Whaley Bridge Parish
Acts 11: 1 - 18
John 13: 31 – 35
Acts 11: 9: “What God has called clean, you must not call unclean.
One day I was on a pastoral visit in the parish and got into conversation with a man – he was about retirement age I think – and he started asking questions about the bible. So I stated talking about Jesus and what Christians believe, and I used the phrase “in charge” – being a Christian means having faith that ultimately God is in charge of the world. Then the conversation took an awkward turn.
“I'm not so sure, he said. "When Thatcher and Regan were in charge, then God was on our side. But since Tony Blair was elected, God's not on our side anymore. It's because of all these foreigners, taking our jobs, taking our homes, using our hospitals. The devil's having a field day." An then he continued listing the reasons why he resented the presence of immigrants in Britain.
I found this a difficult conversion. How would you have replied?
Of course, if he did not agree with government policy on immigration he was entitled to his view. But I could not agree it was a proper thing to do to use God and the devil in the way he was doing to bolster his personal views.
For a start what he was saying made no sense, theologically. When we are thinking about race or ethnicity we need to remember that Bible tells us in Genesis that all people are made in God's image. Black, Asian, Slavic, and white Anglo Saxon people – all made in the image of God. There’s no reason to give white people any kind of priority in God’s love over and above other peoples.
And then of course there’s the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a Palestinian Jew. He would have brown skin and brown eyes. To white western person such as the man I was in conversation with he would look "foreign".
And it is a fact that immigration is increasing the presence of Christian belief in the UK. A good proportion of new migrants to the UK are Christians. In London, where there is high proportion of new migrants to the UK, the number of church goers has received a substantial boost.
Immigration remains a contentious issue in the UK. The response to Ukrainian refugees has brought to our attention the difference between our European neighbours. Poland has 3.2 million. Germany has welcomed 715 000. By the end of April only 27 000 had arrived in the UK.
Immigration policy is a political issue, for political parties to decide upon. As Christian people we need to be concerned about the moral values that underpin our nations politics. The contribution that faith makes is to provide a moral framework within which discussion can take place. As Christians we will want our discussion will be framed within a valuing of the equal worth of each person before God. That is fundamental.
We need to know ourselves made in the image of God – with all the responsibility and dignity that confers on us. Equally we need to know the stranger at our gate as made in the image of God.
Let me take you back to the conversation I started with. As I reflected it, it seemed to me that what this person was doing was to take his world view as the norm, and then to use God as a way of backing up, or endorsing his world view. He didn't like migrants in the UK, so that must mean that God doesn't like migrants in the UK either.
This is something that we can all be at risk of doing. All of us have our own world view - and then we can be tempted to fit God into it. What suits us is to use the bible, or God or religious language to bolster and support our own position. We can invoke spiritual authority to increase our credibility or social standing, or to win arguments. We've all seen it done. If we're honest, some of us have probably done it ourselves. It can look and sound pretty slick.
The problem is, that when I use God as a device to prop up my own world view I've broken at least two of the ten commandments. I've put my own views at the centre of things instead of God, and then I've taken the name of God in vain. File under: sinfulness. File under: mis-use of religion.
Archbishop Kirrill……
This is the God of all creation we are talking about. As the hymn writer wrote, let all mortal flesh keep silence, and in fear and trembling stand. To be open to God is to be open to being changed. The Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, Jesus tells you. Creation is ongoing, revelation is ongoing. God has new stuff for us to find out. We need not to get stuck. The work of the Spirit is to unsettle us out of our fixed view of the world and lead us into a bigger vision of reality.
And that's just what is happening in this wonderful passage from Acts. On the face of it, it seems extremely weird to us. And yet - this is one of the explosive moments of the New Testament when an old way of seeing the world falls away and a new way of seeing the world emerges. Jesus was a Jews, the disciples were, they were bedded into the tradition of synagogue and temple, of following the law of Moses. And now the Holy Spirit unsettles them into a bigger reality. It comes to Peter in a dream: the food laws. These laws he has abided by all his life, the good news of Jesus means they all fall away.
As a faithful Jew, eating Kosher food, his culture has taught him to view non-Jews as dirty foreigners eating dirty food. He doesn't need to see the Gentiles as dirty foreigners eating dirty food anymore. "Don't call anything impure that God has made clean" comes the voice from heaven. The familiar categories that had given his life safety and meaning are breaking down around him. The evidence is clear: God's Holy Spirit is poured out for non-Jew and Jew alike. The outpouring of God's grace will own no limit of ethnicity or nationality. "God has granted even unto the Gentiles repentance unto life."
So this means the good news of grace is not only for Jews – it’s for everyone.
What I want to suggest is that this shaking open of a fixed world view, this unsettling of certainty is not a one off, but is characteristic of the God who meets us in Jesus. Where we are meeting with Christ in a living encounter, surely we must expect fresh insights into the mercies of God which are new every morning. A resurrection faith has no place for nostalgia. We need to look forwards.
For Peter, the giving of the Spirit was the clinching evidence that enabled him to shift his worldview. "So if God gave them the same gift that he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I should oppose God." Who indeed.
This dividing of the world into clean and unclean, of those who are like us and those who are different from us is deeply bedded into human nature. It finds its expression in the purity codes of Judaism, but also in almost every tribe and culture. It keys into profound psychological processes of shame and guilt, of fear and taboo. It is coded into conventions about food and eating in many cultures, and also into conventions around sexual behaviour.
For Peter, the giving of the Spirit was the clinching evidence that enabled him to shift his worldview. "So if God gave them the same gift that he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I should oppose God." Who indeed.
May God who gives us his Spirit so freely, by that same Spirit lead us and all people into a fuller and richer understanding of his truth.