Breaking the Trance

May 2, 2010

Revelation 21:1-6 and Acts 11:1-18

When was the last time a minister talked to you about a trance – especially a Presbyterian minister? I’ve always avoided the subject. I wouldn’t want to give you any ideas.

But Peter was in a trance, Acts says. Actually, Peter says it about himself: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision.”

Perhaps it was a good trance. Maybe he entered such complete spiritual union with God that everything else ceased to matter. Mind and body became one with the Almighty, drawing Peter into an ecstatic, transcendent experience of heaven’s glory.

There is a chance, however, that it was a different kind of trance. Instead of an uplifting, mystical experience, what if it was a chronic, perpetual condition? Rather than being “zoned in” with God, maybe Peter “zoned out” from the world?

It’s logical to assume that the trance was of the first kind; I mean, this is the Bible. But I’ll risk saying that it was type number two. Why else would the voice have commanded Peter to snap out of it – to wake up and “get up”? Something about the trance didn’t sit well with God.

So imagine Peter sleepwalking through life (for years on end), eking out an existence of unexamined assumptions and meager expectations. Picture him lulled into a state of virtual nonbeing, his senses dormant, mind on autopilot, and body going through the motions by rote.

Such a trance might bear symptoms of refusing to do anything bold or daring. Call it a trance of conformity and sameness, as when Peter said, “nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” It’s a trance that extinguishes the spark of life … and leads to playing it safe all the time, following rules without asking why, and narrowing one’s options unnecessarily … the trance of being boring.

Then again, maybe the trance was induced by a steady stream of hypnotizing voices. For us, that might mean voices on TV or radio that spout what the listener already believes and expects to be told – liberal, conservative, cynical, or just plain insipid (with a sit-com laugh track behind it). I’m referring to a trance brought on by voices that put the brain into a slumber and the rest of the body into knee-jerk, reflexive convulsions.

Peter was susceptible to that kind of trance too. We know it, because whenever Jesus tried to teach him something new, Peter recoiled in shock and cried out for the same-old-same-old. When Jesus announced, for instance, that he was about to suffer and die on the cross Peter argued back, to the point that Jesus had to rebuke him and say, “Get behind me, Satan!”

And in today’s passage, Peter argues again – argues against the voice from heaven! – about whether or not to eat food God set before him and called clean.

People today induce trances in other ways, like alcohol or street drugs. Or electronic media that walls out the world – texting, surfing, listening to an iPod, oblivious to everything else. Or playing a video in the car for your children, so they never look out the window, and grow up not knowing where they are without a GPS. (Gosh, I sound old!)

* *

When you’re in a perpetual trance it’s hard to break out – hard for two reasons.

First, we don’t even know we’re in it. Entire societies and cultures can be sound asleep, blithely unaware of what’s happening around them. The rich in gated communities don’t notice the poor near by. The well fed waddle past the outstretched hands of the hungry, never glancing down. Gas-guzzlers treat buses and other public transportation as impudent nuisances in the rush to get somewhere else.

It’s like a self-induced coma. But let’s face it: it keeps us happy. Like the old saying goes: “Ignorance is bliss.” Once we’re under its spell, we may not want to wake up.

The other reason it is hard to break out of a trance is that others would just as soon we stay in it. That’s especially true of people and forces in power.

Consider the believers in Jerusalem – the ones who called Peter in, demanding that he explain why he was consorting with Gentiles. Vested with authority and seated in a city that oozed with power, these self-anointed arbiters of right and wrong knew what would happen if everyone snapped out of their trance. There would be new opportunities. And new problems. Things would happen outside their control. So the council in Jerusalem did their best to stem the tide. They called Peter in to give an account.

* *

What they heard, though, is not what they expected. Peter told them that God leaks through our dogmas and dreams to bring us out of our trance. God wakes people up, ready or not. Peter testified to the council that God did it for him in two ways.

First, God spoke. Like a parent to a sleeping child in the morning, God called for Peter to get up. Sometimes it doesn’t work the first time with a sleeping child, and the parent has to call again. But with God, we expect things to work the first time. God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.

Except that, Acts says, with Peter, God had to say it three times. Three times God said, “Get up, Peter,” and told him to eat. But Peter wanted to stay in his trance.

Did you ever wake somebody three times – a teenager, say, who was out too late the night before? The third time you say, “Get up now, or I’m putting away breakfast!” That’s how it was with God and Peter and the blanket full of food.

What’s interesting – aside from that biblical “three” – is that the Greek word meaning “Get up” also means “rise.” It’s a resurrection verb (anastas).

To Peter and others so deep in a trance that they may as well be dead, God speaks a word that calls forth life from the tomb. God calls Peter out of death-like slumber, back to life, even life with Christ. The voice from heaven utters the single word that represents all things being restored and redeemed, recreated and made new. “Arise, Peter!” the voice says. Wake up! Get up! Snap out of it! Live!

That’s the first thing God does: speak. And the second thing is to feed. God sets food in front of Peter to coax him out of his trance.

God did it for the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 19, when Elijah wanted to die in the wilderness and wouldn’t get up. God did it for a widow too, and her son and Elisha in 2 Kings 4, when their lives were in danger. God gave food to Israelites as well – manna – when they were wandering and lost in the desert, fearing that they’d soon die of hunger. As we heard last week, with Psalm 23, God “makes a table in the presence of my enemies.”

Food is part of the recipe God uses to awaken us from a trance.

No wonder God gave food to the disciples, through Jesus, at the Last Supper. (You knew this would become a Communion sermon sooner or later, didn’t you?) Food – this food – is God’s way of walking us up for lives of justice, service, and compassion. Just as Jesus reconciles us through his body on the cross, so he gives us his body at the table, so that we can enter the kingdom standing up, not lying down – awake, not in a trance.

God stops our stupor with a supper. (Say that three times fast!) And not just with the taste of the meal, but with the aroma. I think of waking on Thanksgiving mornings in my childhood to the scent of Mom’s cornbread stuffing already in the oven, with celery and spices that permeated the whole house. It woke me from a trance every November.

They say the sense of smell has the greatest power for memory, and I believe it. An aroma can take you all kinds of unexpected places, and alert you all kinds of ways.

So if God’s command for Peter to “get up” wasn’t enough, and if the sight of food on the blanket didn’t do it, maybe God used the aroma to break Peter’s trance.

* *

Thank God it worked! Between the food and the command to “arise,” Peter’s trance was broken. Thank God, I say, because it wasn’t just a trance about what to eat or not eat. It was about who to let in. Who to invite to the table with you. Who to talk to, about the wonders of life in Jesus Christ. Who was (and is) eligible for God’s love.

The Christian Church still falls into a trance sometimes, as if there’s no one out there, and everything’s in here. So it is significant that we are hearing this passage on a day when new members are received. Scripture reminds us that when the church wakes up and emerges from its sleep, new people are waiting on the doorstep. Strangers are welcomed as family. No one is left out. The gifts of God are given to all. The table is set for old and new to “arise and eat.”

A church that once saw itself as a narrow, inward-facing sect now turns outward. It extends its hands in mission. It draws people in. It embodies fullness and hope as a community gathered by Christ. We pray for one another.

Even those who are departing (like Rhoda and Mike Moeller) are remembered, celebrated and thanked, for how they helped us be diverse, inclusive, hospitable, and open sharers of God’s grace. They helped us wake up, and kept us alert to the work of the Spirit.

* *

Peter and the early church broke the trance and got up. Or God did it for them. But even as the passage tells us what happened long ago, it hints that this trance-breaking work has to be done again and again by the church in every generation, every time we gather for worship, every day, and minute by minute. Prodded by the Spirit, urged by a heavenly voice, and fed by Jesus Christ, we are roused from stubborn sleep time and again and sent to be the people of God.

God calls us to be no longer like dead men and women, but to “rise” with our Savior. To get up … eat … And live.

To the glory of God.