“Scrapple and Shrimp” - April 24, 2016

Acts 11:1-18

            It can take an effort of the will to eat certain foods.  Have you ever eaten haggis?  It’s a Scottish dish that Wikipedia defines as “a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs); minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, traditionally encased in the animal's stomach though now often in an artificial casing instead”.  If the sheep was slaughtered properly and there’s no pork fat in the suet, this would be kosher.

            Then there’s scrapple.  There’s no way to make that kosher, although I suppose the one time I tried turkey scrapple that might have met the requirements – but it didn’t taste much like the real thing and I wouldn’t recommend it.  I’ve eaten scrapple all my life and like it, but the one time I tried haggis I had to take a deep breath before I put my fork into it.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t scrapple.

            There’s a long-standing debate between whether we eat what we like or whether we like what we eat.  It’s probably a little of both.  To that we add formal or informal taboos around food.  Not only do we consider some animals edible or inedible, there are rules like, “only eat oysters in months with an ‘r’”, and “don’t go swimming for an hour after you’ve eaten”.  Judaism at least has clear rules about what may and may not be eaten and how it is to be prepared.  The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy set them out in detail.  We sort of go culture by culture and dish by dish, and rely on folkways to tell us that it’s okay to eat possum if you are from the South or rattlesnake chili if you are from Nevada, but not to expect it of anybody from Illinois.

            Those laws from the Torah were considered essential for observant Jews throughout most of their history.  To break them was to commit a sin against God.  The Talmud quotes the ancient Rabbi Aqiba ben Joseph, who said,

"Do not go among scoffers, lest you learn their practices!
Do not break bread with a worldly priest, lest you tread on sacred things!
Do not spread vows, lest you tread on the oaths!
Do not get used to eating at banquets,
lest you end by eating forbidden things!"[1]

All of this is background to consider how fundamentally difficult it would have been for Peter not only to enter the house of a Gentile but also to eat with one, and not only to eat with one but also to eat what the Gentiles ate.  Maybe I don’t want to think about what I’m eating when I’m eating liverwurst, but I won’t be thinking that I’m offending God.  Peter would have felt that.

            Peter felt it so strongly that he argued with God about having to do it.  After having a vision of all kinds of animals, including some that were clearly forbidden, he said,

“I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.” [Acts 11:7-10]

As it turned out, the vision was preparing him to be able to see not only the Gentiles’ food, but also the Gentiles themselves as acceptable to God in a way that had nothing to do with the keeping of dietary law.  What would matter would be the way that they would come to place their faith in the good news of Christ, who would be Savior of all people across all lines and borders.

            Peter later told other apostles back in Jerusalem,

“At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’” [Acts 11:11-17]

We accept distinctions among people.  God breaks them down.  We use all kinds of criteria, some of them even based in religious practice, to say who is a good person and who is a bad person.  God, however, doesn’t just give up at that point, the way we so often do. 

God was at work in that other household, among a community of non-Jews, before Peter even arrived.  He was instrumental in sharing the good news, but it was the God who had prepared the way who would also complete the conversion of their hearts after Peter was through speaking.  God very well may be at work in the lives of people we want nothing at all to do with, and would advise our children to stay away from, and with whom we would keep our own dealings to a minimum.

If you think about it, after all, it isn’t the people who have it all together for whom the Lord came.  (If, in fact, anybody really fits that description anyway.)  It was for sinners and for people who are on destructive paths.  What was celebrated by Peter and the apostles when Peter returned to Jerusalem was that

“‘God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’” [Acts 11:18]

Nobody gets closed out of the opportunity to turn to God and live.  Not by their past, no matter how clouded, and certainly not by where they were born or what they eat.

            The gift of the Holy Spirit, that spoke in many languages at Pentecost, also speaks to the inmost part of each human being. 

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” [Romans 8:14-17]

That makes all the ups and downs worth it, something as difficult as turning away from deeply ingrained patterns of life, or something as easy as eating a basket of fried shrimp.

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[1] Babylonian Talmud (supplement), Abot^h de R. Nathan A 26.2