Sheetz...

 

“Sheetz”

 

Acts 11:1-18
11:1 Now the apostles and the believers 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."

 

There is something comforting about seeing a Sheetz store. I have one of their gasoline discount cards, so that means a few cents off on gas, which, with its current price, is better than nothing. Sheetz stores also usually have large, clean restrooms, a boon to any traveler. Their coffee is pretty good, their “MTO” food OK, and the selection of other drinks, slushies, donuts, and other foods you should definitely not have is exquisite! Of course, they are a somewhat regional treat, with what one newspaper reporter called the “Sheetz/Wawa line” almost bisecting the State of PA. I’m not the only one who gets a bit jazzed over a Sheetz store. Years ago, when Sheetz was just expanding beyond their home turf of Altoona, one came to Franklin, PA, where my office (from a prior career to ministry) was. I didn’t know much about them, but an intern who came to work with our program that Fall almost lost his mind when he saw our new Sheetz store, exclaiming, “AHHHH, SHEETZ!!!” Turns out he pretty much lived at one of these places that was near his college. After all, they had cheap coffee, lots of sugar, and two hotdogs for 99 cents, at the time. What college student wouldn’t like that? My brother-in-law owns his own industrial electrical business, and he did a lot of work for Sheetz during their hectic expansion phase a few years ago. He couldn’t speak highly enough of how he was treated by the company, and how generous and kind the Sheetz brothers had been to him. I remember when he first told us about their “newer” stores he was helping design that would have so many “full service” features, it seemed like a pipe dream. And then they began to show up, and they were, indeed, a convenience store version of the New Jerusalem. 

 

This sermon is not a commercial for Sheetz, though. “Sheetz” is just the first thing that came to mind when I was writing commentary for today’s Acts text. Like the convenience store, what we read should be comforting to all travelers on the journey of faith! Of course, there could be some other parallels…

 

The story picks up in verse one, where Peter is being “called on the carpet” for hanging out with the “uncircumcised.” This was a collective code-word for pretty much anyone not of your faith “caste,” or those you don’t ever want to sit beside in church. Yes, it had its roots in Judaism, and the law that males of that tradition were circumcised on the eighth day after their birth, but it was a code word a bit more “polite” than “Gentile.” Calling others “Gentile” or “Goy” wasn’t exactly “politically correct” at a time when the “love of Christ” was supposed to be the driving force behind evangelism efforts, but the fact was that many of the earliest Christian converts either had been Jewish, or were trying to “straddle the fence” between the two faiths. This may sound irresolute or even fickle, but given the hundreds of years of Jewish tradition, is it any wonder these early Christ-followers had a hard time “substituting” their new faith for one with such a profound history? Of course, we don’t have ANY issues today with coded words used to partition off folk from “castes” that aren’t part of the dominant or “desired” cultural pedigrees, nor do we have any religious traditions that anchor us to a past that cuts off our future to spite our face, do we? (Sorry, I’m being sarcastic…)

 

But Peter had a vision as his defense—the “great sheet” lowered down from heaven! Lots of “freedoms” were being signaled by the Divine in this vision. First of all, we have the “forbidden” animals in the great sheet, and the Divine voice tells Peter, “Kill and eat.” Basically, this was a vision that totally dismantled the Jewish dietary laws, of which there were many. My dietitian/spouse has taught me over the years that, while most of the Hebrew Bible dietary laws were “commanded” by God as a way to honor and obey God (doctrines), they were most likely God’s way of keeping his people from dying prematurely from food-born illness. The animals God tells the Jews to refrain from eating were the ones that typically bore parasites. If these foods were not cooked adequately, these parasites could launch a fatal assault on the human body, especially against children and the elderly. Given that the whole “Passover” thing was about getting your butt out of Egypt ASAP, such that they couldn’t even let the bread rise, it is a safe assumption that careful cooking of parasite-bearing meat was not going to happen. And on the journey in the wilderness, likewise. There were other dietary restrictions in the ancient law code, such as “don’t eat meat with milk” (red meat and dairy). Red meat had necessary nutrients such as iron, but if combined with the fats and enzymes in dairy (“milk”), the body did not absorb enough of the iron available. Now one can ask, is this a sure sign that the Divine “voice” was at work, protecting God’s people? Or if you are more of a skeptic, might the religious leaders that penned this stuff have been more “closet scientists” than we know of? (Please don’t go to that “Maybe it was aliens?” argument, or I’ll scream!) Because Christians were now being opened to new dietary freedoms, it did later precipitate arguments about what “meat” one could eat, and in front of whom, such as we see in Corinth, and Paul will later have to address stuff like “weaker vessels” and “not causing a sibling in Christ to stumble.” 

 

Why was this revelation lowered down on a “sheet,” something usually associated with bedding? It may be a stretch, but I believe this could also be a Divine commentary on the “freedom of the marriage bed.” In the time the church was born into, the husband “owned” his wife, and whatever sexual expression happened in the relationship was totally under hiscontrol. Could this “sheet” vision be signaling both that women were now to be empowered in the life of the newly-birthed church? And could even the sexual love expressed in a covenantal relationship now be a shared and mutual experience? Paul’s later teachings and writings about the matter sure seem to say this. Some of the Bible’s language about the “husband loving the wife like Christ loves the church” and the wife “submitting to the husband” and “offering herself to him” are certainly moving in this direction, though in a “first century,” primitive kind of a way. Still, when you realize how “barbaric” and male-centered sexual power and expression was in that century, it is clear that the advent of the love of Christ and his church was bringing a whole new perspective on marriage and sex! (I’ll not go into the argument that this may have even included same-sex, intimate relationships, but it is one that can be made, both from scripture and church history.)

 

The central truth of the “great sheet” vision is that, like the modern convenience store, God was proclaiming the church “open for business” for ALL people. Boundaries, laws, and religious traditions were being discarded and a whole pile of new freedoms were being “lowered to earth” in Peter’s vision. This most certainly included the “gentile” or non-Jewish world. Peter initially rebukes the voice of God (not a new thing for him), saying that “nothing unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But when the voice of God in the vision responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane,” Peter gets on board. For those Peter fans out there, sound familiar? He often over reacted, kind of like John the Baptist when he said he was “unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandals.” Remember when Peter at first refused to let Jesus wash his feet at the Passover gathering, and Jesus rebuked HIM? Here’s the dialogue from John 13:

 

⁸ “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

⁹ “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

¹⁰ Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. 

Peter’s impetuousness is so human and so “us,” isn’t it? We should be thrilled that Jesus offers us all so much grace!

 

Three important points about this story we should not forget:

 

1.    The vision happens THREE TIMES. This was the sign of a “credible witness,” legally, in that day, meaning it would “stand up in court. When a man decided to divorce his wife in Mid-Eastern tradition, he would say to the wife, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.” And that made it legal and final. By the way, this is why Jesus spoke out against divorce the way he did—it was an unjust system in his day, fully favoring the man. The woman divorced in this manner was required to leave the home along with her children. They effectively became homeless. When the Bible speaks of “widows and orphans,” it is not necessarily talking of women whose husbands had died or children whose parents were deceased. “Widows and orphans” would also apply to women and their children who were “divorced by a husband who had tired of them and legally threw them out.

 

2.    Cornelius and his “whole household” were saved by the message Peter shared. It was a message of freedom, a message of their inclusion in the Christian body, and a message of openness to people of all cultures, nations, and races. Remember, “Gentile” was a code for the “undesirables” in that day. Christ ALSO CAME for the “undesirables,” and if you take the gospels seriously, he even seemed to favor them.

 

3.    In Acts 11:17, Peter gives the other Christian leaders this apologetic: 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? It is more than a testimony, it is an argument that the OTHER leaders may be guilty of vexing God and the work of God’s Spirit if they were to hinder this new outreach to the world beyond the only religious tradition they knew, to this point. Peter punctuates the lesson further, proclaiming: Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.

 

Even in our time, there lingers this nasty habit of believers wanting to “limit” or “control” who ELSE may adopt our Christian faith. Why is this? Are we trying to keep the club “exclusive”? Are we subconsciously attempting to screen out those with whom we would rather not sit with in church? (Maybe a lot more “consciously” than we care to admit?) Are we using terms like “purity,” “holiness,” and “righteous” as code words to mean “people like me”? The answer is probably “yes” to these questions, but there is another element at work here, and it is the sinful belief that the resources of God are limited. If all of these other people (“Gentiles”) get what God is offering, there will be less for me and my family. When we look around the universe, or listen to the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, I just don’t see where we get this? And this compression of compassion is not exclusive to God’s grace, either. Politically, there is such a temptation to see all resources as “scarce,” and to limit what we do for “the poor” because it will come out of our own coffers (tax dollars). The Christian is called to believe that God’s resources—of both grace AND provision—are unlimited, and that if we help “the least of these,” God will more than adequately take care of us, too. Friends, this sheet of Peter’s was HUGE! And it was overflowing with abundance!

 

Maybe it’s time that we study the Bible with a new prejudice—namely that God wants to “supply all our needs in Christ Jesus,” and ALL means ALL. This means ALL our needs, and ALL the needs of our neighbor, and ALL the needs of those who don’t look like us, live like us, or act like us—you know, the types we may not want to sit beside in church!

 

The next time you go into one of those “Taj Mahal” Sheetz stores, look around. Notice how many needs of yours they are trying to meet, and especially notice the many things they stock or offer because they want to “bless” you beyond just what you “need.” It’s time for the church to adopt this model, and that is precisely what Peter’s “SHEETS” vision is all about. What is wrong with believing that “we can do all things through Christ who strengthens (supplies) us”? May we do a 180 from “hindering” the work of God to engaging in it, in the name of the LOVE of our Savior, Jesus Christ! Amen!