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May 2^nd, MLC Ocean View, NJ. H. Fege, Pastor, Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 11.1-8, Ps. 148, Rev. 21.1-6, John 13.31-35

 

From a little book Children’s Letters to God, we hear a “theology of innocence.”

What St. Paul might describe as “when I was a child I thought like a child, reasoned like a child…” we get an idea of preconceived notions of a child’s understanding of the divine.

Dear God I’m American what are you? Robert

Dear God what does it mean you are a jealous God? I thought you had everything. Jane

Dear God, instead of letting people die and having to make new ones why don’t you just keep the ones you got now?

Dear God, it rained for our whole vacation and is my father mad! He said some things about you that people are not supposed to say, but I hope you will not hurt him anyway, Your friend… but I’m not going  to tell you who I am…

We all have preconceived notions, especially when it comes to religion.

In the 66 books that make up the Bible, we find that even those who become heroes of the faith had their less than heroic moments… their prejudices.

Maybe their willingness to overcome them is what made them heroes.

Today’s second lesson is a case in point. The lesson begins with Chapter 10 where Peter is visiting a tanning operation (not tanning like suntan, but like leather) in Joppa and he is told to go to the seaside resort of Caesarea some 60 miles from Jerusalem on the Mediterranean, built by Herod the Great and named after his boss Augustus Caesar.

The account from which our second lesson is taken is one of the longest in the entire NT. It is in that account that Luke tells us followers of Jesus were first called Christians.

What this account of Peter’s dream is about is no less revolutionary than the day that Luther stood before the Emperor Charles and told the world that he could not and would not recant his position regarding the truth of the Bible or the day that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, or the day the ELCA ordained women, and now gays. Peter is both the hero and anti-hero of the faith.

When Jesus first laid eyes on him he and his brother Andrew were plying their trade as fishermen, he said “so you are Simon, the son of John and then he said “from now on you will be called Cephas” (which is the Aramaic for Peter, which is the Greek for Rock).

A rock is a solid sort of thing, which is good for building churches but not so good for floating on water.

It was Peter who first recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, and it was Peter who in the next sentence was told that he had no idea what that meant.

It was Peter who huddled out in the cold warming himself by the fire while Jesus was being interrogated by the guards and temple police inside. And when someone thought they recognized him as being a friend of the Lord he said, “I swear I don’t know the man!”  Not once but three times he denied knowing Jesus.

Only a few hours before Jesus had washed Peter’s feet.

In today’s Gospel account we have a shorter version of what happened when Jesus told Peter and the rest that the mark of discipleship was their love for one another and the world.

According to the oldest account of resurrection in the NT, it wasn’t the women who were the first at the Tomb but it was Peter!

We don’t know what was said... maybe just as well.

So in today’s lesson we have another one of God’s 2x4’s hitting Peter over the head… as we get a  glimpse  how the first Christian community had to redefine their understanding of what it meant to follow Jesus. What “to love one another is all about.”

Peter’s religion was based on the OT and in particular on keeping Torah and in Torah there is a book we know as Leviticus that he knew by the name of Torah Kohanim, which means “the Priest’s Manual or the rubrics of Leviticus, cf.11ff.

Growing up, there wasn’t much that I would not have eaten because in post-WWII Germany there wasn’t much to eat!

So Peter the rock had to learn one final lesson which is that Kosher and Christ is not the same thing.

It happened on a spring morning…Again he and his brother and some of the others had returned to the fishing trade.

It was one of those days that their nets again came up empty, and then there He was. This time Peter knew who he was…

He said “Peter, I thought that by now you would have figured all this out…

put out your nets again this time on the other side…

And again they hit pay dirt!

When they had all gotten over the initial shock, Jesus asked Peter “do you love me?”

What a question… but Jesus did ask three more times, maybe for the three times that Peter had fumbled earlier, back there in the courtyard when he denied knowing Jesus.

And each time Peter said “yes, I love you.”

Jesus said “if you love me then feed my sheep!”

In the lesson today Peter learns that sheep come in all sizes, colors, and with different appetites…

So Luke writes one of the longest narratives in the NT explaining how not only Peter’s eating habits had to change, but also how his theology, as to who is saved and who is not… who is in and who is out, needed changing.

How can a good Jewish boy visit with a man who skins pigs for a living?

That’s where Peter was staying when he has the dream to eat Lobster Tail, Pork and Quail.

As if that was not un-scriptural enough, now he is told in a dream to go visit with an uncircumcised gentile, a Roman officer, and baptize him… God is really pushing the envelope!

So here is the bottom line.

In the Gospel we read that the  ultimate criteria for discipleship is, not whether you have memorized Luther’s Catechism, or if you know Greek or Hebrew or whether  you abstain from eating meat on Fridays or any other time for that matter, or whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or god-forbid a Tea Party advocate.

Jesus, the last time he was with them at Supper, said I give you a new commandment that you love one another… by this the world will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

That is what our mother’s taught us isn’t it?

Don’t you hit your little brother... come on now go and give him a kiss and make up.

Be nice to Grandma when she comes to visit...

Why can’t I play with…?

Kids pick up quickly that the horizon of love is limited and narrow.

My dad was a deeply religious man... but I remember on more than one occasion when we came in from playing and forgot to take off our caps him saying… Du bist doch kein Jude... nimm deine Müze ab. You are not Jewish take off your cap.

So love one another but be careful of strangers.

Love Lutherans but watch out for Baptists.

Love all Christians but be careful of Muslims, etc. etc. until we love only our own kind.

In the last book of the Bible John reminds us that at the end of time heaven is not some ethereal place “up there” but “the home of God is with mortals. He will dwell with them, they will be his people and God himself will be with them… see I am making all things new. ” 

The Church would be very different if Peter had ignored his vision of newness. He did not deny God’s call and neither can we as we follow Jesus as we stand in awe, wonder, and sometimes in terror… before the vision of what God still has in store for his Church.

Amen