The Universal Question

I once heard a piece of profound wisdom from an anonymous voice. He was a young man reflecting on his journey towards wholeness. “Every time I think I’ve finally got it figured out, that’s when I’m sure I don’t.” Ah, how true.




Pity the one who has it all figured out, for it is at that dangerous moment that the mind closes and the understanding is left unfed. The atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer told newsman Edward R Murrow on a TV interview back in the fifties that science had just cracked open the door to a whole new universe and had not even stepped across the threshold. That was not mere false modesty, it was a profound description of the true condition of the human mind. How great is our knowledge and how puny in the face of all there is yet to be understood.



But there is a second danger in this notion. When we have it all figured out, we take the next step of thinking our answer is THE answer. Sounds innocent enough, doesn’t it? And yet, this is the underlying cause of such aberrations as the “Ultimate Solution” which the world now calls the holocaust. The well-meaning busybody who is only trying to help, unwittingly can be the cruel tyrant who insists “I know what’s best for you.” What a short distance lies between that statement and the assumption of omniscience. An old Buddhist saying is so true: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”



With that in mind, consider this lesson learned by the apostle Peter.



Good Jew though he was and aware of the prohibitions of the Mosaic law concerning dietary practices, he had eaten a meal with the gentiles. This simply was not done. Why? Who knew? Who asked? It was the law. And that was the end of the matter. So let us agree, their question was legitimate and Peter guilty as charged.



And what do we do when someone so obviously steps off the straight and narrow path of righteousness? Scold them. Correct them. Remind them how they were supposed to act. The problem with this is that it assumes such rules and laws are chiseled in stone. They are eternal. There is no room for new insight and growth. And they forget what the purpose was behind those rules.



It’s an old story but a good one. A young bride, remembering how delicious her mother’s roast was, asked her for the recipe. The mother said it was easy enough. “First you cut off the end of the roast.” “Why?” asked the new bride. “I don’t know,” her mother replied. “That’s just the way your grandmother taught me. Ask her.” So she did. The grandmother looked at her granddaughter with impatience, “Why? Because it was too big for the pan, of course!”



Good rules, but maybe we need to understand the purpose of the rule. Peter lived with rules that had been in place for hundreds of years. They had become self-evident. But just living by the letter of the law could be anything but the intention and will of God as Peter found out.



He dreamt a dream that put him in a dilemma. He was told to eat forbidden food. His refusal brought about a confrontation with an angel who chided him for his disobedience. “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” It was a troubling order. Who was he to defy the Law of Moses and risk the wrath of God? On the other hand, who was he to resist a direct order when that order came from God? Wanting to be faithful and righteous, he was caught between a rock and a hard place.



It was resolved when he was later challenged to go to a gentile who needed him. Now the uncertainty about a dietary law disappeared in the face of a more significant issue. Would gentiles be accepted into the new Kingdom of God, or was Jesus’ mission only for the Jews? Peter was not only a good practitioner of the Mosaic Law, he was also a good Jew. What he now faced was unique. Had he not had that vision of the unclean food, he might have refused to go to the gentiles. But he went, telling his Pharisee critics he had to ask himself the question “who was I that I could hinder God?”



As I read this passage again, I found myself asking “In what ways do I hinder God?” And worse, “How often have I hindered God while believing I was doing so for God?” I shall not go to confession with you on that issue. It is troubling enough to have to admit I have done it many times. And probably no longer ago than this past week!



Ultimately, this event, this vignette, this glimpse into the story of Peter is about action not belief. We can argue until the earth looks flat about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but what action does our belief produce? Believe the gentiles are impure and it only makes sense to avoid them. Believe that the Jews are impure and you justify the holocaust. Believe that someone’s sexual practices are impure and you have just cause for turning them into objects of ridicule and scorn.



I am not free of these unholy judgments. As I heard one woman put it, “I’m a snob. I look down on people who look down on people!” Oh, I wish she hadn’t said that. Yes, I too am guilty. Where there is hatred, prejudice, intolerance, injustice there is a profanation of the holy. We all are created in the Image of God and no matter how far we have defaced that image, God has not shut the door on any of us.



For Peter, the lesson meant action. It was not enough to have a vision of unclean food; he was called to minister to the hated ones. He was invited into their home where he saw with his own eyes an anointing of the Holy Spirit upon the enemy. It’s rather like seeing one’s home team ignored while the challengers from out of town have God in their bleachers!



No, no, no. That’s intolerable. Isn’t it? Or is it? Wasn’t that what Peter was doing when he was urged to go to the Gentiles? Or think of Jonah, that righteous man who tried to run away from God rather than risk telling the Ninehvites how God felt about them and see them repent and be saved. Oh dear. Could God love that pimple faced thug who aspires to dating my daughter?



Apparently God could, and does, and urges us to do likewise. It’s not just a new world we Christians are living in, it’s a newer world every day. There’s no keeping up with it. I listened to a report on NPR yesterday which speaks of this new “i” generation. The generation of the i-pod, the i-pad, google and twitter and facebook. Lord have mercy on us. We are raising children who understand the uses of the internet by the time they’re in first grade. When I can’t get my MP3 player to work, I find a 5th grader to explain it to me. Can we honestly think that the gospel we learned fifty years ago really fits the world in which they live? We may long for the “good old days” and lament the easy morals of today’s youth, but I must remind you, their morals are not that different from the ones we practiced or that our forebearers took for granted. Thus it will ever be as long as we stay satisfied merely obeying the letter of the law without looking beyond the forbidden food to see the miracle God is constantly working in our constantly changing world.



Don’t think Peter got it right away. Told to eat unclean food he rebelled. Never. Never? Why Peter, think who you’re talking to. You know more than God?



Well, yes. The laws are pretty clear on this. And it’s what everyone else believes. And yet, are we really so clear? It’s not been that long ago a couple were convicted of contributing to the death of their son when they refused to avail themselves of the aid of modern medicine for him because of their religious beliefs. We were horrified. How could they do that? Yet how could they not? Given their understanding of the requirements of their faith, to do otherwise was to deny God. Suppose everything you ever believed was being thrown out the window when you were totally convinced that God had ordered things otherwise? How frightening, how dreadful, how terrible for you and your son.



The Universal Question continues to be, “Am I doing the will of God, or am I getting in the way of God’s will?” And that is why I was reminded of that remark I heard long ago, “Just when I think I have it figured out, I realize I haven’t got it figured out.” And to take it a step further, “Just when I’m sure I know the will of God - ah, how strange that I cannot understand the will of God at all!” The poet Stephen Vincent Benet, in his epic poem about the Civil War, imagined Abraham Lincoln struggling to know God’s will:



What is God’s will?

They come to me and talk about God’s will

In righteous deputations and platoons,

Day after day, laymen and ministers,

They write me Prayers From Twenty Million Souls

Defining me God’s will and Horace Greeley’s.

God’s will is General This and Senator That,

God’s will is those poor colored fellows’ will,

It is the will of the Chicago churches,

it is this man’s and his worst enemy’s.

But all of them are sure they know God’s will.

I am the only man who does not know it.



And yet, if it is probable that God

Should, and so very clearly, state His will

To others, on a point of my own duty,

It might be thought He would reveal it me

Directly, more especially as I

So earnestly desire to know His will.



God bless the Peters of this world and the Abraham Lincolns, and the young man who thought he knew but discovered he did not know. God bless us who want to do what is right but must live in a world that keeps changing, changing so radically our sacred rules seem useless.



God bless you as you hear Jesus’ words:



I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. 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.



May God give us the courage, the humility and the faith to hear those words as if we had never heard them before, and the resolve to live by them as best we can this day. Amen.