A Change in the Menu

A sermon based upon Acts 11: 1-18

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

May 2^nd, 2010,  Easter 5

When it comes to food, we all have our “likes” and “dislikes” or we have the things we should be eating and the “no-no’s”; the things we shouldn’t be eating, due to health restrictions or health consciousness.      

Today’s text is about food and diet, but it takes us into some very unfamiliar territory for most of us.  It speaks of food that is directly connected to our obedience or disobedience to God.  

I.

Have you ever heard such a thing?  Maybe you once had a neighbor who was Roman Catholic and only eats fish on Fridays or gives up chocolate or sweets for Lent.  Or maybe you’ve heard about Muslims fasting for the festival of Ramadan or you’ve heard about the Jewish Kosher system which forbids the eating of pork.    

Even though these kinds of dietary restrictions might be familiar to some of us, we are much more prone today to think of food as a “choices” rather than a “requirements.”   Well, perhaps you do recall the idea you learned in elementary school about “daily food requirements”, but hardly ever have most of us ever had even a thought that food had anything to do with our “obedience” to God.   Can’t you just imagine person in the window at McDonalds, asking “Would like Bacon on that?”  “Oh, no thank you!  I’m eating Kosher.”  That sound’s really strange to most of us.  The biggest problem any Baptists might have when it comes to food, is to worry which kind choice to make at Homecoming. 

For most of us, mixing food with religion is about as bad as mixing religion and politics.  But First century Jews understood their diet as having a direct relationship to their obedience to God.   In other words, in that world there were “boundaries” to what one could and couldn’t eat.   While it might sound “strange” at first, to imagine religious boundaries to food, it is not so unfamiliar for us think of “boundaries” or “restrictions” to food for personal reasons.  Remember the stir former President Bush caused when he said he didn’t like Broccoli.  Although parents respected his choice, they wish he hadn’t said that, cause then, when Tommy was told to eat his broccoli, he said, “Ah, Mom, I want to grow up to be president someday.”

The truth is that we all make choices and even have our own personal “boundaries” when it comes to food.  I recall how my brother-in-law, when he was young, used to only eat meat and nothing else.  My Father-in-law will not eat any food at church homecoming or anywhere else, unless his family fixes it.   I didn’t like green beans nor tomatoes when I was a kid.  When my mom told me I needed to eat them anyway, I would quietly feed them to our dog, whose bowl was hidden next to my seat.  Even the dog didn’t like green beans and tomatoes much either until I started putting a little gravy on them.   

While we all might have some kind of personal “boundary” or “limit” concerning food, it is still very strange for us today to think that food choices or requirements might have anything to do with God.  But they did.  If you turn in your Bible to the book of Leviticus, chapter 11 and Deuteronomy chapter 14 you can read about these food choices and requirements.  The point was clear: If you want to be the holy people of God, there were things you can eat and things you can’t.  When you eat them, you will be considered “unclean” “defiled” and by eating the “abominable” thing, you shall be an “abomination” to God (Deut. 14:1-3).   Listen to these strong, defining words from Leviticus:

⁴⁴ For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.   ⁴⁵ For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.   ⁴⁶ This is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth:   ⁴⁷ To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.   (Lev 11:44-47 KJV).

Did you catch that word in verse 46?:  “This is the law……”    Hearing the Bible own words we can recognize clearly we are not talking about suggestions nor mere regulations, but this was the “law of the covenant.”  There wasn’t a law against “strangers” eating “unclean” foods, but for those who wanted to be in the covenant there were strict rules and regulations.   It was the law.  It was a direct command from God.  It was in spelled out in black and white what a person in covenant with the true God could and couldn’t eat.  This was how God set things up.  

With this “legal requirement” in mind, what is happening in today’s text from Acts is quite amazing, even astounding, especially when we, like so many Jews did, understand God to be “unchangeable” (as in Malachi. 3.6, “I am the Lord, and I change not”) and “unmovable” (1 Cor. 15: 58).   How could this God who does not change, change his mind about the menu?  

This was very hard for Peter to understand too.   Can you see his very strong resistance in the text (vs. 8)?  In Peter’s own mind the law was the law and the boundaries had long been fixed.  It was clear.  It was legal.  It was law, and it was in black and white.  It was probably good enough for his Jewish mama, and it would be good enough for him, too.   Jewish adults had lived and believed this way for generations.  They had taught their children to believe and live this way.  This is what the whole Jewish community and now the young Jewish-Christian community was most accustomed to believing.  By obeying these dietary rules and laws, they were not only fulfilling God’s requirements about food, this was how they proved to the world and to their own children that they were not like the rest of the world, but were God’s chosen people.  Can you imagine Peter, going home to tell his own children what he had taught them was now wrong?   No wonder he protested.  When the angel came to him saying, “Arise, kill and eat.”  He complained proudly and boldly:  “Not so, Lord: for nothing common or unclean hath at any time entered into my mouth”. (Act 11:8 KJV).  

How could God overturn his own commandment and law?   Lisa Kenkeremath rightly suggests that this change was so big that it was going to require a lot of convincing evidence (Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XXI, Number 3, April-May 2010, p. 47).  This is why it takes up 3 chapters, along with a “trance”, 2 visions, an angel, and the Holy Spirit to finally convince Peter.  But now even this most stubborn disciple has been convinced that God’s menu indeed has been changed.  He was eating pork and other unclean food with unclean and uncircumcised people.

II.

Now, let’s notice what happens next.  Our text comes in with other believers criticizing and even opposing him because he was eating from God’s new updated menu.  “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (v. 3).   It’s really bad to be doing what God wants you to do, and the people who oppose you the most are not the sinners, but the saints.  This is why Peter turns and explains to the “step by step” (vs. 4 NIV, NRSV) exactly what happened.   

What I think is most interesting about Peter’s explanation is how he goes back to whewre it all  began.  In verse 5 we read, “I was in the city of Joppa praying…..”   Normally, we think of prayer as being the beginning of finding a solution to a problem (and it can be), but in this case, prayer is how the problem starts.   That is if you call “love” a problem.  Because what we are about to see is that the change in the menu, particularly God’s menu came about about because of God’s love problem.   What I want you to begin to grasp and understand is that love is always a problem, but that it is a good problem to have.  But first, let’s continue with what happen.

As Peter began to pray, he went into a trance and saw a vision.  In this vision a large sheet came down from heaven and on that sheet were all kinds of forbidden “foods”, which was all the animals God had told his people not to eat.   Some of them were more appetizing than others---but God was even giving Peter permission not just to “pass the bacon” but also to eat snakes.   As Peter sees all new items (not just snakes), suddenly a voice from heaven comes and says, “Get up Peter! Kill and eat!.”   This happened three times, but each time Peter protested, saying he would not eat it because it was “profane” or “unclean.”   (I find it interesting, that while Simon Peter had been very sincere in keeping his kosher diet, he had not been so clean with his “verbal” diet, when he denied the Lord and treated him as “common” or “profane”.   Peter hadn’t eaten pork before, but he did have to eat some of his own words {Luke 22.61}).   But now, the voice from heaven answers Peter’s protest once and for all: “What God has made clean, you must not call “profane”, “common” or unclean” (vs. 9).      

What we must see is that up to this point, Peter had been a “good” Jew.   Even though he had denied Jesus, he was still seen by all as a “good” Jew.  He was keeping all the laws.  But that is now exactly the part of the problem.  Being a “good” Jew was not getting the job done.  Of course, being good wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t enough to help people know God’s limitless love.   This is part of the reason that when the Rich Young ruler came to Jesus calling him a “Good” master (aka, a good Jew) Jesus immediately protested, “Why do you call me good, there is none good but God” (Matt. 19:16).    Good is good, but being good is just not enough.   Being good is never enough to get the love done which needs for us to do.  

Since being good is not good enough, this is part of the reason God has decided to change the menu.  Did you see this coming?  As Peter comes to the conclusion of his explanation as to why he is eating unclean food with unclean people, we come to the most powerful and most dangerous explanation of all, which we read in verse 12.  “The Spirit told me….”   Now, that’s radical, that’s astounding, that’s earth shaking and practically inarguable.   How do you argue with the Holy Spirit who says, “go with them making no distinction” (v. 12), and how do you also argue with the Holy Spirit who baptizes this man with the gift of Jesus Christ?” (vs. 15-17a). 

So now, Peter puts the whole matter at rest and back in their court when he says in verse 17: “who was I that I could hinder God?”  In other words, who can stop God from changing the menu and loving whomever he decides to love?   The next line is the clincher: “When they heard this, they were silenced.”  But the next line gets even better: “And they praised God.”  With the explanation of a trance, a vision, an angel, the Holy Spirit, and a man on fire for Jesus, we’ve gone from opposing and criticizing to reverence and praise.  God has changed the menu it has quickly gone from being a total disaster and disgrace to being the greatest thing that could ever have happened.

III.

Now, we come to the how this text comes home to us.  I want to put it to us in a direct question: Are we willing to change our menus?   We all come to church for a lot of things, but sometimes I wonder whether we really know how to have “love” on our menu.   A lot of us have all kinds of things “on our plates” these days and we can have all kinds of agendas.   “What do you think about this “issue” or “what do you believe about this or that?”  We’re pretty good at coming up with our own particular versions of religious, political, even social menus of “likes” and “dislikes”.  But Peter’s big vision of the sheet of “no distinction” coming down from heaven reminds us that God has changed his menu and some of us still haven’t changed ours.

This is brings us to the really “disconcerting” and even “dangerous” part of this story.  What Kind of a God do we have, when he is a God who can change his mind about some things?   I brought this idea up recently in a discussion, explaining that long before this, God “changed his mind” or as the Scripture says, “It repented the Lord” or he regretted that he made us (Gen. 6:6) and then another time, when he was angered at Israel, it says the Lord “repented of the evil he was about to do” (34:14).   I don’t know which is more difficult to grasp, that the Lord repented or that he was about “to do evil.”

What we need to see in these difficult texts is that they are both about love.   The loving relationship which was rejected by humanity for God and righteousness is why “it repented the Lord that he created humankind.”  Later, when in Moses’ day, the Lord “repented of the evil he was about to do”, it was about mercy and it was about the love and righteous God wanted the world to have.  And the same goes for today’s text, the only reason God would ever change the “rules” is only for love.  Don’t take this to mean God would “do anything” for love, but also don’t be caught underestimating what God will do.   When God changes the regulations and commandments about “food requirements”, he was changing it so that more people would be able to love him and he could spread his love to more people.

Love is the only purpose that God will change the menu.   What I think this means for us today is that this powerful and very dangerous text of God’s changing the menu is not as much about God changing, as it is about how God wants to see us be change and be changed.  God does a “new thing” in the world only because he wants to do a “new thing” with us.  

If you still have trouble understanding why God might be open to changing the rules in mid-stream, think of it this way.   Let’s say you have a child and you’ve been telling them exactly what they should and shouldn’t do.  Then one day, finally, you realize you’ve done all you can to instruct that child and it’s time to start cutting the cords.  The parent-child relationship was one of giving commands and making rules, but one day it has to change.  It has to change for the sake of love.   As the parent, because you love your child and you want them to succeed in life, there comes a time it’s much more important to give your child choices rather than  commands.      

I believe this is exactly what is going on in this story.  When God changes to menu for “anything”, he does not mean that they should eat and try “everything”.  When God opens the door of freedom for Israel, he is calling them to be more responsible in their choices, not less. .  And the greatest choice God wants Israel to choose is the choice to love others and to include even strangers, and not to exclude people who are very different from them. 

The menu now offers more selections, but there is still one choice that defines all others, that is the choice to make Jesus Lord and Savior or their lives.   Of course there will always be differences between us and other believers and the devil will always be in the details.   But when God opens up the menu, his intention is that we will include love in both the large and  small details of how we emphasize the need to include others rather than excluding them.  Even when we have to make distinctions, as we know we can’t accepting anything and everything, I hope we won’t forget the gospel is never about “who’s in” and “who’s out”, but it’s always about “getting everyone in who loves Jesus.  

One word that gets to me every time I read this passage is the words that God gave to Peter, “Kill and eat.”   Now that word “kill” is really a loaded word.  Can you even wrap your mind about God commanding anybody to “kill” anything?  But if you look closer at this text, it is not really a text that is commanding Peter to “kill” for the sake of “killing”, but it is calling him the “kill” for the sake of eating and living.  Even more than this, although the dream uses the image of “kill” or “slaying” (KJV),  the point is that the word “kill” is use to get Peter’s attention, not to tell him to go hunting for his dinner.   What God is trying to get Peter and the others believers to do, is to move beyond all the “killing”, especially all the killing in God’s name, and move to loving the people whom God loves.

This new menu of God is a tall order, especially for those of us religious type who are used to trying to be good, and who sometimes mistakenly think it is our calling to take the message of “goodness” to the face of the earth.   But nowhere in the Bible are we suppose to equate the gospel with “goodness” except in the “good” we are not, because we are all sinners, and the “good” we are suppose to be doing for those whom God loves.  “Jesus went around doing good,” the text says, and so are we too.  Never does the Bible merely say that Jesus went around “being good.”   He was good, and he was even perfect, and “without blemish,”  but he did not want people calling him “good” because being “good” is not what the gospel is about.   When we get that mixed up we start judging, criticizing and eventually, with words or deeds even start “killing” people, instead of loving them.       

What our mission is not to separate the “sheep” from the “goats” or the “wheat from the tares”, but we are to grow together.  This is what the Bible says because this is the new why God has decided to reach out in the world.   But since God has changed his menu, I wonder how many of us have still changed ours?

Fred Craddock, tells about a church he knew. He remembered it as the status church, First Church Downtown, it was called. Everybody who was anybody went to that church, when Fred was a boy. Not just anybody could walk in there and join. Income and proper attire seemed a membership requirement at First Church. Need I say, People of Color need not apply?   As you might imagine, First Church did not receive many new members. Members simply grew older. As an adult, Fred learned that First Church had closed. Too few people of the "right type," I guess.
Fred had occasion to go back to town and discovered that old First Church was still standing. But now it was a restaurant, a fish restaurant. He walked in the big gothic doors and, sure enough, where there had once been pews, now there were tables, and waiters, and diners. He looked down the nave of the old church and where the communion table had once stood, now there was a salad bar.
He walked out the front door, back down the steps, muttering to himself, "Now, I guess everybody is welcome to eat at the table  ( From a sermon by Will Willmon entitled “When Outsiders Become Insiders, 5/10/1998).

God changes his menu because he wants all people to be welcome to sit at his table.  If God hadn't changed his menu, we wouldn’t have been at his table either.   Think about that.  We too must be willing, for the sake of growth, for the sake of love, and for Jesus' sake, to change our menu from time to time to include rather than to exclude others from God's table.   This is what grace means.  "Grace" is not some something we say at the table, it is God's main course.  Amen.

© 2010 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.