Does anyone else feel like they have tried to hinder God lately?: From April 24 Sermon

Acts 11:1-18 
Psalm 148 (13)
Revelation 21:1-6 
John 13:31-35

Does anyone else feel like they have tried to hinder God lately?

It seems to me that what we hear in today’s lesson from Acts should be a big red flag to us who think we have this Grace thing figured out.  Remember how Jesus didn’t have a whole lot of luck in Jerusalem?  He prayed over them.  He desired to be a mother to them like a hen sheltering her young beneath her wing.  But ultimately they really didn’t want what Jesus was offering them…until they did.  And then apparently, they wanted it all to themselves.

 

They are angry with Peter.  Why would you go eat with those people?  Did Peter think about how familiar this question sounded?  Weren’t there people always asking Jesus some version of this same question?  Why did you eat with them?  They aren’t us! 

Peter takes it upon himself to explain as best he can.  It says he explained “step by step,” which I’d like to think of as like a patient teacher; the one who never tries to make anyone feel dumb for not getting it.  That teacher that says there are no stupid questions even though they know some questions have been asked and answered multiple times.  Some people just don’t get it.

Come to think of it, Peter should know about questions being asked again and again.  He once again finds himself at the center of a three-times event.  Three times this food is presented before him and he is told, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  Profane means unholy and what is of God cannot be that!  Peter was told by the Spirit that he was not to make a distinction between these uncircumcised men and himself and his companions.  Here is where we might pay attention to the red flag rising over our hearts.

“We are not to make a distinction between us and them.”  Oh, but wow, don’t we just excel at this?  Isn’t one of our very best, finely honed skills looking at others and immediately distinguishing what makes them different?  I don’t even know for sure when or how this happens.  We see pictures of little children playing together; children of different colors, languages, and faiths, and they are captured in a moment in time where they don’t see “us” and “them” but only “we.”  It doesn’t take long at all before those same children will be calling one another names on the playground, sending hurtful texts and emails, teaching their children that “those people” are not like us…

And the red flag rises.  Because then we hear: “If God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

So, does anyone else feel like they have been hindering God lately?

God isn’t making distinctions.  God isn’t keeping a checklist of differences.

God has infinite love, boundless Grace, and, lucky for us, all the time in the world to forgive us our sins.  Thank you, God, we need it.

Psalm 148 is a song of praise to a creator God in which even those things with no mouth, no mind, no human understanding, still find their ways of singing praise to God.  Wind and water, mountain and plain, creeping, crawling, flying, and swimming, all things in elegant praise to a Universe Creating All loving God—a God who created every person on the earth.  For nothing can exist except by God.

All things are made by God.  All things are made of God.  The results are as different and diverse as…well, the universe, but the building blocks are the same.  Every person that ever has been, that is now, that ever will be, every single one of us is made of the same material.  You just can’t get around that.

God made all of God’s children and never once did God shudder at diversity and difference.  Never once did God say, “I wish all my children were like you.”

God made us and in some day we do not know and cannot plan for God will make all things new.  Even you, if you can believe it.  And you will look through new eyes.  And what will you see?

A loving God looking on you and all of us with love.  A God making no distinction.

I am not there yet.  I struggle still.  My vocabulary is off the mark.  I am still stuck at times in “us” and “them,” “these” and “those,” “ours” and “theirs.” 

But little children, we have been given a new commandment by God in the form of Christ Jesus telling us, “love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Jesus, who sat with sinners.  He who spent time with tax collectors, outcast women, lepers, blind people, dangerous company, he is asking us to love as he loved.

We’re not going to be saved by what we do.  God chose us and we can’t choose God.  That is not in our power.  We can know that God created us and God chose us and that is a gift that was never ours to turn down.  But we can choose to respond to the gift of love, in love, with love.

 

God loves you and loves you and loves you.  God just will not quit.  Ever.

This unconditional, undeserved, undistinguishing love of God can’t ever be hindered.

We may think we are standing in the way of God when we look at others and do not see the face of God.  The truth is, we are only standing in our own way, and we are often standing in front of a mirror.

What’s different about me?  What’s wrong with me?  What’s loveable about me?

 

God made everything and everyone.

God made you.

God chose you.

I know it is terrifying…God loves you.

We know it is true.

So let us get out of our way.                  Amen.