Acts: Peter and Cornelius

Well, we are

jumping to the book of Acts in chapter

11 this

morning. Um, and so hear the word of the

Lord, friends, from chapter 11:es 1-18

of the book of the Acts of the

Apostles. Now, the apostles and brothers

and sisters who were in Judea heard that

the Gentiles had also accepted the word

of God. So when Peter went up to

Jerusalem, the circumcised believers

criticized him, saying, "Why did you go

to uncircumcised men and eat with them?"

Well, then Peter began to explain it to

them step by step, saying, "Well, I was

in the city of Japa praying, and in a

trance, I saw a vision. There was

something like a large sheet coming down

from heaven, being lowered by its four

corners, and it came close to me. And as

I looked at it closely, I saw 4-footed

animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, birds

of the air. I also heard a voice saying

to me, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

But I replied, "By no means, Lord, for

nothing profane or unclean has ever

entered my mouth." But a second time,

the voice answered from heaven, "What

God has made clean, you must not call

profane."

This happened three times and then

everything was pulled up again to

heaven. At that very moment, three men

sent to me from Cesaria arrived at the

house where we were. The spirit told me

to go with them and to not 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 an angel standing in his

house and saying, "Send to Japa and

bring Simon who was called Peter. And 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 and 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 to us when we believed in the

Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I

could hinder

God? And when they heard this, they were

silenced and they praised God, saying,

"Then God has given even to the Gentiles

the repentance that leads to life." This

is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to

God.

Well, Bob McKillip is a famous

basketball coach um primarily known for

his 33 seasons coaching at Davidson

College. And for those of you who know

college basketball and for for which

that is a thing for you, you will know

that dozens of McKelp's players have

gone pro. Uh not least of whom is Steph

Curry. You guys know him. Yes.

Uh but beyond McKillip's like remarkable

success in coaching amazing players and

winning hundreds literally hundreds of

games, he is known for making his young

players not just like incredible

athletes. Not just incredible basketball

players, but really really good human

beings. He's quite passionate about it

actually.

In fact, in 2018, McKillip, he took his

whole team to Poland to visit the German

concentration camp

Ashawitz. And in his own words, here is

why he believed that trip was

important. He says, "The volatility of

our world right now, it requires a

response informed by both a respect for

human dignity and an understanding of

what happens in its absence. We're

stepping into a moment in history when

for millions, evil seemed to have

triumphed and humanity had vanished. I

want my players to understand this

experience for life and to bring it back

here. Not just as a lesson, but to live

what they learned. Our world needs

leaders who aim to lead and serve. We

need advocates for and defenders of

human dignity. That is why we are

going. Now, you won't be surprised uh to

learn that this experience like

radically transformed that basketball

team. I mean, of course it did. Of

course it did. Those boys were never the

same. And that's because you can't be

the same after something like that. You

really can't. Those those kinds of

experiences, they change your mind. They

transform your whole world view.

the story recorded in Acts 10 and again

in chapter 11 that we just read. Peter

has a like worldshaking

um worldview changing experience just

like these basketball players had.

Peter's experience it starts on the

rooftop in a city named Japa and then it

goes on for several more days as he ends

up in Cesaria in the home of a gentile

named

Cornelius. And just as Ashawitz was

probably not the normal destination for

a college basketball team, Cornelius's

house was not at all where Peter ever

expected himself to

land. It didn't align with the way he

was raised. It didn't make sense with

all that he had been taught about the

world, all he had read in his holy

scriptures, all he'd

experienced being taught by his parents.

No, not until Peter has this strange

strange vision. I mean, he never would

have conceived of standing in

Cornelius's

home. Peter tries to explain this odd

vision to the religious leaders

afterwards and he tells them, he says,

"The heavens opened up to me and a large

sheet like a tablecloth came down and on

it was every forbidden creature you

might imagine. camels and badgers and

buzzards and bats and crocodiles,

lizards and yeah, even a pig. No for

Jews. All the detestable things that we

don't

eat. And then I heard God's voice

telling me, "Get up, Peter. Kill and

eat." But I just could not do what God

wanted me to do. I couldn't. It went

against everything I'd heard before.

went against everything I was taught,

against the scriptures I had memorized,

against everything my parents had ever

taught me about faith. But then God said

to me, "What I have made clean, you are

not to call

profane." And and then the vision

repeated over and over three times

before it

stopped. That is how Peter describes

this deeply strange encounter with God.

Theologian and author Barbara Brown

Taylor, she tries to help us imagine the

shock this would have been for Peter.

She says,"I wish there was some way we

could understand how important dietary

law has been to the people of Israel.

Most of us have eaten bacon our whole

lives and we don't think twice about

combining milk and meat. But if we were

first century Jews, the very thought

would make us break out in a cold sweat.

It would be like coming to church one

morning to find pork chops and whiskey

on the altar instead of bread and wine.

I assure you there's no pork chops

today. But Peter was confused by this.

In Acts 10:17, we're told that he is

Acts 10:17

deeply burdened by this. He doesn't

understand it. He He doesn't know how to

make sense of this vision that he just

saw.

And of course

not because he had a vision that

suggested he break his own Jewish

law. That's crazy. I mean, how would you

feel if what you really believed God was

calling you to do contradicted what you

understood of God's

laws? That's incredibly

confusing. It is. But it's right at this

moment as Peter's like pondering like

how how he's supposed to make sense of

this that a handful of men show up and

say, "Come with

us. We need you to come to a non-Jews

house,

Cornelius." And what you need to know

about Cornelius is he's like the

trifecta of

outsider. He is a gentile, which means

he's unclean to the Jewish people. He's

a Roman, so he's part of the occupying

nation. And even worse, he's a

soldier. So, he's the group of people

that's oppressing the

Jews. And so, yeah, Peter is

unsettled, but but he does something

incredible. He trusts his experience of

the Holy Spirit enough to go anyway.

And it's not really until he walks into

Cornelius's packed house because we're

told that Cornelius has invited a bunch

of friends and family. Peter walks into

a packed house full of Gentiles, full of

Romans. And all of a sudden, the vision

makes sense. All of a sudden, he gets

it. Oh, this wasn't about

food. This was about

people. This was about people.

And so he tells them, he says, 'Even

though this breaks all my rules, even

though it goes against the law and the

scriptures, I'm standing here right now

because God wants to make sure that I

understand that I should never call

anyone profane or

unclean. Now I truly understand that God

shows no

partiality. Peter's mind has been

changed. His worldview has been

transformed. There there are no unclean.

There are no

outsiders. God calls

everybody. But then as as Peter starts

to tell them about Jesus, I mean, before

he can really even get into a sermon,

the Holy Spirit comes upon everyone

present and they all begin praising God.

And that looks exactly like what

happened to Peter and his Jewish friends

when they were filled with the Holy

Spirit back in Jerusalem.

And so Peter says, "Can anyone withhold

the waters of baptism from these people

who have received the Holy Spirit just

like we have?" And so we're told that he

baptizes everyone there. He baptizes

everybody. And he stays with them for

several days. He welcomes them into the

family of

faith. But when the religious leaders

find out that that's

happened, they're not happy. When they

find out that Peter's been eating

unclean food with Gentiles, that he just

went ahead and baptized all these

people, they're

upset. They're worried that he's

watering down the gospel. They're deeply

concerned that he's like on maybe a

dangerous slippery slope and that the

integrity of their faith is being

threatened. And so they ask him, "What

on earth were you doing there? Why did

you think this was a good

idea? Now, I do not think that we can

fully understand like the mindboggling

radicalness for these early Jewish

Christians, for Peter and these other

disciples that are confused. I mean, the

idea that people could become Jesus

followers without also first becoming

Jews, that was unimaginable to them. It

really was. They couldn't even fathom

something like that. And that's because

you have to remember that Jesus was

Jewish. All these disciples were Jewish.

Jesus spent time teaching in Jewish

synagogues trying to explain to his

Jewish brothers and sisters that the

kingdom of God had

come. And and so yes, of course, Jesus

criticized the Jewish faith and

especially the Jewish leaders, but Jesus

also said that he was going to be the

fulfillment of all the law, all the

prophets.

And so for Peter, for his Jewish

friends, they just didn't have an

imagination for this. They couldn't

imagine something big enough to move

past

Judaism. And I need you to understand,

it wasn't opposed that they were like

they weren't opposed to Gentiles um

coming to saving faith, following Jesus.

They just really believed that they were

going to have to be Jewish first.

Which is why when Peter's worldview is

just blown apart by this experience at

Cornelius's house, he tells those

criticizing them, "Well, if God gave

them the same gift he gave us when we

believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who

was I to think I could stand in God's

way?" And that and that does seem to

help his

friends may maybe even shifting their

worldview too because when they heard

this they were

silenced and they had no further

objections and then they praised God

saying so then even to the

Gentiles God has granted the repentance

that leads to

life. They're amazed.

Now friends, it's really clear that Luke

wants to make sure that we don't miss

this. The story of Peter's vision and

the decision to baptize all these

Gentiles, even though they have no plan

of becoming Jewish first, it is told in

great detail

twice in chapter 10 and in chapter 11.

Peter's whole vision is repeated. The

whole story is repeated back to back

because Luke wants to make sure we do

not miss

this. God's Holy Spirit is for the

Gentiles, too. they too have received

the word of God and the apostles

shouldn't dare try and prevent them from

following

Jesus. It's a watershed moment for the

early church. It really is. I hope you

guys can understand sort of the gravity

of this. It changes like the whole face

of Christianity for the rest of history

because this issue, this like Jewish

Christian issue, it's going to be the

key issue for the early church for many

years.

it it's prevalent in the book of Acts

and most of the New Testament letters.

This is a really hard thing for them to

figure out and get past. And so Luke

tells the story twice to make sure we

can't miss it. To make sure we can't

forget it, to make sure that we as

readers in our own day and time, we

don't hinder anyone from coming to

Jesus. And and that's really important,

I think, because we are still just as

prone uh to decide who should be in and

who should be out to try and put plenty

of guardrails in place to keep certain

people away. We still do this in the

church. I think there's all sorts of

reasons we do this. All sorts of

reasons. One one reason maybe the most

obvious to you is we do this because of

arrogance and pride and often

self-righteousness.

Sometimes we find ourselves thinking

that we're the only ones that are good

enough or holy enough or believe rightly

enough to experience God, to deserve

God's

love. But then I think another reason

that we do this is because of our

prejudice and our

hatred. Words we can't imagine we might

struggle

with, but we we've decided certain

people simply because of who they are,

they don't deserve God's love.

and our prejudices. You know, the reason

we hate that word, the reason we hate

hate, um, is because we don't recognize

how easy it is for us to fall into the

same

traps. Our prejudice isn't always easy

to

spot because if your entire life you

grow up hearing that they whoever they

are are different than you and everyone

else. If if you grow up hearing at your

dining room table that they are lazy or

that they are backwards or that they are

dangerous. If you grow up at a religious

tradition hearing that they are the

reason God sends hurricanes and

pandemics. They are the reason the

market

crashed. They're the reason the moral

fabric of our our world is

disintegrating. And if what you watch on

the news and click on on Instagram tells

you that they are the reason you can't

buy a house and they are the reason your

kids aren't safe at

school. Well, then you will eventually

come to believe that they can't possibly

deserve God's love.

And it makes sense that you'd want to

keep them

out. But you know, there are times that

we keep people out, I think. And it's

not because of our arrogance and our

self-righteousness. And it's not even

because of hatred and prejudice. I think

sometimes we keep people out in an

attempt at

faithfulness. Faithfulness.

Actually, we're trying to do what we

believe God has asked us to do.

Like Peter, we assume we're doing the

exact right thing. We're following all

the rules on the do not eat list of our

holy

law. We're trying to keep people out and

we we don't mean to be cruel in our

exclusion. We're actually trying to do

what we think God wants us to

do. Right up until we see a

vision. Right up until we see a vision

and all those cracks start to form in

our own too small worldview.

Maybe when something happens in our

personal

life that shows us that God's love might

actually be bigger than we first had

imagined it to

be. Maybe we read a book or we attend a

Bible study and it starts to

legitimately poke holes in the beliefs

that we were so sure of at one point.

Maybe we have a powerful experience of

God's love among a bunch of people that

we were convinced couldn't experience

God's

love. Maybe one of our kids or our

friends comes out to

us or we have an experience of failure

or suffering that radically challenges

our deeply held assumptions.

There are so many ways that we see a new

vision. There really

are. But but I want to acknowledge this.

It is quite disorienting when we

do. It is quite

disorienting because we then have to

reckon with like how blind we've been

and maybe how

slow we've been to recognize the bigness

of God. God's kingdom interrupting our

deeply held beliefs. How much we might

actually have to change the way we think

and believe in order to align with the

God we see in new ways in new

people. And that can be really

disorienting. That can be

tough. Theologian Willon says this. He

says, "Faith, when it comes down to it,

it is often a breathless attempt to keep

up with the redemptive activity of God.

to keep asking ourselves, what is God

doing? Where on earth is God going

now? And for these early disciples, man,

that early church, you guys, it was a

breathless attempt to keep up with Jesus

Christ. I think it can feel like that to

us, too. Our own breathless attempt to

keep up. But this story of Peter and

Cornelius, it can help us. It can help

us keep up. It can remind us that we're

actually supposed to change our mind as

we come to follow Jesus more faithfully.

That we're supposed to grow and mature

and think differently as we deepen our

faith in Christ. That that that's not

only appropriate. It is

expected that as we mature, it has to be

about a whole lot less than like

following the rules to a tea and making

sure we don't eat all the wrong foods.

And it has to be way more about

encountering the love of God and making

sure everybody gets to experience

it. And this story is also a

warning for us in the

church to never never take a bunch of

requirements and

expectations and push those off as God's

ideas in order to keep people out.

We need to be so careful here that

instead of helping folks follow Jesus,

we aren't actually just helping folks

follow

us. Those are not the same thing much of

the

time. The gospel declares that we're

never to assume that we know who gets to

be in and who gets to be

out, who belongs and who

doesn't. What God has made

clean, we don't get to call

profane. What God has made clean, we

don't get to declare as an

outsider. That's not our

job. And Jesus went to great lengths to

make sure we knew God's love was for

everyone, including those most unlike

us, those who do not fit, and even those

who upset us and make us uncomfortable.

And so friends, maybe it is time to

start praying for some Peter-like

visions in your life. Visions that will

shake us up and help us see with new

eyes. Visions that might shift our

worldview or radically transform it on

who is in and who is

out. Visions that might at least at

first have our most religious

friends uncomfortable and maybe even

criticizing us.

I think we ought to ask God for visions

that will shatter our two small

beliefs in the name of the wideopen love

of

God. The wide openen love of

God. Because friends, according to the

book of Acts, that is how the gospel

spreads. That is how the church grows.

Radical love for the entire world.