“Tag! You’re it!”
I loved playing tag as a child. I was really good at it. I wasn’t only fast, I could zig and zag better than anyone. The only way to catch me was to get a big group and surround me or be really good at zigging and zagging, in which case you were my best friend for life. My grandmother was pretty good at snagging me.
Eventually, everyone got too old and lost interest, except for me, I really miss it.
Well, one day God tagged me.
Turns out God is really good at zigging and zagging. Ever since then we’ve been chasing each other.
The book of Acts is sometimes called the Acts of the Apostles, a better title is the Acts of the Holy Ghost.
If it were up to me- I would call it the book of God Tag.
The Holy Spirit moves quickly, zigging, zagging and tagging rearranging things, stretching people in unimaginable ways, leaving in its wake this confused mass of humanity and human decision making trying to catch up with God’s actions, always changing the rules, always bringing in those who were outside.
It is actually a humorous book, depicting the hesitation and bumbling about while trying to keep up with the Holy Spirit. The three stooges could play the disciples, Laurel and Hardy could play Peter and Paul. It really is very funny if you pay attention.
Peter gets tagged in today’s reading.
He has the vision and God tells Peter to eat all these animals.
And in typical biblical fashion Peter says not only no but hayl no!
It doesn’t make any sense. Peter and God disagreed on how to read scripture. Which is funny if you think about it.
Later on, Peter realizes the vision is about including the gentiles and all sorts of unclean and perverted people as God’s people.
The inclusion of the Gentiles is the burning question in much of the New Testament. How to do that? What does it mean to be a house of prayer for all people?
It is hard for us to understand the fear and tension that this created.
Or maybe not. It kind of reminds me about some of the things we have been trying to figure out as a Church and as a parish.
Peter gets tagged yet again by the Holy Spirit, imagine the Key Stone Cops running around, and you get a good feel for the game of God tag being played while trying to catch up with God’s plan of removing all boundaries and divisions.
John’s Gospel was written by a Church that had been destroyed by questions similar to this and they had to start all over again without being part of the synagogue movement anymore.
John’s Gospel gives us the new commandment to love one another, the Church itself becomes the example of God’s love in the world, known for their love one for another. This is born from deep and painful conflict about how to live out the Gospel.
They learned the most important thing, that first we have to love another. It was a hard lesson to learn. As Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “The eye cannot say to the hand I need thee not.”
We suffer for one another, we sacrifice for one another, we disagree in love with one another, we care enough to listen and argue about how to live out this vision of God’s kingdom including everyone. We all agree on the vision, we all have been tagged, it’s the details that we are working on.
And the first detail is to love another.
I would like to thank everyone in the parish who has been studying, praying, talking and listening in the difficult work of considering same-gender matrimony here at Grace.
It has been good for the most part but there are some hurt people on both sides.
There is this thing called the Sensus Fidelium, which if you have been involved in the study and discussion you know that it means “the sense of the faithful”. It is not about a simple majority or even a simple consensus, it is a certain kind of consensus about how to share in the ministry of the body and blood of Jesus together and it takes the hard work of disagreeing in love and forgiving each other and sacrificing for each other to deeply intuit just what that is.
It is very clear that Grace Church does not have the Sensus Fidelium on same-gender matrimony so I will not be applying to the Bishop for permission to perform that ministry here.
The real issue all along is Grace Church as a community sharing in ministry together.
Sharing in the ministry of the body and blood of Jesus is not milk toast, we can’t always just talk about nice and safe things, it challenges us to always stretch the boundaries as we try to catch up with the zigging and zagging of the Holy Spirit, and that means learning to talk and listen in love with those whom we disagree. We are just now learning how to do that and we are now better at it than we were.
The work now is about healing those who are hurt and disappointed and being responsible with our own emotions and words and thoughts.
No one is being blackmailed, no one is being persecuted, no one is being held hostage, no one is being excluded, there are no divisions, there is simply learning how to disagree in love and to forgive one another when discomfort makes us lose our patience.
We are learning the endurance that comes with serious love, the love of the cross, the suffering and the cross that Jesus calls the glory of God. Jesus says in the gospel today that he is glorified by this.
So don’t mistake being glorified with being divided.
Like I said this isn’t milk toast, love is forever and for real and it’s tough.
We will take a two-year break from this discussion and then we will pick it up again and be even better at it next time.
In the mean time, we live out the vision by pushing back all the boundaries and divisions that stop us from loving one another.
Zig, zag, tag. You’re it.