Making No Distinction

You might be forgiven for not noticing that the Book of Acts features prominently in the season of Easter. After all, I haven’t made reference to it in any of my sermons. But the Acts of the Apostles, the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, has supplied our first scripture reading every Sunday for several weeks now. Some of the episodes in Acts are familiar, like Saul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, his conversion, and his renaming (Easter 3). But others are perhaps less well known, although just as significant, today’s first reading being a case in point– Acts 11:1-18.

Like many others in the Bible, it’s a story about navigating differences. Upon Peter’s return to Jerusalem, the “circumcised believers,” that is, Jewish Jesus followers, criticize him for consorting with non-Jewish folks while he was away: “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” To which Peter responds by describing a vision of ritually forbidden foods being presented to him to eat: “What God has made clean,” a voice from heaven declares, “you must not call profane.”

Then he relays how God has brought him into relationship with three non-Jewish men from Caesarea: “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.” In the course of their interaction, Peter witnesses the Holy Spirit come to rest on these Gentiles, and so he rethinks his own assumptions about religious identity and status: “If then God gave them the same gift that [God] gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

Peter’s listeners are temporarily stunned into silence. Then they praise God for granting “even to the Gentiles,” which is to say, even to all of us, “the repentance that leads to life.”

The Spirit told me not to make a distinction between them and us.

Differences in religion or race or ethnicity or gender or any number of categories have long been obstacles to relationship. Often such differences have given rise to suspicion and segregation, even hostility. Where we’ve accommodated diversity, we’ve nevertheless established hierarchies of power and privilege on the basis of differences. And even where we’ve tried to deal peacefully with difference, we’ve often done so by seeking to erase that which makes diversity beautiful in the first place. So-called “colorblindness” is a prime example; we should be “color-amazed,” I once heard it said, not colorblind.

The story in our first reading from Acts challenges all these human tendencies. When the Spirit of God draws Peter into relationship with people who do not share his background, urging him to make no distinction between insiders and outsiders, it’s first and foremost a provocation to encounter those he might otherwise avoid. Consider his detractors’ question: “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” They take issue with the fact that Peter has come into contact with undesirable others at all. But the Spirit intends to build relationships across difference nonetheless.

The Spirit also intends to dismantle hierarchies we might otherwise uphold. If Peter is to make no distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers, that means he is not to assign value to people according to difference. Why? Because no matter a person’s identity markers, God reserves the right to count them among the people of God. So Peter’s conclusion stands the test of time: If God gathers up whomever God chooses into this grace-filled way of life, then who am I that I could hinder God?

That is not to say differences disappear in a community founded on the love of God, only that our shared dignity binds us together in our variety: “There is no longer Jew or Greek,” as the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Galatia, “there is no longer [enslaved] or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”[1] In other words, your identity and circumstances neither elevate nor degrade you in this body; we all have equal status amid the beauty and complexity of our diversity.

And equality in diversity is a wonderful ideal that is, of course, very difficult to achieve in practice. There’s just too much to lose for those who enjoy disproportionate benefits from an unequal arrangement. So, even and perhaps especially in the church, “making no distinction” often involves taking a stand in the face of adversity.

Consider the example of British novelist and playwright, Dorothy L. Sayers. In July 1948, she surprised her friend and colleague, C.S. Lewis, by taking an unexpected position in a hot debate. Historian Beth Barr relates the story in her book about the subjugation of women in Christian history:

[Excerpt from The Making of Biblical Womanhood, p.209]

Dorothy Sayers might as well have echoed the Apostle Peter: The Spirit told me not to make a distinction, in this case, between men and women. Friends, God continually draws us into relationship across boundaries and empowers diverse people for the work of God’s reign, ever widening the scope of grace. Who are we that we could hinder God? And truthfully, do we really want to? Belonging in the community of God’s beloved surpasses any worldly privilege; equality in diversity is a better testimony to God’s creativity and love than any hierarchy we might manufacture.

Brian Wren puts it beautifully in verse three of our Hymn of the Day, which we’re about to sing together: “As Christ breaks bread, and bids us share, each proud division ends. The love that made us, makes us one, and strangers now are friends, and strangers now are friends.”[2]

[1] 3:28.

[2] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Pew Edition, #482.