Loving those Outside the
Boundaries
Acts 10:34-43
We live in a world and a time that establishes boundaries, builds fences and gated communities, and creates fraternities and sororities and clubs. The result of this human tendency is an illusion of security. But, as a point of fact, we limit the desired universal love of the creator.
The motive behind our attempt to establish boundaries is to claim some sense of security in a very insecure world, to hold on to some dimension of identify in the confusion of a diverse society, to seize peace in a very violent world, but the Christian faith cuts right across this human tendency, and ultimately such attempts to build these human fences will be futile. Our only security and our ultimate peace is to be found in God and God alone and in the unity of all of God's People.
The Apostle Peter's sermon delivered in Cornelius' house is one of the earliest recorded sermons after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It could have been voiced as early as 50 AD. But whenever it was preached is not the important issue but the fact that in the opening volley the preacher starts by saying that God shows no partiality. God doesn't value one person, or church or religion or race more valuable than another.
Cornelius was a Roman centurion stationed at Palestinian Caesarea and he was one of the first non-Jews to embrace the gospel. God gave visions to Cornelius and Peter to set the stage for their meeting and to show Peter that the Gentiles are included in God's plan of salvation and hope for oneness of all of humanity. Peter would be called back to Jerusalem, to headquarters by James and John, to explain this unusual extension of the faith beyond the Jewish community. Thank heavens Peter's position prevailed.
So Peter says: "God shows no partiality". Translated literally, this means that God accepts from every nation and every religion those whose manner of life is devout even though they live outside the boundaries of Israel.
"Those who are outside the boundaries are included” that’s the key to understanding the Incarnation-God in the human flesh of Jesus. Jesus was born to save all, not a select few, but all. Not Jews only, but also Gentiles. Not persons of one race, but all races. Not persons of one culture, but persons of all cultures.
We have trouble seeing God's love for others, who are outside the boundaries of our denomination or political party or race or socio-economic class, but Christ is Lord Of All He Is Not Lord At All.
The problem we have with this truth is that it is difficult for us to not believe that God is partial to us. Especially those of us who are the "babies” in the family. Surely God likes us best. After all, anybody in their right mind would speak English, be an American citizen, live on the Gulf Coast, be a middle class Methodist, and be either a Seminole or Gator or at worst a Hurricane fan. Isn't it that simple? Well the truth is, no, it is not!
Part of our human sinfulness and shortsightedness is that we have been guilty of making surface judgments about people we don't know. Religious nuts! Racial Bigots! And the great sin is not only that we pass up the opportunity to know another person, but that we come to look at others with what Thomas Merton has called "unmitigated arrogance."
We see this in every group's attitudes towards others:
The atheist regards the Christian with unmitigated arrogance: "I know the truth and you don't".
Many Christians regard the Jews in the same way: "Jesus is the only way." "I know the truth and you don't and you'll get what you deserve."
Here we live in the 21st Century and Black and White is still a division in most of the minds of the citizens of America.
Our world is in serious trouble and our elected officials in Congress vote "party line" on most issues. Our state is rated 44th out of 50 in the amount of the percent of monies we invest in the education of the next generation, and our elected leadership will vote party line on what's of value in our state. Rather than trying to work with one another, we have this "unmitigated arrogance". "Unmitigated arrogance” caused the almost complete destruction of the Indian cultures of America:
In the north, the Puritans felt they had a divine mandate to exterminate godless savages.
In the lands of North West Florida, the Choctaw Indians were gathered up and Alexander Talley, the first minister of this church, traveled with them on the trail of tears to the dusty, barren lands of the west.
In South America, Indians were regarded by Christian Europeans as those "who had no souls," and felt they were carrying out God's will to exterminate these Godless natives.
Our divisions are an abomination to God: Indians/European, Black/White, Jew/Palestinian, East/West, Muslin/Christian, Protestant/Catholic, North/South, Conservative/Liberal, Republican/Democratic. All artificial, human constructs of a shortsighted vision.
Look beyond the boundaries. Look beyond the gates of your compound. Look beyond your opinions and your prejudices. Look Beyond. Division by any name limits, distorts, and further promotes judgementalness and an unmitigated arrogance. And I don't believe that ultimately, God will have any part of these our human constructs. There is a longing from the abyss for the mystery for peace, for unity, for respect, for oneness in all the earth. Where humanity went terribly wrong was in its inability to look for the Christ potentially present in others.
The Apostle Peter, in this his earliest sermon, voices this recognition that God sees all alike. "God shows, he says: No partiality among peoples." That's incarnation. That's God in human flesh, regardless of your race, or face, or religion, philosophy, sex, or nationality.
The early Church fathers-Clement of Alexandria, Justin and Origin, looked for the words of Incarnation in the Greek philosophers of Heraclites and Socrates. They taught that while God has given himself to the Jews through the law and the prophets, God had also spoken to the Gentiles through their philosophers. They believed fully that God has witnesses everywhere.
This insight was abandoned and forgotten in the so called Dark Ages when the church stopped even trying to enter into dialogue with other civilizations and cultures. The Crusades was but a selfish attempt to reclaim the Holy Land and to exterminate the Muslin people. Then the divisions of the Reformation further drew lines between Christian believers. And later in America the Ku Klux Klan and Black Racist groups were but indicative of this inevitable tendency.
Today we look back to Peter's early sermon and realize that in the beginning of our movement, God was trying to encourage the realization of the implications of the Incarnation, by encouraging the early believers to appreciate the fact of God's Universal Love, God’s love extends even to those who were outside the boundaries of the religion and culture in which Christ was born. Many Biblical writers have observed the implications of the Wise Men who came from different races and nations to the birth of Jesus as one of the earliest indications of God saying, "If God is not Lord of all, then God is not Lord at all."
Sure God speaks through the laws on Sinai, through the prophets of Israel, and the words of Jesus, but also in the life and voice of the stranger who lives beyond our superficial boundaries.
If we cannot see God in the stranger, we will soon lose sight of God in the Church. We must find God even in our enemy, or we will soon lose God in our friend. Christianity is not merely a doctrine or a system of beliefs, it is Christ living in all-in us, in others, uniting us, healing us, perfecting us by his universal love.
God loves us, and it has nothing to do with our worth, or our race, or our beliefs, or our being lovable, or our citizenship. Not even the fortunate fact that I was born in Marengo County. It has nothing to do with any of these superficial, artificial divisions of humanity. It has everything to do with God. Love is God's nature and will. God is love.
I call upon us in this new year to work for God's desired unity.
First, to work for this unity and in little ways to reach out to the strangers.
Secondly, to pray for, as Jesus prayed, "That they may all be one"
Thirdly, to do all within our human reach, to never again participate in anything that is divisive, judgmental, and destructive.
God once created us as one family in a garden, there will one day come the time when there will be no more strangers in any strange land, but members of one family in the Earth's Garden.