Bridges not Trenches

Acts 10:34-35

We live in a divided time, a time marked by endless justification and rationalization for not only not speaking to those with whom we disagree, but denouncing them completely as being beneath contempt. 

We have the ability to be instantly connected to one another anywhere in the world any time we choose, but we use this tool of social discourse to fill computer screens with pure vitriol. People write on their smartphones and computers things that no one would dream of saying to another person should that person be standing right in front of us, but we feel insulated and safe in our virtual world to say anything we want, and it is the reader’s fault if they are offended.

The Church would like to think itself above the fray, but only a nincompoop would claim that it is so--no, the community of faith falls into the same abyss with various congregations picking sides against various other congregations, sure they are absolutely right as they do so. A recent political cartoon nailed the situation completely--two folks were looking at what appeared to be a reversed basketball bracket--it started with a single line (Christ), then divided, subdivided, subdivided some more, and eventually looked like a conference of spiders, so many arms were there. One person pointed to one of the lines near the bottom of the tangle, intoning, “And here is where we got it EXACTLY right!”

Peter, though, corrects our vision.

He begins with the assertion that God shows no partiality. How could God? God made every human being that walks the face of the earth. Every single one of them is a child of God. John told us that God is love--there can be no loving parent who hates one child out of the passel they have. So, Peter notes, God loves all of us, no matter who we are, where we are, or how we are. In any gathering of human beings, from one to a million, it is a gathering of equals before God. Each and every one of them is the apple of God’s eye.

The key is to recognize this state of being.

And that means reading v. 35 correctly. In the Church, there is a tendency to see this verse as self-justification--sure God loves every person who lives, but God loves us inside the Church just a little bit more because we had sense enough to join the Church! But such an interpretation negates the good news of the previous verse. It says that God DOES show partiality, but an even more onerous form of partiality that makes God duplicitous! God says God loves everyone, but the truth is God only loves--REALLY loves--those inside the human institution called the Church. Thus, such an interpretation cannot be the right one. Instead, we have to bring v. 35 into concert with v. 34. God shows no partiality; what God seeks is love. That is what Peter gets at in his statement about fearing God and doing what is right. 

To understand that, though, we have to redefine “fear” and “doing what is right” through Peter’s base as a Jew. 

Fear does not mean living in abject terror before God, but rather loving God enough to let God be God--i.e., God is free from all human expectation, want, or assumption. God is God; we are not. Fear is recognizing the huge chasm between being human and being God. It is proclaiming God as Almighty and meaning it. That means we cannot know all there is to know of God, but only what God reveals to us about himself. It means we enter God’s presence in humility, realizing that the only way we can be in God’s presence at all is that God allows us to be there. In other words, we see that faith is actually an extraordinary gift of grace--God loves us, reveals himself to us, and protects us from his utter holiness so we can stand in faith, love, and hope. 

Doing what is right, then, is living that grace. We realize what grace really is when we become gracious. We welcome others into our presence because we were welcomed. We do not ask them to conform to our wants and wishes because God did not ask us to get our acts together before coming to him. We meet others in love because we were met in love. We meet others in openness because God was open to us. We seek to be merciful because God met us in mercy. And on it goes, but it is always essentially about the same thing--love--doing what is right, then, is no more nor no less than love. 

Now the kicker--the Church has not cornered the market on either of these attributes of faith.

God loves any and every human being, and God blesses any and every person who recognizes him and loves other human beings with the self-sacrificial, other-centered love found in Christ. God speaks all the languages of faith, just as God speaks all the languages of his seven billion (last count) human children. 

So, our task within the self-avowed community of faith, then, is not erecting barriers, issuing judgments, and circling the wagons, but reaching out in love to every single human being we meet anywhere in the world. 

In so doing, we realize the full and actual promises of our faith.