Rule Change
Acts 11:1-18
God saves the Gentiles
11:1 Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God.
11:2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him,
11:3 saying, "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?"
11:4 Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying,
11:5 "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners, and it came close to me.
11:6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air.
11:7 I also heard a voice saying to me, 'Get up, Peter; kill and eat.'
11:8 But I replied, 'By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.'
11:9 But a second time the voice answered from heaven, 'What God has made clean, you must not call profane.'
11:10 This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.
11:11 At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were.
11:12 The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house.
11:13 He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter;
11:14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.'
11:15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.
11:16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'
11:17 If then 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?"
11:18 When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, "Then God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life."
We sports fans have a love/hate relationship with rule changes. For those of us old enough to be Steelers fans from their first Super Bowl iteration, we are aware that, thanks to the prowess of that four-Lombardi Trophy bunch, a number of NFL rules were changed. Joe Greene, as a defensive lineman, was so good at what he did that, almost from the get-go, he was being double-teamed by the opposing offense. He combated that with a quick helmet slap alongside the head of one of the men covering him, and this disoriented him long enough for Greene to take on the other man, one-on-one, a battle he usually won. Soon, the NFL outlawed the “head slap.” (Joe Greene still made the Hall of Fame, by the way.) Steelers linebacker Jack Lambert was SO good at intimidating the quarterback that the NFL changed the rules as to how “physical” a defender could get with the “franchise” player. Lambert’s commentary? “I think they [quarterbacks] should have to wear dresses.” Lambert, too, made the Hall of Fame. Steelers cornerback Mel Blount liked to intimidate wide receivers by justling with them all along their routes. Blount was one of the few cornerbacks in the game who had both the speed and dexterity to run stride for stride with the speedy receivers, so his success at stymieing them also precipitating a rule change—after five yards, intentional physical “harassment” of receivers will draw a penalty. Blount is ALSO in the Hall of Fame. In the NFL world, every year brings new rules aimed at keeping the play exciting and/or protecting valuable players.
The same thing applies to other sports, like baseball. Nothing got true MLB aficionados up in arms like the “designated hitter” rule, which is now practiced in both leagues. In an effort to make the game less boring, and to protect pitchers from having to bat (they’re really lousy at it), now a designated hitter is added to the lineup, taking the pitcher’s place. On the plus-side of this rule change, it has extended the careers of older, popular players like Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The down-side is that it represents a fundamental part of the game—hitting strategy—that changed, sending baseball purists into therapy. It also cued up the next most inept hitter in a team’s lineup as the “easiest out.”
Rule changes in sports happen for a reason. The same is true in other arenas, as well. We all wear seat belts in cars because studies clearly demonstrated they save lives. Children must be in rear-facing, carefully-engineered car seats in the BACK seat of a vehicle, and must use booster seats until they reach a certain weight. In most parts of the country, you can’t smoke in public, only outdoors, and in designating “smoking areas.” Why? Not just because it bothered people, but because studies confirmed that second-hand smoke was just as much of a health risk as that visited upon the primary smoker. I’m happy for THAT rule change, mostly because it bothered me, though. I wish I could say my lungs were in the Hall of Fame, but I’ll settle for them just being a bit clearer.
The advent of Christianity changed a lot of rules—GOD’S rules! Now, I don’t want to get into a protracted theological argument about “God changing God’s mind,” partly because this is a sermon and not a term paper, but mostly because the Bible makes it clear that God DOES change God’s mind! I’m going to win that argument, and if I don’t, then Moses will. Several times during Moses’ stint as God’s “tour guide” for the wandering people of Israel, God got so mad at them that God told Moses God was thinking about wiping them out and starting with a blank slate. Moses would be spared, though, because he was in God’s corner, just as frustrated with them as was God. However, Moses used this “good guy” leverage on God, suggesting that he had gone to great trouble to get these people out of captivity in Egypt, and was now trying to keep them alive in the wilderness, and for WHAT, if God wiped them out? The scriptures clearly state that “God changed God’s mind of the EVIL God was going to do to God’s people, Israel.” You can’t get much clearer than that!
In today’s Acts passage, Peter tells of how God put him in a “trance” to show him that, in the aftermath of the Christ Event AND the introduction of the Holy Spirit, inaugurating what we know as the “Body of Christ,” the church, some major rule changes were in order. Now, foods previously forbidden for God’s people to eat would now be OK, simply because God was declaring them “clean,” pretty much like God had done with sin, through Christ. AND now the gentiles—goyim in Hebrew—would no longer be anything but “family” in the church. Those previously despised by God’s “set apart” people, would now be called “bretheren.” Both of these were huge changes. HUGE! It took a trance for Peter to get the magnitude and substance of THESE rule changes in the Divine Commonwealth of God.
Sidebar: Isn’t it interesting that practitioners of “evangelicalism” now totally eschew anything resembling “trances,” and aren’t fond of any use of Eastern meditation or spiritual practice? God uses a trance on several occasions to get an important message across, such as this one to Peter, and Paul’s famous “seventh heaven” experience. The theological machinations I’ve heard evangelical friends go through to “excuse” these “exceptions” to their rules about such things are quite amazing. If God can change God’s mind, is it not possible that our “narrowing” of the rules also constrains God?
Back to the text…Peter not only was told about these rule changes, but he was sent to a Gentile man—Cornelius—to let him in on the gig, and to baptize him with the Holy Spirit! Peter, who had fought with Paul about the “mission” to the Gentiles, was now sent by God TO a Gentile, to fully accept him as a sibling in Christ. The landmark pronouncement of this text is: “What God has made clean, you must not profane.” Friends, the Creator of the Universe has changed the rules, and the “game” is now allie, allie, in free! In Christ, not only are our sins forgiven, but all persons are now free to come before God’s “throne of grace,” bar none. Paul states this clearly in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” God changed the rules, and we would do well to not “narrow the field” by laying down our own obstacles to God’s work of reconciling the world to Godself in Christ Jesus!
One of my favorite bumper sticker pieces of theology I saw once said simply, “You catch ‘em, I’ll clean ‘em…God.” The church has erred, as I understand it, by demanding that persons “get their ducks in a row” before claiming Christ as Lord, and following the lead of the Holy Spirit as part of the church. None of us fully understands just how FREE God is to change the rules as to whom may be reconciled. We have just seen a huge schism cripple the people called Methodists over whether members of the LGBTQ+ community may believe and practice the Christian faith without first eschewing their sexual orientation. Modern science has clearly stated that human sexual orientation is a “fluid” thing—actually on a continuum—as it is in the rest of the animal kingdom. We do not at ALL have the same measures of the hormones that influence such things (testosterone and estrogen, for example), NOR are we all born with the exact same sexual biology, and I’m NOT talking about simply “male” and “female” plumbing. In one of my churches, I had the privilege of having the town’s leading surgeon as a church member. After one of my sermons where I was urging folk to not “screen” people merely on their sexual orientation (that church had several “favorite sons” and “daughters” who were gay or lesbian), the surgeon told me that “laity” did not realize how many children were born with sexual organs that were not “clearly defined.” He said that, in these cases, parents were consulted, and a “decision” was made to surgically alter the child to be either male or female, and that over the years, he was not surprised to hear that one of these children “came out,” expressing that their personhood did not match their sexual organs. He further suggested that he believed this could be the case even where no “corrections” were applied, surgically. The practices of the Christian faith have long been amenable to change, wrought by the advances of science and knowledge, if not just based on “preferences” and tradition. Let’s look at a few.
We have the sects of Protestant Christianity today because of the beliefs of Martin Luther, whose study of God’s mercy and grace from the scriptures launched the Protestant Reformation in 1517. And yet, the vitality and continued practices of the Roman Catholic Church remain, and partly due to their OWN “reformation” that we call the Second Vatican Council, that occurred between 1963 and 1965. And there is still the Eastern Orthodox faith traditions that split off from the Roman Catholic church in 1054. And what of our varying worship practices? There are churches today that don’t believe in singing anything but the words of the biblical Psalms in worship, and these without any musical accompaniment. Meanwhile, there are contemporary churches that have large “praise bands” and major pyrotechnics and “EFX” as part of their worship! Remember, for decades, pipe organs were “outlawed” in churches because they were seen as “instruments of the devil,” relegated to bars and public performance venues! (There are people today who now believe that pipe organs are the “only proper” instruments for use in Christian worship.) Our rules for “ordination” and who can be clergy are all over the place, too. I could go on and on, but my point is that almost all of these discrepancies come from some “rule changes” sects have adopted, sometimes based on their very personalized, narrow interpretation of Bible passages, while others have been made on preference, alone. Still, we generally don’t “reject” these folk outright just because they have divergent views. God certainly seems to accept them all as part of the Body of Christ. Why shouldn’t we?
There is something that happens in societies that sociologists call “queuing.” It happens when some previously discriminated against group gets “recognized” and promoted out of its being so victimized by bigotry. There is then a natural tendency for this “accepted” group to manifest prejudice against the next group “in line” behind them. Throughout church history, there have been groups thusly victimized, only to become recognized and accepted, and then to join the majority in persecuting yet another group of people. White Christian slave owners manifest prejudice against their African slaves, and not only their color, but their native faith traditions, such as Islam. They were “forced” to accept Christianity by their owners. Now, the most “popular” group of people to be on the wrong end of the Christian church’s “queue” are the members of the LGBTQ+ community, and many African American Christians are just as apt to reject them as white evangelicals. The sociology doesn’t excuse the behavior, however. Maybe we need more people experiencing these “trances” like Peter and Paul? Actually, I believe the real moral of the story is that God expects us to “grow up”—mature into accepting that we are ALL beloved children of God. We shouldn’t need special effects like trances and angelic “visits” to get it!
I grew up in a time when persons who were divorced could not be elected leaders in the church, nor were they eligible for ordination to the clergy. The Bible was pretty silent on this issue, other than to advocate for family practices and forgiving love that might derail such hurtful things before they happened. There are as many reasons persons end marriages as there are people—some, because of abuse or infidelity, others because their hearts and affections have changed. Somewhere along the way, the church realized that people who were divorced were still children of God, and shouldn’t be rejected by the church. The United Methodist Church has begun to officially do the same for our siblings who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, but it took a schism for that to finally happen. Such rule changes are made to be compassionate, and so as not to “get in God’s way” as God is reconciling the world to Godself in Jesus Christ.
Let me make one more thing clear, here: While we are called to participate in this reconciling activity—Paul says in II Corinthians 5 that we are actually “called to the ministry of reconciliation”—it is ultimately GOD’S WORK, and God is doing it! And while we Christians believe it is “God’s rule change” in Christ to reconcile “the world,” we must also recognize that this “Christing” on God’s part most certainly is happening through other world religions. God is too big and too loving to “live” only according to the very narrow rules the church has tried to place on God. I fully believe that God IS in Christ, reconciling the world through Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., etc. And we all KNOW God has been working through Judaism since the earliest days of God’s call to Abraham. I am aware that not all of my Christian friends believe as do I about these things, but should these difference be cause for “enforcing penalties” on each other? Maybe another way of stating the expression, “God’s ways are not our ways” would be, “OUR rules are not GOD’S rules.” This latter phrase has often been used to suggest that God is going to be harder on humanity than we are on ourselves, but instead, maybe it is that WE have “narrowed” the rules to practice a type of religious “queuing.”
Fact is, we in the church are called to herald the Gospel message of grace as widely as possible. People often quote Jesus saying the “way is narrow” that leads to eternal life, but “broad is the path that leads to destruction,” as a way to justify screening who is “eligible” to be saved, and this is probably quite far from what Jesus was saying. In fact, the “narrow way” is God’s “funnel” to bring all parties through God’s grace, that as few may be lost as possible—this is why it is a “narrow way,” and the spout of that “funnel” is Christ. Obviously, we know how “broad” is the path that can lead to personal disaster or ruin, if one chooses to move in that direction. I will never cease to be amazed at how many ways folk seem to find to screw up their lives, or even snuff them out. This saying of Jesus has nothing to do with following specific rules to “get saved.” God’s great rule change truly offers the “Allie, Allie, In Free” reconciliation I mentioned earlier. And as Mr. Wesley would preach and teach, “getting saved” (reconciled to God) is EASY, and is God’s action; LIVING INTO our Christianity is OUR work, and OUR challenge, though we do have the gifts and empowerment of the Holy Spirit to help us, as well as the supportive community of other Christians. I wish I could just say “the church,” here, but not every church has cast itself as a “supportive community.” Many of them have become “referees” of the man-made “rules of salvation,” and like to throw the penalty flag, relentlessly.
Not all rule changes are welcome, nor do they always change the game in ways we appreciate. However, what God has done in Jesus Christ IS a rule change we can live with, and for all eternity. Let us not forget, though, that God’s redeeming work is GOD’S WORK, and we are not free to make new rules as to whom and how it applies. Let us celebrate and widely witness to God’s Divine Commonwealth that is breaking in all around us! Thanks be to God!
Epilogue: As the owner of a MINI Cooper car, I am now part of a fun “cult” of MINI owners that have a set of “rules” we are to follow when we are out and about with our cute little automobiles. If we park somewhere, we are to keep “Rule Number One” in mind—if there is another MINI in the lot, park NEXT to it and take a picture to share on one of the MINI sites on social media! SO, Christians, may I suggest a “Rule Number One” for you on Sundays—Park your carcass next to another Christian in a church! And maybe sharing a photo of you and your fellow worshippers could become a nice witness on social media, too!