Room at the Table
Acts 11:1-18
Recently I had the opportunity to go to lunch with the new pastor at the Mahopac Presbyterian Church, Rev. Han. I was put in touch with him through the Presbytery because Rev. Han is Korean, and with my having lived in South Korea for a few years, the folks at the Presbytery thought we would hit it off. We did. He has a wonderfully self-effacing sense of humor and a generous and gentle soul.
Rev. Han took me out to a Korean restaurant in town (who knew there is a Korean restaurant in Mahopac?). This was quite a treat, because to my knowledge there are no Korean restaurants in the greater Haverstraw area. I ordered yukgaejang, which is a spicy stew made of shredded beef and scallions and one of my favorite Korean dishes.
To call a Korean dish spicy is almost redundant. The default seasoning in Korean cuisine is hot red pepper paste…and lots of it. In Korea, whenever I ate any kind of spicy dish in the presence of other pastors or church members, someone would comment how surprised they were that I could tolerate the spice. I considered this a small victory in my desire to assimilate.
Even in the heat of summer Koreans still consume bowls of yukgaejang and other spicy stews that are served at or near the temperature of the sun. There’s even an idiom in Korean, 이열 치열, which translates as Fight heat with heat. Fight the heat of the summer by eating a scalding-hot bowl of spicy stew. After doing so, you might even say, Shiwonhae, or “Refreshing!” That is the mark of a born and bred Korean.
I remember this one time when all the pastors had lunch at a restaurant that specialized in maeun-tang, a spicy fish stew. It was a traditional sit-down restaurant, as in sit on the floor around a tea table. As I finished my meal, I wiped the sweat from my brow, leaned back on my palms, and said with gusto, Shiwonhae! The moment the word left my mouth this woman at the next table whipped her head around in my direction. She said to her companions, 그 외국사람이 시원해라고 방금 말헸어. “That foreigner just said Shiwonhae!” And with that, my assimilation into Korean culture was complete.
Food is a cultural marker. It’s one of the things that gives a culture its identity. For example, Korean culture is unthinkable without kimchi, the spicy pickled cabbage that is eaten with every meal. Especially for immigrant communities, preparing traditional dishes and passing down family recipes are ways of preserving group identity in the midst of the broader culture.
For Jews living in Judea in the first century, it wasn’t so much what they ate that set them apart from the surrounding gentile culture as what they did not eat. Chapter 11 of the book of Leviticus distinguishes between clean and unclean animals, i.e., those that can be eaten and those that cannot. Cows are in, pigs are out, and so are rabbits. Fish of all kinds are in, but shellfish, including lobster, crab, shrimp, clams, and mussels, are out. Some birds make the cut, many others do not. Eating most insects is forbidden, except crickets and locusts, which John the Baptist was known to snack on.
The earliest Christians were all Jews, including Peter and the other disciples. They were Jews who came to believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. As observant Jews, they followed the Law of Moses, including all of the many dietary laws found in Leviticus. Even after they professed Jesus as Lord and Savior, they still saw themselves as Jews.
This is a point worth emphasizing: What became Christianity as we know it began as a movement within Judaism. Peter and the disciples didn’t think that they were birthing a new religion. Rather, they saw in Jesus the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures, the Messiah long ago promised to Israel. It’s not until three or four decades after the resurrection that Christianity emerges as its own religion distinct from Judaism.
Everything we’ve read in the book of Acts these past few weeks until now, all of the featured players were Jews, including Saul, whose conversion we read about two weeks ago. The first gentile convert to the way of Jesus Christ is found in today’s reading. Peter describes the incident in great detail.
The story of the conversion first appears in chapter 10. What we’ve read today in chapter 11 is Peter’s account of just how it happened. Peter is addressing a group of Jewish followers of Christ in Jerusalem. They’ve heard through the grapevine that Peter went to the home of a gentile and ate with him. They are none too pleased about this. Gentiles eat all kinds of foods that are forbidden to Jews. Peter has been called to Jerusalem to explain himself. What did you think you were doing by associating with gentiles?
The man in question is a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Cornelius also happens to be what Jews called a “God-fearer,” meaning a gentile who shows interest in the God of Israel, maybe even observing some Jewish rituals, but without converting to Judaism. Such God-fearers were even allowed into the outer court of the temple in Jerusalem.
Cornelius has a vision from God in which an angel tells him to send for Peter. At about the same time, Peter has a vision as well. In this vision the heavens open and a large sheet descends from the sky. On it are all kinds of unclean animals, i.e., animals that God has prohibited Jews from eating. Yet Peter hears a voice telling him to kill and eat.
Let’s note, with some humor, I might add, that Peter’s initial reaction to God is a firm “No way!” “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” This would not be Peter’s first “no” to God. When Jesus told his disciples that as the Messiah he must be rejected by the religious leaders and killed, Peter defiantly declared, “No, Lord, this must never happen to you!” Later, on the fateful night of Jesus’ arrest, when the authorities identified Peter as an associate of Jesus, he exclaimed, “I do not know the man.”
Now, when the voice of God declares all animals clean and acceptable for eating, Peter maintains his piety. “By no means, Lord.” I’ve kept kosher my whole life. I’ve followed the rules. I’m not about to go breaking them now. After all, who knows whether this vision is even from God?
People sometimes ask me how to discern the voice of God. That inaudible voice we sometimes hear in our head, how do we know whether it’s from God?
My default answer is always the same. If the voice you hear is telling you to do something that you don’t want to do, especially something that challenges your assumptions or pushes you out of your comfort zone, then that is likely the voice of God.
We want it to be the opposite. We want God to affirm the things that we already believe or the things that we desire for ourselves. “I’ve always wanted to make a lot of money. I think God wants me to make a lot of money so that I can support the church.” Maybe, but my experience is that more often than not the Holy Spirit wants to lead us in directions that we would not choose for ourselves because that is how we learn and grow.
That’s what the Holy Spirit does with Peter. Peter is absolutely certain that he knows the will of God, and God has forbidden eating animals that God has declared unclean. I mean, it’s right there in Leviticus! Peter can quote chapter and verse.
What finally snaps Peter out of his certainty is hearing the words, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And if it weren't already apparent, God is not talking about just food. He’s talking about people.
The moment that Peter awakens from his vision, there’s a knock at the door. The messengers from Cornelius arrive to bring Peter to Cornelius. You might think that Peter would be reluctant to go with them, given that Cornelius is an officer in the Roman army. Have they come to detain and interrogate him? Is this related to Jesus whom the Romans crucified?
Besides the aspect of danger, Jews are not supposed to mingle with gentiles. They’re certainly not supposed to enter their homes and share a meal together. Peter has all kinds of reasons to be hesitant about accompanying these men he doesn’t know into the home, not only of a gentile, but of a Roman centurion.
Yet the Holy Spirit tells Peter to go with them. What’s more, Peter tells his audience of skeptics—these Jewish Christians who have criticized him for socializing with outsiders—“The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.”
But we like to make distinctions! We like to draw a line so that we know who’s in and who’s out. Anthropologists might say that it’s a survival mechanism deeply engrained in us that dates to our tribal ancestors. It’s a way of identifying who’s a member of our tribe from who isn’t and a way of keeping out foreign threats.
Conservative vs liberal. Evangelical vs Mainline. Urban vs rural. White collar vs blue collar. Citizen vs immigrant. Middle class vs poor. Even within the church, we can’t help ourselves from making such distinctions.
This passage is not about what kind of food is served on the table but rather the God who makes room at the table for everyone.
This is nothing new. The early church wrestled with this same issue. For them the issue was what to do about these gentiles who were wanting to follow Christ. There were those who wanted the church to remain pure, i.e., to keep their Jewish identity and maintain their separation from the wider gentile culture. If gentiles want to follow Christ, then they must first become Jews. Men must get circumcised. Everyone must follow the dietary laws. We must maintain our distinctiveness, otherwise there will be chaos. The whole system will collapse!
This is why the Jerusalem home office has brought Peter in. They believe that he’s threatening the foundation of the social order. And to be clear, he most certainly is, because that’s what the gospel does. This passage is not about what kind of food is served on the table but rather the God who makes room at the table for everyone. The gospel makes no distinctions between insiders and outsiders but applies equally to everyone because everyone—every single one of us—needs to hear God’s word of grace spoken to us in Jesus Christ.
The conservative and the liberal. The married and the divorced. The gay and the straight. The documented and the undocumented. Those who control the levers of power and those who are ground down by its gears. Those who seem to have it all together and those who are completely falling apart.
“You yourselves know that it is improper for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider,” Peter says, “but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” Just as there are no unclean foods, there are no unclean people because God has washed all clean in the blood of Jesus Christ.