The Compassion Is The Point--April 24, 2023

The Compassion Is The Point--April 24, 2023

[Peter said to the crowd]: “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” [Acts 2:36-39]

It's not a matter of finding loopholes or manipulating ambiguous wording in a contract.  It's God's deliberate, intentional choice to show grace to the very ones responsible for crucifying Jesus.  When Peter offers forgiveness, grace, and welcome in the community of Jesus to the crowd in Jerusalem here, it's not begrudgingly as though some obscure fine print forces him to let them in. It is Christ's conscious choice to include them.  The kindness isn't an accident or a side-effect--the compassion is the point.

That is to say, this is not a biblical version of the movie Air Bud.  Yes, that Air Bud--the 1997 live-action movie with a golden retriever who plays basketball on a team with human kids. In case it's been a few years since you've seen that cinematic classic [or somehow managed never to have seen it at all], there's a key scene pretty early on in the movie when the team wants to sub in the dog "Bud" to play for them in a game, and the referee has to decide whether Bud can play or not.  And despite the protests from the opposing team's coaches that this sounds preposterous, the referee consults the rule book and decides to let the dog play, based on the logic that "Ain't no rule that says the dog can't play basketball."  And so, Bud is allowed to play for his team, based on a technicality that creates a loophole big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

It makes for an entertaining premise for a kids movie, I suppose, but let's be clear that the organizations that set rules for sports leagues certainly can't have intended dogs to play, even if they didn't explicitly rule them out.  There surely aren't any rules written "in the book" that forbade players from riding horses on the court, or insisted that the court not be filled with orange Jell-O, either.  The rule book at best just had ambiguous silences, not a deliberate welcome.  So, sure, the refs can say, "Ain't rule that says he can't," but that somehow doesn't quite feel as strong a case as if there were an actual statement in the book that said, "Animals, including golden retrievers, are welcome to play alongside human players, even if the opposing team thinks it sounds ridiculous."  It's a movie--and a whole mess of sequels and spinoffs, actually--premised on an absurd reading of what a rule book doesn't say.

So it's really a big deal to discover here in the book of Acts that God's welcome explicitly includes the very people who had conspired to have Jesus crucified.  These words, which many of us heard just yesterday in worship this Sunday, make it clear that Peter was addressing the same group of people who had cried out, "Crucify!" on Good Friday, and that they are being included in the offer of grace through Jesus.  It's not a matter of ambiguous wording that shoehorns them in; it's not a technicality.  It's not a loophole.  Peter doesn't say, "Well, I guess there isn't a rule that explicitly forbids you from coming to faith in Jesus, so it looks like God HAS to let you in, if you apply for it and get your paperwork in order."  Rather, Peter says, "Every one of you: the promise is for you and for your children, as well as everyone whom the Lord calls to him."  It's an explicit act of inclusion, not a dubious twisting of fine print or an argument from silence.

The very cornerstone of the Christian church's story is God's choice to forgive the unforgivable, include the unacceptable, and welcome those who had quite clearly rejected Jesus already.  Whatever else we say about this community called church [and the ways we have sometimes not lived up to that legacy], we can't pretend this isn't God's intentional policy from the get-go.  God refuses to hold the guilt of crucifying Jesus against the crowds who had been there calling for his death, and God doesn't just write those folks in Jerusalem off as irredeemable.  Nope--the promise is for them... and for their children... as well as for those who are far off [for us Gentiles, that last part is our explicit welcome, too].

If we are going to take Peter's Pentecost sermon seriously, we are called to move beyond vague and ambiguous Air-Bud-type "loophole" words of welcome [like, "Well, I guess there isn't an explicit rule saying you can't belong, so I guess we HAVE to let you have a spot in the back pew as long as you don't make a big deal out of it..."].  We are called, like Peter, to find the people who have reason to believe that they are unacceptable and unworthy and to tell them, with the same authority Peter has, "Every one of you:  the promise is for you... and for your children... and for all."

That's how God's love works, after all--it doesn't hold any of the past against us, so that all of us can be drawn into the grip of God's grace.

Lord Jesus, help us to speak a clear word of your gracious welcome, rather than staying safe in ambiguous silence.