Love on the Inside, Love on the Outside
Love on the Inside, Love on the Outside
The setup for today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles was tacked on at the end of last week’s reading from Acts — Peter stayed on some time in Joppa, lodging with a tanner called Simon. A tanner made furs and other clothing from animals’ hides. Aside from the odor, it was possible that some of the animals being used Peter might have seen in his vision of a sail being lowered to him with the invitation to eat, which would have been unclean under the Law of Israel, thus Peter’s protest.
Notice that the circumcised believers don’t criticize Peter for baptizing the uncircumcised Cornelius and his household. That Luke refers to “circumcised believers” seems to imply that even in those earliest days, when Christianity was just a Jewish sect, there were already at least some uncircumcised believers. What Peter is specifically criticized for is eating with Gentiles, presumably food that was considered unclean by Jews, perhaps one of the animals Peter saw being lowered to him.
And contrary to the acceptance we hear at the end of this reading, not all Jewish Christians agreed that adherence to Jewish food laws was no longer necessary for Gentiles to be accepted into the Christian community. Four chapters after today’s reading, we hear of a great council in Jerusalem where it was decided that while circumcision would no longer be necessary for Gentiles, that they should still adhere to the food laws. How else could Gentiles and Jews share Christian fellowship at the table without being able to eat the same food? This was certainly not the last time that Christians have had to balance respect for individual consciences with maintaining unity.
Peter’s defense in this 11th chapter of how he came to break bread with unclean Gentiles is told from his perspective. In ch. 10, Luke the narrator sets the stage for Peter’s vision with Cornelius’s vision of an angel telling him to send for Peter in Joppa, nearly 40 miles down the Mediterranean coast from Cornelius in Caesarea. Peter starts with where he was at the house of Simon the unclean tanner in Joppa. Having read ch. 10, we already know that Cornelius the Centurion accepts the God of Israel as the one and only God. But Peter doesn’t know any of that. He just knows that some strangers have shown up at his door asking him to go visit a Gentile man he’s never seen or heard of. Peter has to trust that at the end of his journey he will find a brother in Christ that he didn’t know he had until God revealed it to him.
Not for the last time have we Christians had to be stretched past our comfort zone to love siblings who had to be revealed to us. But then what do we hear Jesus say today in our Gospel — Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Jesus isn’t saying this in a public arena, with believers, skeptics, and the curious. In fact, John’s Gospel doesn’t include Jesus’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves. He’s speaking in the private upper room to his disciples, saying that the most important thing for them to do is to love each other, with all their imperfections as Jesus, about to be arrested, will love them, and us.
Does that sound exclusive? The community of The Disciple whom Jesus Loved, from whom this Gospel emerged, was likely the first to explicitly assert that Jesus was God. John’s Gospel asserts this co-identification of Jesus and God the Father more clearly than the other three Gospels. But this assertion had led to those Jewish disciples being expelled from their families, their synagogues, from the communities of faith that they had been raised in. They had been excluded for their belief in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God incarnate in human flesh. So, nothing was more important to them than their Christlike love for each other. And frankly, what good is all of our talk about inclusion and diversity if those on the outside looking in cannot say what the pagan Romans said of the first Christians — See how they love each other!?
We must love each other as the crucified Christ loves us, in our joys and hopes, our griefs and anguish, in our agreements and disagreements. To pursue the Church’s mission, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ,” we must maintain that unity of love with each other. And at the same time, we can’t let that circle of love become a fortress wall against those siblings outside these walls whom God wants so much to reveal to us — male, female and anyone in between; black, white and anyone in between; young, old and anyone in between; rich, poor and anyone in between, progressives, conservatives and anyone in between, disabled, non-disabled and anyone in between. Of course, the late Pope Francis may have put it more succinctly: todos, todos, todos (everyone, everyone, everyone).
Love inside, and love outside.
May 18th, 2025
5rd Sunday of Easter
The Rev. David Kendrick