There are over 60 million Roman Catholics in the United States. That’s an impressive May 9, 2004; Acts 11:1-18 Title: The Telephone Pole Problem

Summer is coming, which means picnics, pool parties, and the sweet sound of bat against softball.

It also means thunderstorms, high winds, and downed power lines. You know that these problems are going to arise, as surely as middle-aged softball players are going to throw out their backs. Most of us will lose our electricity at least once in the months to come.

The reason we’re going to go dark is because we can't let go of the telephone pole. Yes, that’s right. Just think about it: Our high-tech 21st-century economy relies almost entirely on a low-tech 19th-century invention – the telephone pole.

This simple pine pole started out as a support for telegraph wires back in the mid-1800s, when Samuel Morse installed the first copper cable from Washington to Annapolis Junction. Since then, these poles have taken on ever-growing responsibility, delivering telephone service, cable television, the Internet and electric power to homes and businesses. “As a result,” writes Steven Pearlstein in The Washington Post, “it now takes only a strong gust of wind to bring the capital of the free world to a virtual standstill.” (Steven Pearlstein, "The High Cost of Not Spending to Modernize," The Washington Post, September 24, 2003, E1)

It happened last fall during Hurricane Isabel, and it will happen again. Clearly, we’ve got a telephone pole problem.

But what can we do to prevent high winds from knocking out our phones, cable TV, Internet access, and electric power? The answer is really quite simple: Bury the lines underground. But utility companies don't want to do this, saying that the transition would be much too expensive. But come on -- this is no excuse. Our economy loses far more money when it doesn’t have power for several days. To fix a major problem, all that is needed is the will to change.

A similar challenge faced the church at Jerusalem, back in the days of the apostle Peter. The residents of the Greco-Roman world known as the Gentiles were beginning to accept the word of God, and this horrified the Christians in Jerusalem. These Christians, you see, had grown up Jewish, and they had been taught never to associate with uncircumcised, unclean people like the Gentiles. After the apostle Peter allowed a number of Gentiles to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, he found himself on the hot seat in Jerusalem.

“ Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” asked the Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 11:3). It was unthinkable for a good Jewish Christian to break God’s purity laws and sit down to share a meal with an unclean Gentile. But Peter reported to them that he had received a vision from God, and in this vision the Lord said, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (v. 9). Peter understood this to mean that God was doing a new thing, and making the unclean clean.

By making this change, God was enabling the Gentiles to hear the gospel and join the church – something that Jewish purity laws had always prohibited. Peter told his fellow Christians that he was hit by the full significance of this shift when three Gentiles invited him to visit a centurion named Cornelius. The Holy Spirit told Peter to go with them, and not to make a distinction between Gentiles and Jews. Then, when Peter met face to face with Cornelius, he saw the Holy Spirit fall on the Gentiles, just as it had fallen on the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Peter concluded his report to the Christians in Jerusalem by asking the question, “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?” (v. 17).

Good question, Peter. Purity was clearly a telephone pole problem for the Christians in Jerusalem. They had a very tough time letting go of this obsolete attitude. But since God is in the business of cutting down telephone poles and doing a new thing, who are we to hinder God?

The tension in the Jerusalem church was between purity and diversity, and this is a struggle that we are still experiencing today. Look around the church, and you can see that some of us are believers in purity, people who want to enforce traditional morality and theological clarity. On the other hand, some of us are proponents of diversity, Christians who want to accept a broader range of sexual orientations and theological perspectives. Disagreements are bound to arise in the church over homosexuality, premarital sex, medical ethics, the ordination of women, the morality of war, and the nature of Jesus Christ.

Such tensions are tricky because they don't all break down clearly into right and wrong, or good versus evil. As I look over this congregation, I realize that this tension between diversity and purity is really a balancing act, one that is constantly being performed by both pastors and church members. Part of my job as a pastor is to be open to new understandings of sexuality and theology, and to share these developments with you. But at the same time, I am charged with being a guardian of traditional truth and a dispenser of clear guidance. It is difficult for me to know how much to change and how much to preserve … in other words, which telephone poles to cut down and which ones to leave standing.

What I need is a word from the Lord, such as the guidance Peter received when he heard the words, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Until then, I can do no better than follow the example that Jesus set in his own earthly ministry – an example of being willing to break established purity laws in order to minister to the outcasts of society. Remember that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, touched menstruating women, put the needs of children before the needs of adults, and preferred the company of sinners over saints. In all these ways, he favored the diversity of God’s people over the purity of religious laws.

Jesus was never afraid to chop down a telephone pole or two. And I shouldn’t be, either.

But don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Jesus was devoted to destruction. No, his mission was to institute a new and better way. What Jesus really did was take an old approach to purity and replace it with a new and better approach to purity. He completed the work that was started by the prophet Isaiah when he changed the purity codes of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Isaiah did this by including in the religious community two categories of people who had been excluded before __ "foreigners" and "eunuchs" (Isaiah 56:1_8). You can look it up, Isaiah chapter 56. Those who had once been excluded on ritual grounds are now included because they honor God in their actions and relationships. Isaiah went on to speak the words that are displayed for all time in our Sanctuary: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (v. 7).

Isaiah, like Jesus, wasn’t afraid of replacing an outmoded old pole.

Over the course of the scriptural story, our understanding of religious purity is constantly being refined and reformed. First, foreigners and eunuchs are included. Then Jesus reaches out to the outcasts of his day. Then, finally, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to the Gentiles. "A purity of law turns into a purity of love,” observes Susan Andrews, the moderator of our denomination, who will be speaking from this pulpit in June. What we are left with, she says, is a purity of love – a purity of love “embodied in the gracious and hospitable ministry of Jesus Christ.”

Jesus knocks down the old purity of law in order to replace it with a new purity of love. He comes up with a new and better system, like a utility company replacing telephone poles with underground lines. Jesus takes down the purity of law … and puts up the purity of love. What a great message to be able to deliver on Mother’s Day, when we give thanks to the women who have given us the gift of love, the gift of pure and unconditional love.

But we still have to face a question, as we walk into the future together: What’s our telephone pole problem today? There may be some poles that we are hugging tight, even though Jesus is challenging us to replace them with something better. If we don’t remove these poles, we’re going to find ourselves in the dark, without any spiritual power.

Perhaps our telephone pole is a tendency to reach out to only a few members of God’s enormous and wonderfully diverse family. We are challenged to get to know the immigrant from Africa who works down the hall. We are asked to reach out to the neighborhood teen who is becoming increasingly withdrawn. We are encouraged to welcome the gay man or lesbian who is looking for a church home. We are dared to adopt the handicapped child who needs specialized care. We are invited to welcome young singles to worship, and to make an effort to carry the life of the church to elderly members who are trapped in their homes. Unless we look beyond our normal categories of friends and acquaintances, we’ll end up like the Jewish Christians who could not see beyond their purity laws.

Then again, it may be that our telephone pole is much more personal. Maybe what’s blocking our spiritual growth is a failure to grasp that God loves each of us … unconditionally and eternally. When we replace a purity of law with a purity of love, we discover that each and every one of us is a part of the Lord’s wonderfully diverse family.

That’s right: You are part of the family. And so am I. God cherishes every one of us as a unique and precious individual, as a distinctive disciple of Christ who may just happen to be strong or weak, musical or tone deaf, nimble or clumsy, gay or straight, optimistic or melancholy, male or female, old or young. And if God welcomes us into his family and loves us so completely, then maybe we need to love and accept ourselves in the very same way.

Jesus talks about the need for us to take the log out of our own eye, so that we can see clearly to take the speck out of our neighbor’s eye (Luke 6:42). Well, maybe the log is a telephone pole. And perhaps if we remove it, we’ll see both our neighbors and ourselves a bit more clearly. --- There’s really only one way to experience God’s love and light and power, without interruption. Pull down the poles. Right now. Amen.

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