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Before I begin, I’d like to try an experiment. I’d like to see who among us is qualified to be a member of the church. Please, remain standing.

Now, according to the ancient laws of purity that the early Jewish-Christians followed, you may eat any land animal that chews its cud and has a split hoof. And you can eat any sea animal that has fins and scales. You can also eat any insects that have jointed legs above their feet, so locusts, grasshoppers and crickets are all okay. So let’s see...

Would everyone who has ever eaten camel meat, please sit down. Because although a camel chews its cud, it doesn’t have a split hoof. Camel eaters, please sit down.

How about rock-badger? If you’ve eaten rock-badger, please sit down, because it’s like the camel - chews its cud, but doesn’t have a split hoof.

Hare? Any hare eaters?

Now, let’s try seafood. Does anybody here eat shellfish? Oysters, clams?

Okay, pig. Do we have anybody that eats pork?

We’re not really doing very well at this, are we? The fact of the matter is that nobody here would qualify to be a Jew in Jesus’ day. We would all be considered unclean, outcasts, outsiders, because we do not follow the purity laws that are plainly laid out in the Old Testament. According to the community standards under which Jesus and the disciples lived, we are all goyim – gentiles – people who are part of some other clan or tribe. We wouldn’t be Jews, and if we were not Jews, we could not be Christians. All of the first Christians were Jews.

This was the problem Peter was facing in today’s reading from Acts. The Jewish-Christian community was outraged because they had heard about people who were being baptized without first becoming Jews. Baptism was originally based on a Jewish rite of purification, and some people were being accepted as Christians without following Jewish laws. This created a problem: what were the requirements for becoming a follower of Jesus? How could the disciples ever identify themselves from the rest of the world, if they didn’t have some kind of basic rules that they all agreed to follow?

There all kinds of ways that different groups define themselves. My dad was a Shriner, and if you want to be a Shriner, you have to study a certain set of rules and take a certain test and be initiated in a certain way. Shriners recognize other Shriners because they all follow a certain set of rules (and they all wear those funny hats). Or consider Augusta National Country Club; they have their own set of rules. To be a member, you have to be invited to join, and you have to pay an incredible amount of money, and you have to be a man (no women allowed). And until very recently, you had to be white. All groups have some set of rules that define who’s in the group and who’s outside. Otherwise, it’s not a group. After all, if there are no requirements, what’s the point of the group?

The question Peter was facing was, what were the requirements to be a Christian? Up until now, all of Jesus’ followers had been Jews, who had come to believe that he was the Messiah. They believed that gentiles, who lacked any cultural appreciation of Judaism, couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to follow Jesus, because they had no way of appreciating who Jesus was, or what he meant. Gentiles were outsiders.

We have struggled with these same questions ever since Jesus. Who is worthy to share in the life of the Church? Who do we consider worthy enough to participate in the life of the body of Christ? It wasn’t very long ago that black people were not permitted to share communion with white people. More recently, women were not only prohibited from being priests, they could not even be on the vestry or serve at communion. Even now, we still have rules which determine who can receive communion. The canons of the Episcopal Church require that a person cannot receive communion unless they are baptized. You can be baptized in any denomination, mind you, but you must be baptized. This is an extremely hot topic in the Church right now. The people who support this restriction look to scripture (1 Corinthians) to justify the rule. But others believe that requiring baptism is just like requiring circumcision or not eating pork – they don’t feel it’s very important.

The Holy Spirit has never been confined to only one nation, or tribe or clan. The Holy Spirit came to all people, Jew and Gentile. The Spirit moves the hearts of everyone, and brings us all into an new relationship with God and with one another. The Holy Spirit cleanses us all, and make us all new. No more Jew or Gentile, no more slave or free. All of us bound together in discipleship to do the one thing Christ commanded us to do on his last hours on earth. This is Jesus' last commandment. And what did he command us to do?

…Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Peter realized that the only requirement there is for being a Christ-follower is that we love and serve each other. As Christians, we define ourselves not by the foods we eat, not by the clothes we wear, not by our race, or gender or even our sexuality. Disciples, Christ-followers, are defined by only one rule. They are defined by their love for one another.

Friends, I know there some who find this hard to believe. I know that there are passages in the Bible which can be interpreted as being against full inclusion and participation of gay people, just as there are also passages that can be interpreted as being against full inclusion and participation of people of color, or women. I know that there are some who would like to put an asterisk on Jesus’ last commandment – that surely there must be some rules that we cannot bend. At the same time, I also know that there are some who have always been considered Outsiders, and who find it impossible to believe that this parish, or any community, can ever really love them as Christ taught us to love. Sadly, this is true. We will sometimes fail to show the love that Jesus taught us. And we will continue to struggle with issues of who we are and what it means to be a church in the 21st century for some time to come. But Christ himself never put an asterisk on his greatest commandment.

...Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

If anyone ever asks you what the rules are for being a Christ-follower, if anyone asks you what it means to be a member of this church, you can say this: they will know we are Christians by our love.

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