Sermon based on Acts 9. It was a beautiful late morning in the mid 1970's around Killdeer, a small town located in western North Dakota and I had been invited to participate in an event that I have only done once.
It all began when I was invited by an elderly member of the church to participate as his helper. After receiving permission from my parents, I was told to wear jeans, a long sleeved shirt, work boots and a good pair of gloves. Then on one cool, June morning, we began the journey in his old IH 4x4 driving about an hour into the badlands.
When we arrived we joined other ranchers and their families as well as a couple of other volunteers --- largely young teenage boys like me. Besides us there were about three hundred restless cattle in one of three stockades an assortment of full grown steers, cows, yearling, calves and "weaners" those calves who were weaned.
After everyone had arrived and everything was settled, we began with the training and pairing. Thankfully I was assigned to work with an experienced friend from school by the name of David. Together we reviewed the basics, the cattle are going to be sorted and we boys were assigned to the branding and castration pen, a smaller stockade next to the larger.
We were told the cattle were going to be sorted with the adults going into one pen and the unbranded calves and weaners going into our pen. There we would work as a team with one of us grabbing the head and the other the back legs. The person who grabbed the head would be responsible for pushing the calf to the ground and holding on tight with his shoulder on the shoulder of the calf. The other person would help get the animal down and put one leg with their boot on to one of the back legs while pulling and holding on tight to other. At that moment when we were secure, we were to shout "Ready," as a man would come up and if male would quickly castrate the animal. Another person would follow up and whichever haunch was up, a hot branding iron would burn a brand. I'm still not sure how they knew which out of three brands would be used on which calf.
After the branding we would shout to each other and let go and get out of the way, catch our breath and then look for the next calf. The last of the young cattle to go through the process were the oldest of the spring weaners because they were the largest and the hardest to get down.
There are many details that I could share, but the one memory that still lingers, many years later --- imprinted into my memory --- was the branding. There is nothing like the smell of burning hair and flesh, feet from your face. I can still recall the pungent smell; a smell so strong it would linger in my nose for days.
The reason I bring this episode in my life up is that this week's first lesson marks an important transition in Acts, where the author ends one section and begins another. It begins with the raising of a widow named Tabitha from the dead. But the last sentence includes a very revealing detail and important transition: "Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon." It is so important it is going to be repeated. Later the author of Acts begins a new story about a Roman solider named Cornelius where it repeats: "Send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Peter, who's staying with Simon the tanner." And just in case you missed it, not too much later the author of Acts writes a third time: "Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner." Why make three references to Peter, a disciple of Jesus, one of the main apostles, one of leaders of early church, staying in the house of Simon a tanner?
First, if Joppa, modern day Tel Aviv, rings a bell, you're right because about 800 years earlier; Joppa was the seaport city where Jonah "fled from the Lord" because as a Jew he was repulsed at God's call to preach to the pagan Ninevites, a background --- showing how God's irony works --- that change happens --- miracles happen --- people grow.
Now let us consider the main character in our lesson, Peter who grew up an observant Jew on a lake --- the Sea of Galilee. Then there is this moment in Peter's life, were things change. Who knows just how this began? Maybe he sat, nets in hand, and the thought just popped in Peter's head one day that there might be more to life…or maybe he had a conversation with someone or heard something in synagogue that week that raised some questions about his faith and threw him for a tailspin. Or perhaps there was a crisis… we do not know, but we do know is that one day a man named Jesus came along and said simply: "Follow me." And Peter did.
And perhaps the change in Peter that had been incremental moves into hyper drive for within three years, Peter's life is turned upside down. Miracles happen that defy his understanding of the world. Peter hangs out with people he may have before disliked, like Matthew, one of his new colleagues who was a former tax collector from ---- his own community!
And then Peter is watching Jesus, breaking other rules he had grown up to believe… hang out with unclean people like lepers for example. Then before you know it --- three years is really not very long --- Peter sees things he never thought he would see and now on the other side of a cross and an empty tomb and fellowship moment in a room, this same Peter, the old sailor, is standing up and preaching. Not only before crowds but this former fisherman is up in front of people like the religious supreme court.
Then Peter is leaving Jerusalem. And everything is changing again, for now Peter finds himself at the head of a bed where he is witness to two miracles. One of them is obvious. Peter shows up in Joppa at the request of some grieving believers. Apparently, they think maybe Peter might help their friend. When he arrives, Tabitha is already dead, and Peter, as opened and changed as he is, Peter tells her to wake up. She did and that is the first miracle.
But when the reader read the lesson, we may not have noticed the second miracle for Peter and the important transition in Acts. It is equally and perhaps even more astonishing. As I said earlier "Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon." That was the second miracle.
A tanner… for an orthodox Jew… was as unclean as unclean could be. A tanner worked with dead animal bodies all the time. Simon was ceremonially unclean and therefore, spiritually unclean and could contaminate other people. Simon the tanner was a socio-economic outcast. He lived on the margins of society. A woman could actually divorce her husband for being a tanner. He was a "dirty" man in both a literal and figurative sense.
Simon was also a religious outcast. For example, if you remember an important aspect of Jewish life are the dietary laws to "keep kosher" by eating only what is "fit" or "clean" — from the Hebrew word "kasher." As you may remember, this was based on the fact that one way to express your relationship to the holy God is by not defiling yourself with "dirty" food. However, in the case of Simon the tanner, handling animal carcasses was expressly forbidden by Jewish purity laws in Leviticus 11: 39–40. Simon could not just eat his way to cleanliness; he would have had to find a totally different profession.
And just imagine the stench before refrigerated trucks and before the days of clean butchering meat factories. I lived with a stench of branded burned flesh for only a few hours on the day in June. Just imagine how Simon looked and smelled at the end of a hot day, day after day. Just imagine the smell in the house; that was the world that Peter entered, an orthodox Jewish fisherman from Galilee when he walked into the home of Simon. That is the second miracle. That is why this line is repeated three times, a not so subtle reminder of what the life of following Jesus, the cross and the resurrection means.
It is also a transition into the boundaries Pentecost was pushing these disciples to cross; Peter's story shows how the early believers struggled with Jewish laws about ritual purity as Gentiles joined their movement. And it was a good thing because in chapter 10, Peter is going to have to take an even bigger step. Living with the smell of Simon the Tanner was just this first step because next comes baptizing the household of Cornelius the Gentile… a Roman centurion of all things, an encounter that will push Peter into a vision, a dream from God, which invites Peter to move beyond and leave behind all those purity laws; a vision that the good news knows no boundaries.
Amazing is it not? We take for granted that Christians are people who are willing to be Spirit led, but I wonder if we may forget what that really means. Peter was led along one lesson at a time… so are we. Our world is God's classroom fashioned for us. What is around us? Who has meandered into our lives? What person, what pain? What dream? What smell? What challenge… is before us?
Maybe even something as awkward as a Bloody Tanner to a Kosher Fisherman? Maybe someone or something is there to bust open our stereotypes and lead us one step further into the flock led by the Good Shepherd.
Peter began one day in a small fishing boat… and the tradition says he wound up in the center of the known world… in Rome, as the leader of an exploding faith. Jesus had even predicted it; "What you really are Peter, is a rock." Furthermore, tradition has it that down under The Vatican, down in the deepest place, under it all, acting as the foundation God made him to be, there is a grave marked with the name Peter. Who would have known that his journey began on the beach of a lake, through the house and smell of Simon the tanner to Rome?
Life will not leave us short of where God wants to take us, the flock God intended for us to be around. Life will not leave us less than God has made us to be. Let us Wake up… pay attention…to the smells --- to the places --- to the people --- God would have us be in community under Christ as our Good Shepherd. Amen.