May 2 Sermon: Perchance to Dream
Sermon, May 2nd 2010
Holy Covenant UMC
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Acts 11:1-18
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Peter has a dream. A dream about food. Do you ever dream about food? During Lent, when I had given up sweets, there were multiple nights when I actually dreamt of eating chocolate and I awoke with a sweet taste in my mouth. I also, unfortunately, awoke with a craving I couldn’t satisfy…Well, Peter has a dream about all the animals that he can eat. God says eat any and all of these Peter….pigs and cows, reptiles, chickens, goats, animals that feed on other animals….eat some barbecue and bacon, have some sausage with your eggs, put some cheese on your chicken…God says kill the animals and eat, Peter, eat abundantly.
Now, I have to admit, that as a vegetarian, I’ve always had a really hard time with this dream. For here we have God, God, in the very words of Scripture, this sacred story, commanding us to kill animals and eat them. It hurts my vegetarian heart.
Peter has a hard time with this dream too. At first, it’s more of a nightmare for him than a gift. You see, Peter is Jewish and very faithful. He cares deeply about his identity and the identity of his community. And it’s important to him to keep the laws of his faith, the very laws that God commands….and this means keeping kosher, not eating four-footed animals, not mixing meat with dairy. Eating animals that are deemed clean by Jewish law and staying away from unclean animals.
Peter is also Jesus’ best friend and faithful follower. We meet him this morning, in the book of Acts, which is the story of the very early church. Acts comes after the Gospels and tells us these marvelous stories about how those first followers of Jesus created their community after his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. Jesus says to Peter, you will be the rock that my church will be built on. So Acts tells us these stories of how Peter is the rock and how this early church forms itself.
In the beginning, the dream for the church is that it will maintain its Jewish identity. So that the followers of Jesus will always and only be Jews…by birth and ancestry, by circumcision and by keeping kosher…only eating clean foods. This was the original dream of the church.
And lo and behold Peter has a very different dream. He goes to Joppa and dreams of eating—not eating chocolate—but eating animals. Decidedly unclean animals. God proclaims the animals clean, saying: “What I’ve made clean, you must not call profane”. This news, that those animals aren’t profane, rocks Peter’s world. He doesn’t know what kind of rock he’s supposed to be anymore. This dream shakes everything up in his world. It’s as if the truth he had been living wasn’t true anymore. The markers of his community, of those who follow Jesus, of who God calls and how, are now part of a different dream.
I had a moment like this, when my clear vision and dreams were shifted, in seminary.
While there, I took a class on United Methodist Polity, where we learned about the structure and rules of The UMC. Most people dread this class…it’s an entire semester devoted to detailed rules, fascinating material such as how you structure a church budget and what to do if you sell a church building….but we take it because it’s a requirement in order to be ordained. Most people wait until their last semester, putting it off.
But I was really fortunate, because I got to take this class from Bishop Woodie White. Bishop White was a Bishop in residence at Candler, my seminary, retired from the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Prior to becoming bishop, he was the first executive director of the newly formed General Commission on Religion and Race of The UMC. At Candler, he taught classes, preached, and met one-on-one with students….He’s well known in the larger church for many reasons, but he might be best known now for the annual letter he writes to Martin Luther King, Jr., published around his birthday to comment on the state of race in the church and The U.S.
So taking this class from Bishop White turned a dull and often tedious subject into an opportunity rich with stories and polity put into practice, from someone who had lived this history and had much wisdom to share.
One of our first assignments was to write about a United Methodist congregation we had been part of and what was distinctive about our church. I wrote about my home church, St. John’s UMC in Lubbock, TX. I’d always described it as a “dream church”. An ideal place to learn the love of God through Christ because of its openness. Our mission was open minds, open hearts, open arms, long before the larger UMC took on the similar statement: open minds, open hearts, open doors.
So I went on and on in this reflection paper, waxing eloquently about why St. John’s is so open, why it’s a dream church: we were reconciling, in the middle of the Bible belt, so we were a place where people of all gender identities and sexual orientations were welcome; we had an outreach ministry on Tuesdays where people came to pick up food and received health screenings and could participate in Bible study; then in the evening we had a free legal clinic. Children and youth were a vital part of the life of the church—not relegated to Sunday school or children’s choir, but welcomed on committees with adults, read scripture in worship services, and allowed to ask questions and actively participate. We used inclusive language for God, recognizing that God is beyond gender. Acknowledging that exclusively male language for God reinforces the church patriarchy that has for 2,000 years has taught unequal value for women and men. I went on and on about how inclusive St. John’s is.
I turned the paper in, proud of my home church…so many people have negative experiences of the churches that they grew up in, I knew he would be really impressed that I grew up in a dream church, a place where all were included. A week later we received the papers back with comments. And at the very end of the paper the Bishop wrote: What a wonderfully inclusive church! Was there any racial diversity?
Was there any racial diversity? No. Maybe 5 people of color in a congregation of 300. That simple, painfully obvious question, was a wake-up call: this inclusive church had many more dreams to dream if we really were to be inclusive. The Bishop wasn’t indicting the church and he realizes the complexity, better than anyone, of race and the church.
But what he was doing was reminding us, reminding me, that when we describe a church we can’t just describe the people that are already there. We do a great injustice to the Gospel when we limit its boundaries; when we assume who is in and who is out. When we are certain who the church is for, it’s probably time to dream some new dreams.
And this is what happens for Peter. For the dream he dreamed about food wasn’t as significant as what happened next. For God was saying eat the animals, they are clean, because he was calling Peter to share a meal with the gentiles, the non-Jews. God was saying that Peter was called to open up the table, draw the circle wide of the church. Dream of who is not yet in the church Peter. Dream of who you can still invite. Dream about with whom you should be sharing a meal…and worship and study and prayer and the Spirit with.
Stop focusing on the people who are already there and move outside of yourself to invite others in. For the Spirit already has….and with Peter’s rigid boundaries of the church he was getting in the way of the Spirit. For after his dream he goes to eat with three gentiles. The Spirit says: go with them and do not make a distinction between them and us.
Do not make a distinction between them and us. This, this, friends is how the church starts! With these words! There is no distinction between them and us. It’s the pivotal moment in the story of the church….for if the church was born as a place where distinctions were made, where some received the spirit and some didn’t, then the church would have been a small sect of Jews who followed Jesus. But in this moment, because of Peter’s dream, the church is a brand new place where there is no distinction between gentile and jew, male and female…it’s a place where all are welcome. It’s why we are here today, 2,000 years later…if Peter hadn’t trusted the dream that the church could be for gentiles too, none of us would be here. Thanks be to God that Peter dreamed so big and shared that dream with the church.
For he went back to the religious leaders in Jerusalem and at first they scolded him and said: why, why Peter did you eat with the unclean? With those who aren’t circumcised? How could you share a meal with those who aren’t like us? And Peter had a choice: He could have been silent in the face of this confrontation and not revealed his dream, his call from God. But instead, he dared to share the dream of welcoming those on the outside in, of redrawing the boundaries. And then the leaders had a choice: They could have thrown Peter out and found a new leader, remaining a church for those who were already there, or they could have listened. And the leaders of the early church took the bold step of dreaming right alongside Peter and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. And they decided to dream. Decided to open the church wide and look for who wasn’t already there.
And this, friends, is our call from the Gospel…it’s the story of how the church started and so it’s the story of how we must continue to be the church. This is what Bishop White reminded me in that one simple question: Was there any racial diversity in your church?
Today, we don’t make the same explicit distinctions between clean and unclean, it’s harsh language. But we do, implicitly, make assumptions about how welcoming we are and who has a place among us. At St. John’s, nobody would have described themselves as unwelcoming to people of color. In fact, quite the opposite…and yet, we weren’t a church who claimed racial diversity as a central value. We also weren’t a church who named that as a significant absence and admitted that this was a way we weren’t actually so inclusive. The church is full of loving people, but we were so busy caring about who was already there and paying attention to those inside our walls, that sometimes we didn’t answer the call of the early church to ask the question: What dreams do we need to dream? Who are we not including at our table?
And this is the question for us this morning, Holy Covenant, posed by the early church, inspired by the Spirit of God in a dream: Who are we not including at our table? It’s a tough question to ask because we are wonderfully inclusive in so many ways. So many of you of found a home here where we have never been welcomed in churches before.
So this should inspire us to help fling our doors open wide to others who desperately need to find and know this same kind of welcome. When we say at the communion table: all are welcome to come and to feast, we should look around and see who’s missing from this table, and begin the process of invitation. What does that look like for us?
It can look many ways. We’re not called as the church to be all things to all people…BUT, we are called to constantly move beyond our comfort zones and dine with those who aren’t already here.
Maybe we consider having a meal once a month on a Saturday and invite people who are seeking or skeptical about church. People who have been hurt and kicked out…give them an opportunity and a safe space to ask questions and explore. So that we can continue to reach those who need to be welcomed and haven’t yet discovered God’s abundant grace.
Maybe we consider eating and worshipping with our DD guests, instead of only opening our sanctuary on Tuesday evenings. Here’s an idea, a dream, that Kara (the director of DD) and I have pondered…..there’s a meal every day of the week in this area for those who are hungry except for Sunday. What if we were to have soup and sandwiches on Sunday evening, not just for those who are without any place to get food, but for our congregation too. What if we have a community meal where we all sit down together and share in food and fellowship and conversation. And then those who want can stay for worship at 7pm….what if we were a church where hungry and full, housed and homeless and ate with one another at the very same table, making no distinctions between them and us, and then worshipped together as the body of Christ? This is not a formal proposal, there are no plans in the works….but we do have a dream.
And if this text teaches us anything it’s that the church should always be dreaming…dreaming of who we are not including and reaching out. No matter how welcoming we think we are, we can always be welcoming more. For the church is not a place that maintains a space of welcome for those who are already inside the doors. No, the church is a place where the love of Christ is always reaching outward, beyond our walls so that we learn to tear down walls. So that there is no longer a them and an us. Because when we come to this table, God says to us, as God said to Peter: Eat, and eat abundantly! And share this meal far and wide. Look what happened to Peter when he followed his dreams.
So let us dream, Holy Covenant, guided by the Holy Spirit, open to new visions.
For dreams, friends, can and do change the world (one meal at a time). Thanks be to God!
Tags: Kate
