Lectionary Reflection for Easter Sunday C on Acts 10:34-43

WE LOVE THEM LINES

A driven and ambitious man learned of an exclusive club that only extremely wealthy, successful, and influential people could join. He investigated the entrance requirements and set his plan to meet them so that he could join. When he finally accomplished his goal, his pride knew no bounds and he loved flaunting his membership in such an elite community. But when he discovered another, even more selective club that only admitted the super-wealthy, famous, and powerful, he became depressed at the knowledge he would never be welcomed, and he stopped caring about the group he just managed to enter.

We do love our lines, don’t we? We love to know who is in and who is out. We love to create groups that only admit those with certain unique talents, riches, or status. Our entire world is so structured around our lines that we have even drawn lines on the planet (only visible on maps, of course) to define and separate us. We get so absorbed by the tiny differences between us that we easily ignore the wealth of things that unite us and the great similarities that we all share. We have developed no shortage of stereotypes, doctrines, and qualifications to classify one another and ensure that we only have to deal with those who look, think, speak, behave, dress, believe, and love as we do. But our lines have not brought us safety, peace, and flourishing. The great irony of our faith is that even the resurrection—whether we believe and how we believe in it—has become a test to determine who belongs and who must be rejected. But that is the opposite of what the Easter story is about. As Greg Carey writes:

The Easter message humbles a culture that continually debates human worth¹

In the Easter season, the Revised Common Lectionary replaces the usual Old Testament readings with selections from the Book of Acts. On Easter Sunday, the chosen passage drops us into the middle of a much longer narrative that had massive consequences for the early Church. The Apostle Peter is at the centre of the story and his experience seeks to erase all our lines.

A DREAM OF RESURRECTION

There is a sense in which Peter’s journey in Acts 10 and 11 is itself a resurrection narrative. It begins with Peter raising Tabitha, a devoted and compassionate believer who lived in the town of Joppa, from the dead. Miracles like these often seem to be used by the New Testament writers to affirm the righteousness of a person when their actions would otherwise been seen as wrong or inappropriate. When Jesus healed the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years, her touch would have made him ritually unclean and therefore unable to be used by God until he had been purified. Jesus then touched Jairus’ dead daughter, his uncleanness was further confirmed. But then, by raising her, he demonstrated his power over the laws of exclusion and shame. Similarly, the writer of Acts begins Peter’s narrative with the raising of Tabitha to confirm that Peter was a righteous person through whom God’s power was at work. This justifies Peter’s flaunting of religious norms later in the narrative and makes the story of his transformation more profound.

While staying in Joppa, Peter received a dream in which he was invited to eat from a sheet filled with all sorts of animals that descended from heaven. When he resisted, claiming that he had never eaten anything unclean, he was told not to label as profane what God had made clean. The dream was repeated three times, and then messengers from a Gentile, God-fearing centurion named Cornelius arrived to invite him to speak to Cornelius’ family and friends about Jesus. On meeting Cornelius, Peter mentioned that it was unlawful for Jews to associate with or visit Gentiles (Acts 10:28 CEB). This seems not to have been a part of the biblical law, but rather a social and religious taboo that was strongly upheld in Peter’s time.² Nevertheless, Peter’s choice to accept Cornelius’ invitation would have raised more than a few eyebrows in the primarily Jewish Church.

This brings us to the reading set for Easter Sunday, which begins at the point where Peter “opened his mouth”. In saying this, the writer of Acts used an expression that would usually introduce “some weighty utterance” and, as F.F. Bruce explains:

The first words that Peter spoke were words of the weightiest import, sweeping away the racial and religious prejudices of centuries.³

Peter began by acknowledging and rejecting his inborn, religiously required prejudice against Gentiles, and affirmed his new realisation that God shows no partiality. Eugene Peterson phrases Peter’s opening statement in this way:

It's God's own truth, nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you're from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he's doing it everywhere, among everyone.⁴

Peter continued with the story of Jesus’ baptism, ministry, death, and resurrection, but before he finished his sermon, the Holy Spirit fell on the gathering and everyone began speaking in tongues (a necessary sign to convince the believers who had come with Peter that the Gentiles had indeed received the Spirit). This was the final movement in Peter’s resurrection. He went from a prejudiced Jew, who valued and protected the lines of division, to a welcoming follower of Jesus who erased those lines. The old, exclusive Peter had died and a new inclusive person had been raised—and in the process, the resurrection of Christ was given a whole new meaning. Peter’s dream had not just been about food laws or even being more open to others. It was a dream of resurrection, of the way God’s life was to be received, experienced, and shared in a world defined by division and exclusivities.