Sixth Sunday of Easter (B) Acts 10:25-48
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. – Robert Frost
Boundaries.
Every living thing, from the simplest one-cell amoeba to the complex organisms that we call our bodies, needs boundaries. The boundary separates what is included in the living thing from what is outside it. This boundary needs to be strong enough to enable the living thing to exist as a separate being, but not so strong that it keeps the living thing from interacting with the outside world.
Let’s use our amoeba as an example. It has a membrane that separates it from everything else. If the membrane is too porous, too much of its own substance will leak out, and too many potentially poisonous substances may leak in, and the amoeba would soon cease to be. If the membrane becomes too strong, the amoeba would become unable to take in nourishment from outside, nor could it expel its waste products. It would soon die of suffocation, starvation, and self-poisoning. The same is true of any living thing, be it plant, animal, or the peculiar sort of animal that we call the human being.
What is true of us as individuals is equally true of us as groups. Every social group, and every society, must have some kind of boundary. The boundary defines who is in and who is not. The boundary needs to be strong enough to clearly define the group as a group, but not so strong that it prevents that group from interacting with the larger society and growing.
Social boundaries are not as obvious as an amoeba’s membrane or our own skin. They are usually expressed through boundary markers – rituals, customs, ways of doing things that show that an individual belongs to this group and not that. How we speak, how we dress, what we eat and how we eat it, how we relate to others – all of these customs, and more, remind ourselves – and everyone else – to what group(s) we belong.
When we live in a society or nation that shares most customs or rituals or morals, one feels little tension or pressure about one’s boundary markers. One may not even think of them. They feel like “the way things are”. One source of tension comes when we live in a society with multiple groups bound together by multiple boundary markers. How does each group maintain its legitimate identity, and yet coexist with all the others? Another source of tension comes when the boundary markers themselves are changed – or when one feels pressure to change them. To what extent do the proposed changes make us more faithful to what our group was intended to be? To what extent do they make us less faithful?
We can say more. When we live in a society which has many groups offering many different boundary markers, or when there seems to be great pressure to give up one’s identity and be assimilated into another group, then the boundary markers grow in importance. To assert them is to assert one’s right to exist. To abandon them feels like a betrayal of everything one believes in, and everything one is. It is to betray the group.
In a country as culturally diverse as the United States, one could expect that boundary issues would become major challenges. This has, in fact, been the case from our very beginnings, and remains so. Who is truly an American? Who is free? Who is a slave? Who can vote? Who can marry? Who can come into this country and become one of us? Who can’t? Why? What does it mean to be an American? The controversy over the border wall that President Trump would like to build symbolizes this tension in our own day. Who are we? How welcoming should we be? Who do we keep out? And, how do we determine that? What course of action is truly best for our country now? What is this country all about, in the final analysis?
It is also no surprise to see similar challenges in the Catholic Church (and in nearly every Christian denomination and other religious group in our nation). Who can receive Communion, and who can’t? Who can be baptized at Mass, and who can’t? Should Mass be in the spoken language, or in Latin? How should our churches be designed? What about devotions, or statues? How about fasting? Birth control? Social justice? Marriage and family life? Abortion? Our commitment to care for our planet? How strong do our boundary markers as Catholics need to be to help us preserve and strengthen our Catholic identity, while remaining flexible enough to enable us to invite others to join us, to interact with the surrounding culture, praising what is good and challenging what is harmful? What is too rigid? What is too loose? What is absolutely essential? What must we defend at all costs? Where can we be flexible without compromising ourselves?
These few examples, no doubt, have every one of you, dear readers, thinking of many others. That is a good thing. Now, let’s move to our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, and see how it speaks to us here and now.
Jews in first-century Palestine found themselves in a situation not unlike that of Catholics (and other Christians) in contemporary America. Except for a brief period under the Maccabean leaders, the Jews had been living under the domination of some other culture for six hundred years. First, the Babylonians. Then, the Persians – followed by the Greeks and finally the Romans. The Persians had been quite tolerant of the Jews and their faith. The Greeks were much less so, actively trying to assimilate Israel into their own culture and abolish anything that was incompatible (belief in one God, for example). Besides this, young Jews felt the lure of Greek culture, with its plays, poetry and athletic competition. Boundary markers became even more important, as Jews sought to preserve their identity as a people of God. Many were willing to die rather than eat pork, because the dietary laws of the Old Testament were one of these boundary markers that made Jews unique (circumcision was another). Therefore, maintaining these markers in their entirety showed their utter commitment to God and proved that they were true members of God’s people.
The Romans, when they conquered the Greeks, proved to be somewhat more tolerant of the Jews. But not much. The Romans were not above committing their own atrocities to maintain “order” (as they defined it). Once again, most Jews felt the need to maintain very strong and firm boundary markers, if their faith was to endure. The Romans may not have enforced assimilation to the extent that the Greeks tried to. However, their mere presence was a constant temptation and threat to Jewish identity. Strong boundary markers were seen as essential.
Jesus then arrives, announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God. All God’s promises to his people will now be fulfilled through Jesus. He is eventually arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death. But he rises from the dead, and gives the gift of the Holy Spirit to his disciples.
Those who believed in Jesus knew that his death and resurrection had somehow changed everything. It took these early disciples some time, however, to understand the full import of this change. We see this gradually unfold in the early chapters of Acts. Before his ascension, Jesus commissions his disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. First, they are to wait for the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit comes at Pentecost. Jews assembled for the feast, from many different nations, hear the apostles speaking to them in their own languages. Then, by the Spirit’s prompting, the Gospel is brought to Samaritans and to an Ethiopian. Saul, the great persecutor, is converted. All of this leads us to our reading from Chapter 10 of Acts.
We are presented with Cornelius, who is a Roman centurion who has felt drawn to the faith of Israel, though he has not formally become Jewish. He is still a Gentile, a pagan. Yet, he is given a vision of an angel who instructs him to send for Peter, who will offer Cornelius and his household a message of salvation. In the meantime, Peter, who is hungry and waiting for lunch to be ready, gets his own vision. He sees a host of animals, most of them ritually unclean and therefore inedible for a pious Jew, and a voice which invites Peter to come and eat. Peter refuses, protesting that he is a faithful Jew who honors all the boundary markers. Then Peter is told, “What God has cleansed, you are not to call unclean”. This happens three times, and leaves Peter troubled. What could this mean?
Then, people sent by Cornelius arrive, and tell Peter why they are there. The Spirit prompts Peter to go with them, though they are all Gentiles. Peter goes to Cornelius’ home, accepts his hospitality, and finally begins to understand his vision. Peter is no longer to consider one like Cornelius as “unclean”. Peter states that he can now see that “God shows no partiality” – therefore, Peter can’t, either. As a confirmation of this, the Spirit comes upon Cornelius and his household, to the amazement of the other Jewish Christians who are with Peter. Peter then orders that Cornelius and his household be baptized, though the men are not circumcised. The Holy Spirit has made them clean; who was he, Peter, to deny that?
Can we see how difficult it was for Peter to make this move? He didn’t do it on his own; the Holy Spirit was leading him every step of the way. Peter had to violate some ritual purity laws that were seen as inviolable boundary markers for Jews, in order to go to Cornelius at all – let alone baptize him. Peter had to go against, to a point, a tradition where many had accepted death rather than eat pork. When Peter went to Jerusalem after this, he was immediately challenged by other Jewish Christians about this. How could Peter violate such a boundary marker?
What Peter learned through all this was that the Lord had redefined the boundary markers through his own death and resurrection. The door of reconciliation and grace was now open to people of every nation and race. But this breakthrough in understanding the meaning of the Paschal Mystery would generate another problem. Christians were still rooted in the faith of Israel. They would still need boundary markers. What would they be? Jesus had fulfilled all of God’s promises to his people. But what did that mean for how Christians read the Old Testament? What was still binding and valid? What were still the true boundary markers for Christians? And what was no longer binding in the wake of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection?
Nearly all of Paul’s letters, and much of the New Testament as a whole, are attempts to answer that question. On the one hand, Paul would argue that circumcision was irrelevant. It was faith, leading to baptism, that saves. On the other, Paul was confronted with some who understood all this as meaning that, literally, “anything goes”.
What Paul – and the whole New Testament – would insist upon is this: Jesus himself becomes, so to speak, the boundary marker. It is Jesus who reveals the true meaning of the Scriptures by his words. Jesus’ life of self-emptying love is the paradigm for anyone who would claim to be a follower of his. Baptism – by which a new believer sacramentally entered into the dying and rising of Christ – and the Eucharist – through which the believer receives the Body and Blood of Christ and becomes one Body with Christ and all other Christians – become two new boundary markers for all Christians. The willingness to forgive as they have been forgiven. The willingness to endure humiliation and suffering for the Lord. The willingness to stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed. The preservation of the marriage covenant. All of these were seen – both by Christians themselves and by pagans who observed them – as boundary markers, traits which made Christians distinctive in the eyes of the larger culture. Though we could add more today, none of these would be left behind even now.
Where does this leave us now? I have not even attempted to answer every question I have raised. My hope is that, in reading this, you will have a better sense of what the question really is, as well as some background to help you come to a better answer in your own life – guided by the Holy Spirit and the living tradition of the Church. Ultimately, our willingness to live out the Lord Jesus’ words and example in our own lives – even at the risk of being seen as belonging to Him – is the ultimate boundary marker for us. It is the test of any other boundary marker we might have. Does it help us become more faithful to the Lord – or not? Even more importantly, is Jesus truly Lord of our lives? To what extent? Are we willing to be “all in” for the Lord?