April 24, 2016

Acts 11:1-18

I first came across Tony Campolo when I was in seminary. A Phd student who is now a big shot professor at Duke was leading a study group at the church we both attended, and she was using a video series that Campolo had produced.  I had never heard of the guy before, it turns out, because he was pretty wedded to an evangelical tradition that I had never been able to identify with.  But, though I can’t remember anything about the content of the videos anymore, I can remember the impression he left.

First of all, he looked and sounded to me like Dick Vitale.  You know who he is?  The very animated basketball broadcaster, who even in you don’t like basketball, manages to make the game entertaining with his enthusiasm and colorful way of adding commentary.  He also happens to know what he’s talking about.  So, he’s fun to listen to and he’s pretty informative.

And, Campolo was kind of the same way: entertaining, thoughtful, inspiring, challenging, and clearly doing his best to be a faithful Christian, even if at times he sounded a bit conservative for me.  It was clear to me at the time that he was someone worth listening to. He’s remained an important figure in the evangelical world all these years.  He’s been an ivy league professor, a sociologist, a pastor, and an activist.  He’s been a shining star in the evangelical world and a much respected leader.

But, on June 8 of last year he rocked the evangelical world with the following letter:

As a young man I surrendered my life to Jesus and trusted in Him for my salvation, and I have been a staunch evangelical ever since. I rely on the doctrines of the Apostles Creed. I believe the Bible to have been written by men inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit. I place my highest priority on the words of Jesus,…

            From this foundation I have done my best to preach the Gospel, care for the poor and oppressed, and earnestly motivate others to do the same. Because of my open concern for social justice, in recent years I have been asked the same question over and over again: Are you ready to fully accept into the Church those gay Christian couples who have made a lifetime commitment to one another?

While I have always tried to communicate grace and understanding to people on both sides of the issue, my answer to that question has always been somewhat ambiguous. One reason for that ambiguity was that I felt I could do more good for my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters by serving as a bridge person, encouraging the rest of the Church to reach out in love and truly get to know them. The other reason was that, like so many other Christians, I was deeply uncertain about what was right.

It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church….

One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that, through Peggy [my wife], I have come to know so many gay Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own. Our friendships with these couples have helped me understand how important it is for the exclusion and disapproval of their unions by the Christian community to end. We in the Church should actively support such families. Furthermore, we should be doing all we can to reach, comfort and include all those precious children of God who have been wrongly led to believe that they are mistakes or just not good enough for God, simply because they are not straight.[1]

Clearly, I happen to agree with Campolo, but that’s not exactly why I’ve shared all of this. I’m sharing it because what he’s done strikes me as being remarkably courageous and prophetic.  He is faithful enough to honestly struggle with the issue, open enough to a still-speaking God to change his mind, brave enough to test his convictions in the field of real, lived-out relationships, and strong enough to express his change of heart to a community whom he knew might no longer accept him.

I share all of this also because it is the closest possible parallel that I could think of to what Peter has done in our Acts passage this morning. Though it may seem hard to believe, the question of Gentile inclusion was the biggest, most difficult, matter facing the first century Church.  “Followers of the Way” in Jerusalem just couldn’t fathom that non-Jews could possibly be drawn into the peoplehood of God.  The world had always been divided into two types of people: Gentile and Jew.  The Gentiles were unclean; they weren’t righteous before the law; their didn’t keep kosher; they simply couldn’t be part of the “people of God” without first converting out of Gentile-ness.  At least, that was the prevailing opinion.  Gentiles would have to be Jews before they could be Christians.

But, Peter has this vision where all sorts of forbidden beasts are lowered down on a sheet and God says, “Peter, get up, kill and eat.” Peter is disgusted and says, “Absolutely not, Lord.  I’ve never put an unclean bite into my mouth.”  The vision happens three times and the Lord replies, “What God has made clean you must not call profane.”  Next, Peter finds himself summoned to a Gentile home in Caesarea where he is guided to preach, and as he speaks the Holy Spirit of God descends upon the entire household.  He can’t deny it; it’s the very same Spirit that he and the Jerusalem church received, and so he baptizes the Gentile household and remains with them for days.

You can imagine that the folks back home weren’t so happy. “You did what?!” You know that it can’t work that way?  How could you do that?  How could you defile yourself that way?  How could you baptize them?  What does this mean now for us?

Peter doesn’t say what it means. He just tells them what happened.  He tells them what God did.  He tells them how the Spirit worked.  And he finishes with this: “Who was I to get in God’s way?”

What happens next may be the most remarkable part of the story. Acts tells us that they were silenced.  They stopped their objections.  They listened.  They changed.  They praised God, and despite the impossibility of it all they concluded, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”  Their entire world had just changed.  The foundational assumption about what it meant to be a person of God had just been radically challenged, and to their credit, remarkably, they received the news as part of the new beautiful, life-giving, thing that God was doing in their midst.

To be able to change in such a way, it seems to me, takes incredible strength of faith, and courage, and openness. It takes a people who are willing put the ways of God before their own ways, a people who are capable of sacrificing themselves for the sake of a mysterious and unpredictable force that’s offering them a new kind of self.

And, this sort of thing is never easy. I’m reminded of words by Mohandas Ghandi.   He writes, “I have only three enemies. My favorite enemy, and the one most easily influenced for the better, is the British Empire. My second enemy, the Indian people, is far more difficult. But my most formidable opponent is a man named Mohandas K. Gandhi. With him, I seem to have very little influence.”[2]

If you can believe it, Angela and I were once in the midst of a disagreement. And, by “disagreement,” I mean a fight – an absolutely heated, and angry, and unfortunate clashing of perspectives to which there seemed to be no solution or common ground. In complete and utter frustration we went to our separate corners, and I offered up a fuming mad prayer to God.

“God, can’t you show her how wrong she is? God, can’t you fix her thinking? What am I supposed to do with this? I mean, can you believe her?!” I went on like that for a bit. What I heard in response to my prayer was just this, “Tim, I love you.” I kind of ignored that though because it seemed a bit off point. “I’m so right, and she’s so wrong…” Yada Yada, and on I went. “Tim, I love you.” This kept happening until finally I said, “I know you love me, but what about her?” God said, “I love her too.” That, of course, is where the argument changed. That’s where I changed too.

There are many important matters in this world that call for our attention. There are inequities and injustices that we should not ignore. And, at the root of them all, I would suggest is the self – billions of selves – being invited to lose themselves in something bigger, being invited to sacrifice their comforting agendas and judgments, for a new way of being that is shaped, and colored, and motivated, and fed, and claimed by a holy and eternal love and amazing love. “Church, I love you. And, I love them too.”

 

[1] http://tonycampolo.org/for-the-record-tony-campolo-releases-a-new-statement/#.VXtCkKPD9he%20%3Chttp://tonycampolo.org/for-the-record-tony-campolo-releases-a-new-statement/

[2] http://alt.gathering.rainbow.narkive.com/jHuw5gDV/gandhi-s-three-enemies