May 2, 2010 Acts 11:1-12a “Drawing Inclusive Circles”

Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

“In the movie, District 9, an alien spaceship stalls in the skies above Johannesburg [South Africa].
After three months with no communication, South Africans decide to board the ship, only to find a
million aliens who need rescuing. They move them to District 9, an area that’s a cross between a
township and a refugee camp. But eventually the welcome for the aliens grows thin; the government
forcibly relocates them to a remote area and brutally enforces their separation from the rest of the
population.
District 9, evokes the worst of South Africa’s apartheid era, when people were treated as aliens in their
own land. This painful mockumentary also depicts an international relief industry in which the
inefficiency of the United Nations is replaced by the ruthless capability of a transnational corporation,
which is also seeking the secret of the aliens’ ultra powerful weapons technology. The film is an
embarrassing indictment of how we treat the stranger.”1
There’s been all kinds of things in the news this past week about how we treat strangers in our midst,
how we treat aliens. Not aliens from outer space, but aliens from south of our border. (I haven’t
heard anything about a problem with Canadian.) Arizona passed an immigration law a week ago
Friday, claiming the Federal government has failed to resolve the immigration issue. “The law, which
proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations,
would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to
detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation
for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.”2
England is having its own problem with the immigration issue. This past week, Prime Minister
Gordon Brown, who is in a very tough election campaign, was confronted by a woman on the street
who asked him about reducing the budget and about the immigration of a million eastern Europeans.
Brown, as he got into his car following the encounter, and with a TV microphone still on, said to an
aid, “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?
Ridiculous.” When asked the problem, he said, “Everything, she was just a bigoted woman.” Brown
has profusely apologized to the woman, but the analysts are suggesting that this could well cost him
the election.
Back in our own country, “Amid [the] national debate over Arizona’s tough new immigration law,
Republican Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James (and son of previous Gov. Fob James) vows
in a new campaign ad that if he’s elected, he’ll give the state driver’s license exam only in English, as
a cost-saving measure. ‘This is Alabama; we speak English,’ he says in the ad. ‘If you want to live
here, learn it.’”3
I confess I don’t have answers to what the immigration policy of our country should be. Do we make
1 1. Jeffrey, Paul, “Room for refugees?”, Christian Century, April 20, 2010, p.
22.

2 2. Archibold, Randal C.,

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html
Published: April 23, 2010

3 3. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100428/ts_ynews/ynews_ts1831
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it possible for those who’ve come into this country illegally to become legal? Do we seal our borders
and make it impossible for anyone to cross into this county illegally? Do we send those without
documents back to their countries of origin? Do we make them go through a long legal process to stay
in this country, or make them pay X number of thousands of dollars to stay? There are a lot more
questions than there are answers, and both Republican and Democratic candidates are having problems
answering the questions in a way that will appease all the groups who have made this their #1 issue,
ahead of balancing our nations’ budget, ahead of reforming Wall Street, ahead even of health care.
But while I have no solutions, I do have a concern as I’ve listened to the debate over immigration. My
concern comes from this morning’s sermon text of all places. The story that Luke presents to us today
from chapter 11 actually starts in chapter 10 of Acts. There we read, “In Caesarea there was a man
named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, as it was called. He was a devout man who feared
God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. One
afternoon at about three o'clock he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in
and saying to him, ‘Cornelius.’ He stared at him in terror and said, ‘What is it, Lord?’ He answered,
‘Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa for a
certain Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.’
When the angel who spoke to him had left, he called two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the
ranks of those who served him, and after telling them everything, he sent them to Joppa.”
The story then switches scenes. “About noon the next day, as [the 3 men] were on their journey and
approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to
eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something
like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of
four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter;
kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or
unclean.’ The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call
profane.’ This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. Now while
Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by
Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate. They called
out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking
about the vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down,
and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.’”
Understand here, that Cornelius was a Gentile, and Jews were to avoid Gentiles. We get a feel for this
when in the 11th chapter, the early Christian church leaders confront Peter – not with trying to convert
a Gentile, but with eating with them. “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”
they ask Peter. That was forbidden. In the beginning of the Christian church, Christianity, was for
Jews, not for Gentiles. It was for Jews, not for people like you and me. That’s the first thing to
remember.
Second, remember that Jews were not to eat those things that Peter saw in his dream. They weren’t to
eat “four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air.” When the angel says to Peter,
“Get up, Peter; kill and eat,” Peter says, “Not me Lord. I’m not going to eat any of that for it’s
unclean and I’ve never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” 3 times Peter refuses to eat what is
put before him in his dream. But God is not to be denied in reaching out to the Gentiles. God has
ordered pigs-in-a-blanket for Peter, and Peter eventually understands. Peter comes to understand that
God wants the message of Jesus Christ to be spread to not only the Jews, but to the Gentiles as well.

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He finally says to Cornelius, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation
anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
This is the message that Peter presented to the leaders of the church in Jerusalem in today’s sermon
text. God shows no partiality. God’s idea of who to include is bigger than our own idea of who we
want to have in the church. We want people like us, people who think like us and dress like us and
look like us. God doesn’t care about those things. God only cares about whether a person loves Jesus
Christ. As the poet Edwin Markham put it so well, “He drew a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a
thing to flout But love and I had the wit to win; We drew a circle that took him in.” That’s what God
does – draws circles that take people in, yes even those people we may not want in.
This goes for God’s church. We’re to welcome all to God’s fellowship. This is one of the reasons we
Baptists have what’s called “open communion.” We welcome all who believe in Jesus Christ to the
communion table. A person doesn’t have to be Baptist, doesn’t have to be white, doesn’t have to be
rich to be welcome at Christ’s Table. Anyone who believes, anyone who wants to partake of the
symbols of Christ’s body and blood is welcome to the Table. Because God has welcomed us to the
Table, welcomed us into the Family of God, we’re to welcome others into the body of Christ as well.
It’s not for us to judge who should be here and who shouldn’t. I’m more than happy to leave those
kinds of decisions to God.
Which brings me back to the immigration question. As I said, I don’t have any solutions to the
problem of who to let into our nation, and how to respond to those who are already here illegally. I
do, however, feel that it’s important for Christians to speak out in support of all people. If God shows
no partiality, it’s important that we at least consider what that means when we seek to resolve the
immigration issue. Rev. Gregory M. Williams, an Atlanta pastor and advocate of comprehensive
immigration reform puts it well. He said, “God has been good to American, and we need to love all
God’s children. [Immigration] is a complicated issue, but we have to start somewhere to rectify this
broken system.”4
The leaders of the early church, when they heard Peter’s argument, when they heard Peter describe
what he’d seen in the vision sent from God, when they heard him say, “The Spirit told me to go with
[Cornelius’s men] and not to make a distinction between them and us,” when they heard again of the
work of the Holy Spirit, Luke tells us “they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God
has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’”
May we welcome all to Christ’s Table. May we welcome all to fellowship as God’s people. And may
we consider, seriously consider, what it means to love as God loves those who want only a chance to
care for their families as we care for our own families. What does it mean to love the stranger, the
immigrant?

4 4. Tucker, Cynthia, “Arizona law an immigration wake-up call,” Enterprise-Record,

May 1, 2010.
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