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Today’s Friday on Faith comes to you from my boyhood home in Fairfield, Connecticut. I’ll be back from vacation in the middle of next week.
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – I heard a sermon last week at my church. The Cross, about Peter and Cornelius. In Acts Chapter 10 Peter has a vision where God tells him it is okay to eat non-Kosher food – things like pigs and reptiles, which would have been considered unclean to practicing Jews. “What I have made clean is no longer unclean,’ Peter is told.
Peter also realizes that God’s vision for him is the Gentiles are not to be considered unclean, and those who surrender their lives to Jesus Christ are to be welcomed in as full brothers in the faith.
Later in the story Peter is called to Cornelius, who has also had a vision. Cornelius is a Roman general; he and his household listen to Peter’s testimony and are baptized.
This is not a story about God doing away with the concept of clean and unclean food and people. I remember in Brooklyn, visiting the Rubenstein house down the block. They kept a kosher home. And I remember Mrs. Rubenstein saying, “So many rules! If keeping Kosher wasn’t joyful, no one would do it!”
What I think we miss about the story of Peter and Cornelius is that Peter, in his wisdom and obedience, opened up the faith to everyone. Without inviting Gentiles in become Christ-followers, Christianity would have been nothing more than a small, fringe, Jewish sect. A small group of Jews believed, in Jesus, they had found the Messiah whom their faith had been seeking for generations. Jewish leaders of the day rejected their claims. There were many, many false messiahs who had been dismissed over millenniums.
After welcoming Cornelius and his household into the faith, Peter would establish a church in Rome. It was at the crossroads of the ancient world, and a place were their were no Jews. Christianity would grow based solely upon whether “others”, of all ethnicities and religious backgrounds, would accept Christ. And they did. And the flag Peter planted in Rome still flourishes to this day.
Consider how remarkable that is. Jews today look upon with suspicion those who convert to their faith; they’re still considered outsiders. Muslims expect Allah’s followers to be born into and die in their religion. Most Buddhists or Tauists are born as what they are. And Christianity, which I consider to be the true faith, solicits and welcomes outsiders.
That’s the lesson of Peter and Cornelius. Jesus intended for his church to be for all people. Your background, your past, your ethnicity, your skin color doesn’t matter once you accept Christ as your savior.
Thanks be to God!
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