6th Sunday of Easter. B.

Last week, as we reflected briefly on the life of St Paul, we saw how the fact that he had been born and brought up in Tarsus, in what we would think of today as Eastern Turkey, had helped prepare him for his later work of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. In Tarsus he had had daily contact with the pagan religions of the Roman Empire and so was familiar with both their religious terminology and their religious language when, years later, he began his work of preaching the Gospel. But for Peter, the other great figure of the early Church, things were very different. Coming from Galilee, Peter would have had slightly more contact with the pagan world than the people around Jerusalem had. But, essentially, the world beyond the boundaries Palestine would have been unknown territory to him. And so, before he could respond to Jesus command to go out and teach all nations, God had to teach him something. He had to open up Peter’s mind, broaden his horizons and prepare him for the work that lay ahead. And in chapter ten of Acts, from which today’s reading comes, we see how God did this.

We have looked at this story before, of course, but I want to remind you again of what happened. It was all to do with this man, Cornelius, whom we hear about in the reading. As a result of a dream he had had, Cornelius, a Roman centurion, had sent two of his slaves to Jaffa to bring Peter to Caesarea. At the same time, Peter himself was having a vision while at prayer in which he had seen a big sheet come down from heaven filled with every kind of animal, reptile and bird, while a voice, the voice of God, told him to eat. But Peter had refused on the grounds that, as a Jew, he did not eat what was unclean, his “Certainly not Lord. I have never eaten anything unclean” – religion being used as a reason for not doing what God asked - being one of the great jokes of Scripture. But God had insisted. “What God has made clean” the voice had said, “you have no right to call unclean,” something so important, so vital for the growth of the Church throughout the world, that we are told it was repeated three times.

And so, when Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house, he utters those words we heard today. “The truth I have now come to realise is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Beside these words of Peter, Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for man” quote when he set foot on the moon forty years ago pales into insignificance. As he and the other astronauts of that era looked at our world from space they were deeply aware of the oneness of it all. But Christianity had proclaimed that oneness two thousand years earlier. The prophets had dreamt of it in their own historically limited way, imagining a time in the future when all the nations of the earth would flock to Jerusalem. And, of course, today’s psalm, like many other passages in the Old Testament, speaks of how all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of God, our response being, ‘The Lord has shown his salvation to the nations.’ But it is only with Pentecost, when people from every nation on earth heard the Gospel proclaimed in his or her own language, that the dream of a world where all barriers between peoples would cease to exist begins to take root. “There is no more distinction” Paul writes later in one of his letters, “between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, male and female.”And even now, two thousand years on, the world is still struggling to come to terms with such a far reaching and radical vision for humanity.

But to be an Easter people, a people of the Resurrection, is to be totally committed to this ideal. In the Gospel today, Jesus commands us to love one another the way he has loved us and in the second reading St John tells us that anyone who fails to love the way God loves does not know God. And it’s as simple as that. We can perform religious actions until they are coming out our ears, but, if we are not aware at some level of ourselves of a movement which is drawing us outwards, beyond narrow self-interest, beyond national boundaries, beyond prejudice in all its shapes and forms, to embrace every human being on the face of the earth, then I’m afraid it’s true. We have never met God. We may be resisting this movement. We may be steeped still in prejudice and narrow ways of thinking. But if, at some level of ourselves we do not know that this is wrong, then we do not know God. Or, to use another language altogether, we are in mortal sin; we do not have the life of God in us.

And so, in the face of such a possibility, I invite you to take a long hard look at yourself today. Look, first, for the things in you that are not compatible with the truth which Peter came to realise that day and which changed his whole view of the world. Look at your often unspoken prejudices; the thoughts that pass through your head, often unbidden, about people different from yourself. Think of your attitude to foreigners. The very word ‘foreigner,’ in English seems to suggest some kind of inferiority. Foreigners speak funny languages, eat funny food, wear funny clothes. They are not like us and not being like us, the subtext is that they are not as good as us. Just think of the way we in Britain speak about Europe. We are part of Europe, but we speak of it as if it were some kind of foreign place filled with people we prefer not to mix with. And then, apart from the Frogs, the Huns and various Degos, there are all the others: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Pakis and many others. Its not just the language we use. Often the attitudes which lie behind the words are so deeply imbedded in our culture that we don’t even notice them. And I haven’t even mentioned the English and our appalling attitude to them here in Scotland.

So look into yourself today and recognize this stuff at work. The fact that it’s there just means that you are human. But if, at a deeper level, we don’t recognize that these things are wrong, completely at odds with the Gospel and want to be free of them, then we are in serious bother. We do not know God.

BIDDING PRAYERS

As many predicted at the time, the end of the cold war between The United States and the Soviet Union has resulted in recent years in a whole series of smaller conflicts all over the world. In many cases old scores have been settled and old wounds re-opened, some of which continue to fester and seem incurable. But we pray that, as this new century advances, the peoples of the world will learn to put such things behind them and find new ways of living together in peace..............Lord hear us

In the course of the 20th century, the world saw the growth of many international bodies aimed at resolving ancient conflicts and disputes. We had The League of Nations, The United Nations, The International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, the European Union, The British Commonwealth and many others. None of these bodies is perfect. All of them are imperfect. But we pray that, in time, they and those which follow them, will bring about what the world needs and longs for.............Lord hear us

Suspicion and fear of those different from ourselves is as old as humanity itself. It is one of the main forces that has shaped our history. We are, by nature, deeply conservative and attached to what we know. And yet, in recent years, there are signs of progress. Not only do we travel more, but we have learned to eat and enjoy food from many different countries. And so we pray that this process, slow as it is, will gradually broaden our minds and extend our horizons.............Lord hear us

In the face of the current financial crisis affecting the world, one of the great dangers, experts tells us, is that we retreat into protectionism, looking after ourselves at the expense of others. But what humanity needs at this time is the very opposite of this. In an age of globalisation, the peoples of the world need to work together. Our futures are inter-twined and no country can solve the big problems we face in isolation. And so we ask God for the wisdom we need at this time...........Lord hear us

Many of us here are descended from people who came to Scotland in the past in search of a better life. The majority were from Ireland, but people came, too, from places as far apart as Italy, Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere. Now, today, many are coming from other places too, also in search of a better life for themselves and their families And so we pray that, as the grand children and great grand children of immigrants ourselves, we will not fail to welcome them now.......Lord hear us

The future of humanity is not known to us. All kinds of things could happen in the future. But if this future is to be one in which the world finally puts prejudice and fear behind it and embraces a new way of living rooted in the Gospel, then we will need many men and women of vision who will challenge old ways of doing things and show the world that there are alternatives to what has always been. And so we ask God to raise up such visionaries and prophets among us here.....Lord hear us