Kingdom Food
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This passage is all about the word “you.” Who was Jesus talking about when he said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Who is the “you” there? Much about reality had changed in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Had the “you” of “you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” changed as well? If you are a Christian, but you’re not Jewish, listen up because the message of this passage is going to be important. As the Chosen People, the Jewish people enjoys a special, if not complicated standing with God. If Jesus’s “you” was talking about anyone without Jewish ancestry, then reality had changed dramatically in yet another way. The Jewish people’s relationship with God was based on some foundational moments like the Passover, the Exodus, and quintessentially, the giving of the Law. And one of the most important things to remember about the Law is that it is a setting apart of a people for God. And this people was to be known for its righteousness, so their attention to the details of holiness, their love of God and fellow Israelites. The Law, of course, was meticulous, from herbs to building codes, to who to sleep with, and who to worship. The Jewish Torah is meant to be comprehensive. And again it is meant to set the Israelites apart from every other people, in order to remain in a righteous relationship to the one true God. It was meant to make a separation between holy things and people and unholy things and people. It was necessary if righteousness was going to be maintained.
So here in the New Testament, so much of what is being hammered out in Acts and much of the rest of New Testament Scripture is about what the death and the resurrection of the Jewish Messiah, the Son of God, what that MEANS. As an early Jewish believer in Jesus, you had to be going through a bit of an identity crisis. If Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Law, as he claimed to be in the Sermon on the Mount, is the Law done with?
Is it set right?
If it’s really fulfilled, is it to be an example or a counter-example, a picture of what we shouldn’t do?
It’s clear that Jesus’s death and resurrection was meaningful first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile. He was a Jewish teacher, he was the subject of messianic expectation. The death of Jesus was the death of the Jewish Messiah. And this would have had vast meaning for someone familiar with the Old Testament. Because as a seminary professor of mine once said, everyone knew that Messiahs win and don’t die. We see in the death of Jesus another aspect of reality turned on its head. Messiahs win and don’t die. Yet this one did die. The winning was just more momentous than a military victory, the Messiah, it turned out, won BECAUSE he DID die. But, as the early church was figuring out more and more, if Jesus really rose from the dead, the Messiah’s victory over death wasn’t just a Jewish victory, it was a human victory, Ultimately it was a divine victory, but it was for everyone. It wasn’t merely a Jew who rose from the dead, but that first easter, Jesus won a victory for all humanity against death.
So back to the Law, what do we do with it? Was Jesus’ victory a victory for the Law as well? Or against the Law? Had the Law changed? Had God changed? Some of the early Jewish believers didn’t see the conquering of death as a good enough excuse for a big tent revival. To them, Peter’s association with Gentiles was a case of the exclusive, set-apart nature of the complicated Jewish relationship with God being violated. Associating with the nations of the world is what ALWAYS brought a fall from grace to Israel. Think of Solomon, with wives from all over the place, getting him to include foreign religious practices alongside the Lord. And the rest of the kings were even worse, setting up Asherah poles and other false divine images in the Temple. Israel’s only hope was to be separate from the nations as God had instructed. And there goes Peter, messing up the New Covenant just as the Old Covenant Israelites had messed up that covenant, through associating with foreigners. So our passage tonight is Peter’s explanation to his Jewish friends just what he was doing.
The whole thing had begun with a vision during prayer. He saw all kinds of weird animals being offered to him as food. Imagine you’ve been invited to a dinner, a black tie affair. And you sit down to a large table covered with a large sheet. The host instructs his servants to remove the sheet, and underneath is a giant cooked horse on a giant platter. And the host offers you and your date a horse leg. What would you say? Uhhh. Something to the effect of, “I don’t eat horse.” But this wasn’t just a matter of American or Jewish sensibilities about food. God’s own Law said not to eat this stuff. So Peter sees a whole spread of forbidden food. It wasn’t just gross. It was not allowed, even bacon! It would have been like being told to eat an endangered species. Peter was probably sickened by what he saw, when instructed to eat it. “I have never eaten a Sumatran Tiger, and I never will!” “I have never eaten anything unclean, Lord.” And the voice from heaven told them that God had made it clean. Not that he had changed his mind. But that reality had changed. The cleanliness of those animals had changed. The animals on that sheet had been made clean because something had happened. And it wasn’t the dream, but the Cross, the empty tomb.
That victory of the Messiah and of God wasn’t just a Jewish victory over death and sin, but a victory for all people. Because of Jesus, God expanded the cover of his righteousness over people of all nations, not just Israel. The death and resurrection of Jesus had made it possible for what was unclean to be made clean. The Law had been satisfied as it pertained to formerly unclean things like food and nations and even sins. Sin hadn’t become clean, but the Law had been satisfied, fulfilled. Sin is transferred to Jesus and righteousness to all people, if they would only come to live into it. The Law had been a caretaker watching over and governing righteousness until it could be placed inside human hearts and wills through the Holy Spirit. There was an overlap in outcomes. God’s people try not to sin, but now it’s because the Law is written on their hearts by the Holy Spirit. The examples in the Law meant to serve as object lessons for keeping separate were fulfilled when the veil of the temple was torn in two. Unclean food was no longer a needed object lesson, because God had done something new and he wanted to teach a new lesson. He had used food to give a new lesson about the reality of what he accomplished, not only in giving Israel the land, but in cleansing them from sin and making peace with God. And if peace had really been made with God, it’s time to use food for a new lesson. One for everyone. Food isn’t about ethnic division anymore, it’s about human unity, living out and honoring the victory Christ has won over death and sin and the peace he’s made with God the Father on behalf of humanity.
That victory gave all humans something in common besides sin and death. So ethnic divisions don’t make sense anymore. After three repetitions of the same dream, Peter, the man who denied Christ three times and was restored by Christ three times got the message. He went on his divine appointment to bring the salvation of Jesus to a family, a household in Caesarea. As he spoke, the Holy Spirit moved in them as he had at Pentecost and he remembered Jesus’s words, “John baptizes with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” And he knew who the “you” was. That it was a bigger “you” than himself or his fellow apostles, or even the Jewish people. God has set aside a new people for himself, taken not just from the Jews, but from all humanity. And when they heard Peter’s explanation, the Jewish Christians got it. They understood that God has also granted the Gentiles repentance that leads to life. And in that moment, the reach of Christ’s victory stretched out with it’s immensity. Holy Week had impacted everything, in yet another new way. And now all God’s people can say Amen.