SERMON The Conversion of

Cornelius…and Peter

Acts 10:1- 43

Pastor Robyn Hogue July 19, 2015 Skyline Presbyterian Church

In chapters 10 and 11 of Acts, we find the beginning of a cross-cultural gospel. For the first time, those totally outside the Hebrew camp are converted. You will remember that the Ethiopian eunuch was already somewhat of a convert to Judaism when Philip found him reading the Old Testament scriptures. The Samaritans were considered “half-breed” Jews and not entirely outside of the Jewish community, but not accepted within the community either. But now for the first time, Gentiles, those absolutely outside the Hebrew race, accept the Christian faith.

Cornelius, the Roman soldier, is the first of many. He is the spiritual ancestor of all of us who are not genetically Jewish. God has prepared him through his prayers, his goodness and his hopes. At the same time, God works at the other end of the spectrum and deals with Peter. Through a dream his mind is emptied of all preconceptions of what is clean and unclean; worthy or unworthy. Peter being thus prepared trusts God and goes to the house of the Gentile Cornelius. Peter is led to a prepared person, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the first Gentile, his family and his circle of friends.

God’s surprises get revealed in these two visions, one given to Cornelius and the other to Peter. They were part of one central vision the Lord had for His church. For us today the passage shows that the Lord has a next step for each of us. He wants to give us more than we can imagine. He created a willingness in both Cornelius and Peter to want something more than they had experienced previously. We know that hunger.

As a whole, the tenth chapter tells us a great deal about this man. If all we had were verses 1 and 2, we would have enough to admire him. Cornelius was a centurion, a Roman soldier in charge of one-hundred men. He was a part of what was called the Italian cohort, a regiment of soldiers made up only of those who had distinguished themselves for gallantry and valor. The fact that he and his family were together in Caesarea means that he was either highly respected or was being rewarded for a special service to Caesar, or that he was retired. That he still had men at his command eliminates the idea that he was retired from active military leadership. He was deeply respected. His spiritual hunger was expressed by the regular disciplines of prayer and alms-giving. A remarkable man, he was one singled out by the Lord to be a personification of a truth he was going to teach Peter, and subsequently, the church.

There are times the Lord allows us to stumble onto what He’s prepared. Other times He details His guidance in undeniably clear ways. In this case, He gave Cornelius a longing for God and instruction to call for Peter; and to Peter God gave a vision which became clear to the apostle through Cornelius’s call. The Lord knew how to deal with a soldier who would respond to orders and a spiritually sensitive saint for whom a vision would delicately birth an idea in his Hebrew brain.

Peter was a strong-willed man. The Lord had told him that He would build his church on the rock of the apostle’s faith in Him. Now that faith had to be expanded to new vistas. That would not happen easily. Peter had to be made willing with a sure knowledge of what the Lord was doing as an undeniable sign of what Jesus wanted His church to be and do. As Saint Bernard prayed years later, “Draw me, however unwilling, to make me willing; draw me, slow-footed, to make me run.”

Peter had been drawn by the Spirit’s guidance from one human need to another until he ended up in a village on the Mediterranean coast called Joppa. There is evidence of the softening of his exclusive Hebraism in that he stayed at the home of Simon, a new believer who was a tanner. An orthodox Jew was not permitted to have any dealings with anyone who worked with dead animals. That’s the reason that tanners had to live fifty cubits outside a village. This ritual uncleanness is clearly delineated in Numbers. But this tanner outside Joppa was different for Peter. The man was a believer in Christ, and Peter found in him a friend, in spite of the regulations. Peter was in process—on the way to unexpected freedom.

One day while he was at the tanner’s house, Peter went up on the rooftop to pray. The question of the Gentiles was on his mind, sharpened by the obviously genuine faith of his host. Was the Gospel exclusively for the Jews? Did a Gentile convert have to follow Judaism prior to becoming a follower of Jesus and a member of The Way?

While Peter prayed, he also waited for the noon meal to be prepared. Why else does Luke tell us the time of day? The vision the Lord gave him matched both the need of his mind and of his stomach. A vivid picture of a giant sheet with four corners was being let down on the earth. It was a mysterious vision indeed. The sheet contained all kinds of animals, reptiles, and birds, some of which Peter, as a strict and orthodox Hebrew, was not permitted to consume based on the food regulations in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14.

The sight of those forbidden foods would have been startling! But next, the Lord commands: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter’s strong will would have matched his strong revulsion to things that years of conditioning had taught him were unclean. “Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean!” (Quite something to yell at the Lord of creation!) The Lord spoke again; “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” And to be sure he heard, the message was repeated two more times. The Lord wanted no confusion about that message. It was to be the basis of a renaissance that would shape the future of the Church.

Was the Lord contradicting Leviticus and Deuteronomy? Giving Peter a new diet? What’s going on here? The Lord is getting through to Peter about the people he should love and reach with the Gospel. The vision was a parable. And like Jesus’ parables during the incarnation, this one would have layered and lasting meaning.

The Church was not to call non-Hebrews common and make the Body of Christ exclusively Hebrew. That took more than a parabolic vision to register on Peter’s thinking. The Lord usually follows a concept with an experience in which our thinking and behavior can be altered by enacting the truth. And while Peter was having the vision, the Lord was also arranging for the situation in which the apostle would see more than a vision. He would see a Gentile centurion and his family uncommonly blessed.

So often the Lord works in these same ways: He creates a willingness, He gives us a truth that reorients our thinking. And he follows this with a sign in our relationships or daily responsibilities which confirms the truth. When all of these line up, we can be sure we are on the way to a new discovery. Peter had had a growing uneasiness with exclusivism. The vision deepened that. The clinching confirmation was about to occur.

Many people refer to these chapters as the story of the conversion of Cornelius, a spiritual but not religious man. After sitting with the text this week, I’m now convinced that the principle subject of this chapter is not so much the conversion of Cornelius as the conversion of Peter. Peter learned that grace trumps race.

Chapters 10 and 11 of Acts tells us four magnificent truths about our Triune God. God is all-present, all-powerful, and all-knowing. And God is all-loving with a love that includes all people. It is God’s delight to surprise us with whom God chooses to love and welcome into God’s Church.