Sermon for May 18, 2025: Are You What You Eat? based upon Acts 11:1-18

5/20/2025

Acts 11:1-18 Peter’s Report to the Church at Jerusalem
(New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

Now the apostles and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “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. So I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. 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. 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; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 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.’ 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?” 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.”

It is probably not fair, but every time I read this scripture I think of one scene in the movie Mean Girls. The movie is about a girl named Cady to moves to a new high school. She’s been living abroad and feels out of place because she doesn’t understand the culture of her high school. While at first she makes friends with some pretty regular artistic kids, she eventually falls into a group of popular but mean girls whose friend group is called “The Plastics.” The Plastics have developed a rule of behavior that guides whether or not they deem someone worthy to spend time with them. For example, they only wear their hair in ponytails once a week, and they only wear jeans and track pants on Fridays.

Cady ends up getting in some shenanigans that involve pitting the Plastics against one another and some of this comes to a head on a Monday when the most powerful Plastic, Regina George, dares to sit down at lunch while wearing sweatpants. Gretchen and Karen, the less powerful Plastics, who have had Regina use the rules to keep them in line, turnaround and demand that Regina follow them like they have had to. “You’re wearing sweatpants. It’s Monday,” Gretchen says. Karen continues, “So that’s against the rules and you can’t sit with us.” Regina, not used to having the rules she largely made up used against her, argues that they are just made up, but Karen, who has been made to leave the table for breaking them does not buy it. Neither does Gretchen, who screams over the din of the cafeteria, “You can’t sit with us!” That’s the thing about rules. They can be used for good things. Or, they can be used for bad things. The people who make rules up for bad things almost never think those rules will be turned back on them.

I want to be clear: the religious rules that are being discussed in today’s reading are pretty different than rules that the Plastics made up. The Plastics made up rules to give Regina power in their social hierarchy. Jewish religious laws were ethical principles that bound a community together, demonstrating their commitment to God and helping to provide social cohesion for ethnic group that was often trying to remain intact in the face of attacks from more powerful empires. Sometimes rules help you figure out how to be one people together. If someone breaks those kinds of rules, it can feel like a threat to a whole group of people.

My friend and colleague Rev. Dr. Tijuana Gray, when writing about today’s scripture, points out that “The believers at the church in Jerusalem want to do the right thing. They want to follow Jesus. They also want to honor their traditions, namely the distinction between the circumcised and the uncircumcised.” This is one of the rules Jesus and his first apostles all followed. They were Jewish and he was Jewish, and they all had gone through the ritual of circumcision. Even when more people than just the first twelve began to follow Jesus, they were still generally Jewish. At this time, there isn’t yet a distinct religion called Christianity. When most people who follow Jesus are Jewish and following Jewish laws, it begs the question: must someone follow Jewish religious rules to follow Jesus? This starts with a question about spending time with uncircumcised men. But, it leads to questions about other religious rules.

As Dr. Gray notes, “the message of Jesus was spreading beyond the Jewish community. To strangers. To outsiders. People who did not follow or even know the Jewish customs. That could be a little unsettling. A little scary.” It makes sense that those who had followed Jesus longer and who also followed Jewish religious law, would ask Peter, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” You don’t spend time eating with people who don’t share your allegiance to your religious laws! Or, if you do, you have to have a good reason. Dr. Gray wonders and I’m inclined to agree that even though the text says they “criticized” Peter, is it possible that there was also some curiosity there along with a little nervousness. Peter was, after all, the chosen one, the rock that the church would be built on. Gray points out that “he wasn’t leading the way that they thought he should.” So, what was he trying to do? And should that change what they were trying to do to follow Jesus.

Jesus often opted to share a story rather than give a direct answer. Peter seems to follow in his footsteps here. He describes a vision he had when he was in Joppa, the home of Dorcas:
“I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. - all things that were forbidden to eat under the law, and yet - I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’” Remember, as I said, Jewish religious law covered (and continues to cover) many aspects of life, including ethical eating. Some foods are simply off limits. The rules have been ingrained in him, and there is no way Peter would dare to eat these things. “’By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’” Peter knows what he is supposed to do and what he shouldn’t. And, he knows he shouldn’t eat those animals. God is gracious. God answers from heaven, “‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’” This interaction is repeated three times:

Eat that.
No, it’s not allowed.
That food is ok to eat.

Dr. Gray says, “Sometimes we need the message repeated before we learn the lesson. And then we may need to live it out, to feel the truth of it, before we really get it. Some of those lessons, we have to learn over and over.” Even if we’re Peter, the one Christ called the Rock. In this case, the lesson he needed to learn was that purpose of religious laws was to foster connection and to build a life around honoring God. In the course of this vision, he learned that he could do both of those things in a new way.

From what I understand from historians, it can be challenging to figure out when “following Jesus” became something distinct from being Jewish. I think you can make a solid argument that the moment that Peter received a revelation from God concerning food traditions is the moment that Christianity begins to branch away from Judaism. Paul would also be led to understand that it was not necessary to be Jewish to follow Jesus, and that Jewish and Gentile believers could be one body of Christ in fellowship with one another.

What does that mean for us modern inheritors of their traditions? I hope that we can look at Peter’s example and see someone who is willing to have his ideas about who is able to be included in Christian community changed by the calling of the Spirit. As Mitzi Smith notes in her commentary on this text, the interaction between the faithful in Jerusalem and Peter is a response to the conversion of Gentile believers, particularly Cornelus, a centurion. Peter could have chosen not to baptize him because he wasn’t adhering to the same religious laws. But, God helped him see that Cornelius and the other Gentiles had a heart for Jesus’ message and were willing to be moved by it to live differently. Peter realized that the Spirit can surprise and invite us to build relationships that we once thought were impossible.

The Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber shares a story, I believe in her book Pastrix, about a change that started happening in the gritty little artsy Lutheran church she helped found in Colorado. It started with a bunch of folks who had often found themselves on the outside of mainstream Christianity- they were LGBTQ folks who had been forced out of other churches, people in recovery from addiction, artists, impoverished folks, and people with more than a few tattoos. Once their broad welcome and generous church spirit became known, some other people started showing up... respectable people. People with regular jobs and very few tattoos or body piercings. She calls them “normies.” The church actually ended up having to do some real soul-searching when people who they didn’t expect to show up did and wanted to be a part of what they were doing!

Perhaps this a lesson for us today that the church must continually be open to the Spirit reminding the church that the definitions of “us vs them” that we are clinging to can always be upset by one vision that comes at just the right time. The boundaries that can be of use in one time and place may prevent us from developing faithful relations in another. May we never be so certain that we know which “them” to exclude from “us” that we miss out on the relationship Christ is calling us to. May we never find ourselves yelling “You can’t sit with us,” when we could be saying “God gave them the same gift that he gave us.”

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Rev. Dr. Tijuana Gray shared a sermon with me that she wrote on this scripture. It was very helpful!
What are the Mean Girls Rules?