There is Room for All

Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter 5/18/25. Year C John 13:31-25

Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is another Sunday where we can find heaps of good news in our readings. It shouldn’t be a surprise, considering we are in the season of Easter. And yet, some days, it can feel like a gushing waterfall of wonders is flowing over us, and we’re just trying to catch our breath. Or maybe that’s just the month of May. Regardless, we find ourselves in two very different rooms in our gospel and in the reading from Acts.

In John’s gospel, we’re brought back to the intimate gathering of Jesus and his disciples on the night of his betrayal. The disciples’ feet are still dripping from Jesus washing them, and Judas has just left the table, venturing into the night, to betray Jesus. There is tension in the room, but instead of succumbing to anxiety, fear, and insecurity, Jesus chooses to focus on love.

There is plenty to be divided over in the time of the early church, and that division will constantly threaten to tear the body of Christ apart. But that night, Jesus is practically child-like in his clarity with the disciples. He lays out the simple yet excruciatingly difficult command for them: to ‘love one another, just as I have loved you. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

The confirmation students and I have talked about how challenging the commandments in the positive form are from the Ten Commandments, like ‘honor your father and your mother’ or ‘remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy’, rather than those found in the negative–you should not steal, you should not covet your neighbor's things.

We struggle similarly with Jesus’ new commandment–to love one another as Jesus loves us–because it’s so straightforward. Though Jesus doesn’t expect us to care for each other perfectly, he reminds us that our first instinct, our first reaction, needs to be love. We are commanded to lean in, assume the best of people, and forgive more than we think possible.

This doesn’t mean we have to agree with everyone and everything; it means if we disagree, which is normal and natural, we do so with love. In our Acts reading, this is the room in which Peter finds himself today, as he attempts to disagree with his people, with love.

Peter returns to the faithful Jewish Jesus followers in Jerusalem after he’s healed the sick and raised Tabitha back to life. Now, he shares with them his extraordinary experience of the Spirit.

As we heard, the Spirit pulled Peter towards a non-Jewish or gentile community. These proverbial outsiders were showered with the Holy Spirit and then baptized as new believers.

At first, the community Peter talks with when he returns home, are on the defensive. “Why did you go into the house and eat with gentiles?” People raised in the Jewish faith were not permitted to enter a non-Jewish house and eat together.

However, their question echoes the same inquisition Jesus faced when he ate with ‘tax collectors and sinners.’ But then they hear Peter’s first-person witness: -It was God who gave Peter the command to expand the menu for followers of Christ, to widen the circle, and to baptize those who were already blessed by God.

-It was the Spirit who whispered in Peter’s ear to “make no distinction between them and us.’ -And it was the Spirit who was already at work in the gentile community long before Peter got wind of this massive shift for the followers of Christ. This is easier for us to say, and far more challenging for Peter’s community to enact in those early years of the church. It was as if the ground slid out from under the feet of the Jewish believers.

All they had known was now in question: Are the Jewish people the only chosen ones? Will they still be taken care of by God in the same way? Is there really room for all at the table? Is there really room for all at the table?

This is the question we ask in our own communities. But I especially like Peter’s line when he says: ‘If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’ Who are we that we can hinder God?

What is the Holy Spirit up to in our communities? Where do we see our Lord pushing the edges of the circle out to fit more and more? Adding a leaf to expand the table, pulling up chairs to show that all are truly welcome? Adding water to the soup.

The leadership of St. James has been discerning this table fellowship, this hospitality of the Spirit. We’ve been praying in multiple spaces for God to guide our present and our future towards more loving and inviting practices.

This is what Peter experienced and what Jesus commanded: We make no distinction between us and them, whoever they are. In our discernment of the LEAD strategic planning process, the team was asked similar questions: Who is on the sheet for us? The sheet that God raised and lowered three times in front of Peter and reclaimed as blessed?

What populations are overtly or unconsciously forbidden for us? Be it people of different races and cultures, people of different socioeconomic status, people who identify as non-binary or LGBTQ, people whose immigration papers say the wrong thing, people who happen to be homeless, people who voted differently than we did, people who suffer from mental health challenges or addictions, those who are in prison. Etc. etc. etc.

Loving each other, those like us, is hard enough, but God clearly calls us to welcome, invite, and accept all without distinctions. That is a challenge, yet the spirit is already there, moving and working. Who are we to hinder God?

We had a rich conversation about communion at our last confirmation class. One section of the class focuses on what God does, and the other on what we do. It became very apparent to all of us that if the table is God’s table and Holy Communion is God’s gift to all people, then it is not up to us, the church, to say who is welcome and who is not.

We are one in the Spirit, one in the body of Christ; one faith, one Lord, one baptism. And we are called to love as Jesus first loved us. That is a tall order, yet it is the very center of our faith, the greatest commandment of all: Love one another as I have loved you. It is this simple and this complicated at the same time.

So, dear church, in this week ahead, when we have an argument with someone or we’re frustrated with something and we’re tempted to distance ourselves or turn towards the negative, towards the worst, think back to this lesson of Jesus loving even Judas, who would betray him. Think back to the Spirit’s pulling Peter together with Cornelius, someone he never expected to have anything in common with. Carry these stories with you and let them lead you to love.

Jesus wants us to build a movement of love with the Spirit because love comes down to us first. Notice in all the readings that it is God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit who seeks out God’s people, makes connections, and opens the way to deeper relationships. It is always this movement of God towards us, in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, that we can trust and hold onto as we risk loving one another as Christ loved us.

Who are we to hinder God, dear church? The room we all belong in, where there is plenty of space and all are welcome, is the home of the Lord, which is and will always be with us.

Thanks be to God,

Amen.