Beyond the familiar

When I was a kid, my parents and I ate out once a week. We lived in New Orleans—which is a city with pretty much the best food in the world. There were a lot of options for good restaurants to go to. But every Saturday night, we drove to the same place. It was called Casamento’s. It’s famous as a raw oyster bar, but that’s not why we went. We’d arrive at 5:30, just as they opened, before the dinner rush. Every week, we sat at the same table—in the back room, just to the right as you entered the room, in the corner. Every week, I ordered a shrimp po-boy—just shrimp and bread. (If you’ve never been to New Orleans, a po-boy is a sandwich on French bread, like a sub or a hero.) Every week, my parents ordered fried oyster po-boys—but they added some tartar sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes to theirs. And every week, I got to order a Barq’s root beer. In a glass bottle. The glass bottle was important. Every week, I’d go back to the restroom to wash my hands. To get there, you had to walk through the kitchen. I loved that kitchen. I can still remember the feel of the cornmeal on the tile floor that they put down to catch splattered oil. Every week, after dinner, on the way home, we’d listen to the end of the Prairie Home Companion radio show. We’d almost always tune in in time to hear the News from Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Sometimes, before we left the restaurant, I’d get to buy a bag of plain M&M’s, which I’d spread out on the back seat of the car and sort into colors. Light brown, which sadly no longer exists, was my favorite.

You probably have your own memories like my memory of those Saturday evening trips to Casamento’s. Comfortable places and routines. Things that you did the same way again and again—not because you had to, but because you wanted to.

The familiar is comforting.

The familiar is comforting. And change is hard.

Human beings are wired to stick with what we know, to turn inward. It’s natural. It’s human.

But, unfortunately, sticking with the familiar isn’t very Christian.

The story of Christianity is the story of a widening circle. It’s a story of people following Jesus into the midst of change—Jesus, who himself broke every boundary.

Today’s reading from the Book of Acts is just one example of that still-evolving story. It’s the story of two men—Peter and Cornelius. Peter was a Jewish fisherman. Cornelius was an officer in the Roman army. Everything about their backgrounds suggested that they should remain strangers—maybe even enemies. Peter kept kosher, following the strict dietary laws of Judaism. Cornelius was intrigued by the one God of Judaism, but his social status almost certainly depended upon his participation in Roman rituals of sacrifice and worship. Peter and Cornelius would each lose something by associating with the another.

But Cornelius had a vision. An angel of God told him to send to the town of Joppa for “a certain Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” Cornelius listened to the vision, and sent messengers to seek out Peter.

While the messengers were still on their way to him, Peter also had a vision. Three times, he saw a large cloth filled with all sorts of animals being lowered to the ground. And he heard a message, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” Three times, Peter refused, as every rule he’d ever known taught him to do. The animals in his vision weren’t kosher. He couldn’t eat. But three times, he heard a voice saying, “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

And then the messengers from the Roman soldier Cornelius arrived. And Peter heard a message telling him to go with him. And so he went. He traveled to Cornelius’s home and he entered and spoke with him.

In that meeting, both men had something they needed to learn. Cornelius needed to hear the Gospel, the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection, the promise of the Holy Spirit. Peter needed to learn that the Gospel wasn’t just meant for his own people, but for all the world.

But Peter’s trip to visit Cornelius caused a scandal. An observant Jew shouldn’t eat with a Roman soldier. Peter told his story, and those who heard him marveled that God’s grace could reach even to their enemies.

It’s a lesson that the Church would need to learn again and again.

You may know the hymn, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” It’s in our hymnal, but there’s one verse that our version of the hymn cuts short. That verse goes like this: “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea…But we make [God’s] love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own. For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.”

“We make [God’s] love too narrow by false limits of our own.” “False limits of our own.” We humans are good at those. How often do we make God’s love too narrow—whether by our judgments, our routines, or our fear of change? We like the familiar. We draw lines that make us feel secure. But God calls us to push past those lines.

It’s the lesson Peter and Cornelius had to learn. And it’s a lesson Christians have had to learn again and again over the centuries. Whoever the outsider is in any age, the insiders ask: surely God’s grace can’t extend that far? And the answer, again and again, comes back: oh yes it can.

Every time this story plays out, it requires us to change. It requires us to set aside the familiar and open ourselves to those who are different.

So where does that leave us? If Peter and Cornelius had to be pushed beyond their comfort zones to see the wideness of God’s mercy, how might we be called to do the same?

The familiar isn’t bad. The familiar is the very ground we stand on. But holding too tightly to the familiar can limit our vision and our growth.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy—wider than our minds can comprehend. And God keeps showing up, breaking down barriers—and inviting us to do the same. Maybe this week we can ask ourselves: where am I holding on to the familiar at the cost of welcoming the stranger? How can I—how can we—widen our circle just a little bit more? Who is your Peter? Who is your Cornelius?