Up On the Roof

Acts 11:1-18

Preached by Rev. Trina Zelle

May 2, 2010

Unlike Peter, I wasn’t praying up there on the roof, I was taking down Christmas tree lights.  And I learned two things up there that sunny winter El Paso afternoon.  First that even if you’re only on a one story roof, and even if you ease the Christmas tree light strings very gently towards the ground and even if they only drop a foot or two, they still break when they hit the ground.  Apparently, when it comes to dropping light bulbs, rate of descent isn’t quite as important as the hard surface that waits below. 

The second thing that I learned up there is that where you’re standing has a big impact on how you see things.  I had never been up on our roof before.  It was a job my husband usually took care of but he was working in another city so the task fell to me.    And I’m grateful that it did.  I saw our neighborhood in a brand new way. The same street, that from eye level felt like its own self-enclosed neighborhood, was quite something else, when seen from the roof -- just one little street among many, whose houses were part of a larger pattern that extended far into the distance.  Suddenly, the fences that surrounded everyone’s houses seemed ridiculous.  The big sky seemed so much more important.  Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

Maybe similar thoughts entered Peter’s head, just before he entered into prayer up there on the roof.  Maybe it wasn’t so much an ecstatic trance that he entered into as it was the exhilaration that comes from a startling insight.  Look at the way the roofs of houses make them all seem connected from up here.  All of these divisions that define family and friend, friend and enemy, make no sense!  Especially when you consider Jesus’ last instructions:  Love one another as I have loved you.  And specifically to Peter, ‘feed my sheep.” 

How appropriate then, that Peter’s vision involves food.  Lots of it – all of it forbidden according to his religious tradition: shrimp, lobster, who knows – maybe spare ribs.  And then he hears God’s voice telling him, “Kill and eat. ..if God says it’s clean, you must not call it unclean.”

And then Peter does the unthinkable.  He deliberately crosses over the line that until now has separated him from a world he has always considered to be profoundly unclean. Including the human beings who live in it.  He does this because Peter doesn’t stop with a literal interpretation of what God has told him in this vision – that kosher food laws are no longer in effect.  He applies it to other life situations and concludes that God wants him to enter into fellowship with the kind of person he never would have shaken hands with before.  Now he will not only shake hands, but sit down and eat with them.  Probably formerly forbidden food.

Remarkable.  Miraculous.  Breaking through a boundary as solid as a brick wall on the strength of an momentary  vision.  A very concrete thinker, Peter nevertheless grasps God’s unexpected message that Jesus wants everyone to be included in his community of followers. 

There’s another miracle here too. The miracle that occurs in the hearts of those Jerusalem Christians who are able to hear this new thing that Peter is telling him.  And respect it.  Without argument.  Without sending him to a psychiatrist.  Without forming a committee to pick apart the vision’s contents, scrutinizing it for orthodoxy. 

They take it as a matter of course that sometimes God speaks to us directly and sends visions.  They take it as a matter of course that God speaks to us through other people in ways that we don’t expect.  And then what do they do?  They rejoiced!  They rejoice and embrace the change.

How are we doing?  In the embracing change department that is.  As individuals, as a faith community, I suspect that we’re doing pretty well.  As part of the broader community of which we are a part?  Not so much.  The long simmering immigration issue, in all of its complexity, seems to have resulted in a statewide meltdown over the last few weeks. Ambitious politicians in other states are already sponsoring similar legislation, eager to cash in on anti-immigrant sentiment. Willing to perpetuate myths that marginalize a whole group of people.  Many of whose ancestors lived in and wandered across this land.

I don’t pretend to know where others stand on this issue --  either in terms of your own experience or your opinion.  All I can do is share my own experience with you.  Share, how a change in where I stood has impacted how I see things.  And then invite all of us to evaluate what is transpiring in Arizona right now, through the lens of hospitality – a fundamental of the Christian faith if there ever was one -- and, in one of those miracles of timing, our spiritual practice focus for this month and beyond.

Remember yelling at the TV screen during those horrific days after Hurricane Katrina?  The helplessness, the anger, the shame that this was taking place before our eyes in our own country? In my reality, that’s what it has felt like for much  of the last three years. My reality shift began when, after 26 years in parish ministry, I took a job that involved partnering with low wage immigrant workers and church and community allies to establish a worker rights center.  Immigration -- an issue that hadn’t been on my radar screen up until that point suddenly appeared front and center.  Daily, I saw up close what people were going through – people I knew, liked, and admired.  And what others were doing to make their pain worse. 

To tell you the truth, going to church started to be an excruciating experience. Knowing what was happening outside church walls, made a lot of what happened inside seem ludicrous.  Especially with so many faith communities either ignoring the situation or offering abstract “studies” on the issue, utterly oblivious to the heart wrenching human devastation that was taking place on the other side of their stained glass windows.  Avoiding what was happening to  fellow Christians – the kind of people we always talk about wanting to get through our doors but never seem to get around to inviting.

What finally redeemed the situation for me, and turned torment into exhilaration, was my entry into what author Rebecca Solnit, in her book “A Paradise Built in Hell” calls ‘the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster.”  And if you think that the word “disaster” is hyperbole for what is happening to the immigrant community here, as well as Arizona’s larger Hispanic community, talk to me after the service. 

And what constitutes these extraordinary communities?  Something that Solnit also calls ‘informal networks of mutual aid and encouragement.’  Ordinary folks who have decided to stop waiting for someone else to organize them or tell them how to proceed.  Who trust their own instincts and respond in compassionate and practical ways to the disaster unfolding in front of their eyes.  Who give of their own resources without doing a cost/benefit analysis first. Who create communities of caring in the most unlikely of circumstances.

That’s what the rest of the country didn’t hear about when stories about Arizona hit national headlines.  All of the ordinary people quietly doing extraordinary things and literally saving lives in the process – including their own.  Ordinary people who have come to the inescapable conclusion that we are all family.  Bound together in ways we don’t yet recognize.

And always remember that we have quite a legacy here – and not all of it’s embarrassing.  There’s the Sanctuary movement of the early 1980’s, started by Tucson Presbyterians.  An effort to save political refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador from certain death.  Most of those folks are still around.  I ran into John Fife – former moderator of the General Assembly of the PCUSA, Sanctuary Movement founder, and convicted felon, at the rally at the capitol last Sunday – still going strong.  The Samaritan Patrol, No More Deaths, Humane Borders. The immigrant community itself, incredibly gracious and welcoming to a Midwestern outsider like me.  

I would submit that it’s networks like these, growing like crabgrass on the ground level that constitute the foundation of transformation. Networks rooted in the  recognition that we are all  connected and our destinies are bound up together.  It’s that simple.  We don’t have to wait around for religious leaders at the top of the food chain to issue a proclamation for us to act; we don’t have to wait for a three part immigration series – even mine – to educate us. Just the awareness that, not only are we all connected, we are all, literally family.

It’s a lesson that I actually learned years ago when I was a recent seminary graduate.  It happened  one late afternoon, in East Longmeadow, Mass., at the tiny church where I was serving as a part time interim pastor. As I gathered my things to leave, my choir director arrived to set up for choir practice.  As we chatted about the upcoming Christmas concert, I was suddenly struck with the urge to make a snarky remark about Elizabeth Jones, a choir member who sang soprano with more volume than talent. 

That’s when my still small voice delivered a sharp elbow jab to my impulse control center. 

“Tell me about Elizabeth Jones,” I said instead.

“Oh, Elizabeth.” he answered.  “Elizabeth is my daughter.”

Church lesson number one: everyone is related. Everyone. They don’t teach you that in seminary.

And it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about large or small churches. Big churches just have bigger family webs to untangle.  Actually the rule, “everyone is related,” isn’t limited to churches. It’s wherever you find people.   

Which brings me full circle back to the topic of hospitality and immigration.  I sometimes wince when I encounter - and catch myself using – the phrase we church people use when talking about the immigration issue from a faith perspective:  “We must ‘welcome the stranger.’” 

As well-intentioned – and scriptural -- as that phrase might be, sometimes I think it makes things worse.  Because, again, this isn’t about strangers, it’s about family.  And not just metaphorically either. In this nation, as is true around the world, we are all, literally, family.

It’s true in our nation’s south where, once upon a time, slave owners sold their own children into slavery and its true here in this part of the United States too, long inhabited by an indigenous population when the Europeans showed up. Many people out here in the Southwest – including some who might surprise you --are descendents of both groups.   We are all family.  Or will be soon.  As comedian Chris Rock once said, “Be careful who you hate because that’s who your kid’s probably going to marry.”     

And, we are also family by virtue of the small networks of caring that spring up in the most unlikely places.  That’s what the early church was you know.  Not a top down structure designed by committee in a far off city, but through connections woven strand by strand by loving and sacrificial actions. .

Going about it from the perspective of “welcoming the stranger” does not build communities of mutual caring, with the  heart connection that keeps us agitated until we know our loved one is safe.  

To be fair, family can be, and often is, a major pain in the neck.  Thanksgiving dinner at my house, with all of its conversational landmines comes to mind.  But if loudmouth Cousin Joe or crazy Aunt Josephine were to show up at your door in dire straits, wouldn’t you heave a sigh, maybe inwardly roll your eyes, and then do what was needed to help them?  Now, what if it wasn’t one of your difficult relatives who came to you, but the ones who’ never asked for anything before; who’d always brought a delicious dish to Thanksgiving dinner; who spoke with quiet pride about the accomplishments of their children even as they praised yours. 

What if they were the ones to come to your door, pale with fear, eyes brimming with tears at the prospect of having to choose between leaving their children behind or taking them to a strange country with no possibilities.  What would you do if they came to you?  I want to believe that you would do what my mother did years ago, on a freezing November day when Jimmy Heath, our paper boy, came to our front door, no jacket, shivering and crying from the cold.  Jimmy was from a poor family who lived in my small Illinois town – literally on the other side of the railroad tracks. 

What would you do if they came to you?  Like my mother, in tears yourself, you would yank them inside, embrace them, sit them at the kitchen table, bring them a hot drink, and call them by name.  And do whatever it took to help them.  Because you were family.

And family doesn’t need a book or lectures on how to welcome each other.  It doesn’t make other family members wait outside, to be given the leftovers after everyone inside has eaten their fill. Family opens the front door and makes sure that there are seats for everyone at the table.  Then they sit down together to eat as a family; because in families, there are no strangers.  Amen.