Sermon — May 20, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there are some parts of the Bible that are easier to understand than others. People sometimes make a distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but that isn’t quite it. Jesus or Paul sometimes say incomprehensible things, and often the Old Testament is straightforward. But there is a distinction in vibes between some of the more obscure ritual intricacies of the Bible, and some of the clearer stories and ethical teachings. And you see it in our readings today.
There’s a qualitative difference, in other words, between “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another,” and, “God, no! I would never eat a lizard.”
But here’s the thing: We need both halves, the clear and the obscure. And in fact, each one helps us understand the other. Because if you want to understand what Peter’s saying about unclean foods, it helps to understand what we mean when we talk about God’s love; but if you really want to understand what love means, you also need to know why Peter won’t eat an iguana.
Our Gospel reading today was short, and sweet, and seemingly simple. It comes from the Last Supper, just after Judas goes out to betray Jesus, and Jesus says, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer.” (John 13:33) Soon enough, he’ll be dead. “You’ll look for me,” he says, “but where I’m going, you cannot come.” (13:33) Heaven, we assume. And then he gives them “a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (13:34) This is the classic “easy” kind of verse. This is the God we know and love. The one who sends Jesus to teach us to love one another. This is something we can understand, because we know what it means to love.
Our reading from Revelation is straightforward enough, as well. The Book of Revelation can be weird, sometimes. But we understand what it means to say that there is some future world, where “[God] will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes.” Where “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:4) We often read this at funerals, because it’s comforting. It’s good news. And while we might have questions about how exactly this all works, we get what it means, because this experience of grief and death is part of human life.
And then there’s our story from Acts. Some of the other disciples criticize Peter and ask him why he was eating with Gentiles, with men who were not Jewish. “I was praying,” Peter says, “and in a trance, I saw a vision.” (Acts 11:5) Okay, fair enough. There was a bedsheet full of reptiles coming down from the sky. And a voice said, “Kill and eat!” (11:7) And Peter said, No way! “Nothing unclean has ever entered my mouth!” (11:8) This happened three more times, and the sheet went back up to heaven, and Peter knew exactly what to do.
… Sorry, what?
I’m guessing this passage doesn’t make much sense to most of us. What does eating reptiles have to do with eating with Gentiles? What does any of it have to do with Jesus? These seem like prime examples of the two halves of the Bible: the familiar and the strange.
But these stories aren’t as different as they might seem. They’re all part of one big story of God’s love for the world. And so we have to understand this first reading in order to understand what our gospel really means.
Now, if you like to show off, you should consider a graduate degree in Biblical studies. Let me tell you why. At the reception after the Easter Vigil, George Born said he had a question for me. A linguistic question. He’d noticed that one of the psalms during Holy Week used the word “loving-kindness” to describe God’s relationship to us, and he was wondering about the origins of that translation.
I spent years training for this. So I told him: “Loving-kindness” is usually the English translation of the Hebrew word chesed. It means “love.” But a particular kind of love. It’s not romantic love. It’s the loyalty and faithfulness of mutual obligation. And then I said: if you really want to know what chesed means, you have to go back to the Hittite and Assyrian suzerainty treaties of the first millennium BCE. (Six semesters well spent?)
But here’s the thing: These ancient treaties between the rulers of these great empires and their vassals use the word “love” in a way that sounds absurd to us. A new king rises to the throne, worried that his vassals will rebel. And he circulates a treaty to them all: “You shall love Assurbanipal… son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord, like yourselves.” (Ring a bell?)
This isn’t a love letter. It’s a treaty. A covenant. A two-sided agreement, where both parties make promises. The king fulfills the covenant by establishing just laws, and leading the people well. The people fulfill the covenant when they follow the laws the king makes, and don’t rebel against his authority. In this covenantal worldview, following the law is an act of love. It’s the manifestation of this chesed, this loving-kindness that binds the sovereign and the people together.
And this kind of covenant is the model for the Biblical law, given by God to the ancient Israelites. This covenant includes many things. It has both criminal and civil law: regulations for how many witnesses are needed to convict someone of murder, and for how much money you owe if your ox gores someone else’s ox. But it also contains plenty of what we might call religious law. It tells the people which rituals to do with their sons on the eighth day after their birth. It tells them which foods they should and should not eat, and what sacrifices to offer on which holy days. It reminds them, again and again, to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
These laws were the people’s half of the covenant with God. This is what it meant for them to love God: to follow the covenant, to keep the commandments. But in the five hundred years or so leading up to Jesus’ day, the Jewish people rarely had their own state. They lived under foreign rule, or as strangers in strange lands. And so, the distinguishing marks of Jewish identity became not the civil or criminal laws, things that had to be enforced by the state, but the ritual laws. Circumcision, and food laws, and the Sabbath became the primary markers of what it meant to remain loyal to the covenant, to love God, as God loves us.
And that’s what Peter’s vision is about. Will he eat animals that his religion forbids him to eat? No way! He loves God. He’s a faithful man. He follows the Law, and that means he doesn’t eat lizards. That’s part of the covenant given by God. That’s what it means to return God’s love in kind.
But God, it seems, is up to something new. That’s what the Holy Spirit has to say. God has written a new covenant, not only with the Jewish people, but with the world: “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:18)
And God has given a new law, as well. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says. “That you love one another.” (John 13:34) Nothing more and nothing less. This is the covenant the Christian makes with God. The chesed, the loving-kindness, the covenant loyalty that united the Israelites to God, must now extends to unite all human beings to one another.
That new commandment of love may be easy to understand. But it’s very hard to do. “Just as I have loved you,” Jesus says, “you also should love one another.” (13:34) Just as I have loved you, he says, as he prepares to lay down his life for them, you also should love one another.
We’re not invited to be friendly with our fellow parishioners. We’re not called to care for the people of this nation. We are commanded to love “one another,” a “one another” that’s so large that it comes to include all the peoples of the world. We’re commanded to love one another just as Jesus loved us, so that Christians should be known throughout the world by our self-giving love.
That’s the standard, anyway. That’s the goal. That’s the new commandment, a law which none of us, as individuals or as a church, can ever quite fulfill. We can aspire to live out that love. We won’t manage to do it.
But God changed the covenant in another way, as well: God made it unconditional. Because in Jesus, God fulfilled both sides of the covenant, the human and divine. God lived out that perfect law of love that’s too great for us to bear, and commanded us to do the same. But when we fail, we do not face the fearsome judgment of some heavenly Assurbanipal, crushing our rebellion with force; we meet instead the love of Christ, who lay down his own life for us, and who is leading us forward to that world where death shall be no more.