Easter 3 (NL1) John B. Valentine
Acts 10:1-17; 34-35 April 23, 2023

“CHOOSING SIDES”

So .... the Warriors are gonna tip off in less than three hours ... right???

Now I know that:

• Some of you are thinking “They’ve got this” ... and ...
• Others are thinking “Phew ... at least they didn’t get rolled” ... and
• Still others that “All good things must come to an end” ...

But .. In any event ... I’ve got a weird question. While I’m neither hoping nor predicting this ....

If ... IF ... the Warriors get run from the NBA playoffs this week ... whom would you be rooting for come next Sunday?

• Would it be Sacramento ... the only team that would be left from Northern California?
• Would it be Phoenix ... led by one-time Warrior Kevin Durant?
• Would it be one of those teams from SoCal ... the Lakers or the Clippers ... or
• Would it be somebody else?

Actually ... IF the Warriors get run ... I don’t really care WHO you root for ... as long as it isn’t the Lakers or the Clippers ...

But I am kind of curious HOW it is that you choose the teams you root for?

In other words ... how is it that you ‘choose sides’?

HOW DO YOU ‘CHOOSE SIDES’?

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Actually ... do any of you remember ‘choosing sides’ as a kid ... divvying up into sides and all that?

Granted ... for the big, strong, athletic kids ... ‘choosing sides’ was great fun. After all ... they got picked first and their egos were assuaged once again.

But for we who were numbered among the shorter and the smaller and the slower ... ‘choosing sides’ was a regular act of public humiliation. It wasn’t a pleasant exercise to endure.

But ‘choosing sides isn’t something that stopped when we graduated from elementary school ... or middle school or high school for that matter.

No ... ‘choosing sides’ is something of a national pastime for us.

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Needless to say ... our nation’s politics have devolved into ‘choosing sides’ ... has it not???

We’ve got at least one political party that thinks the best way to win an election ... maybe the ONLY way to win an election ... is to segment and separate and subdivide.

It may be that we pledge allegiance to the flag of the UNITED States of America ... but our politicians ... and their cronies in news media and social media ... are working diligently ... all the time ,,, to divide us.

But let’s not fool ourselves ... folks. The only reason the politicians play the divide and subdivide game is because mimics something that many of us do all the time ... inside our heads ... inside our hearts.

• We use the “Wealth” screen to divide people into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.

• We use the “Race” screen to divide people into those who look like us and those who are different.

• We use the “Ethnicity” screen to divide people into those whose cultures of origin feel like our own and those whose cultures of origin we find a bit weird ... and ...

• We use the “Age” screen to divide people into the “Greatest Generation”, the “Silent Generation”, the “Baby Boomers”, “Gen X”, the “Millennials” and now the “Gen Z” crowd.

Not to mention ... the gender identity screen and the gender expression screen and the sexual orientation screen and the ability and/or disability screen and the family status screen ... and the list goes on and on.

The thing is ... we have so perfected this idea of separating and segmenting and subdividing that we now assume divided-ness is just the natural state of all things.

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But ... honestly ... it gets worse!

If one wants to see our nation’s penchant for separating and segmenting and sub-dividing ... Example A would have to be ‘the Church’.

I mean ...

• There’s Roman Catholics and Orthodox folks ... who sub-divided in the Great Schism of 1054.

• Then there’s Lutherans and Calvinists and Anglicans and Baptists ... who sub-divided during the Reformation in the 16th Century.

• Then there’s all the ethnically-based sub-divisions of all those groups ... that emigrated to this country in the 18th and 19th centuries ... the Norwegian Lutherans and the Dutch Reformed and the Russian Orthodox and Swedish Covenant folks and the like.

• And then there’s the subsets of the sub-divisions of the separatists ... which are probably too many to count!

Such that ... anyone want to guess how many different Lutheran denominations are registered under IRS tax code as of 2023???

According to Wikipedia at least ... the answer is like 31! Not just the ELCA and the LCMS ... but the ELS and the WELS ... and the ALC and the NALC ... and just about every other alphabet soup permutation under the sun!

Truthfully ... I kind of hate to admit it ... but when I first arrived here back in 2003 ....

There were ...

• people who identified as ‘Holy Cross’ people and
• people who identified as ‘Shepherd of the Valley’ people and
• people who identified as ‘Our Savior’s people even!

The point ... even in the Church ... particularly in the Church... we have perfected the art of sub-dividing and separating and segregating ...

Without realizing that all of those distinctions become excuses for us to look down our noses at our neighbors ...

And that ... at the end of the day ... we begin to believe that we are ‘special’ or ‘better' or ‘more favored by God' or some other such thing than ‘they' are ... because WE belong to a particular subset.

But you know who suffers because of all of that sub-dividing???

The Church ... and God ... and our neighbors.

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I mean ... what was the point of that curious story which we heard read as this morning Scripture lesson?

That lesson comes to us from the Book of Acts ... wherein Christianity ... the Gospel and the Church and all ... has started from just the spark that was Easter ... and is beginning to spread like a wildfire through tinder-dry scrub-brush during those days we’re now starting to call ‘Fire Season’.

The Holy Spirit is fanning the flames ... and pushing the frontiers of faith ...

• first through Jerusalem ...
• then through Judea and Samaria ...
• then through Jewish communities around the Eastern Mediterranean ... and
• now through non-Jewish communities throughout the Roman Empire.

But this incredible expansion of the Church didn’t come with some growing pains.

You see ... Jesus’ first friends and followers were all Jewish. They’d grown up observing:

• Jewish dietary laws ...
• Jewish religious laws ...
• Jewish holiday calendars ... and on and on and on.

But when Paul’s Gospel-preaching began to connect with people from other nations and customs ... with their own dietary laws and holiday calendars and favorite foods and cultural biases and the like ...

There was this incredible clash of cultures.

Some people ... following the thinking of Peter ... thought that ... if you were going to become a faithful follower of Jesus ... you need to become Jewish and adopt the culture of Judaism ... and take on the Jewish dietary laws and religious laws and holiday calendars and the like ...

• That you had to ‘choose sides’ ... as it were ...

• That you had to choose this particular side.

And some other people ... following the thinking of Paul ... thought not.

• That you didn’t HAVE to become a Jew to become and Christian ...

• That you didn’t have to adopt all cultural expectations of Judaism ...

• That you could keep your own culture ... embrace your own ethnicity as it were ... and still become a Christian.

And so here ... in that text which Donald read for us ...

We hear how it was that Peter has a dream ... and how Peter’s penchant for subdividing and segmenting and separating ... Peter’s penchant for ‘choosing sides’ ... wilts and withers under the Spirit’s fire.

To the end that Peter ultimately confesses:

“I get it ... I see it now ... I truly understand that God shows no partiality ... but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.

• Choosing sides just becomes an excuse for us to look down our noses at someone or someones else ... just because they are different.

• Choosing God’s side means not choosing human sides at all!”

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Let’s be honest ... folks.

• If the Church is going to make a difference in make a difference in the world ...
• If our denomination is going to make a difference across our nation ...
• If our congregation is going to make a difference in our community ...
• If we ourselves are going to make a difference to those whom God calls our neighbors ...

We need to fundamentally express ... with our very being ... God’s core values.
And one of those values is ‘acceptance’ ...

Not of ‘choosing sides’ ... but choosing God’s side.

Because ... if we’re going to get sucked into the world’s game of ‘choosing up sides’ ... and putting folks down because they don’t look like us or act like us or speak like us or behave in ways which we find acceptable ... then we are putting at risk that very unity which Jesus prayed for ... and paid for with his blood.

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Maybe the question is simply this?

WHOM IS EASTER FOR?

Is it for ‘our’ people???

Or is it for ‘all’ people???

This may not be the message that we are hard-wired for ..

This isn’t the message that many of our nation’s politicians are articulating these days ...

This may not be a message that we learned on the playground ...

But this IS the message of the Cross ...

That God in Christ chooses all ...

Even you ....

Even me .......

For which we can only ever say ‘Thanks be to God.’