The comedian Groucho Marx famously said

‘I sent the club a wire stating, 

PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. 

I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB

THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.’

 

It’s a great one-liner and we might have some sympathy with his feelings.  Who you let in, who you keep out is important to many organisations and institutions and nations.  They define themselves by who their members are and the cache that they bring. And the more exclusive you can make the club the more power and influence you might be seen to have.  The Bullingdon Club is a case in point.  Noted for its exclusive status in Oxford University, its lavish banquets and the tendency for its members to trash restaurants and rooms, it’s become almost mythical.  And what a place to be when some potential future leaders of the Tory party were there doing the trashing!

 

St Peter has arrived back in Jerusalem and people are not happy with him.  Until then it was quite clear – the church, the infant, fledgling church was for Jews, Gentiles were not included.  The others wanted to maintain the standards, circumcision, eating the right things with the right people.  It was all clear, all defined, it was easy to work out who was in and who was out and as far as they were concerned, the gentiles were out.

 

But news had got back to them of strange goings on in the coastal region.  Peter had been away, visiting Joppa and staying with Simon the Tanner.  But they’d heard that he was eating and drinking with the uncircumcised.  So when Peter meets them they confront him and he has to explain himself.

 

The Acts of the Apostles gives us two accounts of this incident and they’re almost word for word the same.  Peter is on the roof of the house where he was staying and has this strange vision, the sheet and the creatures that it held and this voice, this insistent voice, ‘Get up Peter, kill and eat.’  Of course, though it was about food, about the dietary laws that Peter had been taught from being a child and was maintaining, the vision was about much more than that.  

 

As Peter was caught up in the vision, entranced by what he was experiencing, people arrived from just further north along the coast, from the great Roman city of Caesarea Maritima.  They’d come for Peter and the Spirit told Peter to go with them.  And when he arrived in Caesarea and entered the house of Cornelius, Peter recognised in him and his family their right to be part of the new Israel, citizens of the new Jerusalem, part of the household of God even though they were foreigners, gentiles, and in response Peter baptised them there and then.

 

The vision is exactly what the great Archbishop William Temple said

 

‘The Church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.’

 

The church is by its very nature inclusive.  That is what Peter is being shown, it was challenging every natural instinct that he had, challenged everything that he’d so far been taught.  But the vision was clear and he could do nothing else but respond.  It couldn’t have been easy, he never says that it was, but it was the right thing to do, to proclaim a vision of the church that had space for everyone because that is what God wants.

 

This inclusive vision of the nature of divine reality is that all people regardless of any of the distinctions which we might like to make are included – even those who do not regard themselves as part of our life - and there in the midst is the living God, the one whom we know in Jesus, the God who makes his dwelling and his home with us.  This is the most exciting truth that the church has to proclaim – God is here among us and you are most welcome.

 

Sadly, and too often, the reality of the church bears little relation to that powerful call to inclusion which St Peter received and which completely changed his way of thinking, his way of living, his theology.  Some members of the church seem more like Groucho Marx, not wanting to be members of this particular club if some others are included.  It’s a heretical view of church that has to be resisted until the message gets through, church is not like that, it’s not an exclusive club for the saved, it’s an inclusive body which embraces all, and only those who exclude themselves are not found there and even they are still beneficiaries.

 

The gospel took us to Jesus preparing his disciples for his departure.  It was something that they didn’t want to imagine, couldn’t imagine but Jesus is clear to them about what will happen.  And he gives them this commandment ‘that you love one another’.  It was a powerful and seemingly simple command for them.  But as we saw with Peter, and with the others back in Jerusalem ready to criticise him for what he’d done, it wasn’t going to be so easy to live out – the implications were much bigger, ever bigger, beyond the imagining of that group of twelve with Jesus in a locked room.

 

But for Jesus this is clearly the defining sign of who we are – because after giving the commandment he then says simply and clearly

 

‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

 

It’s as important as that – this is what will define, identify us.

 

Whether here at St Alfege, or at the Cathedral we want people to know that we know Jesus and follow Jesus because of the quality of our lives, the quality of our loving, the ability we have to embrace and include and care for and nurture and sustain and be ready to be challenged and to be ready to change our attitudes and even to change our theology.  All of this is included in this commission to be who we’ve been created to be – the church, the place where God makes his home among us.

 

The question we always have to ask ourselves every time we meet as church and look around and see who is here and who is not here, every time we look at who is sitting next to us, every time the inner voice asks us whether this is a club we want to be a member of or a home and a table that we want to gather around is, are we being the church that God is calling us to be, are we really that inclusive community that we, that you pride ourselves, yourselves, myself as being?

 

Is St Alfege Church, is the Cathedral, is this diocese, is the Church of England a living out of the vision that Peter had on the rooftop and that was a challenge to the grandees back in Jerusalem.  This is the big question that we’ll see being played out and is already being played out as we prepare for the Lambeth Conference in 2020, in which we know already, some are not invited, some are not included and some won’t come if others are there.

 

I wonder if God is ever tempted to do a Groucho with the church, sending a wire to resign membership?  Are we ever really the church that God wants, the place where God is at home, or is the reality that God chooses to be elsewhere where the true values of inclusive love are being lived out?

 

But being the God that we know that God is, we’re not abandoned but instead we’re called to eat as Peter was called to eat and God spreads a feast of his own self.  Whoever we are God calls us to eat and live, we, the living people of our living God, in this place, at this time, with a gospel to proclaim.  And that gospel is simply that we are to love, for God is love, with the other people called to table with us, in this amazing inclusive and never exclusive church that will include even you, will include even me.

 

That is how exciting the church is, that is how exciting the church is called to be, that is the radical gospel that we are living out, right now.

 

Andrew Nunn