Making a Christian Decision (May 5)

Readings, 1 John 5:1-5, Acts 10:44-48, and John 15:9-17
Image, St John the Apostle Leaning on Christ’s Breast (1310) Bode-Museum, Artist unknown.

Today’s reading from Acts is a lynchpin of the New Testament. Peter has been led by the Spirit to the house of Cornelius; a god-fearing Gentile. At the house, he and his fellow circumcised believers are astounded to see that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. Seeing this, Peter asks, Can anyone withhold the water for baptising these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
 
If that question sounds familiar it might be because last week we heard the Ethiopian eunuch ask Philip, Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptised? Last week, when we considered this question, we focused on Philip’s personal doubts. But there were larger factors that could have prevented the baptism, just as there are for Peter standing in the house of gentiles.
 
Let’s start with what might have prevented Philip. Deuteronomy 23 forbids the castrated or mutilated (as the eunuch would have been considered) to be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Similarly, Leviticus 21 forbids anyone in Aaron’s line who suffered mutilation or castration to be a priest of God’s people. Thus the question of whether a eunuch could be baptised and made fully part of the people of God is not a self-evident “yes.”
 
However, the Eunuch was reading from the scroll of Isaiah, and Philip would have known that the prophet also offered these words,
Do not let the eunuch say,
   ‘I am just a dry tree.’
For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
   who choose the things that please me
   and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
   a monument and a name
   better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
   that shall not be cut off.
 
Peter on the other hand, knows that Gentiles must become Jews in order to be joined to the covenant between God and Israel. Peter knows too that Jesus said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The early Jesus movement is a Jewish reform movement. All the principal players who have received the Holy Spirit, and been entrusted with the Good News are circumcised Jews. The admission of the Gentile is not a self-evident “yes.”
 
But Peter also knows what God had to say through the prophet Isaiah:
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
   ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’;
… the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
   to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
   and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
   and hold fast my covenant--
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
   and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices
   will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
   for all peoples.
 
Both Philip and Peter are asked to do vital, interpretive work in the moment. Both know well their scriptures and could find more verses than not to prohibit these baptisms. Both know well their tradition and could rightly assert that before baptism is possible those who stand before them must take strides to become the people of God (circumcision/dietary practices) or be joined only in part (holding a peripheral membership while being denied the ability to approach the centre of the movement and its holy places). However, at the same time, both know well that their scriptures hold within them a trajectory of expansiveness. Both know well that Israel’s history with God includes more than a few outsiders who have walked near with God. Philip and Peter need to decide whether the days in which God will give the eunuch an everlasting name and gather the foreigner to the house of prayer are indeed these days? Are these the days in which the house of God becomes a house of prayer for all people? Isaiah (for all it offers) doesn’t go the whole way for them, it still envisions admission of both parties as dependent on joining the covenant people, a movement inward that requires a kind of cultural assimilation. Peter and Philip, to discern that there is nothing preventing the baptism, must still take a bold step into the new.
 
And since both Peter and Philip are standing where they are because of the Holy Spirit they decide yes, these are the days. They see the power and fruit of the Spirit moving before their eyes, and discern that there is indeed nothing to prevent these baptisms, nothing to prevent the expansion of the movement to those it previously excluded. They decide to put no obligation on them to become a different people, a different body, a different culture, but recognise the Holy Spirit has been poured out on them as well. The past does not have to decide the future, for the Spirit of God breaks in with the dazzling possibility of the new.
 
Now, I contend, that even without the rather obvious signalling of the Holy Spirit, Peter and Philip were already equipped with what they needed to recognise the appropriateness of this expansion. Which is handy for us, who too are faced with such questions in our own day.
 
Because even without the undeniable activity of the Holy Spirit, Peter and Philip knew several things. First, as mentioned, they knew that scripture has trajectories of expansion and change that often challenge earlier prohibitions. How we read, and where we place emphasis, opens before us the possibility to see that where a group once was precluded and condemned it need not be so today. Second, both knew Christ emphasised the command to love. Knew that not only was the love of neighbour the greatest commandment, but that his disciples would be known by their love for each other, and that to love those beyond the pale of compassion was to love Jesus himself. This undermines systems of tiered belonging in the church. Third, Christ had bestowed upon them the title of friend, and friends are allowed to make big decisions with what they have been entrusted. Friends are allowed to step boldly into new terrain. And Christ’s friends do this with confidence, because they know that if they abide in love, Christ abides in them.
 
Taken together, this makes possible the faith which conquers the world. The faith which can conquer the values and vision of the world as it is, the structures and strictures of the world as it was, and open the possibility of the world as it could be (on earth as in heaven). Faith in the in-breaking future of the Spirit of God who interrupts the expected and assumed, and points to where God is doing a new thing. It is this world conquering faith that drew Philip to the chariot and filled him with the conviction to go down to the waters of baptism with the Ethiopian eunuch. It was this world conquering faith that called Peter to the house of Cornelius and allowed him to see that the Spirit he had received had been poured out here as well. But we too have received this world conquering faith. Which leads us to ask: where it might be drawing us? Who, it might be bringing into our path? And how it might expand what we have received, so that boundaries might be broken down, assumptions might be disturbed, and the lines of who has been called a friend of Christ might be enlarged? For we have been entrusted as friends of Christ with a world conquering faith to go beyond before. Sent to proclaim good news, watch for the movement of the Spirit, and led into mutually transformative relationships of love and grace.