Acts: 11: 1-18; Revelation 21: 1-6

A new way of seeing

What is that you and I do that really matters?  Have you asked yourself that?  We have all have our assumptions about what matters, but chances are we don’t think about it that much.  Chances are we do not have a way of evaluating which things we do really matter and they compare to others. For instance how do you compare helping your relatives with helping a homeless guy? How do you compare giving to church with giving to a charity?  How do compare providing for your family with volunteering?  What really matters, friends?

The problem in Acts was dietary laws. This was a major issue. It still is for conservative Jews and for Muslims: Kosher and Halal. Once at a gas station in Asia a truck driver’s helper got really mad at me because he thought I used the word pig in his local dialect in addressing him. That is much more of an insult to a Muslim?  A pig is about the worst animal out there, because pigs like eating garbage.  There is quote (maybe it’s Yogi Berra, maybe it’s not) which goes as follows:” Never get into a mud wrestling match with a pig, because the pig likes it.”  No pigs and their meat are not a good thing in Judaism and Islam.  In Hinduism it’s cows, but for the opposite reasons: cows are revered. We don’t quite understand, but we won’t eat horses or dogs. That’s not a religious thing, but it’s more because we see them as family members.   To us diet is a thing that is about our self-preservation and our health, but it still involves our values, even though it is not a religious or spiritual issue so much.  So Peter through his dreams sees things differently and he changes all the rules of the game: what God has created cannot be profane, so go ahead and enjoy it.

We’ve talked about maps and how the discovery of maps and the improvement of maps has been changed the world. The world looked so different when the land that lay West of Europe was not connected to the land that lay to the east. Then it changed when Columbus believed  the earth was round, but much smaller.  India was supposed to be in the Caribbean.  Not only was the continent behind the Caribbean much bigger than he assumed but the largest ocean on earth lay between it and East Asia.  Now with google maps all we have to do s type in an address and we scroll around the world to a spot we know or we want to know.  The rock group Arcade Fire had a video a few years ago in which you see yourself running and when you type in your address, google maps takes you there and you find yourself running in your own neighborhood.  A very strange experience. What a new way of seeing?

Friends, what we think matters in our lives has a lot to do with how we see the world. For people who believe the world can’t be changed, perhaps only their family matters.  For believe who don’t think we should be worried about people half a world away, the actions we should take are in our country only.  So it depends  a lot on how we see the world we live in it. The perspective is important. Let’s take this congregation for instance.  If we are going to do new creative things in the years to come, we are going to have think about how we see this church of ours. Some will say: “it needs to be bigger.” Others may say:”I came here because it’s small and people call you when they haven’t seen you for a few weeks.  Some may say, we need to make sure we have a parking lot in the future.” Others may say:” where we park is not as important as what we do for the community around us.” Some may think that what matters is the size of our Sunday school.” Other will say:” You’re never going to have an equal number of students from different grades when you are a small church. It’s really the old school house idea. “ Some may say we need to get enough money to keep the church going.” Other may say money shouldn’t not be our main concern, for it wasn’t for Jesus.”  It all depends on how you look at it.

Friends, I am hoping that in the next year we will be able to engage each other in a deliberate process of exploration.  I would like it to be a year of exploration.  Like Peter we may come to see that what we considered crucial isn’t and what we considered trivial is crucial.  A new way of seeing may be what we need.

In the Book of Revelation the whole issue of what matters is gone.  The text does not even talk about that anymore. It points to a time when there is a new heaven and a new earth.  When all the things that once mattered and that matter now and will matter in the future have come together in something new and beautiful.  As Christians it is in the light if that text that we must see the world.