New Diet

I read that these numbers are accurate: Americans spend $33 billion each year on weight-loss products and an estimated 45 million Americans go on a diet each year. We sometimes think about what goes into our mouths. We don’t always follow through on practices that get us results…but we think about it. One fellow joked with me: “I am on a new diet. I can eat anything I want, but if it tastes good, I must spit it out.”

I will not be explaining here a new diet, sorry; I just thought the title might get you to bite. I am looking into a passage from Acts of the Apostles which touches on “do’s and don’ts” of eating tied to purity codes from the Law of Moses. It seems that the Apostle Peter receives a vision while in the Mediterranean coastal city of Joppa. He sees a sheet come down from heaven to the ground in front of him. Looking at it, he sees animals including some ritually unclean for a Jew following dietary laws to eat. Peter is startled to hear God’s voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” He protests, saying that he has never let ritually impure food pass by his lips.

The divine voice twice repeats the injunction. Then three men from Caesarea meet up with Peter, and the Spirit orders him to go with them and not to draw distinctions between particulars of his folk and those of these strangers. The Spirit had been speaking to them too: they were instructed to watch for a Simon, called Peter who could give the message bringing them salvation. Others came too as they entered a house:

The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, `Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.' And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, `John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?" (Acts 11:12-17)

This is a radical, watershed moment. The message is delivered that eating the correct foods and avoiding other foods would do nothing to connect them to God through the Spirit. Indeed, nothing at all from the purity codes would save them. Even the washing baptism introduced by John the Baptist would not secure them ultimately. What they needed was the gift of God coming through Holy Spirit Baptism. The news is radical, declaring that what is effective for salvation is effective for all recipients of the gift without distinction: Jews and Gentiles, circumcised or not, people restrictive about food or unrestrictive. Salvation hinges only on God giving the gift to any who believed. All those who chose to receive the Spirit are saved.

Our instincts, innate and learned, teach us to divide. The Spirit draws us into the life and communion of God. If you want a new “diet” here it is: “ingest” the openness of the Holy Spirit and hand over the place of judgment to God. We naturally crave making distinctions, but we can consume instead the Spirit’s invitation, and thereby rejoice in the holy connection and union it affords us.