Draw the Circle Wide

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.


How many of you have friends?

Families?

Acquaintances?


I bet every one of us could fill a page with groups we belong to. It might take a bit to get started, but then they just keep coming. Does anyone have any examples of groups you might belong to?

Cape Bretoners, Canadians, Men, Women, Octogenarians, Mid-lifers, over or under educated, teachers, nurses, park-workers, fishermen, Anglicans or any other denomination, Christians.

The list of groups is endless. We are very good at putting ourselves and others into groups. They help us understand each other. They help us define our own roles. They help us to say that we belong, to unite us with others.

This is the good side of labelling, of defining groups to which we belong.


These groups have a bad side too. Any time we say some people are in a group, it means we are saying that others are outside the group. While we could fill at least a page with groups we belong to, we could fill volumes with groups we are not part of. I am not a nurse. I am not a mother. I am not an octogenarian. I am not a teenager. I am not a world traveller. I am not a fisherman, or at least not of fish.

Putting ourselves and others into groups can be incredibly divisive. It can let us feel superior. It can make us feel left out. We can use it to include those we like and exclude those we don’t.

I believe Jesus asks us to use groups in a different way. He turns them upside down. In our reading from The Acts of the Apostles today we hear about Peter’s vision. In this vision God is redefining Peter’s understanding of who belongs in the group Christian and who is excluded. He is pushing the boundaries of Peter’s group. He is drawing the circle wider than Peter had drawn it.


God does not tell Peter that he should not define his group. What God does is to tell Peter that instead of describing his group by who is in and who is out, Peter should define his group by who is in and find ways to make it possible for others to be in. He tells Peter to push the boundaries of his group.

Jesus teaches us again and again to push our boundaries. To draw our circles wider and to draw them wider still. But no matter how wide we draw our boundaries they are still there, or are they?

Think of the boundary of our circle as a rubber band. We start with just a few inside and everyone else outside. We find a way to move a few more from the outside to the inside. The rubber band stretches. We move a few more in. The rubber band gets very tight. We move some more in. The rubber band breaks and suddenly everyone is in.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of this. Take for instance the group, nurses. First it is just those who are actually nurses. Then we expand it to include everyone who has a nurse in their family. The circle gets wider. Next we include everyone who knows a nurse. Wider still. Next we include everyone who has ever needed a nurse. Wider still. Finally we include everyone who has ever known someone who needed medical assistance, whether they got it or not. The rubber band snaps.


Or the fisherman. Maybe we start with everyone who fishes for crab. Then we expand to include everyone who fishes for any kind of shellfish. Wider. Add those who fish for anything else. Wider still. Add anyone who has ever eaten something caught by a fisherman. Even wider. Finally we add everyone who has an ancestor who has heard of a fish. That probably got everyone.


In our gospel today, Jesus gives us a new commandment. “That you should love one another.” Who should this apply to? If we use the same process and push our boundaries we start with Jesus’ disciples, that means those of us here and other Christians. We draw that circle wider by including all who revere God in any way. Finally we break the circle wide open by including all whom God loves. As Peter said “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us” and “who was I that I could hinder God.”

God does not ask us to stop defining groups. To do that would not be human. What God does ask us to do is to follow Jesus’ example and to find ways to use our groups to include rather than to exclude. This might still be hard, but it is something that we can work at. When we finally manage to get rid of the circle altogether we will have found the Kingdom of God.


Thanks be to God.