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Text: Acts
A Light for the Gentiles In the name of him who fulfilled all
righteousness for us, dear friends in
Christ: I know that I’ve mentioned in
the past that Epiphany is sometimes called the Gentile’s Christmas. And that’s fitting because the arrival of
Gentile wise men from distant eastern countries who have come to worship the
baby Jesus remind us that the one born “King of the Jews” whom they sought was
intended by God to be recognized universally as the King of Creation and that
his Gospel of Salvation applied to all people who put their trust in him. In our day, we take these truths for
granted. Since none of us come from
Jewish stock and are therefore Gentiles, and since we all believe the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, it’s hard for us to imagine it being any other way. But the fact is that coming to that very
basic idea was a major breakthrough in the thinking of the earliest Christians,
one that required overcoming huge obstacles, misconceptions, and
prejudices. What now seems so natural to
us was totally foreign to them. We get a glimpse of this in today’s
reading from Acts in which a rather astonished and dumbfounded Peter exclaims
that it’s just finally hit him that the Gospel of Jesus is for all people. “I now realize how true it is that God does
not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation ….” The words Peter uses there mean literally,
“God does not discriminate between faces.”
It means that with respect to the salvation that comes by faith in his
Son, the Lord God is blind to outward appearances. One face is the same as another to him,
without regard to age, gender, skin color or complexion, shape of the eye, or with respect to hair, its color, texture, curliness,
fullness – or even the total lack of it.
It doesn’t matter to the Lord. He
simply does not make such distinctions.
How sad it is that sometimes we who have been made his children let
these things matter so much to us. And
because at times we do, it may be beneficial for us to review the larger story
that brought the Apostle Peter to make this startling realization. It begins in the city of It was in this regiment that served
a centurion by the name of Cornelius.
And make no mistake, he was an Italian Roman officer through and
through; but he was also what was called God fearer – that is, he was a partial convert to the Jewish
faith. Now, it was not that uncommon for
Roman soldiers stationed abroad to pick up some of the culture and even the
religions of the nations in which they served; but conversions to Judaism were
quite rare. So in this Cornelius was
already something of an oddity. But
however it happened, through his exposure to Jewish people, he had gained first
an appreciation and then an awareness and knowledge of the Lord God. He was familiar with Scripture, and he
attended services at a local synagogue – though he would have had to stand in a
special screened off gallery in the rear of the building. As a Gentile, the most he could ever hope to
be is sort of a third class citizen of God’s Kingdom. In the Jewish mind, people were
ranked by God in an inviolable order. On
top were the Jewish faithful – those who were natural descendants of Abraham,
who carefully observed the Laws of Moses, and who were regulars at
worship. Below them by far were non-practicing Jews, that is those who were Jews by
birth but did not follow the customs or attend synagogue. They were considered sell-outs and
traitors. Officially, the door was
always open for them to come home.
Unofficially, they would be made to feel as if they had to crawl through
the space under the door to come back in (perhaps there’s a lesson there for
us). And then, far, far below these
sell-out Jews, you had the Gentile believers – or, God fearers, as they were
called. As a rule, they did not practice
the strict dietary laws of the Jews, nor were their males circumcised – largely
because it wasn’t felt the covenant and promises pertaining to circumcision
applied to non-Jews; and besides, you’d be hard pressed to find a Jewish Rabbi
who would consent to perform the ceremony on a “Gentile dog”. So, while they were believers in the true
God, the God fearers were always held at arm’s length by the others. They would never be invited into the home of
a real Jew – and even more unthinkable would be for a real Jew to go into the
home of a Gentile whether he was a God fearer or not. But to Cornelius, though he was a
proud member of an occupying army – an officer of the invincible strength of
the most powerful and sophisticated empire on earth – it was okay to be
regarded as pond scum as long as the water of the pond was the Word of the Lord
God. His discovery of its truth was more
important to him than his status. So he
was willing to put up with the discrimination and humiliation, as well as the
barriers his fellow believers put in his way.
We’re told that he was a faithful man, devoted to prayer, and generous
in his giving both to the synagogue and to the poor. His humble faith and acts of
kindness did not go unnoticed. The Lord
sent an angel who appeared to Cornelius in a vision. The angel told him that there was a man named
Simon Peter down in Joppa, another coastal city some 30 miles south of
Caesarea. He was told to send for Peter
and to listen to his message. That was
all – which on the surface is rather strange.
I mean, the angel could have simply told the good news of the Gospel himself
directly to Cornelius; but that’s not what happens here. And there are a couple of reasons for
that. One is that the way the Lord has
ordained his church to grow is through witness of its members. The Lord told the disciples to go and
make disciples by baptizing and teaching.
It’s a job God has given to men not angels. It’s the same mission we have been given – and we’re wrong to expect God to do it any
other way. But in this case there’s more
involved because there’s a lesson the Lord has for Peter to learn too – a
lesson about whom is included in the
command to baptize and teach. In any
case, in response to what the angel told him, Cornelius sent three of his men
down to Joppa to fetch Peter and bring him back. So off they went. Meanwhile, like the angel said,
Peter was staying temporarily in Joppa.
He was there planting the first small Christian community among his
fellow Jews. And that’s something we
must emphasize, because being a good faithful Jew himself – albeit one who had
come to faith in Jesus – it never occurred to Peter or the other Apostles that
the rules of engagement, so to speak, with regard to they way they thought
about themselves and their relations to Gentiles had changed. They were Jews looking to share the good news
with other Jews, the lost sheep of Israel – and the rest be damned for all they
cared. Which is why it’s so interesting
that we find Peter in Joppa of all places.
Recall that Peter’s name was originally Simon Bar Jonah, which means Simon the son of Jonah. His father was named after the prophet. And you remember Jonah. He was the first real missionary that the
Lord sent to Gentiles in the Old Testament.
He was supposed to go to Nineveh, the capital city of the hated
Assyrians (who were the conquering Romans of their day). Jonah didn’t want to go. He didn’t think the Assyrians were worth
trying to save – and it was from Joppa, of all places, that Jonah set sail on
his ill-fated attempt to reject the mission God gave him. Now we find Peter, Simon the son of Jonah,
tasked with a similar mission to the Gentiles from the same place – but like
his father’s namesake, he needed to have his thinking adjusted first. And so it is that we find Peter up
on the patio-like roof of the house in Joppa where he was staying. He had gone up there to spend the hour before
dinner in prayer. And we’re told that he
was ravenously hungry – it seems the smell of his dinner cooking downstairs
kept wafting up and distracting him from his spiritual endeavors. It happened while he was praying and thinking
about hungry he was, that he fell into a deep trance. In a vision he saw a huge bundle wrapped up
as if in a sheet descending from heaven.
Upon reaching the ground, the corners of the sheet unfolded, revealing
all kinds of animals – specifically animals that that Jews were forbidden from
eating. Some of you will appreciate that
there were probably a couple of fine hogs in there with of the critters. Anyway, as he is seeing this, he hears a
voice that says, “Get up, Peter. Kill
and eat.” But Peter refuses. He answers, “No way, Lord. I would never eat what’s unclean or
impure.” The voice responds, “Don’t you
dare call impure what God has made clean.”
Then the whole vision, with Peter’s refusal and the divine rebuke,
happened twice more. And then Peter came
out of the trance and sat scratching his head wondering about what it meant. And right here it may be helpful to
expand a bit on the dual purpose of the dietary restrictions that the Lord gave
the Jews. People often wonder about it,
and unfortunately the answer they usually get has something to do with health
considerations. You know: “You can get trichinosis from undercooked
pork.” The truth is you can get sick
from eating any undercooked meat. No,
whenever we see a law given by God that is not based strictly on morality, that
is, basic questions of good and evil, we need to look for a spiritual
message in the law. And in general,
what the Lord was telling his people by forbidding certain foods was that he
wanted them to be discriminating about what they ingested – not so much in a
physical sense, but far more importantly, in what they allowed into their
hearts and minds. They were to exclude
the world’s unclean ideas, philosophies, false teachings, and the idols and
religions of the nations around them.
They were, in a spiritual sense, to watch what they ate. That’s still the case. But by teaching the lesson through the food
they ate, the Lord caused a sort of mechanical separation. The dietary restrictions forced the Jews to
confine their table fellowship to people who were also under the same
restrictions. It caused a kind of
isolation – just like it’s doing in that case in Indiana that was in the news
this week, where they’ve got a student who is so deathly allergic to peanuts
that they have established a special table in the school cafeteria for those
who have peanut butter in their lunches.
They are made to sit in isolation from everyone else like they’re peanut
butter lepers or something – and so the circle of whom they can talk to during
what is prime socialization time is extremely limited. That’s what the Lord was accomplishing
through the dietary restrictions – not only was he telling his people to watch
what ideas and philosophies they took in, he was also limiting their exposure
to what might harm them. But at this point in the unfolding
of his plan, you might say the shoe was on the other foot. Exposure was exactly what the Lord wanted –
not so his people would begin to absorb the unclean ideas of the world; but
rather that they would take the good news of Jesus to everyone. That’s what the vision Peter had was all
about. The Lord was telling him it’s not about unclean food; it’s about what he
thought of as unclean people – people Peter would never have associated with
because he did not consider them worthy of hearing the Gospel and coming to
faith and salvation in Christ. “Stop
calling them unclean”, he was being told; but he still wasn’t quite getting
it. And just then the Spirit of God told
Peter to get up and go downstairs because there were three men looking for him,
and that he was to go with them without hesitation. So with them he went the thirty
miles back up the coast to Caesarea – and you can almost imagine him turning up
his collar and lowering his hat so that no one would see and recognize him in
the company of these Gentile men. If
they had sunglasses back then, he would have been wearing a pair. But then they lead him to Cornelius’
house. And there Peter stands by the
threshold. To step across it is to break
one of the Jew’s most sacred taboos. He
fears becoming thoroughly contaminated by this unclean association. And understand that at this point, it has yet
to really occur to him why the Lord has sent him on this strange journey. Still, he figures, I’ve come this far – in
for a penny, in for a pound – and he steps through the door. And what he found inside astonished him. It was not just Cornelius, but a whole large
room crowded with people. It was
Cornelius’ family, his servants, and many of his soldiers all gathered there to
hear the message of the man the Lord had told Cornelius to summon. Cornelius thanked Peter for coming, and
explained to him about his visit by an angel.
And then he said, “Well, here we are, and we’re all ears. What is it that the Lord wants you to tell
us?” (This, incidentally, is the kind of
opportunity every evangelist dreams of:
a ready-made congregation all standing there happy to see you eager to
hear what you’ve got to say.) This is what provokes Peter’s
astonished outburst that is today’s Epistle reading. And what’s he’s saying is, “I get it
now! I was a little slow on the uptake;
but now it makes sense.” He then shared
with them the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ, about his life and ministry, his
sacrificial death on the cross, and his resurrection to life to proclaim the
forgiveness of sins in his name – forgiveness for all God’s children, for as
many as believe in his name, Jew and Gentile alike. And then, to Peter’s utter amazement, what
followed was a miniature repeat of the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit came upon the people gathered
in the room and they began to speak in different languages just like the
disciples had done. This wasn’t so much
for the benefit of Cornelius and his household as it was for Peter – it was a
confirmation to him that from here on out God really was dealing with the
Gentiles on the same terms as with the Jews. Peter then baptized every one of
them into the family of God, making them equal heirs of kingdom of heaven – and
assuring each one that God’s word to us baptism, “You are my beloved child, and
with you I am well pleased”, applied also to them for the sake of Jesus. And this is the message for us today as
well. The world is filled with people
whom (like Cornelius) the Lord is preparing to hear the Good News of Jesus. Like Peter, we don’t know what he’s doing in
their lives and what doors of opportunity he’s opening. But we do know that when a door is opened,
those who are ready to hear the message are not going to hear it from
angels. He’s given that task to us, we
who are already his children by faith in Christ. May the Lord then give us of his Spirit, so
that when he opens a door of opportunity, we may like Peter overcome our pride,
our fears, and our prejudices and boldly step through it to make the Gospel of Jesus
known. May he use each of us to add to
his family and bring his Light to the Gentiles, in Jesus’ holy name. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
