"Made Clean" (Acts 11:1-18)

There are stories, and then there are stories. Stories so big, so meaningful, that they give meaning to life. Stories that help shape societies and civilizations. Stories that explain what it means to be alive.

Scholars call stories like these myths. Now, you may have heard the word myth used to describe anything that isn’t true; you may have heard the word myth to mean the opposite of fact.

But scholars use the word myth very differently.

A myth may not be literally true, but a myth always contains a deeper truth. The literal, factual truth of the myth isn’t what’s important. What’s important is the meaning it provides to a society, to a culture, to generation after generation, and how it helps a society understand itself and its place in the universe.

Stories that fit this definition certainly include many from the Bible. The Creation. The Exodus. Babylonian Captivity.

We find them in other religions. The great flood that we read about in Genesis is an ancient story that is found in many near-eastern religions.

America has its myths. George Washington and the Cherry Tree, for example. Scholars debate just how factually true that story is. But there is no doubt that it is a story that helps us understand who we are as a nation and who we strive to be. It exemplifies the qualities we want in our leaders and in ourselves. And for that reason, it continues to be told.

It is mythic.

A number of American myths have given shape to Disneyland. The old frontier, for example, with Davy Crockett. Davy Crockett was a real person; but not all the stories told about him are factual. Yet for a long time in our country, they were mythic, because they helped us understand who we were as a people and who we wanted to be.

Sometimes, the stories that shape us change. You don’t see many references to Davy Crockett in Frontierland anymore. And Tomorrowland – well, the story told there today is not the story that was told in Tomorrowland a few decades ago.

My first visits to Disneyland were when I was a child in the 1970s. I remember entering Tomorrowland, which at the time my favorite of all the lands at Disneyland.

As I entered Tomorrowland, on the left there was the Circlevision theater showing “America the Beautiful.” On the right was “Adventures thru Inner Space,” which explored the mysteries and potential of

scientific discovery.

The buildings housing “America the Beautiful” and “Adventures thru Inner Space” were across from each other, and the exterior of both buildings featured beautiful murals by artist Mary Blair. The north mural showed children from different nations dancing and making music. Ribbons above their heads symbolized global communications. At the top of the mural were communication satellites, bringing the world closer together.

The south mural, on the Adventure Thru Inner Space building, was about energy, with nods to solar energy, wind energy, water power, and fire.

Walt Disney personally chose Mary Blair’s art to bring optimism and joy to Tomorrowland.

I didn’t realize it then, but these attractions, and the murals, all contributed to the story, the myth. Together, they created an epic story of our world’s present and future, a future of hope, of discovery, of cooperation among peoples and nations working together to create a better world.

The Mary Blair murals are gone. Whether they were removed or just covered up, I don’t know. And the rides are different, too.

On the left, where America the Beautiful used to be, is a ride called Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters. Inside the ride, guests use laser blasters to shoot at and

defeat the evil Emperor Zurg.

On the right is Star Tours, a ride based on the Star Wars franchise.

And in place of the Mary Blair murals, we now have murals of outer space, of starships and space stations and the Death Star.

All this, taken together, tells a very different story.

Instead of Walt Disney’s vision of optimism and joy for a better world, we’ve left this world entirely for a universe of wars and battles in outer space.

It’s a very divided universe.

In Buzz Lightyear’s universe, it’s us vs. the evil emperor Zurg.

In the Star Wars universe, it’s the rebels vs. the Empire, the dark side vs. the light side.

The stories about our future have changed.

The myth of hope, discovery, and cooperation has transformed into a myth of good vs. evil, us vs. them.

I only mention this about Disneyland because Disneyland does so well at taking the big, epic, mythic stories of our time and presenting them to us in the form of entertainment. Disney didn’t create these stories. Disney didn’t initiate the shift from a future of earthly optimism and joy to a future of conflict in outer space. Disney is simply reflecting back to us our own increasingly dark, pessimistic vision for the future of this planet.

Today, many young people have given up hope for a future that is better than the present. Young adult fiction set in the future is most often dark and pessimistic. Young people know that climate change is real, and they know that they will be the ones who will have to deal with its effects. We don’t seem any closer to achieving peace today than we were  in the past. The problems of racism and prejudice, which many thought were becoming things of the past, we now know are still present, still tearing apart lives and societies. And economically, unless you happen to be among the very richest of the rich, it’s getting harder and harder to be able to afford things like housing and healthcare and college.

No wonder the stories we tell are shifting from hope for a better world to a more pessimistic story in which this world is beyond saving, and our best hope is to leave this world entirely for a new world in outer space, and even then, there will still be wars and battles and unimaginable terrors.

That’s the story that we now tell about our future.

Fortunately we in the church have another, alternative story. An epic story. A story of mythic proportions. A story we need to hear, again. A story we need to tell.

It’s a story of an earth that is good. Very good. An earth that is worth saving. An earth which is filled with all kinds of creatures and plants, all of which were created by God, all of which were pronounced good, all of which – together – constitute this remarkable, interrelated ecosystem in which we live, and move, and have our being.

In this story, we hear that – early on – people did divide creation into good and bad, clean and unclean. People defined boundaries that set them apart from each other. But in time, they learned to overcome those boundaries.

It’s the path we all take. The first great task of life is figuring out who we are; defining oneself, discovering what it is that makes one unique. Then, we move on to the second task, which involves learning that who I am is connected to who you are. The boundaries that define us are meant to be open boundaries, like the walls around a city that has many open gates that allow people and information to flow back and forth. We are all connected. All things, all people are good.

This discovery is made in the second half of one’s life journey.

Unfortunately, some people never get there.

Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples, might never have got there except for the prompting of God’s Spirit. Thank God Peter was open to listening for the Spirit’s voice. Recognizing that we are all one often requires the Spirit’s help. It doesn’t happen of our own initiative. All we can do is be open to it when it does happen.

For Peter, it happened like this. One day, he was meditating. Praying. Sitting in silence. Opening himself up to the Spirit.  It’s amazing how important times of silence are to a growing, maturing faith.

In his time of prayer and meditation, Peter saw a vision. A large sheet was lowered from heaven, and on the sheet were many animals that Jews considered unclean. Not eating these animals was one of the things that helped define Jewish identity.

And a voice said to Peter, “Get up, kill, and eat.”

This was a whole new story, and at first, Peter refused. Only non-Jews ate the animals that Peter saw. Only Gentiles. One of the things that distinguished Jews from Gentiles were their eating habits, and Peter had been well-trained to follow a strict kosher diet.

So he replied, “No, Lord; Nothing unclean or profane has ever entered my mouth.”

But the voice said, “What God has made clean, you shall not call profane.”

This happened three times.

Then Peter realized: this wasn’t about food. This was about the distinctions made between different groups of people. It was about the separation, the disconnection, between various groups of people who all desired to follow Jesus.

And Peter realized that no thing and no person that  God has made is unclean.

God created everything. God created everything, and pronounced it all good. As a growing, maturing person of faith, Peter knew who he was. He knew his identity. He knew that he was loved by God and called by God. Now that his identity was established in his mind, God was teaching him that everyone and everything else was also loved by God, and that all were connected.

There is no good or bad. There is no clean or unclean. All things and all people are made by God, and they are all connected. They’re all connected to each other, and to the earth from which they came.

And it is all good.

Peter had to be told this three times before he understood it. In our world today, even three times is not enough. We are all connected: to each other, and to the earth. Everything is created by God, and it is all good in God’s eyes.

If we truly understood this – if this was the story we told, the myth that shaped our world – what a difference it would make!

If we recognized the earth as sacred and holy and good, we wouldn’t limit our vision of the future to one in which we leave this planet for something else.

If we recognized the earth as sacred and holy and good, we wouldn’t pollute it and destroy it as we are doing now.

If we recognized the earth as sacred and holy and good, we would take care of it. All of it. Every plant, every creature, every lake and forest.

Every person.

Because everything is connected. All of it was made by God and pronounced good and clean. It is through our actions that God’s good, clean earth becomes spoiled and unclean.

Our addiction to fossil fuels is destroying the land, making our air toxic, and destroying lives. But we can end this addiction.

Our addiction to plastic is polluting our land and oceans. Whales and other sea creatures are dying because their stomachs are full of ingested plastic. Are whales not holy, sacred, and good in God’s eyes? But we can end this addiction.

The consequences of pollution and climate change pose the greatest risk to the world’s most vulnerable people: racial minorities and poor communities. A Native American community in Lousiana has lost 98 percent of its land due to rising seas. That community is now being assisted by the government to move their entire community to a new location, but many other communities and even nations around the world face similar predicaments.

But we can slow down our consumption and find more sustainable ways of living. We can reclaim the optimism of Mary Blair’s murals. We can reclaim the biblical witness of an earth that is good, an earth that is worth saving. We can tell the story of our God who created this earth, pronounced it good, and set us over it to care for it and protect it.

The future doesn’t have to be dark and pessimistic. All we have to do is tell a new story – create a new myth – and live out that story in our lives.