Do I Know You

Text: Acts 11:1-18 Other texts: John 13:31-35

What God has made clean, you must not call profane. Three times God says it. Three times God warns Peter in a vision. Three times Peter shows his reluctance to trust in God’s judgment. Three times God overrules him. What God has made clean, you must not call profane. What I, God, have said is clean, you, Peter, must not deny. If God has made it clean, then who are we, as Peter asks, to hinder God? You must not—you are prohibited from—calling profane what God has announced to be good.

This is a command, not advice. God is not giving Peter permission to accept the gentiles into the ministry of Jesus (as we’ll talk about in a moment). The voice from heaven is not merely giving Peter an OK to minister to the gentiles. To Peter, these gentile people are strange and foreign. Those who heard about Peter eating with the gentiles would have been disgusted. It would have been viscerally disturbing. This is not advice. Rather, this is an order. Peter must minister to those whom he might fear and despise.

It is not our prerogative to choose whom to favor and whom to detest. It is God, not us, who decides. It is certainly not in our power or charter to constrain God. It is not for us to second-guess God’s blessings.

What God has made clean, you must not call profane.

We can interpret this story in Acts narrowly. We can see it as one of a series of episodes that document the discussions of the fledgling church with itself. Should the Jesus movement continue for Jews only—as it began—or for gentiles (non-Jews) also? And since gentiles were in fact already being included, did they have to become Jews first? So Peter tells of a vision that argues for the inclusion of gentiles as-is, without the need for their conversion. In the vision, Peter is instructed to eat the food that he, a Jew, would find hard to swallow, but God tells him: go ahead. God accepts the gentiles as they are; it is not up to Peter—and more to the point, the leaders in Jerusalem—to deny them. Peter closes his argument with the question: who was I (and by implication, who are you leaders) that could hinder God? The debate ends on that note. In Peter’s favor.

We could consider this story to be an historical tale, and interpret ourselves right out of it. Or, we could interpret it to be a story of the church’s first working out of the commandment that Jesus gave his disciples in the passage we just heard in John.

What God has made clean, you must not call profane.

In the passage from John, Jesus is preparing his disciples for life without him. “I am with you only a little longer,” he tells them, “where I am going, you cannot come.” They will remain here. But their ministry to the world will not stop. It has just begun. What shall they do? How shall they behave? Here is how: “I give you a new commandment,” he says. Love one another. Love one another just as I have loved you.

This is much more than a tip for living a good life. This is much more than a teaching by Jesus about how to behave. It is a blueprint for a Christian life. It is a requirement. Loving one another as Jesus has loved his disciples becomes a definition of a follower of Jesus. In this way, it is a criterion for making decisions, a gauge for judging actions. Are we serving others selflessly (which is what this kind of love is)?

This command of Jesus makes loving God and loving others identical. Subsets of each other. You cannot serve God and not serve others. When you serve others, you serve God. To serve God means to serve others even before you serve yourself. To love one another as Jesus loved us is to love others more even than we love ourselves.

Our beliefs, our theology, even our praise and worship promote this end. They are not ends in themselves. They remind us of our creator; we remember to be humble and not so proud. We are given courage in the face of fear. We are moved to see all people as our brothers and sisters. We are freed to love one another as Jesus loves us.

What God has made clean, you must not call profane.

This story in John appears between two predictions of betrayal by his followers. Just before, Jesus told his disciples that someone will hand him over to the authorities to be executed, and Judas—the one of whom he speaks—sneaks off to prepare to betray Jesus. And just after the passage, Jesus will tell Peter three times that Peter will disown him.

We are called to love not only the easy but also the difficult—those whom we like, our benefactors and admirers, but also our betrayers and disowners. It is not for us to choose whom to love. Jesus does not qualify his command, only except by the provision that if we want a model, we are instructed to use Jesus. This man who forgave his executioners.

On the one hand, we have plenty of reasons not to love all others. We are often inclined—more, we are often compelled—to hate others, to seek revenge, to act in fear. We are inclined to be indifferent to others whom we do not know—strangers on the street or in strange lands. To stand back.

On the other hand, we do know how to do this. We help neighbors whom we do not know. We feed people who are hungry. We visit prisoners. We rush into danger to save the wounded and offer grieving visitors our homes. We have a whole system of care-givers who try to protect and mend all who come in need.

What Jesus commands is not that we do something ridiculously hard. What he asks is that we distrust our preconceptions, our traditions, our instincts—and our notions of what is disgusting or abhorrent—when we act toward others in the world.

It does not particularly matter how we feel or what we believe. It does matter what we do. By this—by what you do—everyone will know you are disciples of Jesus. Loving one another is a hallmark of being Christian. Will the world know by your actions that you follow Jesus? Our actions indicate to the world what it means to follow Christ.

I give you a new commandment, Jesus says. Love one another. We are rarely changed by theological arguments—that’s why Peter tells a story instead—or sermons preached. We are changed by the doing of it. That’s why this is a command, not a teaching. It is as compelling as the command to “go and baptize” or the command to “do this in remembrance of me.”

It is a means of and a sign of grace. To follow it can change the world and it will change us.