Cornelius, Conversion, Gentiles in the Church, Acts 10:23-48

It’s Wednesday and as we read thru the New Testament in a year we come to the last half of Acts 10:23-48. It continues the story we began yesterday. Read it through and then come back and we’ll think some more about it. Luke begins the story with “the next day”. Cornelius had sent three - two servants, and a trusted officer - to find and bring Peter back. After a night’s sleep, they set out. There were ten of them in all (11:11,12) and they traveled the road back to Caesarea arriving the next day. Cornelius and a house full of friends and relatives were waiting for their arrival. I cannot fathom the anticipation or the expectations that must have hung in the room. Peter arrives as a King to them. Cornelius falls at his feet as if he were the emperor and Peter begins by making it clear - “stand up, I am only a man”. This is how the redemption of a person begins. Not by standing above them but by being with them as an equal. Peter is a humbled, seasoned, mature leader, but most of all a person Jesus has trained. He had watched his Savior many times step into unfamiliar settings and each time he saw how Jesus followed the leading of the Spirit and did what God had sent him there to do. Now, he was where God had led him, and he didn’t want to be recognized for something he was not. He just wanted to do what the Spirit of God had led him there to do. As Peter enters the house, his human Jewishness kicks in, and he takes a second look, but his Jesus follower keeps him walking into the house. “he said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.’” It might seem strange for us to read those words, but Peter is still a Jew, steeped in his own prejudicial upbringing. Jews don’t mingle with Gentiles...period. Yet, God had made it clear to Peter two days earlier in Joppa, “...don’t call things unclean when I call them clean...” He got it. Peter continued, “So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.” Now it was Cornelius’ turn. His explanation was the truth...God had sent an angel to visit him and tell him what to do... “seek out Simon who is called Peter”. It can’t be more specific than that. “So I sent for you.” There they stand, two men. Neither knows exactly why they are standing there. Cornelius is told by the angel to send for Peter, and Peter is told in the vision followed by the voice that the three men standing outside his door are there because they were summoned, and the voice told him, “don’t be afraid to go with them.” Two men, each is holding a piece of the puzzle, but not all of the puzzle pieces. It’s as if they walked into a bank and each had a key for a safety deposit box. Each needed to insert their key in to make it open. “Peter began to speak” (vs 34). It is a confession of the need to set aside prejudice and bigotry if we want to see that God has made humans in his own image. God accepts those who “fear him...do what is right”. Is it a works salvation he is declaring? No. He makes that clear as he shares the Gospel. Jesus Christ came into the world because God sent him. They had heard the stories of how Jesus ministered throughout Israel. Jesus did the works of God in doing good, healing, teaching...but they Killed him, hanging him on the cross...but God raised him from the dead on the third day, and we are witnesses of it all. It’s not a sermon or even a great theological treatise, but its the unvarnished simple truth of the Gospel. Peter’s message then is two-fold: God is the one who made all people, and all people need Jesus... “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” The Gospel is a simple message and we don’t need a theological degree to share it. The household of Cornelius was listening to Peter’s message. Nodding their heads in agreement, whispering “yes, amen, he’s right, we need this too”. Peter does not finish his talk before God shows up! Every preacher who has ever preached loves it when God’s Spirit comes to interrupt the sermon. Peter and his fellow Jewish friends are “astonished” because “It’s Pentecost all over again!” God is making it clear. Jesus had told them that they should wait for the Holy Spirit, and then go out from Jerusalem into Judaea, Samaria, and then to the uttermost parts of the world. It was happening just as he said. The Gentiles were receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit - just had they had received it - by putting their faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. Peter saw it, the others saw it, and they affirmed it...no second class citizenship in the Kingdom of God. “Surely they can be baptized just as we were”, and they were. A household of Gentiles entered the church. No one in Jerusalem knew it at that hour. The people in Joppa where Peter had come from didn’t either. The rest would find out later, and question it, but God was changing the church from a “Jewish only” place to a “All People everywhere” place. He’s still doing it. The only thing that is the same in all people in all places is that they all believe, put their faith and trust in Jesus alone, and they all are baptized in his name. My son, Chris Pollasch, wrote some kind words of a mutual friend - a Pastor in Madison, Wi., Alexander Gee Jr. I met Alex back in the mid-1990s. We both were Pastors and we both loved Jesus. Alex is African-American and leads a church on the south side of Madison...an area that white Pastors and churches have little impact on. Alex became a friend...a close friend, and in spite of time, distance and separation is still a friend...always will be. Alex didn’t need to be evangelized like Cornelius, but I needed an education in what it meant to be a black person in the city. Alex helped...along with other friends...Tom and Debra Browne were two more God brought into my world. I never thought of myself as prejudiced, but layers of my whiteness covered over the lack of seeing what they had to go through. I had never been followed by a security person in a store, they did. I never got pulled over by a police officer because I was driving through a white neighborhood...but they did. One day I asked Alex if he and his family would like to come over and swim in our pool. We had a swim party, a barbecue, and a great time. He was in the pool with me when he looked at me and smiled, and said, “you don’t have any idea of what your neighbors will think and say about a bunch of black folk swimming in your pool with you?” No, I didn’t think of it at all...and I am glad I didn’t. Peter was right...”God is no respecter of persons.” Peace