Easter 6B (Acts 10:44-48)

“When the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice.” (users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/ritualcat.html)

Doctrines lose their fundamental meanings when practitioners or believers stop asking a critical question of why. The Jewish ritual of circumcision for male converts is a public symbol and promise agreed within its faith community to enter into the covenant of and with God who has first initiated to reach out to people. The key here is not the ritual itself but God who cannot stop loving God’s own. In today’s lesson, the Holy Spirit is that critical question itself that exposes the fundamental meaning of what it means to be circumcised and baptized. The Holy Spirit also is the answer to that question that it is God who is the reason for ritual circumcision and baptism. In other words, why it is even possible for them to enter into God’s covenant is by God, from God, and with God. St John would say, “We love because God first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

When we forget or stop to ask why we do what we do, all our Christian practices become like the cat tied up at the monastery. This seems to be what’s happening in the lesson. The cat is the doctrine that only the circumcised can be baptized. The meaning of ritualistic circumcision is lost that its sole goal is to acknowledge and commit oneself to the covenant of and with God. It shouldn’t be used as a dogmatic means to filter who is worthy to be baptized or not. 

For this reason, today’s lesson may be one of the most dangerous texts for Christians who like the way things have been for them that no change is absolutely necessary because it’s about change and more importantly, God is all about change. The Holy Spirit descends upon the gentiles, meaning God is available, present, and known to all regardless of one’s religious, ethnic, economic, and gender statuses.

God doesn’t care at all what the circumcised believers or we, in general, think about how God should act or to whom God should be present. This is not to say God basically does whatever God wills. Perhaps God can but there’s no one who has any idea about God’s doing until we see its fruits. It’s much wiser to be silent on God’s act unless we become a part of that divine action in the world. So the point of the story is not about when or how God acts. It simply is that God is available, present, and known to every single creature. This universal, thus catholic truth would be radically provocative to those who set their rules to police who can join their club and who God can admit. 

Jesus’s good news is about God’s reign or the kingdom of God in a traditional term, dwelling within everyone. His ministry is not to permit God to be encountered with everyone in his name but to awaken the loving and compassionate presence of God in everyone’s hearts. Don’t look outside to find God. Don’t expect religious people or clergy will give us God. God is already within us. 

So asks Peter, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Those who recognize and experience God’s presence in all living things themselves are the new song (Psalm 98:1) that the early Church sings. What about us? Are we somehow making the same mistake that Peter and the circumcised believers did in the lesson that our understanding of baptism has become the cat tied up? Somehow thinking the Holy Spirit is only available and present to the baptized and there’s nothing we ought to do to deepen our spiritual maturity since we’re already baptized and spiritually set for the rest of our lives? I believe not!

My friends, I invite all of us to continue to allow the Holy Spirit to deconstruct our fixated belief systems and reconstruct or resurrect our love for God so that we can practice God’s compassion in the world. May it be so. Amen.