Fifth Sunday of Easter, 19 May 2019
Austwick, Clapham
Would you go on a picnic with Peter? Look at the food he he laid out on his picnic blanket: four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air..... Would you eat any of those?
I ask, because whilst Peter's people the Jews had very strict food laws, we do too. We have very clear ideas about what food is clean and what food is unclean, what food is 'ours' and what food is 'foreign muck' which we wouldn't touch even if our life depended on it because we'd feel contaminated by it. Think of the foods which some other people eat, but you would definitely not eat: frog's legs, monkey's brains, tripe perhaps - and consider the reason why you'd not eat them.
Truth is that we are all guided by our society’s ideas about what is clean and what is profane. Laws which change as society changes, but strong influences on us all the time.
Our modern-day obsession with purity and cleanliness, sometimes framed as ‘health and safety’, is just as powerful as the purity laws of Peter's day. UK households waste 7 million tonnes of food every year, 5 million of which is edible [2]. That’s enough to fill 40 million wheelie bins, or 100 Royal Albert Halls. Sell by dates have a lot to do with this. If it's past its sell by or use by date, we bin it: even though it would do us no harm at all.
If Peter invited you to his picnic and brought along some bread and butter which were each just over their use-by dates, and some ham and strong smelling cheese past their sell-by dates, would you eat a sandwich with him? Some of us would, but others might turn up our noses, say 'no thanks’ politely, and go away and gossip or make jokes about Peter's horrible picnic food and about the people who had said yes and eaten with him.
Some time ago I worked in a hostel for homeless people where we served sandwiches donated from a large supermarket; sandwiches which had just passed their sell-by date. Interesting to think about the values of that supermarket: they wouldn't let their customers eat that food for to them, it would be unclean, but they would pass it on to homeless people: perhaps regarded as unclean anyway, so it wouldn't matter that they ate it.
What you eat is sometimes used as a form of insult towards you. For example Germans call the Dutch 'cheese eaters'. Or, if you’re from Wigan you’re a ‘pie-eater’. (‘What do you call a balanced diet in Wigan? A pie in both hands’). And so on. [3] So we might understand the struggle that Peter was having in his heart and mind about whether or not he should be eating Gentile food.
From the beginning, Christianity was a Jewish faith. Jesus repeatedly impressed on his fellow-Jews that the kingdom of God wasn't just for people like them. It was for everyone. Gentiles included.
When the Jewish leaders of the Jesus People began to see Gentiles come to faith in Christ, they had to change the way they saw them. They had to learn to share their faith with them. They had to learn to share their food with them. They had to learn to eat their food.
So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised him, saying, 'Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?' Peter shared that dream, in which God told him to prepare a meal from food that he wouldn't normally touch. That tasty selection of four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. It was rather like God asking us to make monkey's brains the main course at our Harvest Supper.
Peter refused at first saying, "[No], Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth." He didn’t want to risk eating 'foreign muck'. But God insisted, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."
Then Peter realised the significance of what God was saying. That the food wasn't the real issue. The food symbolised the real issue: that in God’s eyes, people of a different culture were clean, and pure, and good, and loved, and that he, Peter, must open his arms, and share his faith - and his table - with them. [4]
If we are living with a foot in two kingdoms - the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Heaven - then we are called to unlearn our habit of calling others profane or impure. We are called to show those who are different from us that they are equally invited with us to receive the grace of God, and join us in his Kingdom. Together with those very people we may once have thought 'disgusting', we are called to disbelieve that lie.
It's a wonderful calling and it's a sign of God at work in the world. It’s one way we can obey the ‘new commandment’ which Jesus gave his followers, ‘Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.' This new commandment means unconditional love for all people. Love, with no questions asked. Love, for people who look differently, talk differently, pray differently, and eat differently - than us.
How good it is to see signs that the Kingdom of Heaven is breaking into our world. We know that the most popular meals in Britain today originated in foreign lands: fish and chips is a French and Jewish import; and from Italy, Spaghetti Bolognese is our current favourite family meal. [5]
When these foods first started to appear over here a lot of people avoided them, thinking them bad, dirty, offensive... not English, not Christian... But we live in more enlightened times today; the Kingdom is coming; our diet is enriched by the vast array of ethnic foods available in our shops and restaurants, from Indian and Chinese to Mexican and Thai. Oh, and many people’s favourite, from the USA, Big Mac and Fries.
No longer seen as smelly, dirty, nasty 'foreign muck'. No longer regarded as sacrilegious, because it comes from religions that are not 'ours'. Gradually people have come to accept these exotic foods, and now, most of us love them and embrace them as our own. Loving their food is a positive step towards loving people who are different, accepting what they eat is a step towards accepting who they are. Such love - is a joyful thing. It’s a sign of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Do you know, once, in Scotland, in someone’s home, I shared a simple communion using an oatcake and a dram of whisky. Today, Jesus once again invites us to the table in which we all share his bread and all drink from his cup. We come by his grace, knowing ourselves to be not profaned but loved. And offering ourselves to learn how to not profane others but to love them - unconditionally - instead.
Notes
[1] Sermon based on my previous outings on this subject, Peter's funny picnic: gesture politics of the most powerful kind?, 24/4/2016, Acts 11: Peter's Funny Picnic, 28/4/2013, On eating rats and loving one another, 6/5/2007, and Acts 11 - On Peter’s Picnic, 2/5/2010.
[2] Love Food Hate Waste website: Why save food.
[3] Racial slurs taken from The Racial Slur Database. Handle with care.
[4] In the Kingdom of Heaven ‘there are, in fact, no impure or profane people, where not even disgusting people consider themselves disgusting, [a kingdom] where we have learnt to disbelieve, and to help them to disbelieve, in their own repugnancy’. James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, p.102
[5] Grant Bailey, Britain's 20 favourite meals revealed in every decade from 1960s to now. Mirror, 11 December 2018.
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