As he drove down the street, he saw it coming—and so did his children. A small cat, obviously just beyond the kitten stage, dashed into the road, in front of the car making its way toward them in the opposite lane. They couldn’t hear the thump, but they saw the kitten tumble out from behind the car and drag itself off the edge of the road.

"Dad!" the children shouted, "Stop! Stop!"

He knew what they wanted. They had never met a mammal they didn’t like. He knew they wanted this one too.

Pulling his car off the edge of the road, he ordered the kids to stay inside it, and then walked back up the road looking for the cat. It took a few minutes, but finally he found it. It was huddled in some bushes, scraped and frightened by its encounter with car and blacktop.

Pushing back the branches, the man gently reached his hand into the bush and toward the cat. But the reception was not pleasant. The cat bristled and hissed, and with claws bared it took a swipe at the man’s hand, removing several layers of skin in the process.

Now the man had no evil intentions. All he sought for the cat was good—a home of its own, care for its wounds, a trip to the vet if it needed. But the cat did all it could to thwart the good he wanted to do.

I offer this story because it is analogous to our own. Now I know what you’re thinking: "You’re right, Don. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to do something nice for someone and gotten my hand slapped." And I don’t doubt that’s true. But that’s another sermon for another Sunday. Today, the analogy is with the cat because I suspect that just as the cat hindered the one seeking good for it, so you and I hinder the good God intends for us.

How can that be?

One of the ways we hinder God is by a preference for practices over people.

When Peter arrived in Jerusalem, his critics were waiting. They had already heard about his mingling with Gentiles, those who were uncircumcised. They were particularly upset that he had eaten with them. And for good reason. Such a thing wasn’t done. To do so was to break the dietary laws of Judaism. It was to flaunt the rules that had defined the Jewish people for centuries, laws that had maintained the Jewish people’s uniqueness, laws that were given by no less than God. For Peter to break them was to disobey God.

Yet Peter’s vision of unclean animals and God’s command to rise and eat helped him to discover that those practices, as important as they might have been to him and to his Jewish friends, had become a hindrance to the work of God. They kept God from bringing together all of God’s people into one family.

Of course, dietary laws are the least of our concern. Most of us eat whatever we want whenever we want. Our diet may shape our waistline but not our identity. But there are practices that do—practices that are held with the same vigor as Peter’s critics held the rules on eating. When I was growing up, any Christian who didn’t read from or quote the King’s James Bible was considered suspect. There were churches that had unwritten but nonetheless clear rules on apparel. In them, no real Christian man would be caught dead in church without a suit, and no real Christian women would wear slacks. And music? If it wasn’t Gospel, it wasn’t God’s! Those were the rules in that church but they are similar to one’s in many churches. And one doesn’t mess with those rules.

Yet what we have discovered is such practices often hinder rather than help the work of God.

Twenty-six years ago, a young pastor and a few friends started going door to door in a Chicago suburb. They asked people if they went to church and, if not, why? The results were interesting. "Too stuffy," "irrelevant," "make you dress up," "don’t like the music," "don’t understand the language," on and on. In response, the young pastor founded a church that broke all the rules, that set aside the practices that were keeping people out. And at last count, more than 20,000 people attend worship services at Willow Creek Community Church each week. Throughout the country, churches like Willow Creek are reaching hundreds of thousands of others. God’s grace is being experienced and lives are being changed because they dared, with Peter, to set aside practices that were hindering the work of God.

Of course, there are other ways in which we hinder the work of God. Another way is through our prejudices toward others.

Last week, during his historic trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II prayed for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. He prayed that Muslims, Jews and Christians living in that relatively small area of the earth might live in peace. Certainly that is God’s will. After all, Scripture urges people to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

But let’s face it, we have little hope for such peace because of the long-standing enmity between the factions there. Their view of one another is so skewed by prejudice and hatred that they hinder the intentions of God.

Such prejudice is not new. Breaking the dietary laws of Judaism was one thing, but breaking them with not simply a Gentile but a Gentile soldier was unthinkable. Such people were not only viewed as those outside the covenant of God but as oppressors, inflicting their pagan ways upon God’s people. No decent Jew would associate with them. Such was the prejudice.

But Peter came to understand that his vision of unclean foods was not merely about dietary laws. It was about all the people that he had dismissed because of his prejudice. He viewed them as unclean or profane, but his view of them hindered God’s plans of reconciliation. He had to realize that Gentiles too, through God’s grace, were made clean.

Prejudice continues to hinder the work of God.

Not long ago I heard about a church in a small town in Iowa. It had grown impressively over the last few years, moving from a staid, family-like church to one with more than 300 worshippers each Sunday evening. What caused this sudden growth? Huge numbers of Hispanics had moved into the community, taken jobs at a factory, bought homes and settled down, yet this was the first and only church to offer worship in Spanish, to make any attempt to reach this fast-growing segment of the town’s population. And any hope that this oversight was simply a missed opportunity by the other congregations disappeared when long-time residents spoke. Their prejudice against these newcomers was clear. Here God was providing an opportunity for God’s people to be united, for the reconciliation between cultures experienced at Pentecost to be relived, and only one congregation dared to practice what Peter came to preach. The rest, it seems, let their view of others hinder the work of God.

Still, our practices and our prejudices are not the only ways in which we hinder the work of God. There is another way.

During the presidential campaign, then-Governor Bush frequently used the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations." What he was suggesting is that students, particularly minority students, were diminished when people had low expectations of them simply because they were minorities.

I think that phrase—"soft bigotry of low expectations"—points to another way we hinder God. We have low expectations of what God can and will do.

The criticism that the Jewish Christians offered focused on Peter. They wanted to know why he went to the Gentiles. They wanted to know why he ate with these unclean sinners. They wanted to know why he preached the Gospel to them. Notice the emphasis. Their barbs were aimed at Peter because they could not even imagine that God could or would extend grace to the Gentiles. So low were their expectations of God that they never even pondered the possibility that God might have been at work.

That is why Peter goes step-by-step through what had happened. "I was in Joppa and while I was praying God gave me a vision. In that vision, God made it clear that no one is unclean. And when the vision was over, some folks were at the door inviting me to go to Caesarea and the Spirit said to go. And then when I arrived and started to tell them about Jesus, the Spirit fell upon them just as it did us."

I wonder if we don’t suffer from the same view of God. Do we really believe that God can heal the wounds in our lives? Do we really believe that God can change people from the inside out? Do we really believe that God can bridge the divide between peoples? Do we really believe that the love of God is big enough to cover both our friends and our enemies? Or do we hinder God with our low expectations?

There is a certain irony to this story of Peter’s defense of his preaching to the Gentiles. The irony is this: The one thing that brought the Gentiles into the realm of God—their repentance--was the one thing that those who were hindering God’s work also had to do. They had to turn away from the practices and prejudices and the views that hindered God and toward the joyful possibilities that God makes possible.

May we be granted the grace to do the same.