How good are you at being a guest rather than a host? Do you find it slightly awkward going to someone else’s home and look for excuses to get out of an invitation. Or are you perfectly happy to receive someone else’s hospitality? I’ll come back to this later.
Betrayal
We’re in the 5th Sunday of Easter but our Gospel reading from John takes us back to a short scene during that least meal together which Jesus had hosted before the crucifixion. Feet have been washed and the plates left to soak – or was it the other way round – and Judas has just left the building. The next time we see Judas, he’s leading the soldiers to arrest Jesus in the garden.
And then just after our verses from John 13, Jesus predicts Peter’s imminent 3-time denial, and all before the cock crows.
Our verses today sit in-between. Jesus doesn’t criticise or lecture either Judas or Peter, though you would perhaps have forgiven him for doing so. Instead, he talks about love. Jesus commandment to love is surrounded by betrayal and abandonment by those closest to him. Judas before and Peter after. But Jesus chooses to talk about love…
What difference?
Those of you with a good memory will recall that we had the same verses a month or so back within our Maundy Thursday readings.
And it rather begs the question why we’ve returned to them so soon. What difference should the death and resurrection of Jesus make to how we view these words? How does love sound different when we hear it in the aftermath of Easter, in the overcoming of death, than it did before, on Maundy Thursday?
The love that Jesus shows the disciples that night is indiscriminate, it’s not based on merit. He takes on the mundane role of a servant and washes and feeds both Judas and Peter – and the rest who would also abandon him. He knew exactly what was going to happen, that they would let him down, yet he treats them all the same.
Take it up a notch
How often do we hand out judgement rather than compassion to those that we feel have let us down – or that we think might let us down in the future? The action of Judas would betray not just Jesus but all of the disciples too. There are times when we can feel abandoned and betrayed by friends or family. When we feel pain and loss and confusion. But Jesus says love, all the same.
And that on its own can be a tough ask but Easter takes it up a notch. The death and resurrection of Jesus asks us again what love requires, what it looks like. Theologically, what does this sort of love mean, what makes it distinctive? By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Well, if God can handle death, then God can handle any and all of my mess and failures too. Love can now mean anything from washing feet and serving a meal to the heroic giving of one’s life – and everything in between.
Christlike
Jesus is the visible presence of God. The Word made flesh. The love that the disciples (and by extension us) are being asked to take on is to be that ongoing visible presence of God. To be Christlike, Christian, even when Jesus is not physically here.
And it’s not by our knowledge that the world will know you are my disciples but by acts of love, service and sacrifice. It’s our love that should convince the rest of the world. Do you think it does? Are we that convincing?
At the start of this chapter, it says: ‘Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.’ To the end, to completion, to the finish, it is finished. It sets the tone for this whole section which is usually called Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. Four chapters of final messages and teachings for his disciples, which focus on love, unity and the coming of the Spirit.
In John, God becoming human, living amongst us, dying and rising was a demonstration of that love for us. A love that we’re asked to replicate. And that’s the ethic, the practical purpose, of Easter. That we love one another just as we’ve been loved.
Shove in the back
And our story from Acts is an example of that love worked out in practice.
Peter’s visit to Cornelius, a Roman Centurion, can be read in full in chapter 10. What we have here in chapter 11 is just the summary. We know that Cornelius was a generous, devout and godly man even before Peter’s visit. I’ve seen one commentator speculate whether Cornelius was the Centurion at the foot of the cross (Mark 15:39). Tradition also has it that he later became the first Bishop of Caesarea.
It’s clear from chapters 10 & 11 that Peter is an observant Jew who wouldn’t knowingly or willing transgress any of the Jewish laws and customs. He has to be given a vision and a shove in the back from the Spirit to go visit Cornelius, a Gentile, and put aside any deep-seated cultural bias that he’s grown up with.
Scandal
And Peter spends time in the house of Cornelius, preaching and teaching. We’re even told that the Spirit interrupted Peter before he’d finished his sermon and came upon all who heard his message. Peter then promptly had them all baptised in water as a symbol of what had just taken place.
In our chapter 11, Peter goes back to Early Church HQ in Jerusalem to face the music. At this point, the very newly formed Christian church is made up from those with a Jewish heritage. Like Peter, the men were circumcised and observed the laws of Moses. And they weren’t happy.
The scandal for these folk back at base appears to be not so much that Peter had preached to and baptised some uncircumcised Gentiles – which itself ended-up as an emergency council meeting a few chapters later. The scandal was rather that he’d gone into their house and eaten with them. He’d accepted their hospitality, eaten their food.
Reframing
We have to remember that the purity norms that they abided by reinforced the Israelite identity as a people set apart to serve God, to honour God’s law and receive God’s deliverance. Purity was about objects, food, times and people all being in their proper place as ordained by God.
As we see in the NT, much of the struggle of the early church was reframing what it meant to be a community where Israelite and Gentile, rich and poor, male and female could both serve and share a table together. The communal aspect of salvation is an important mark of what the church had to get grips with as the disciples live out their experience of what they think happened at Easter.
Here Peter is demonstrating that Easter ethic of loving others. That God’s work in humanity extends God’s love to all, not just a select few. Who was I that I would hinder God, Peter says? See God has done a new thing and broken-down barriers. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy as we try to figure out what that means in practice.
Guest rather than host
We often talk about being welcoming and hospitable and how we can be better at it. But this passage throws out a different challenge. Peter went to Cornelius, not the other way round. He could have come up with all sorts of reasons not to. As I asked at the start, how good are we at going out and being a guest rather than a host? Entering the homes or the celebrations of others and sharing food with them, perhaps others with a different cultural background, eating different food or behaving in a different way to what we’re used to?
If we find the idea of that difficult, then we’re clearly in good company. But we need to ask ourselves why? God became human in Jesus and lived with us and ate with us. Is it asking so much for us to do the same?
Wiped away
Finally, in Revelation, we see that there is so much more to come. There is more than we can see now, and it is good. The tears from betrayal and death are wiped away. It’s a passage often used at funerals and gives words of comfort and promise.
We’re told that God will make his home with us and dwells with us. The host becomes our guest. God is our Alpha and Omega – present from our beginning until our end.
In the meantime, as his disciples now, we are charged with being the ongoing visible presence of God in this world. To show love to others as we have been loved ourselves.
In the aftermath of Easter, as Easter people, we need to ask ourselves: how will we be the ongoing visible presence of God, to show each other the all-encompassing love that we ourselves have received, here, in this time and in this place? In a sense, how do we also become both guest and host? Amen
“Guest and host” was delivered by Ian Banks at St John with St Mark’s on the 5th Sunday of Easter, May 18th 2025. It was based on Act 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6 and John 13:31-35.