The Good News: Acts 11:1-18 Common English Bible
11 The apostles and the brothers and sisters throughout Judea heard that even the Gentiles had welcomed God’s word. 2 When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him. 3 They accused him, “You went into the home of the uncircumcised and ate with them!”
4 Step-by-step, Peter explained what had happened. 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying when I had a visionary experience. In my vision, I saw something like a large linen sheet being lowered from heaven by its four corners. It came all the way down to me. 6 As I stared at it, wondering what it was, I saw four-legged animals—including wild beasts—as well as reptiles and wild birds.[a] 7 I heard a voice say, ‘Get up, Peter! Kill and eat!’ 8 I responded, ‘Absolutely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 The voice from heaven spoke a second time, ‘Never consider unclean what God has made pure.’ 10 This happened three times, then everything was pulled back into heaven. 11 At that moment three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were staying. 12 The Spirit told me to go with them even though they were Gentiles. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered that man’s house. 13 He reported to us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and summon Simon, who is known as Peter. 14 He will tell you how you and your entire household can be saved.’ 15 When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as the Spirit fell on us in the beginning. 16 I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”
18 Once the apostles and other believers heard this, they calmed down. They praised God and concluded, “So then God has enabled Gentiles to change their hearts and lives so that they might have new life.”
John 13:31-35 Common English Bible
31 When Judas was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Human One[a] has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify the Human One[b] in himself and will glorify him immediately. 33 Little children, I’m with you for a little while longer. You will look for me—but, just as I told the Jewish leaders, I also tell you now—‘Where I’m going, you can’t come.’
34 “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. 35 This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.”
Reflection: “Tipping Points”
I used to own a Quarter Horse and take him to shows around Saskatchewan. His name was Double Toad, but we just called him Toad. I bought him from a trainer when he was only a yearling, on the theory that if I bought a young horse and had him professionally trained, I would know exactly what to expect from him and I would be able to trust him. I needed this because, a year or so before I bought him, I had a serious accident with another horse and fractured a vertebra.
Toad and I did pretty well in amateur classes, with the help of our trainer who was Toad’s former owner. Perhaps predictably because of my injury, I was happiest in the slower, more controlled classes and eventually we specialized in the trail class. The trail class is a little obstacle course built in the arena, meant to simulate obstacles you might find on an outdoor trail ride – things like opening and closing a gate, stepping over logs, backing around corners, and crossing a low bridge. Picture a dog agility class, but much slower. It wasn’t an exciting crowd-pleaser like the barrel racing, but it suited us.
So when I hear the words “tipping point”, what I picture is the teeter-totter bridge obstacle, where a bridge platform is balanced on a log so that as the horse walks across it, the far end which was in the air tips down and rests on the ground. It’s a pretty tough obstacle for a horse, an animal that survives in the wild by running away from anything unfamiliar. The feel and sound of a bridge beneath his hooves is already scary, and then just when he thinks he can trust that surface, it moves! Toad and I could make it over a low teeter-totter but it was definitely not our favourite thing. There was always the uncertainty in the anticipation: when exactly will the bridge tip, and how hard will it thump down?
This might have been the frame of mind of the believers in Jerusalem who have called Peter on the carpet to explain himself after he has eaten with the Roman centurion Cornelius and his family. The ground underneath their feet is suddenly unfamiliar. Up until now, the Jesus followers have all been observant Jews, circumcised and following Jewish dietary laws. Now one of their most trusted leaders is breaking those laws and they find themselves inching along towards understanding, wondering when the bridge they find themselves on will shift under their feet. One wrong step and everything they have worked so hard to build could crash to the ground, and then what?
And here’s another tipping point image from today’s world, a TV ad from a few years ago. In it, the narrator says something about “every X seconds, another species becomes extinct” while toy plastic animals tip off the edge of the world one by one.
At first glance, it seems that author Malcolm Gladwell must have been thinking about a much more positive kind of “tipping point” when he wrote this sentence, “The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”
Gladwell argues that what it takes for an idea to reach and pass the tipping point is mobile, influential storytellers that other people listen to, telling the story effectively to other crucial contacts who will continue to pass it on.
And that is just what happens in Jerusalem. Peter is the influential storyteller, perhaps the most highly-respected leader in the new movement. When the Jewish believers want to know why he has broken their purity laws to eat with Gentiles, Peter does not become defensive and argumentative. Instead, he tells his story: the story of his vision in which a voice tells him that he can eat any animal, because “what God has made clean, you cannot call profane”. When he receives a request to visit Cornelius’ house in Caesarea, he interprets his vision to mean that just as he should not distinguish between clean and unclean foods, his mission should not distinguish between Jews and Gentiles.
Peter’s story, and his belief that he was following the prompting of the Spirit when he ate with Cornelius and his family, convinces his skeptics. The ground has shifted under their feet, but Peter’s vision is catching and they begin to glimpse the astounding truth of this new idea: perhaps the good news is not theirs alone, perhaps new life in God is available to all. The bridge tips, it strikes the ground, but instead of being thrown into chaos they see the path continuing on past the end of the bridge. Peter is the influential story-teller who first understands the possibilities of the new story, which is heard and then told by Paul, the tireless traveller who carries it and it spreads like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire.
We can also find stories like this in the struggle to save our home planet and all her plants and creatures. Yes, there are tipping points, far too many of them, when there are no longer enough individuals alive to ensure the future of a species. There are habitats that are so degraded that they may never again support life.
But there are also the story-tellers and the carriers, the people who have the vision and tell the new story, the story that we need the earth more than the earth needs us, that compassion for “the other” includes compassion for the earth and all living things. Some of these story-tellers and carriers are high-profile, well-known names: Naomi Klein, David Suzuki, Elizabeth May. Others are less well-known, but still influential because of their contacts and their skill at telling the story.
I think of my friend Kevin Van Tighem, a biologist, a wildlife writer, and a former National Park warden. We went to university together in Calgary and reconnected on Facebook after many years. Through his Facebook posts and other writings, I have learned so much about a variety of environmental issues.
Perhaps the topic that he is most passionate about is the need for healthy headwaters because everything downstream depends on them. When the mountain creekbeds and surrounding wetlands are damaged by off-road vehicles, when the upland forests are clear-cut, when the beaver and their dams disappear, the result is huge fluctuations in water levels, and poor water quality further downstream.
Here is a poem I wrote about Kevin and the Oldman River in the foothills of southwestern Alberta. The photo above is taken at his place, showing the Oldman River valley and the Livingstone Range behind it.
Naapi Otsithaatan (Oldman River, Alberta)
I have a friend who lives by a dying river
Drying up as the land above it is ravaged,
banks unstable and slumping
into the sluggish flow below.
I grew up beside the same river
further downstream where it meanders
aimlessly through a wide, ancient valley,
where we also meandered aimlessly on horses or bikes
where my brother lost his glasses overboard,
poling a makeshift raft across a slough.
There were no snakes in that damp garden then, but now
rattlesnakes have followed the dry and warning signs are posted.
On warm summer evenings, my friend
takes his lawn chair into the shallows,
sips his whiskey, enjoys the cooling air
the cool water on his feet
and lets that water heal him, for that sweet time,
of his grief as his good friend
passes
away
Kevin still holds hope that the Oldman can be saved, so he continues to write and speak and fight. He can tell his stories effectively because he has a passionate vision of how we can live with more care for our living home and our non-human neighbours. He can tell the stories because he lives them firsthand, he walks the high country he writes about, and he cares. His stories spread because the people who hear them are often people who have many other contacts and so they have the potential to catch and spread like wildfire. Like Peter and Paul and other early apostles, he gets very discouraged but he never gives up because he believes in the truth of his vision.
There’s one more tipping point I’d like to mention – the beginning of a return to the ancient Indigenous understandings of Creation. Some use the term “animism” for this concept. Graham Harvey summarizes it this way, “Animists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others” 2 and “All that exists lives… all that lives is holy”
Perhaps if we can hold that vision, and extend our understanding of the family of God to include all of creation, we can continue to work and walk towards that crucial tipping point: a moment when we leave the old familiar ground, our world of fear and greed and love of comfort, and walk forward over unfamiliar ground towards a new vision. We can do this because we know that the Spirit is leading us, as the Spirit led Peter’s community so long ago: across the bridge, across unfamiliar ground, past the terror of the tipping point to where we can see the new path stretching towards the horizon.
We are invited to be the storytellers and the carriers of God’s good news, the love that unites and nourishes all of Creation. As the Christian Animists say: “Everything is alive. Everything is sacred. Everything is connected. Everything is person. Everything is nurtured. Everything is respected.”
Thanks be to God!
For Reflection: How does the idea that “Everything is person” challenge or encourage you?
