Who am I to hinder God?

18 May 2025

Easter 5 Year C

The Revd Devin McLachlan

Note: for pastoral reasons in our community, this sermon was replaced by a extemporaneous reflection on creation, grief, community and hope.

If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?

‘Hold hard a minute, then!’ said the Rat. He looped the painter through a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker luncheon-basket.
‘Shove that under your feet,’ he observed to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat. Then he untied the painter and took the sculls again.
‘What’s inside it?’ asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.
‘There’s cold chicken inside it,’ replied the Rat briefly; cold tongue, cold ham, cold beef, pickled gherkins, salad, french rolls, cress sandwiches, potted meat, ginger beer, lemonade, soda water—-‘
‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstasies: ‘This is too much!’
‘Do you really think so?’ enquired the Rat seriously. ‘It’s only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!’

 That delicious scene from Wind in the Willows always comes to mind whenever we come to this part of the Acts of the Apostles

Because Luke gives us some important details — details which Peter, in preaching about his vision, chose to leave out.

The chapter before today’s lesson, Luke tells us the whole  story:

 Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while it was being prepared he fell into a trance. 

 …and so he has a vision of a heavenly picnic blanket descending from heaven.

 It is very nearly comic — hungry apostle, waiting for his lunch, has a vision of food. But it’s one of the most transformative moments in the New Testament, an experience of grace by which Peter’s sectarian mind was changed, when he finally knew that Jesus really had meant all nations, that we would be a church that welcomed Gentiles as well as Jews, that by Baptism there is neither slave nor free, Gentile nor Jew, male nor female, but that all are one in Christ Jesus.

Now it’s not just about being a faith that can pack a picnic with cold ham alongside cold beef, and whatever’s in the potted meat…though it’s worth saying: Christians are weird about food.

Nearly every other religion has dietary restrictions — whether it is keeping halal in Islam or Kosher in Judaism, or vegetarian in some schools of Buddhism, taboo dishes in Polynesian cultures, the strict rules of Jains….

Nearly everyone has rules about food.

The Christian uncircumscribed diet is the exception in human history, an aggressive, counter-cultural declaration of hospitality, love, and inclusion.

Food rules are a daily spiritual discipline, a reminder of the community to which you belong, and the obligations which you owe to the divine.

It’s a concept that goes beyond ‘ick, I don’t like eating that’, goes beyond fasting and self-denial, to a fundamental sense of identity and belonging.

Now the Romans elite also had a practice of unrestrained eating — Larks tongues, parrot heads, and whatnot — but with a very different intention: a celebration of unbridled wealth and indulgence.

But see how Peter’s vision of the heavenly picnic is far more than a Roman feast:

At that very moment three men…arrived at the house..… The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. 

And there we are — The heart of Christian community:

            Not to make a distinction between them and us.

There is the true feast of that heavenly picnic.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,  if you have love for one another.’

It’s hard work. Human seem biologically wired to turn the world into ‘Them’ and ‘us’, and to seek out binaries where in truth there is breadth. If you’ve been on the receiving end of division and fear in a church, you know how much it can hurt.

We should do better. We are called to do better, even as a community of sinners, with all our baggage and privilage and fear:

 Because church is a hospital for souls, gathered because we are broken, but called to transformation, to wholeness and healing.

In the words of a sign I saw recently by a church:

“If you think there are two kinds of people in the world…God loves them both.”

When my home church, the Episcopal Church, chose to start down the path of full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians in the church, including in the sacraments of ordination and marriage, we did not do so to be popular or inoffensive or easy-going — that would be the path of the Roman feast, as if to say (and here I’ll translate into British English:

 We are an inclusive church because we read the Guardian, iInstead of saying:  we are an inclusive church, because we read the Gospels.  Because we believe that faithful loving relationships can reflect the love of Christ; because listening to the voices of trans Christians, the experiences of gay and lesbian Christians, the stories of folks traditionally excluded  from the church’s institution — that faith, those stories and experiences, those prayerful conversations opened hearts to that same Good News that shocked Peter:

If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God? Who was I, that I could hinder God?

And there it is.

Peter, in his moment of radical love turning away from insisting on circumcision, exclusion, purity codes, and binaries,  didn’t call for a Marcionite church, throwing out the Hebrew Scriptures, rejecting what God has taught us through his revelations to His People;

And he didn’t call for an anything-goes Roman feast, freedom from the law becoming a meaningless “ do what thou wilt”

Peter simply says in humility: Who was I, that I could hinder God?

  All those fears — fears of “us’ and “them”, fears of clean and unclean, fears often born out of the very anger and abuse we’ve received as children — fears that lead to transphobia, homophobia, racism, anti-semitism… we don’t get over those fears by looking the other way.

We move past those fears when we say, with both humility and trust: Who am I, that I could hinder God?

And if we discover we are hindering the work of the Spirit, we turn to God, and to one another, to ask forgiveness and to seek out justice, to pray for the grace to love one another just as Christ loves us, for who are we, that we could hinder God? that by God’s grace we might be changed, as Peter and the early church was changed, again and again, learning anew in each generation how to reflect Jesus radical, welcoming, rule-breaking, foot-washing, life-giving 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.’