For this week’s sermon, the lyrics from You Are So Beautiful to Me came to mind.
You are so beautiful to me.
You are so beautiful to me.
Can’t you see [Post Chorus] You’re everything I hoped for / You’re everything I need / You are so beautiful to me / To me.
If only it were so, if this were applied to everyone…what a greater, more splendid, harmonious world…
But the world we live in often divides people into particular categories. Good vs bad. We have created dividing categories between worthy and unworthy, between this kind of person, who is good, and this other kind of person, who is bad. This kind of face is attractive, and this other kind of face is not. Studies show it does not take long for us to divide each other. It doesn’t take long for us to create arbitrary lines, for us to convince ourselves that these superficial, artificial categories are inherently true and therefore socially reinforcing. We can convince ourselves that you are worthy and you are not.
That kind of thinking has been applied to religion as well.
We like to place God within perfect boundary lines.
We sometimes feel unworthy to approach God because Others have told us that we are not worthy of God’s love, that we are to remain separate from God. They told you God’s love is not accessible to you. They claim God denies you the fullness of living in God’s presence.
We don’t always feel worthy. We don’t feel pure enough.
The Gospels and the book of Acts tell a different story. We find our Acts reading in the middle of a broader narrative. Apostle Peter is spreading the Good News of Jesus. The story tells us that there was a man named Cornelius.
Cornelius was a Gentile, but a God-fearing man. He expressed his faithfulness by donating money to people in need. Right at the beginning of the story, it mentions his righteousness. It mentions the good things he has done.
One day, Cornelious had a vision. An angel of the Lord appeared to him and said There’s a man named Peter who is in Joppa, go and send for him. Cornlious did as instructed and sent three men to find Peter.
Meanwhile, Peter was in Joppa at the house of a tanner, and he was famished. As he waited for his meal to be prepared, he went up to the roof to pray,y and he fell into a trance. In his vision, he saw a sheet descend, lowered by its four corners. He could see all kinds of animals: four-footed creatures, reptiles, and birds. In the context of the time, many of these animals were, by custom, not allowed to be eaten. They were considered unclean, and unclean items would temporarily place a boundary between God and the person who ate them.
So, when Peter sees them, he knows he does not want to eat them. From his perspective, he does not want to be separated from God. But God says, Peter, Kill and eat! Peter responds Never, Lord. I have never eaten anything impure or unclean. Then God spoke again: “Never consider unclean what God has made pure.” This exchange happened three times. And once the vision ended, Peter was left dumbfounded. What he has just heard defies everything that he believes to be true. From his understanding, he’s not allowed to eat these animals.
That’s when the messengers from Cornelius, the Gentile, arrived. The Spirit told Peter: Go Downstairs. Don’t ask questions, go with them because I have sent them. When Peter sees them, he tells them, “I am the one you are looking for.” They say, “Cornelius, a centurion and righteous man, a God worshipper who is well respected by all Jewish people. A holy angel directed him to summon you to his house and to hear what you have to say.” Once again, Cornelius’s worship and his good works are emphasized.
The next day, Peter and the other believers travel to Joppa. He’s taking others along with him. So, I’m guessing he told them of the vision that he received. So, they’re curious. Why is Peter being sent to this guy, Cornelius, a Gentile? You have to know this is a time in the early church when it is trying to figure out who is eligible to hear the good news. Many think only Israelites were eligible. They are then shocked, bewildered, and wondering what is happening.
Peter arrives to see Cornelius. When he does, Cornelius, his relatives, and friends fall at their feet. Peter told them to get up, for he is only a human like them. Peter is invited inside the home, where he finds many people gathered. He tells them, “to get up because he is a human like them.”
Peter then says something in Acts 10:28 that has confounded translators and others. I’ll read to you two translations: the New International Version: He said to them, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. The other is the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, and it reads, ” He said to them, ‘You yourselves know that it is improper for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider, but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.
Translators have a difficult time translating this because there isn’t a Law in the Torah that prohibits a Jewish Person from associating with a Gentile. But the language used in Greek strongly emphasizes that Peter believes that there is a requirement for separation. But, we know that elsewhere in the Bible and in other geographical locations, it was acceptable to associate with Gentiles. But perhaps where Peter came from, it was a cultural taboo or socially forbidden, meaning that the culture strongly prohibited it, because we know that the Mosaic law did not prohibit associations.
Sometimes, within a religious framework, the distinction between who is in and who is out is based on a person’s actions. But in this instance, Cornelius, as mentioned earlier, was a God-fearing man. He worshipped God and donated money to people in need.
So here we see, Peter was operating on the idea that it was wrong for him to associate with Gentiles, and therefore, from his perspective, God could not be available to them. Peter, before his vision, would have called these people unclean. He was purely working from a place of bias against people like Cornelius. But God says otherwise. It wasn’t God who called them unclean. It was Peter’s bias that could have gotten in the way, but God was working in Peter’s heart to be closer to God’s perspective.
Cornlius goes on to retell the message he received from God.
Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people, anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.
Peter is learning what Paul writes so eloquently that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. But what is important is actions. Does a person give of themselves to others?
How many of you were picked on, bullied, or ostracized? When did someone say to you I don’t want you to hang out with that kid? How many of you did not “fit” in? Where did people avoid you? Maybe you were shunned and left out.
Maybe you were the girl who was picked on in class.
The new kid, or the outsider, or your parents couldn’t afford name-brand clothing. Maybe even today, as an adult, you feel on the outside. Understand this: God loves you. You are worthy of God’s love. Don’t let anybody tear you down.
Maybe you’re the person who picked on others, made them feel less than. Maybe you’ve distinguished entire groups of people as either good or bad.
And truthfully, we all have experienced being placed outside, and we’ve been the ones to place others outside. Bias happens in many forms.
We need to learn and be transformed like Peter. We don’t even have the excuse like Peter to be unaware of God’s perspective; we know it because we just read it. God’s perspective is that we are to see everybody as worthy of dignity and respect, as one of the mantras of the civil rights movement, everybody is somebody. We can’t hide behind our own bias. We have to work through our bias to get to the other side. Find some resources that will inform you about other people’s lives. Read autobiographies, watch an informative YouTube channel, follow people on social media who do not look like you or talk like you.
God’s perspective is a vision for peace, hope, and love.
If we operate from the perspective that everybody is worthy of dignity and love, it might change the way we interact with other people who are close to us and afar; we might just reach that vision.
Amen.