Cornelius

I do wish the people who compiled the lectionary wouldn’t start us off right in the middle of a story!
You never know quite what is going on.
I do see that they wish to take pity on those whose turn it is to read the Scriptures aloud, but even still!

And this story in Acts, that was our first reading today,
starts off bang in the middle of things.
What is Peter up to, and, more to the point,
what has he been up to?

Well, the story began when Cornelius, a Roman official, wanted to learn more about God, so God sent an angel to him saying, in effect,
“The man you want is called Simon Peter, and he’s staying at the house of Simon the Tanner, here in Joppa –
why not send for him?”

Snag was, it was going to take more than an invitation to persuade Peter to go round to the Cornelius’ place.
If you were Jewish, you didn’t associate with unbelievers, end of.
You certainly never went to their homes –
you might speak to them in the street, if you absolutely had to,
but going to their homes would have made you what was known as “unclean”, and you would have had to have had a ritual bath
before you could associate with your friends and family again.
That’s one of the reasons why the Priest and the Levite walked past the dying victim in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan –
if the man was actually dead, and they touched him,
they’d have made themselves unclean for no good reason.
Far better to pass by on the other side of the road, and pretend you hadn’t noticed.

So because God wants Peter to go and see Cornelius, Peter, too, gets a vision.
Or, just possibly, a dream –
he’s gone up to sit on the flat roof to pray for awhile before lunch, and he might easily have nodded off.
Anyway, whatever, what he sees is a large sheet, full of the kind of animals he simply wouldn’t have dreamt of eating in a million years.
The sort of animal he’d always considered unclean, and probably made his stomach churn to think of eating it –
rather like we might feel about ants’ eggs or sheep’s eyeballs.
But three times he was told to do this, and three times he was told not to call anything unclean that God has called clean.

When he woke up, or came to himself, or whatever, he was still inclined to wonder what God meant by it all.
So you can imagine how surprised he was when he found Cornelius’ servants waiting downstairs, asking him to come along.
Now, Peter, since the Holy Spirit came, is a changed man.
But at times there are still traces of the old Peter there, like now, because the first thing he said was "You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile."

So kind. So polite. Contrast this with last week’s story, where another man who was a total outsider wanted to know more about God, and God sent Philip to talk to him. Philip wasn’t in the least worried about chatting to the man, and even baptised him when he was challenged to do so. But Peter is a different kettle of fish.

“Your yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile!”

Yeah, right. I wonder how that made Cornelius feel. I wonder how it makes you feel. Some of you will have experienced far deeper rejection than I can ever know or understand. Peter might just as well have said something along the lines of “Your kind of people are generally lazy and just come here to sponge off of social security.
You people all have lots of babies so you can get more money from the Government without having to work.
I shouldn't be crossing the picket lines to talk to you scabs.
I am fully aware that God does not approve of your life style and that you are an abomination to God.
I don’t know what I’m doing talking to the likes of you….
But hey, here I am.
Aren't you impressed?"

Oh Peter….. not good. But fortunately, Peter has learnt a bit in recent weeks or months, and he has learnt to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and suddenly realises what his vision meant.
He rightly concludes, "God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean."

Peter is slowly realizing that he had been sent to this particular household for a reason.
Until then, the disciples had thought that they were only meant to be preaching to the Jews, and the Good News wasn’t for everybody.
Jesus had tried to show that it was, but I have a feeling he wasn’t altogether too clear on that one while he was on earth, so it became an issue to be addressed primarily after the resurrection, like now.
Peter suddenly sees the light:
"I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him."

It’s the same as last week’s story, isn’t it. The treasury official, rejected by the Jews because of his mutilation – he wouldn’t have been allowed to convert, even had he wanted to – challenges Philip to baptise him. Would this new religion reject him, too? “Here is water,” he says. “What is to keep me from being baptised?”

And, of course, there was nothing. This man, whose skin was a different colour, who came from a completely different country, whose sexuality was, forcibly, different from most people’s – there was no reason at all why he shouldn’t be baptised, and Philip baptised him.

But somehow that news hadn’t reached Peter yet, or if it had, Peter hadn’t really taken it in. I think he must have apologised to Cornelius for having been rude, but he must have been utterly gobsmacked.
Right from his earliest childhood, he had been taught to thank God each day that he had not been born a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.
And now God is telling him that who people are doesn’t matter –
if they want to know Jesus, if they want to be baptised, they can.
And while he is beginning to say something of this to Cornelius and his family, the Holy Spirit takes over, and Cornelius and his household all begin to pray in tongues and to rejoice in God’s love. So Peter baptises them with water, and henceforth they are members of the church.

And so Peter tells the believers in Jerusalem, when they send for him and ask what on earth he thinks he’s been doing.
For Peter, this is a start of a whole new journey of discovery, of what God is doing among other people, people who aren’t Jewish.
He does have his moments of backsliding –
St Paul tells us, in the letter to the Galatians, that he had to remind Peter that he was perfectly able to eat with Gentiles and not to be so stupid about it.
But, by and large, the early church had turned a huge corner.

The snag is, it hasn’t stayed turned, has it? St Paul may have written that “There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free,
there is no longer male and female;
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” –
but the Church doesn’t believe it and never has!
Peter may have learnt that God shows no partiality,
but God’s followers most certainly do.
Philip may have found no reason not to baptise the treasury official,
but too many people who came over on the Empire Windrush and its successors found themselves unwelcome in our churches.

Look, we’re always going to associate mostly with people who are more like us –
we have more in common with people who come from the same sort of background, went to the same sort of school, enjoy the same sort of hobbies.
Christian folk may well prefer the company of other Christians.
That’s okay.

But it can all too easily become toxic, become a matter of “them and us”. I am ashamed that it was not until this year that I realised, thanks to the television advertisements –
I expect you’ve seen them, too –
that Muslims believe, just as we do, that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer.
And I simply hadn’t known that before, and I should have known.

God shows no partiality. We are all equally loved and cared for, whatever our race, or religion, or skin colour. Many centuries ago, John Donne, a clergyman poet wrote this:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

We are all involved with one another.
Because God shows no partiality, and neither must we.
We are all accepted by God, loved by God, and, as Christians, indwelt by God the Holy Spirit.
Each and every one of us.
Even you.
Even me.
We may be rejected by the world, we may even –
although I do hope not –
be rejected by the church, but God will never, ever reject us. Amen.

 

Remain in my love

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

Thus Jesus in the first part of our Gospel reading today. To set it in a little context, which I probably don’t need to do, but still, this is, of course, part of Jesus’ farewell to his disciples. They have met together for the Passover meal, and Jesus has washed their feet. And the other Gospels tell us that he took bread and wine, blessed them, and gave them to the disciples – the ordinary actions that the host would have done at any special meal together, particularly a Sabbath or Passover meal. But Jesus, we are told, took this and lifted it into something different: This is My Body; This is My Blood. And now he is speaking to them, telling them things that perhaps they won’t take in all at once, but that the Holy Spirit, so Jesus reassures them, will remind them of in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

Above all, he is reassuring them. Basically, he is telling them that he must leave them, but that they will not be left alone. The Holy Spirit will come to them – something that couldn’t happen if Jesus didn’t leave. And the Holy Spirit will lead them into all truth.

The bit about loving one another, though – that’s so important that he says it twice. First, right at the very beginning: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” And now in the passage we have just read: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

Well, yes, all right, we know that. We have heard it before. It is familiar. But, hang on a minute – how are we supposed to do this? And what does Jesus mean, anyway?

Part of the problem, of course, it does depend on your definition of “love”. Our English language lets us down here, unusually, as we only have the one word that has to cover an awful lot of meanings, from loving God down to loving cheese on toast, including loving our families, our friends, our pets, our old teddy-bear, our hobbies and the person we're in love with! In Greece they managed better, and had several different words!

There is “storge”, or affection, the kind of love you feel for your child or your parents; then there is “eros”, which is romantic love; “philia”, which is friendship,and “agape”, which is divine love, and this is the word that is used in this passage. It is also, as you may or may not know, the word that St Paul used in that lovely chapter in 1 Corinthians, when he talks of the nature of that sort of love:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

One of the interesting things is that when Jesus reinstates St Peter after he has denied him, you remember, by the lakeside, when he says to him “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” he uses the word “agape”. Peter can’t quite manage that, so he, when he replies “Lord, you know that I love you”, he uses the word “philia”; in other words, “Lord, you know I’m your friend”. Then when Jesus again asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”, he again uses the word “agape”, and Peter again replies using the word “Philia”. And then the third time, Jesus himself uses the word “philia” – which is why Simon Peter was so hurt. He’s already said twice that he is Jesus’ friend, why does he have to say it a third time?

Simon Peter found that committing himself to agape love, to God’s love, was pretty much impossible. I’m not surprised, are you? Let’s look at it again:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

This is the sort of love that Jesus was talking about, when he told us to love one another in the same way that He loved us.

But how? Heaven knows, I don't always succeed in this, I'm sure my centre is far more often on myself than it is on God, and I expect many of you feel the same way.

Even Simon Peter couldn't do it, as we have seen: “Lord, you know I'm your friend!” It wasn't until after Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit came down, that he became the great apostle and evangelist. His love for God, and for his neighbours, was never in doubt after Pentecost, however much it was before!

So it seems as though we can't love God or one another without God's love first in us, in the Person of the Holy Spirit. And in our Gospel reading, Jesus says that we need to remain in His love. God loves us. We need to remain in that love, “abide” in it, the older translations say. A modern paraphrase, “The Message”, says “Make yourself at home in my love”. So if God’s love is in us, and we remain in that love, we make ourselves at home in it, what does that mean? Jesus says that if we obey his commands, we will abide in his love, end of. And his command is to love one another.

But it's not always easy, is it? The trouble is, quite apart from anything else, our human loves can be so desperately flawed. You might think that there is nothing more wonderful than the love between parents and children but how easily that love can turn into wanting to dominate the child, to dictate how it should live, what it should do, who it should be. And you have all heard the old joke, “She’s the kind of woman who lives for others – you can always tell the others by their hunted expressions!” The kind of person who, out of love, misguidedly tries to run people’s lives for them.

And I don’t need to spell out just how easily romantic love can go wrong, and become something of a battle for possession. Or in this day and age, more likely, a refusal to commit oneself to the beloved.

As for friendship, you would have thought it would be difficult for that to go wrong. People tend to be friends because of shared interests; Robert and I have a great many very dear friends whom we would not otherwise have anything in common with apart from our love of skating. That is the thing that we are friends about.

But sometimes friendship can be more about excluding the other person, not including them. Particularly among children, of course, but it can happen among adults. Sadly, we see it a lot in the churches – we exclude those who, perhaps, are not of the same denomination as we are, or don’t worship God in quite the same way. Or perhaps we are Evangelical and they are not, or vice versa, so we tend to be sniffy about their way of being a Christian, and exclude them.

But God’s love is the kind of love that lays down its life for its friends. Jesus says that if we obey his commands, we will remain in his love. We need to love one another with God’s love, and that’s not something we can do alone. God’s love, we are told, is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit – we can love neither God nor one another without God’s having first loved us.

It all comes back to that, doesn’t it. God loves us and one of the implications of that love is that we are enabled to love one another.

But it’s not just about gooey feelings. Jesus pointed out that the greatest test of love is if you are willing to lay down your life for the other person. And St Paul’s description of love is eminently practical, too. Love, it seems, is something you do.

Love is something you do. Love is about putting the other person first. It’s about taking that extra step – giving someone a lift, even though it’s out of your way; making that telephone call, or sending that e-mail, to check that someone is all right. It can even be about commenting on someone’s Facebook status! It’s about remembering people’s birthdays and other special days. All that sort of thing – you know as well as I do; I scarcely need to spell it out.

In another place, Jesus tells us that we must love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Now loving ourselves is, very often, the difficult bit. It's all too easy to have the wrong kind of self-love, the kind that says “Me, me, me” all the time and demands its own way – the absolute opposite, in fact, of the love that St Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians. You can't love your neighbour – or God, either, for that matter – if you are full of that sort of self-love.

But then there is the equal and opposite problem – we don't value ourselves enough. We don't really like ourselves, we have a big problem with self-image, we are not what the French call “comfortable in our own skins”. And often it is the people who appear most self-absorbed, most unable to love others, who are the most wounded inside, and who are totally not comfortable with themselves. And again, it is only through the love of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, that we can be made whole, and thus enabled to love ourselves and other people, as we should.

So really, it's all one – we love, because God first loved us; we can't love God without also loving one another; we can't love one another unless we love ourselves – or, at the very least, have a healthy self-image, which amounts to the same thing; and we can't love ourselves unless we are aware that God loves us!
So the important thing, as it always is, is to be open to God's love more and more - which is basically what I think "remain in my love" means; to continue to be God's person; and to continue to be open to be being made more and more the person God designed us to be. To be fully human is to be fully God's person. Amen.