And that is what this text from Acts is about: God’s love is bigger than we want it to be.  God does love each and every person – whether we like that or not.  God loves even the people we wish God did not love. 

 

Which is what Jesus has been trying to teach us all along.  You might remember that Jesus went so far as to command his followers to love even their enemies – and those are the worst people to have to love. 

 

And then, on the night before his death, just after Judas left to put out a hit on him, and fully aware that Peter was about to publicly deny him, Jesus gave his followers one final commandment.  It was both simple and incredibly difficult: “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.”

 

That is a pretty clear commandment.  If Jesus’ followers would have taken that commandment seriously, we wouldn’t even have this passage from Acts; the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem would have never criticized Peter for sharing the Good News of God’s love with people they considered unsavory or unworthy.  And followers of Jesus would have never rounded up women and drowned them as witches.  And followers of Jesus would have never burnt crosses and hung black men in trees.  And followers of Jesus would not stand on street corners with signs that read, “God hates fags.” 

 

If Jesus’ followers would have taken that commandment seriously, to love one another as Jesus loves us, we, the Church, would be known by our love and not for our very checkered history. 

 

I think at the root of this history of failure is our inability to grasp the immensity of Jesus’ love.  When Jesus said “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” he meant for us to love others completely and unconditionally.  Because that is how Jesus loves us; he loves us completely and unconditionally.  And that love is not diminished when Jesus loves someone else – even if that someone is beyond the walls of the Church, or across the political aisle, or in a group we think of as “other.”  Jesus has enough love for us and for the people we don’t like.  Jesus’ love knows no exceptions and all that he is asking of us is that our love would be the same: offensively comprehensive and without exception.  “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

 

And that sounds like a lot to ask; and admittedly there will be times when Joppa, or even the belly of a fish, feels like an appealing alternative.  But not only is love our commandment, it is our only chance.  In this fractured world, in which there so much judgment and so little mercy, in which sides and lines are so quickly drawn, in which victory is often the only virtue, dare to be known, not by your labels, but by your love.