We All Belong
Acts 10:1-35, 44-48
Year B Easter 6
Prayer: Open our hearts, O God, to your presence – to the love and comfort and challenge of your presence.
We’ve already been enjoying and exploring God’s presence in worship today through many different means. We’ve experienced it through music and prayer and confession. And we’ll experience it now through scripture and sermon. But, mind you, God’s presence isn’t something that happens only “up here” in the chancel and pulpit, but also “out there” with all of you. We experience God’s presence when we reflect on our own experience, when we mix and stew and weave and braid our own stories together with music, scripture and sermon.
So let’s take a few minutes before the scripture is read to reflect on and then talk about our own experience. We are going to talk about belonging. Here is the assumption I bring to a conversation about belonging: I begin with the assumption that we have all had times when we knew and felt that we belonged, and that we have all had times when we didn’t. So, what we are about to do might feel a little vulnerable, but, rest assured, we have all had these experiences.
So let’s do this: quietly first (you might want to close your eyes), let’s each think of an experience we have had when we knew that we belonged. What experience comes to your mind? What did it look like? How did it feel? And what about an experience when you were quite sure you did not belong? What did that look and feel like? Was everyone able to come up with 2 situations?
Take 60 seconds and jot down somewhere the words and phrases that come to your mind about each of those experiences.
Now turn to someone next to you and work together to create two lists: one that describes what it is like to belong and one that describes not belonging. Take three minutes to do that.
I did this same exercise not too long ago with another group of people. Let me share what they came up with. First, the “not belonging” list. If you hear something that fits with the general tone of your list, feel free to nod or say “yes” or even “ouch” (whatever comes naturally.)
What does “not belonging” look and feel like?
o I felt different, like an outsider. I was so self-conscious.
o No one talked to me. They ignored me. Was I invisible?
o I felt useless, uptight, uneasy, on-guard, wary.
o I didn’t know the language (spoken and unspoken). There seemed to be rules and jokes that I didn’t know.
o I couldn’t help feeling angry.
o I was an outsider, “A fish out of water.” “These are not my people.”
o I could see that other people belonged, but we didn’t have any shared experience.
o Something must be wrong with me.
Phew! Pretty yucky, eh?
Contrast that with belonging. When you hear something that fits with your list, nod or say “Amen” or “That’s right.”
What does belonging look and feel like?
o It’s safe. I’m cared for. It’s comfortable. I can be myself.
o It’s ok to take risks.
o We have shared vision, values, and practices. We’re in solidarity with each other.
o I’m happy and engaged.
o People can joke at my expense, and I’m ok with it.
o Conflict is ok.
o It’s energizing. Creativity can flow.
o We have shared experiences and memories.
o I can see who doesn’t fit… so I’m able to welcome others.
Now, hold all that. Some of it is painful, and some of it is wonderful. All of it is full of important life experience and perspective that will help us understand more deeply the story in today’s scripture.
Acts 10:1-35, 44-48 is the story of an encounter between two quite different people, Cornelius and Peter. Actually, it is an encounter between two quite different groups of people: between people who are like Cornelius and people who are like Peter.
Peter is Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples. He comes from the Jewish people and, as such, he observes the Jewish Old Testament laws. That would include, for example, laws about food, the kinds of animals one can eat, and the kinds of animals one cannot eat and still belong.
Cornelius, on the other hand, though he certainly belongs some places (he’s a centurion of the Italian cohort) is a Gentile. In other words, he is not a Jew. And because Old Testament law didn’t talk just about food, but about people, Peter is naturally inclined to believe that Cornelius is “different,” yes, and that he really should not associate with Cornelius. I said that Peter is “naturally inclined to believe,” but it is more than that. It would be Peter’s “religious and faith conviction” that he should not associate with Cornelius. So this is an interesting encounter!
o READ ACTS 10:1-35, 44-48.
Peter, a follower of Jesus and a good Jew, comes into this encounter fully convinced that he ought not associate with Cornelius. But then God “messes with him.” God opens up his heart and changes his whole perspective.
There are a couple pivotal moments in the story. One of them is when Cornelius’ people are standing by the gate of the house where Peter is staying. He is “standing by the gate.” Jews were not to let Gentiles into their homes lest they beome religiously unclean. So Cornelius’ people are being respectful; even though they are not Jews, they are respecting the boundary by “standing by the gate.” I find that phrase poignant and painful. Think back to our description of “not belonging.” I imagine Cornelius’ people may have felt some of that. (I wonder if they felt like “unclean animals in a sheet.”)
The other pivotal moment is when the light bulb comes on for Peter. We cannot tell exactly when that is for Peter. Perhaps it is when he invites Cornelius’ people into the house. Perhaps when Peter accepts the invitation to go to Cornelius’ house. Perhaps it is only as he is explaining to Cornelius and his household what has happened: “I truly understand…” [Flash of light?] “I truly understand that the dream I had with all those creepy, crawly, slimy things which God assured me I could eat wasn’t a dream about food at all. It was about people! I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
What is this like? A preaching professor of mine once said that until you have a metaphor, until you can say what it is like, you haven’t really internalized the message. So, what is this like? It’s like a ripple.
This event in the early days of the history of the Christian church is like a ripple. The dream Peter had and the dream Cornelius had and the events that follow is like a pebble being dropped in a pond and rippling out.
Now pebbles create waves, and this one was no exception. But what else do they do? When a pebble drops into a pool of water, it sends out a set of concentric circles and each circle brings more and more into the inside of the ripple. It spreads, reaches, embraces until there is no “outside,” only “inside.” Everything (and everyone) is eventually inside the ripple.
This was a seminal moment for the followers of Jesus, for Peter and the gang. They had to decide whether this church that they were forming and becoming, whether it would be narrow and focused and exclusive or broad and reaching and embracing, a place of belonging for all people. Without this event in the Church’s history – an event that brought Gentiles into the inside – very few of us would belong to the church.
But we do! In spite of how uncomfortable and challenging it had to have been for Peter, he and those who followed after him continued to ruminate and reflect and sort out the meaning of the dream, the meaning of the Holy Spirit falling on those whom they had always considered outside God’s people.
There is a diagram in your bulletin [at the end of this document], two concentric circles segmented up like a pie. So there is an inner circle and an outer circle. We so readily segment our world into the “in” group and the “out” group. For Peter it was Jews who were on the inside, with Gentiles on the outside. Who is it in our time and place? For example,
o Rich are on the inside and poor are on the outside.
Shout out whatever other categories come to your mind.
o White on the inside and Black (or other persons of color) on the outside
o Dutch on the inside and non-Dutch on the outside
o Straight and gay
o Educated and non-educated
o Able-bodied and disabled
o Male and female
o Educated and uneducated
o Young and old
o Thin and heavy
And what about when it comes to our churches?
o The people who like our kind of music
o The ones with the right family configuration
And it can be a lot more subtle than that too. Someone pointed out to me recently that at one church, a visitor who carries his/her Bible with them to worship would look like they belong. At another, it is exactly the opposite. Groups can have a million-and-one rules about what insiders do and what they don’t do.
But here is the good news. “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.” That is what Peter had to learn, and that is what the church has to learn over and over with group after group and person after person who represents difference.
And here is one of the really cool things about our church. There are people here in virtually every category we named just a minute ago. And we all belong. So we get to practice being the Church that God has called us to be. We get to rub shoulders with each other and hear each other’s stories. Like Peter, who was astounded that the Holy Spirit was being poured out on those who were so different from him, we too get to marvel at what God is doing in the lives of sisters and brothers who we come to know here at church!
Think back to the two lists you created with a partner sitting in your pew. Experiences of not belonging are so absolutely painful, and experiences of belonging are so powerful. So let us be gentle with each other. There are times when we fail along the way, but we are practicing. We are practicing at sharing the radical and unconditional love of God. And that, my sisters and brothers, is transformational.
But let’s not practice as an end in itself; let’s practice because we need to learn this skill of reaching, welcoming and embracing; we need to “ripple” with a heart for reaching, welcoming and embracing.
The Heidelberg Catechism (a set of simple questions and answers about faith from our Reformed tradition) begins with this question: What is my only comfort in life and in death? And it answers in this way: My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but I belong. I belong to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.
My friends, we belong. We belong to our faithful savior Jesus Christ. And, not only that, we belong with God’s people. How will we share that sense of belonging with others?
Let’s pray: O God, may we know ever so deep in our beings that we belong. We belong to you. We belong to your church. We belong to each other. May that sense of belonging change us from the inside out, and ripple out to those we meet. Amen.