John 13:34, 35; Acts 11: 9, 17, 18

What it boils down to

We have all boiled pasta from a package before.  The hard, cream-colored pieces almost seem like plastic.  Only a fool would try to eat it like that.  No, it needs to be dropped into boiling hot water and after it boils down it becomes edible.  We have all forgotten to heat up water before (at least I hope so) and we know that ground coffee or tea leaves or honey do not do what they are supposed to do when the water is cold.  It has to be boiling or nearly so.   But maybe that’s not exactly what we are looking for here. In the different dictionaries, “boiling down” originally means reducing (or condensing) bulk or elements by boiling.

In Acts Peter has a dream about edible things. He is told to eat them, but he refuses.  When you boil it down all those things are foods he as a good Jew is not supposed eat and as a good Jewish man he refuses.  But then in that dream he is told in so many words that of God does not consider those things profane, why should he?  When you boil it down, it isn’t about following dietary laws.  It is about something much greater: the power of the Holy Spirit.  So Peter’s faith overnight goes from becoming a faith of rules and laws to a faith of Spirit.  He sees things differently.  Friends, these images Peter has of food boil down to nothing. Faith is not about laws about food or anything else.  It is about love that comes through the Holy Spirit; when you boil it down. Of course we need commandments in faith, but none can ever be greater than the commandment to love God and others. This is what Jesus is making abundantly clear in the Gospel of John. Now returning to the passage in Acts, things become a little complicated because it also seems to be about Jews and non-Jews. What it boils down to friends is that He affirms once more that the new faith is no longer Judaism. It is a whole new world faith where everyone is included. You see what unites people in no longer the religious law, but the love that comes through the Holy Spirit. Again this is what Jesus is talking about.  Actually in a Christian perspective the whole Bible boils down to the Jesus who calls us to love.  For Christians Jesus is the prism through which the while Bible must be seen.

Friends, let’s talk about Prince. Actually I can’t.  I know nothing about him other than what I have learned in the last several days. I was living in Asia when he was at his most popular. But the other day it felt more like I had been on another planet.  I could not have identified a Prince song even if my life depended on it.  I had to get from news shows what he and his music were all about.  They boiled it down for me.  I found out he was a few years younger than me, that he was from Minneapolis and never really left there, that he could play almost any instrument, that he battled with the powerful record companies and that you could never pin him down. His identity seemed to be elusive. Extreme creativity and freedom seem to be what he was most about. He was so creative that he could bring together many genres of music and as a result his fans were a mixture of races and ages and economic levels.   Even they could not be defined.

Friends, we have just seen Peter boiling down what is important to the brand new Church.  We have just heard Jesus boil down what the new Christians will be measured by: how they love one another.  Earlier we tried to boil down the life of well known people, but found that it was hard to do. In the light of this, what does your life boil down to? How would others boil it down?  Now, let me make it clear, this is not about image.  It is who and how you really are.  Two weeks we talked about the lives of Peter and Paul and how different they were and also so complicated and how it shed light on our own complexity.  Last week we talked about who the there is a tension between being a lamb and being a shepherd and how me need both to be wholehearted human beings.  Now if we through that in a big pot with all the things we say and what we do, what does it boil down to, friends?  There is so much that distracts us throughout our life, like: finding or not looking for a mate, financial security, family responsibilities, how well our children do in life and whether they are health and happy, the success of our careers, how well we appear in the eyes of others and above all the constant worrying we do about each and every one of those.  Each phase in our life seems to be preoccupied with one or the other.  So when we learn about mindfulness we realize it is a good thing: living in the moment as effectively and compassionately as we possibly can. However, friends, there is another layer to mindfulness and that is: at its core and beside all our worries, what is the deepest meaning and purpose that drives us, what does it all boil down to?  May God in Jesus through the Holy Spirit give us insight and vision.