Today's Scripture Reading (March 6, 2024): Acts 10
A friend of mine tells a story of an evening church service. Back
in the day, I was brought up in a church where we went to church twice on
Sundays. Canadian Christian singer Jerry Proppe wrote a song a couple of
decades ago about the pain we kids went through because we had to go to the
Sunday evening service. Proppe said that what that meant for all of us who were
kids at the time was that we always missed the last ten to fifteen minutes of "The
Wonderful World of Disney." I know the pain. Church kids never saw the end
of the story because we had to leave the TV and go to church.
For my friend, let's call him Bob (not really his name), the
church service started at 7:00. But Bob had a friend (Steve, also not his name)
coming into the city after spending the afternoon at the lake. Steve wanted to attend
church, but he walked into the service at 7:25, during the special music, which
often wasn't all that special. Steve entered the sanctuary and came right down
front to where my Bob was sitting. Bob says that he could hear his flip-flops
slapping the bottom of his feet every step of the way. Steve had long hair, a
T-shirt, shorts, and these flip-flops. Steve loved to give high fives, but he
was one of these guys who gave hard high fives, so he came to the front of the
church and went and gave Bob a high five, and it sounded like a gun had gone
off in the church. And then he sat down and eagerly wrote notes in his new Bible
as the preacher spoke. But after the service, a group of well-meaning older
ladies with blue hair came up to talk to Steve, and they came with a message.
The next time you come to church, you dress. You do not come to church in short
pants and flip-flops. There was no room in their theology for this young man who
dressed as if he had just come from the beach, which was precisely from where
Steve had come. For these ladies, the way you dress is crucial if you want to
worship God. Coming to church in shorts was unthinkable.
God comes to Peter; he lets down this sheet and says to Peter,
take, kill, and eat. And Peter can't figure out what to do. It was unthinkable
that Peter would do as he had been instructed. But as long as Peter could not
make that jump, he was useless to God.
A principle in Christian Theology tells us to center ourselves on
what Jesus said. Don't ignore the rest of the Bible, but see those instructions
through the lens of Jesus. Sometimes, people ask me why I speak so much about
love, and my answer is pretty simple: because Jesus did. Peter and the women at Bob's church service had
some unlearning to do concerning their faith. Why did God send Jesus into the
world? Because God loved. Why did Joseph take Mary to be his wife? Because Joseph
loved. Why did Peter walk on water? Because God Loved Peter. Why did Peter stay
at Simon the Tanners? Because God loved Simon, and Peter was beginning to
understand that.
Why is Acts 10 crucial? Because God loved
Cornelius and needed Peter to come to that understanding despite everything
that Peter already believed he knew. In fact, and this is hard, the primary
command from Jesus is love. However, sometimes, all of the rest of the stuff of
our faith stops us from loving. (Does God really care if we wear flip-flops to
church, or is that just something we need to unlearn?) The tricky thing about
the story of Cornelius is that what Peter believed was biblical, but his belief
in the Bible was stopping Peter from loving. Listen, I am not saying throw away
the rules or God's laws, but I have come to the understanding that while God's
laws are important, they are God's domain, not mine. God will judge, not me. Let
me be very clear: I believe that God will judge. There is a judgment, and I am
not downplaying any of that, but judgment is not my job, especially when it
comes to people outside of the church. That is beyond my pay grade. If you are
a Christian and I find out you are cheating on your spouse, expect a
confrontation with me. But if my non-Christian friend is cheating on his wife,
we will have a discussion, but it won't be anything like it would have been if
he had accepted Christ because God has called me to do one thing: love. And
anything that stops me from loving has to go, no matter how unthinkable that
action might be.
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Acts 11
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