PS

This post is tacked on to the one below. As I work with this passage from Acts, I'm feeling led in a direction that I don't really want to go with the sermon, because I'm afraid it will distance me or separate me from most of the congregation. However, the tug in me is strong enough that I think I'll go that way anyway. Here's the title I'm thinking of "An Apologetic: Why I'm a Liberal." If you'd be willing to comment or email me, how do you respond to that title and how do you think it is related to the passage from Acts below? My email is ejohnson@communityreformedchurch.org.

May 6

John 13:31-35
31 When he was gone, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
33 "My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Acts 11:1-18
1 The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3 and said, "You went into the house of the uncircumcised and ate with them."
4 Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: 5 "I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, 'Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.'
8 "I replied, 'Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.'
9 "The voice spoke from heaven a second time, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.' 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
11 "Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man's house. 13 He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, 'Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14 He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.'
15 "As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 17 So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God's way?"
18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life."

The scripture from Acts demonstrates that one of the realities of God’s new relationship to us after the life, death and resurrection of Christ is a new openness. Until now, the Gentiles were not just considered different or outsiders, they were actually considered unclean, sinful by their very nature and they were dangerous because they could make God’s people sinful by association. Jesus demonstrated in his living and associating with the ‘wrong people’ that God’s followers had gotten that approach to people all wrong. Peter was God’s chosen instrument to show the first followers of Christ that openness and acceptance were central to the message of Jesus and the new church in ways that amazed even them. Do you believe this is still central to Christianity and if so, who are today’s ‘Gentiles’ who God might welcome into the church even if we are inclined to avoid them or consider them too sinful or too dangerous to our own purity?