Do you have people in your life that for whatever
reason you’re just not going to sit down with and share a meal? Wedding receptions can be an absolute
planning nightmare due to family feuds and making sure that so-and-so doesn’t
wind up sitting with so-and-so for fear of the blow up that would ensue. Ever
been so-and-so?
Now, let me ramp this up a bit. Are there particular kinds of people with
whom you would rather just not have in your space? Sick people?
Mentally ill people? People of
colour? Of other ethnicities or
nationalities? People with different
sexual orientations? How would you feel if you were sitting in a
restaurant and somebody unwashed, wreaking of body odours, and mumbling to
herself sat in the next booth? How would
you feel if a young man of Middle Eastern descent sat at the booth and kept
making calls in Arabic on his cell phone? What if two men sat in the booth and were giddy
in love like teen-agers, holding hands and stuff, what then?
Let me ramp this up a little bit more. Are there persons or people who you believe
are not welcome in the presence of God and whom God does not love? Is there anyone whom you believe should not
be welcome to sit in that pew over there?
Well, maybe you’re gracious enough to say you’re not going to play God
and will tolerate them, but on the other side of the church. But, what if they come to the potluck after
service, would they be welcome to sit at your table or would you suddenly
become a wallflower?
This is a difficult topic, this deciding who is
included, who is acceptable, who is clean in God’s eyes. I’ve often heard ministers preach that when
Jesus was crucified, he was nailed to the cross in such a way that his arms
were wide open in love to all. Yet, when
it comes to us, his disciples, we seem to have our arms crossed in judgement. But, you know, we should be careful when we
construct boundaries around the love of God because it makes Jesus’ arms look
crossed in judgement.
Do you remember what happened Easter evening when
Jesus appeared to his disciples who were cowering in fear behind closed
doors? Do you remember how he blessed
them with his peace and told them that as the Father had sent him, so he was
sending them - with that particular ministry of healing and reconciliation? Do you remember how he then breathed on them
and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are
forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (Jn. 20:22-23)? Well, the same applies to us. We, too, share that same mission of
cross-bearing reconciliation and have been filled with that same breath and Spirit.
We share the task of forgiving and
retaining the sins of others.
I find what Jesus had to say that night powerfully
troubling. It means that in our
fellowship, in the hospitality and love that we share in Christ, we really do embody
and really can enact the grace of God through our actions to each other and to
whomever we welcome into our fellowship. Jesus has given us the authority either to
forgive the sins of others or to bear their sins against them in a way that has
permanence. Here’s how it works. I know people who have been profoundly healed
– emotionally, spiritually, and even physically – because a congregation opened
its arms to them in forgiving love. I
know people who want absolutely nothing to do with God and their inner pain
turned to bitterness because they walked into a church in need of grace and
only a found a bunch of people with their arms crossed in judgement.
Jesus elsewhere said to his disciples, “Truly I say
to y’all, whatever y’all bind (prohibit) on earth will be bound (prohibited) in
heaven and whatever y’all loose (permit) on earth will be loosed (permitted) in
heaven” (Mt. 18:18). There is some
pretty heated debate in the scholarly world as to what exactly that verse means
but all would agree that we need to be real careful whom we exclude from
fellowship and why because who we welcome in our midst is welcomed in heaven
and who we exclude from our midst is excluded in heaven.
Looking at our passage from Acts we find the Apostles
in Jerusalem exercising this authority of binding and loosing with respect to Gentile
people who have obviously become believers.
They all know that Peter has welcomed Gentiles into Christian fellowship
in Caesarea and that the Holy Spirit fell upon them as well. As Peter had come to Jerusalem they want to
know what happened. Peter tells the
story that after a vision that destroyed his religion-based prejudices the Holy
Spirit led him to the household of a Roman Centurion named Cornelius and told
him to proclaim the message of Jesus. As
he was doing so, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as the Spirit had done with
the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost.
Seeing God had welcomed these Gentiles Peter said “Who am I to hinder
God” and then he baptized the whole household; servants, children, and all.
It is remarkable that when the Apostles questioned
Peter about this truly awesome event that the Apostles were not celebrating
with joy and wanting to know all the wonderful details of this new thing God
had down in the power of the Holy Spirit of welcoming Gentiles into the
fellowship of Christ. If you remember,
Gentiles were not welcome into the Presence of God according to Jewish
faith. But here God had poured his
presence upon them. The Apostles were
not amazed. Rather, they criticized
Peter and bluntly accused him, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat
with them?” Wow. Scrape my jaw off the floor. Knowing full well that God had given the Holy
Spirit to Gentiles and welcomed them into the body of Christ, all the Apostles could
do was criticize Peter for going and eating with them. “There goes the potluck. We can’t just eat latkes anymore. We’re going to have to learn to eat bacon.”
God had gotten out in front of the religious
prejudices of his people and fully included Gentiles into the Body of Christ. Predictably, the Apostles wanted to treat
them as if they were still to be considered unclean and not worthy of full
fellowship in the people of God. Those
God had made clean by pouring his very self upon them, the Apostles still
wanted to treat as defiled. God was
loosing, but the Apostles were binding.
Sometimes God, through the powerful workings of the
Holy Spirit, gets out in front of us and does things that challenge us and
doing so he leads us to accept those whom we believe we have a Scriptural basis
to consider unclean. When God does this
we have a choice: either to continue to exclude them and hinder what God
himself has done, or to take a deep hard look at own spiritual state and,
considering the grace God has shown us each, humbly acknowledge as Peter did,
“Who am I, who am I, to hinder God?”
Looking at a more contemporary situation, our
denomination now finds itself in what I am convicted to believe is an Acts 11
moment. Our denomination has a binding
and losing decision to make. For the
past few decades God has been including people into the Body of Christ whom
many believe to be unclean...and yes, I am referring to that pesky sexuality
and gender matter that we stand divided on.
General Assembly is coming up in two weeks and the matter will again be
on the table. I, being your dutiful
minister, must brief you on what is happening so that you won’t be caught
unawares if the PCC should make the national news at some point during the
first week of June.
As a matter of background, the current stance of our
denomination is that we recognize that homosexuals and people who are differently
gendered are the way they are because they were born that way not that because
(and excuse my crassness) they made some “perverted” decision to “swing the
other way.” To take this stance is to
say we understand that God formed them in the womb to be the way they are just
as he formed each of us to have the sexual identities that we each have. We have welcomed the work of some very sound
science to come to this conclusion.
This is also to acknowledge that nearly all of these
folks have suffered greatly for simply being who they are. Historically, the Church hasn’t helped them
much at all. Rather, we’ve called them
an abomination to God and contributed to acts of violence against them. Our denomination has repented of these hate
crimes and has vowed to discontinue and counter any practice that might
continue this violence. It is the stance
of the PCC that we want our churches to be safe places for people who are not
heterosexual.
Furthermore, it is our denomination’s practice that
in acknowledgement of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these
folks we welcome these folks into the membership of our churches hoping they
will find the love of Christ embodied in us and be accepted as they are. Moreover, they are welcome to serve in any
ministry in the church even as elders and even ministers provided they stay
celibate. Yes, homosexuals can be
ministers in the PCC provided they stay single.
For us to have this practice means that we recognize that the Holy
Spirit is at work in these folks just as he is in us. Therefore, we must listen did Peter to the
voice in his vision that told him not once but three times, “Do not call
anything impure that God has made clean.”
Presently, the matter that we continue to wrestle
with as a denomination is what we call “full inclusion”. This involves permitting or prohibiting
homosexual marriage and permitting or prohibiting married homosexuals to serve
as Ministers of Word and Sacrament. To
do this we must change our definition of marriage. “Full inclusion” is on the table because we
need to discern whether or not our current stance of being welcoming as long as
they are not practicing is an insult to their basic human dignity and right to
be in a fulfilling relationship.
As this matter has proven immensely divisive and
threatens the very survival of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, last year’s General
Assembly formed a special committee consisting of former Moderators of the
General Assembly and charged them with the task of trying to find a way for us
to go forward. Their report came out
Tuesday with four options which are: change nothing; full inclusion; create
three sub-denominations under the one big denomination; or, let ministers,
sessions, and congregations do what they want.
Well, back to the council of Apostles in Jerusalem,
and to Peter, and to the point I wish to make: sometimes God, through the
powerful workings of the Holy Spirit, gets out in front of us and leads us to
accept those whom we believe we have a Scriptural basis to consider unclean. When God does this we have a choice either to
continue to exclude those whom God has included and hinder what God himself has
done or take a deep hard look at our own spiritual state and, considering the
grace God has shown us each, humbly acknowledge as Peter did, “Who am I, who am I, to hinder God?” And maybe we should take one out of Peter’s
playbook and just spend time eating with and getting to know those whom we regard
as uncomfortably different from ourselves.
Amen.
