"Let Things Pass" April 24, 2016

John 13:31-35 Acts 11:1-18 I Corinthians 13 Life is not fair, life is not equal. The point is not to live the Golden Rule related to others, but to love because Christ loves us and to let everything else pass. The same Paul whom we have been reading the last several weeks in Acts, whose mission was to bring Christ to those like us who had not previously been Jewish, wrote to the Church he pastored at Corinth, words which we most often read at Weddings. Paul's instruction to the Church has nothing to do with Weddings, or Romantic Love. Paul recognized we each come to God from our passions; To the Educated and Charismatic Christian, if I speak poetry/ angelic tongues, but have not love, I am as brass; To the Mystic Christian, if I have faith to move mountains, but have not love, nothing is changed; To the Social Gospel Activist, if I give away all I have, even my body, but have not love, I am nothing. Because Prophecy will pass. Tongues will pass. Knowledge will pass. For our knowledge is imperfect, prophecy is imperfect, and when the Perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. The problem being that we are unwilling to let controversies pass, to live differently, to live Under the Love rather than continuing to live Under the Law. In Judaism there were 613 Laws, governing what you could and could not eat, what you could and could not do, when and how. All the world throughout time, found it impossible to adhere to every iota of every law. The last words of Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper were that he gave them a New Commandment, not a 614th Law but one instead of all the rest: that we love one another as Christ has loved us. What a great offer, instead of all the 613 different laws, some as intimate and life changing as circumcision, with prohibition against tattoos and piercings; others as communal as whether you can enter the house of a non-Jew, or eat with a non-Jew, or eat without ceremonially washing your hands; if instead we simply need to love one another as Christ loves us. In the first four hundred years of Christianity, there began divisions in the church over how to explain the Trinity and the Nature of Christ. Over Icons and whether we could make images of God, and whether those who renounced their faith could be forgiven, over Free Will and God's Plan. Today, over abortion, euthanasia, sexual orientation, race, denominations, etc. This polarization seems the very antithesis of Jesus command to love one another. The point is not that these controversies are irrelevant. We are called to love as Jesus loves us. St. Augustine described Jesus love in two ways. First that Jesus radically individualized his affection of others. Instead of Not seeing the trees for the forest, Jesus never failed to focus on the particular, the individual affected by leprosy, by blindness, the child, the woman bent over. He demonstrated love for each and every one. But also, according to Augustine, Jesus loved all as he loved each one. It was not that this one was an isolated case, or that one was more forgivable than another, but a universal love for every person in every circumstance. Karl Barth was a Swiss Theologian wrote 14 Volumes on Church Dogmatics following WWI, and Karl Barth happened to be our own Karlene Miller's Grandfather. We were born as humans, but called to ultimately become more. Barth articulated that “Jesus is our species.” Jesus never would have given us this command if it were not possible for us to love one another as He loves us, yet how very few have tried. CS Lewis explained that there are two kinds of love. There is the love most of us experience, “a need love.” When we as humans say “I love you” what we really mean is I need you, I want you. You have a value that I desire to possess, no matter the consequence to you. Need love is born out of emptiness and a coveting to be filled. Need love is circular, reaching out to the beloved in order to draw back some value to our self. Need love sucks the marrow out of the other, because of how the person feels when in relationship to the other. In contrast, is grace, or a gift love. Gift love overflows like a bountiful artesian well, that shares because there is plenty and the other has need. Gift love, instead of drawing back value to itself, is an arc, moving out to bless and to increase rather than to acquire. According to Lewis, “what we are created in the image of, is not two feet or two hands, or a long white beard, we are created in the image of everlasting unconditional grace and love.” Paul Tillich, one of the great 1950s-60s Theologians explained this passage focusing on the reality that from Jesus this was a Command, yet how can you be commanded to love? A Command feels hierarchical, coming top-down, I give my dog a command to sit and she does; whereas Love bubbles up between people. Tillich identified this as “theonomy” that what Jesus commands resonates with our innermost longing, our internal experience of what we know is right, and having been unconditionally loved, we respond to others with love. One of the difficulties we have with is Faith in the immediacy of the here and now, rather than perspective. When the disciples saw a man born blind, their question was “So who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” To which Jesus responds “Neither, but to grant an opportunity for God to be glorified.” It is impossible for us in the here and now, to see God's presence in horrific tragedy, but routinely there are occasions where God uses the horrific to bring about a greater good, a love impossible, unless we let things pass. In the 21st Century in the comforts of North America, it is difficult for us to comprehend the circumstance and significance of Peter with Cornelius. In the last 60 years, the American Medical Association has repeatedly reversed itself on the need for and abuse of practicing circumcision. The issue in Acts is more than biology. Simon Peter has become the leader among the apostles, he is before the creation of the institution, the first Pope, and here Peter is being called on the carpet for what he has done, much as the behind the scenes authority struggles of Pope Frances today. The importance of the circumstance are hard for us to grasp, Peter left Joppa, and went into the house of Cornelius, which simply entering would have been a cultural violation that he might come out as a Barbarian. Peter ate a meal with the occupants. Peter extended to these non-Jews the blessings and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Imagine offering Communion and the rites and responsibilities of Church Membership today to one who was never Baptized, who never confessed the name of Jesus Christ. Peter explained, this did not simply happen, this was a Calling. He had been abiding in the house of Simon the Tanner. As we named last week, Simon, though Jewish, would have been socially, religiously, unclean. On the roof of the home of Simon the Tanner, Peter has the dream of a Great Sheet being lowered from heaven. Recognize, this is not Saul, who had been a zealot converted from one extreme to be a missionary for Christ. This is Simon whom Jesus renamed Peter. This Peter had been circumcised as a child, had grown up in a Jewish household and been Bar-mitzvah-ed, this Peter who had kept a Kosher home all his life, who in one of the first miracles had invited Jesus to his home and Jesus had healed Peter's Mother-in-law who had then fed Jesus at their table. This Peter had been one of Jesus' disciples, Peter who had been in Jesus' inner circle with James and John, who had witnessed Jesus Transfiguration, Peter, James and John who had been invited to pray with Jesus in the Garden at Gethsemane, Peter who denied Jesus three times that night, and after the resurrection was asked by Jesus three times to love and feed Christ's sheep. To keep Kosher, is to distinguish between Clean and Unclean. Shellfish, lobsters, snails, snakes, turtles and carnivorous birds were not Clean, not Kosher. Animals with a toe, like we possess, monkeys and pigs and horses, you would not eat. But even more, according to the Law, to keep yourself pure and Holy For God, you would never cook meat and dairy together, because of a Law in Leviticus that you would not cook a lamb in its mother's milk. To insure this, you would have different pots and pans, and plates and utensils for dairy than for meat, that the two would never touch. All of this, Circumcision, and Kosher Laws, Levitical Laws adhered to, in order to keep you separate for God, because being set aside for God is the very definition of being “Holy.” Yet, I imagine what Peter was pondering on the roof, is how often what we do to keep ourselves HOLY FOR GOD, may Keep us FROM God! And three times a great sheet is lowered from heaven, inside of which is every kind of creature, clean and unclean, and a voice proclaiming “Kill and eat.” What a terrifying nightmare for Simon Peter, yet when he refuses, the voice responds “What God has declared as Good, you shall not call unclean.” When suddenly there is a knock at the door, and request to come. Where he is presented to Cornelius and his household who all pray devoutly to God and are praising Jesus Christ. Making this applicable for us today... Tensions between Christians and Jews has been problematic throughout our history. During WWII, the Holocaust, in Hebrew The Shoah, was the planned systematic extermination of all European Jews undertaken by the Nazi Government, with knowledge of the Catholic Church. On the first Sunday of lent in the year 2000, Pope John Paul II made an unprecedented trip to Jerusalem, where he visited the Wailing Wall, the Western ruins of the wall of Solomon's Temple, a sacred site to Judaism. Pope John Paul II publicly prayed at the Wall for forgiveness for all the sins Christians had committed against Jews, naming Shoah, Holocaust as “Calvary (the place of Crucifixion) for the 20th Century.” Faith, Hope, Love all are eternal. But the greatest of these is Love. Jesus at Table commanded us to love one another as we have been loved.