Acts 10:1-48; John 15:9-17; Sixth Sunday of Easter; May 5th, 2024
“The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles (Acts 10:45).”
Just our luck, we come off last week’s highs to get stuck today with a text on circumcision. Not that circumcision can’t be a fun topic I imagine if you’re a mohel or something. But on a Sunday morning in May? And for communion at that? Circumcision? Boy, the lectionary better have a good reason for this!
Now you’ll probably not remember that prior to when our text begins, the apostles (who were circumcised Jews themselves) were only concerned with spreading the gospel to fellow circumcised believers like themselves. The thought to preach to Hellenized Gentiles, or the uncircumcised, was flat out rejected, or at the very least, suspected of suspiciousness. Especially as there was a predetermined bias against Gentiles for being synonymous with Rome and that of pagan religions. So, you see, preaching to people like this, the uncircumcised, well, it simply wasn’t done, and was even argued about by Christ’s own apostles.
But all of that changed when a man named Cornelius, a Gentile Roman uncircumcised centurion (that’s a mouthful) stepped out onto the scene. Apparently though, Cornelius was a not a pagan like the majority of his Italian brethren, but was rather observant in a God-loving Gentile sort-of-way, and as such, was sympathetic to Judaism. And in one of his daily prayers to the Jewish God, he receives a vision that beckons him to send for the apostle Peter. And trusting in that vision, he orders a couple of his men to do just that.
Meanwhile, off in the strange land of Joppa, Peter is said to be sitting comfortably on his roof, which seems like an odd place to sit, but there he too receives a vision from God and even goes into something like a trance. And in that trance, he is told, and I quote, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat (10:13),” which is interesting, as I didn’t realize that Lord Voldermort had made his way into the Bible.
“Get up, Peter, kill and eat”? What are we to make of this? Well clearly God is not commanding Peter to go on a Hannibal Lecter killing spree. Or so we hope. No, instead, God is telling Peter that he can in fact eat certain foods that the Levitical laws traditionally declared unclean. But more powerfully than that, that Peter can fellowship with those who were previously identified as uncircumcised and unwelcomed people, like Cornelius and his funny little cohort.
This, my friends, was a momentous step forward from the prevailing theology of the time, with all of its dietary conditions and rules on foreigner engagement. Here the evolving God is widening the reach of the Spirit, spreading the gospel out into the uncharted, beyond its regulations, and into communion with those who had previously been segregated from the table of grace.
And so encouraged by this evolved and cultured vision, Peter gets off of his roof and travels to Caesarea, a hotbed of uncircumcised Gentiles, where Cornelius was waiting for him. And when he gets there and meets Cornelius, face to unrecognizable face, he goes so far as to shatter the dogma of his time by saying,
“You know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or even visit a Gentile;
but God has shown me that I should not call you, nor anyone, profane or unclean (10:28).”
“And God has shown me that I should not call you nor anyone profane or unclean.”
Words to live by, my friends.
And upon hearing these words, and during Peter’s mini-sermon which follows, Cornelius and his uncircumcised cohort break out into tongues, interrupting Peter even as he preached. Don’t get any big ideas…
And at this, Peter and the rest of the circumcised believers were so inspired that they wondered aloud, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have (10:47)?”
And so, they baptized them, and they spent their evening with them, and thus joined into fellowship with them, Jew and Gentile together, chosen and outcast, clean and “unclean” all as one, all united under the same banner of God’s ecumenical grace.
This story then, my friends, for all of its bizarre twists and turns, should penetrate deep into our hearts this morning. For in the same manner that Peter was interrupted from his sermon, so too should we be interrupted from our comfortable and sterilized positions; our opinions, politics, and even our faiths that have far too often been left unchallenged by uncomfortable yet rewarding interactions with those deemed “unclean” on the outside of our inner circles.
For from the mouth of Christ himself, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15:12), and, if you are to be my friend, then you will do as I command you (John 15:14).”
Which means my friends, that you can’t just love comfortably; no, you must be interrupted, and go out and love your true other, your “unclean” and “foreign” other. Even your enemy other.
Such that if you are for Palestine then you must still love the Jew, and if you’re for Israel, then you must still love the Palestinian.
We are commanded to love. Even those who our society and nation, religion and friends on campus tell us not to. That means we are to love the gay, the straight, the non-identified and binary. And also the republican, and democrat, and even those funny independents too. We are to love them all, for the Spirit goes out to all, to Cornellius, and his cohort, the uncircumcised and all the “unclean.”
Amen?
Let me close with this: Soren Kierkegaard, the great Christian existentialist, wrote, “Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all.”
Just the same, my friends, it will be by love, and our expression of it, that we will be known as Christ’s own. As his friends. His BFF’s to the end.
Amen.
