Know God

5 Easter 2010
(Acts 11: 1-18; Ps 148; Rev 21: 1-6; John 13: 31-35)


What does that mean as prayed today, to “truly know God”?

At my age, I am very careful about saying “I know that person, I know so-and-so.” The people that are closest to me constantly surprise me. My very spouse and kids are books in which I have only read the introduction and part of the first chapters. And others? The longer I serve here, the more surprised I am by people whom I thought I knew. Sometimes I am delighted by what I learn, sometimes I am frustrated, sometimes I am disappointed, and sometimes I am even frightened. So I rarely say that I know a person anymore. I don’t even know myself very well, especially after hitting mid-life!

If it is so hard to know a human person, how can we hope to say we truly know God?

It’s a good question to carry with us, as today we hear a tale of people who thought they knew God, or at least they thought they knew what God thought. The early Christian movement was very Jewish, and content with that. After all, the Master had said that he had not come to abolish the ancient Law, but to fulfill it. The Law made it clear who was in and who was out, and the uncircumcised, pork-eating, idol-worshipping Gentiles were definitely out. This was one of the earliest crises of the post-resurrection Church, as it ran head on into what they thought were the legitimate boundaries of their community, who was in, who was out, who was clean and acceptable, who was by nature and act unclean and unacceptable.

It took a divine vision to get through Peter’s head. A sheet full of everything that should nauseate a good Jew—pigs and snakes and probably prawns—drops from the sky. “Get up, Peter, slaughter, then eat!” There’s nothing abstract here—Peter is told to put aside all his prior knowledge and his revulsion and take something into his body. That’s one way to get to really know something—eat it! Peter answers loyally as he has been taught, as he has been taught to be faithful to God: “Not me!” But the shattering words are said three times, “What God has called clean, you are not to call profane.” When Peter awakes, the Gentile visitors are there to give Peter a chance to live his strange dream, the dream where God thinks differently than Peter had been taught and God is found where Peter did not think to look and God was calling Peter to get over a world of tradition and teaching and prejudice in order to see as God sees, to love whom God loves, to share life and even death with those whom Peter never imagined he would live and die with.

Peter’s colleagues’ amazement shouts through their words, “Then God has granted repentance EVEN to the Gentiles!” If God loves and accepts the Gentiles, what else may this God think and choose and do?

Do we want to know God? Then prepared to be surprised. Prepare to have our prior opinions tested. Prepare for dreams or visions that will lead us to welcome and accept those whom we never imagined us to welcome, to share life with, to live and die with. Because to know God is to look to who God looks, to love who God loves, to allow ourselves to be challenged to welcome wholly those who we never thought we’d welcome. We have been welcomed, so we are to welcome.

And in the Gospel, Jesus reveals the heart of God.

Jesus’ own heart is broken as his disciple and friend Judas leaves to betray him. We must never forget that the heart of God is revealed amidst broken promises and the bitterness of betrayal. It is broken hearts that reveal the love of God. And it is here, when the bond of friendship and love has been broken, that Jesus gives the “new commandment”—“love one another as I have loved you.”

Why is this new? The old Law said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love’s not new.

Maybe it is the second part, “as I have loved you.” It is the love of Jesus that makes this commandment new. We have been called, empowered, freed to love by the love of God in Jesus.

Or is it that we ourselves are transformed and made new when we love?

We do not know God with our ideas. We know God when we accept the amazing love of God. But it does not stop there. We know God as we allow the love of God to transform us to love as God loves. And today we are given a map of how the first Christians learned how to love:

By being open to surprise. To being willing to change what we thought we knew about God, about who we are and who are those whom we did not think we would ever have to love, to accept, to eat with, to live with.

A tiny Jewish sect was surprised and broken open and had their minds changed and began a journey into a new and unexpected life. We are the beneficiaries. We call that new community the church.

How may we be surprised, how may we be broken open, how may our minds be changed, and on what new journey may we set out?

That is how to live that new commandment. That is how we truly know God.