Lectionary readings: John 13:31-35 and Acts
11:1-18
‘You will look for [zéteó] me…Where I am going, you
cannot come.’ Jesus
‘…when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers
criticized [diakrinó] him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat
with them?’’ Acts 11:2, 3
In our Gospel reading, Jesus tells his disciples that
they will seek for him, by careful inquiry, but will discover that where he has
gone ahead of them, they are not able to follow. In our reading from the Acts
of the Apostles, the gathered church investigates Peter’s actions thoroughly, with
the intention of separating themselves from him, and certainly from the
Gentiles he had eaten with.
Peter had gone to the home of the Roman, Cornelius. A
man in dazzling white had appeared to Cornelius; Cornelius had taken him to be
an angel, a messenger from God. And certainly, we meet angels in bright white
at the empty tomb; but we have also seen Jesus in dazzling white at his
transfiguration. Directly or indirectly, Jesus has gone ahead of Peter to the
home of a Gentile.
But Jesus must help Peter overcome that which stops
him from following, from going where Jesus has gone. Peter is unable to step
beyond the laws that separate Jews from Gentiles. Jesus is firm, and gracious,
and Peter gets there in the end. But now he is being judged harshly for it.
When Jesus tells his disciples that where he is going,
they cannot follow, he is setting out the pattern for the Church: that Jesus
goes ahead of us, where we are not yet able to go. Beyond our comfort zone.
Beyond our identity markers. Beyond things that matter deeply to us. Jesus is
the pioneer of our faith. But he is also the perfector of our faith, and Jesus
gives his disciples the means to follow him: love one another. Put the other
before yourself. Desire their flourishing.
There is no love on display among the gathered church,
for Peter, or for Cornelius—whom, of course, they have not met. It is easier to
not love people you haven’t met. [‘The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas said
the only thing that really converts people at a deep level is seeing “the face
of the other”. Welcoming and empathizing with the other leads to transformation
of the whole person. This interchange is prepared to transform both persons—the
seer and the seen. In a sense, we need the stranger for our own conversion from
our individualism, self-centeredness and our tendencies towards
self-preservation and exclusion.’ Brad Brisco, Facebook 15 May 2018] Peter
addresses their concerns, point by point, and even then they fail to grasp Peter’s
conversion. It isn’t long before they are insisting that these new Gentile
believers must adopt their Jewish identity markers.
We haven’t moved beyond this tension between love and
criticism, and we never shall. We get it right, we get it wrong. We get it
right again, and wrong again. We get it right, we get it wrong, we get it
wrong, we get it wrong, and by God’s grace, through repentance, we get it right
again. We get it wrong again, we get it right, we get it right, we get it
right, and, just as we are feeling we are getting the hang of this, we get it
wrong again. We don’t grow beyond this pattern, because we never arrive at the
full extent of God’s love, but Jesus never stops drawing us deeper into it.
Where do we discern Jesus, in our neighbourhood, gone
ahead of us to others, to whom we cannot yet follow him?
What does it feel like to get to know strangers with
the intention of becoming friends?
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