Can’t contain it. Year C, Easter 5, May 2, 2010

Rev. Catherine Wright
St. Andrew’s, Elyria, Ohio

(RCL) Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

There is a song I learned when I was growing up. Perhaps some of you have heard it also. The words go like this:
Love is something if you give it away,
Give it away, give it away.
Love is something if you give it away;
You end up having more.
It's just like a magic penny;
Hold it tight, and you won't have any;
Lend and spend it, and you'll have so many
They'll roll all over the floor.

Pennies, rolling all over the floor. So many that we can’t hold them, can’t contain them. Love, so much that it can’t be contained, but spills over. Spills into our world in the form of Jesus. Spills into his love and care for each one of us. Spills into us. And then what? What do we do with it once it spills into us? Do we hold it tight, hoard it, hide it? Or put it on a lamp stand, share it, hand it out to everyone we meet.

It is a crucial scene in John’s Gospel, his telling of this Good News for us. The betrayer has left the room. The plan is in action. The end is coming and soon. There is no time left and Jesus chooses his words to these people carefully. Love. “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.” For one another. But who is this one another? Is it the other disciples? That is one answer that Christianity has come up with over and over. Communities of Christians have closed themselves off from the rest of the world, taking care of and loving only those already in their midst. Think of the Gnostics living out in the desert in the early days of the church. Think of the Amish. Think of those who won’t associate with anyone who is not a part of their group. Think of congregations that won’t great the visitor in their midst, or tell their friends or coworkers where they are on Sunday morning, or what sustains them in this life. Is that sharing the love of God? Or hoarding it. Is that operating from Hope? Or fear?

Look at our first lesson for today- this reading from Acts, from the stories about the first days of the Christian community.
The dream Peter has is about what is clean and unclean. It is another way of saying…who is in and who is out…in the community of faith.

Peter’s vivid dream pits the “old purity ways” with God’s new “clean ways”. Again who is “in” as seen by the eyes of God verses who in “in” in the Jewish Christians eyes.

We have our own purity codes today. We see that played out in
-racial tension
-interfaith tension
-gender and marriage tension
-economic tension
-immigration tension

Our purity codes are no less strong than those during Peter’s time.
What does “there is no distinction” look like in 2010…in contemporary issues of our time.


Blue and red…there is no distinction
Conservative and liberal…there is no distinction
Legal and illegal…there is no distinction
and a host of other distinctions that we like to make, but that just get in the way.

Walter Bruggemann says it this way: Imagine that we are all invited to “the same gift”…the same Spirit is given to all…no privilege, no advanced notice, and no advantage in better faith or better future…all are clean.
Two items of interest to note from this reading in Acts:

It was Peter’s experience with something “new” that changed his mind.
-not reading about it or hearing about it. He dreamed the dream, then was faced with men from Caesarea. These Gentiles, non-Jews, ones distinct from himself. But he gave them a chance and while he was speaking the Holy Spirit fell on them just as it had fallen upon the first disciples at the beginning. Peter’s mind was changed.

And it was Peter’s experience of God that he was sharing with the Jerusalem Council -and the way that experience changed him. He was not arguing with them- he was telling them about his experience, what he had heard, and seen and believed.

How often do we share our God experiences with one another?

The second item of interest….the Jerusalem Council…asked questions. They did not keep silent. They had called Peter there to bring him back in line, to stop him from doing these things that they felt were wrong. But they gathered together, they asked questions, they talked, and apparently they listened to Peter.

And in the end…God won…God always wins.
The council, after hearing Peter’s experience, silenced their criticism.

And then one of the best verses in the NT:
Verse 17: If God gave them the same gift as to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then what power did I have to stand in the way of God.

Who are we to hinder God?
Who are we to stop the creative power of God…Who are we to halt the work God began in the Old Testament. From beginnings we can hardly define or imagine. Who are we to hinder God, to hold onto our pennies. We are to praise God, as the Psalmist does in our Psalm for today. We are to give thanks, as the United Thank Offering invites us to do, remembering the many things in our lives that are overflowing, that we are grateful for. God is making all things new and it is not our job to decide that some people are not included in that. Our job is to keep giving that love away, to let the love that is overflowing continue to overflow. Who am I to hinder God?
“Faith, when it comes down to it, is our often breathless attempt to keep up with the redemptive activity of God, to keep asking ourselves,
“What is God doing…where on Earth is God going now?”
Spread those pennies around. Share that love. Be strengthened at the table today, be strengthened by the community that surrounds you. Watch for where God is going now and join in. Continue to be a disciples that can be know by the love you have for one another.