Sometimes (not often) there will be an event or a flash of insight that changes forever the way we view things. This is often called a ‘paradigm shift’. My attitude toward crying babies on an airplane was very different after we had children than it was before. I feel tenderness, not annoyance, toward the babies and for the parents. My paradigm has shifted.
The great paradigm shift, of course, is when we become followers of Jesus. We see everything differently, and therefore live differently.
Sometimes a ‘paradigm shift’ needs to happen to a church. Sometimes we need a fundamental change in our perception, a change in our basic understandings about what it means to be the church, a change in our making difficult but necessary changes in order to be more effective in a changing world, a change in that one of our driving assumptions, something we’ve just always taken for granted as being ‘the way it is’, is just plain wrong. A change in our paradigms happens and when it happens, it is painful. But, like surgery, it is a necessary pain toward greater fullness.
The account in Acts 10 & 11 relates just such a paradigm shift. In this text, God forces Peter and then the church to re-think and then discard and repent of a basic assumption about what it meant to be the church of Jesus.
Acts tells the history of the progress of the Word of God and the simultaneous growth of the Church as the Apostles and early Christians testified to Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and ultimately to Rome.
What we might not appreciate with all its force was the courage and sacrifice needed to bring the Gospel of Jesus across certain boundaries. In Acts chapter 8, when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaritans, loathsome half-breed pagans in the eyes of the Jews, had accepted the Word of God they immediately sent Peter and John to investigate. The Holy Spirit of God became so obviously present in such a way as to convict them, beyond doubt, that the community of Jesus was not for Jews only but also to the Gentiles. The Gospel would break down even the dividing wall of hostility between races of people. It was a major shift in the life of the Church. The Gospel is for ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Another such shift happens here in chapters 10 & 11, when the Gospel first comes to a Gentile. This, too, marks a major shift (or rather, the completion of the shift). Having learned (they thought) that Jesus is for ‘us’ and ‘them’, God now shows them that they actually didn’t get it after all. Jesus is not for ‘us’ and ‘them’. In Jesus, there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. There is only us. Jews and Gentiles are not separate but equal. In Christ, we are one.
But this shift didn’t happen without some turmoil, first in Peter, and then in the Church as a whole.
In chapters 10 – 11, the story is played out over four different scenes..
Scene 1 is Acts 10:1-8, and takes place in Caesarea, Rome’s administrative capital in Judea. There we are introduced to Cornelius. Cornelius was a centurion in what was known as ‘the Italian regiment’ or ‘cohort’ and, with several hundred Roman soldiers under his direct command, he was a man of some influence and power.
Cornelius, a Gentile, was also a religious and moral man: He was a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.
One day, while he was praying, something happened:
About the ninth hour of the day (three o’clock in the afternoon), he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, ‘Cornelius’. And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?”
And he said to him, ‘Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea.’ When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa..
In scene 2, the focus shifts to Peter who is in Joppa. You remember from the end of chapter nine that in this town he recently had seen Tabitha raised from the dead, resulting in many people turning to the Lord. So Peter stayed for some time in Joppa, presumably overseeing this burgeoning new church.
While the delegates from Cornelius are enroute to Joppa, about a day’s journey on foot, Peter also has a vision. About noon, he is on the roof of the house where he is staying and he is praying. While praying, he becomes hungry, and while food is being prepared for him, he falls into a trance and has a food-related vision: he sees a sheet lowered by its four corners, from heaven. The sheet is full of creatures of every kind: beasts, reptiles and birds. And Peter hears a voice that he recognizes as God’s voice saying, ‘Peter, kill and eat’.
Peter’s response is to recoil. Peter can’t believe that God, who had determined what was considered clean and unclean, is inviting him to kill and eat. Had Peter touched anything, he would be ‘unclean’. Remember that Peter is still a Jew, and so that would be abhorrent to him. So he says,
‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.’ And the voice came to him again a second time, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’
This scenario is repeated three times – ‘Peter, eat’ / ‘Lord, surely not’ – and then the sheet is withdrawn back into the sky. A bizarre episode, certainly. Peter ponders it but does not understand.
Right at that time, the men sent by Cornelius arrive at the gate of the yard and call out asking if Peter lives there. The Holy Spirit says to Peter, ‘Three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.’
Peter goes to them, introduces himself, and finds out the errand on which they have come: that the Gentile Cornelius has invited him to come to Caesarea. The light begins to dawn on Peter, that the word from God to be careful about calling unclean what God has said is clean is linked to God’s instruction that he go to the home of this Gentile Centurion. Gentiles were considered unclean. No pious Jew would willingly associate with a Gentile, certainly not to enter his home. Not that they hated Gentiles (though many did). Rather, they held them in contempt as a lesser people.
Peter shows that he is beginning to understand when he invites the delegation from Cornelius to be his guests for the night. The next day they start the journey to Caesarea, and Peter invites some other Christians to come with him.
Scene 3: When they get to Caesarea, the most secular city in Israel, a city all about Rome and about the Emperor (Caesar). When they get there Cornelius and his relatives and friends are waiting to welcome them. Cornelius has organized an event and Peter is the main speaker. Peter says to Cornelius, in effect, ‘You know how unusual this is. I’m breaking a major taboo by entering your Gentile house, but God has shown me that his taboos and ours might be different. But God sent me here and so here I am.’
Cornelius relates again the details of his angelic vision now four days earlier, and says,
‘It was good of you to come. Now we are here in the presence of God to hear all you have been commanded by the Lord.’
And Peter says, ‘Now I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’
Then Peter begins to tell Cornelius and his guests about Jesus, but before Peter even finishes, the Holy Spirit falls on the group. The Gentiles begin speaking in tongues and praising God. The Jewish Christians are stunned. But Peter snaps his fingers and says, ‘This is exactly what happened to us at Pentecost!’ He knows suddenly that this is God’s salvation of the Gentiles, and orders that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. The implication of that is that these Gentiles Peter now considers full and equal members of the Church of Jesus Christ, and therefore as children of God.
It is an absolutely staggering development. It’s probable that the Jews would never have conceived even the possibility that Gentiles – Romans! – could become God’s people. But here, God has unmistakably demonstrated that he accepts Gentiles into his chosen people.
It was such a staggering development that even the other apostles had a hard time believing it. The scandalous news quickly spreads not only to the apostles in Jerusalem, but to the other Christians scattered throughout Judea. The grapevine of the church was as speedy and effective then as now.
Scene 4: It is interesting what the news is that has come to them and then what they talk about. The news that comes to them is that the Gentiles had ‘received the Word of God’. That is something of a technical term in Acts, for ‘coming to faith’. It’s the same phrase that described what had happened in Samaria in chapter 8, when there was an incredible outpouring of power and joy and freedom from bondage to the superstition that had kept them in fear, and when news of that came to Jerusalem, the news was that the Samaritans had ‘received the Word of God’. Now, they hear that the Gentiles have received the Word of God. That’s the news that comes to them. And it sounds like good news, doesn’t it?
But what do they talk about? So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.’
The ‘circumcision party’ were Christian Jews who still thought the Gospel was not a matter of God’s grace but of their performance. Converts had to have faith in Christ but also keep the Law as represented by the Law of circumcision. They thought that to become a Christian one had also to become a Jew. After all, was not Jesus the Jewish Messiah, and wasn’t God the God of Abraham and his descendants?
So, even if the Gentiles received the Word of God, that reality was overshadowed by the appalling fact that Peter had actually gone into a Gentile home and eaten with them. It is like they had a church meeting and someone stood up and said, ‘People getting saved and filled with the Spirit, OK. But what’s this I hear about Peter actually having dinner with one of them!’ There is such a tone of accusation from people who had missed the point entirely!
Peter then explains what has happened. He tells the whole story. He recounts his vision of the animals in the sheet, and God’s Word to him to beware of calling common what God has made clean. He tells of the delegation from Cornelius and the angel’s message that had started the whole affair. He tells how as he’d barely gotten a few sentences out in Cornelius’ house before the Holy Spirit so obviously fell upon the Gentiles just in the same way he had fallen upon the apostles at Pentecost. And it led Peter to one inescapable conclusion: ‘If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?’
In other words, ‘Look, I know what we all assumed God thought about the Gentiles and how we are to relate to them, but God clearly showed us that we were wrong.’
When they heard the testimony and the details from Peter’s own mouth, they fell silent. What could they say? And they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’ ‘Wow, we never would have thought it. God has given the Gentiles repentance!’ God blesses those Christians, that they so could easily conform their wills and understanding to the clear activity of God, to lay down their paradigms, and bow themselves to the work of God.
This was a major moment in the life of the church. It was when the church made the conscious shift in understanding that this was more than a Jewish sect, but a global religion. The Apostle Paul, former zealot for Judaism, later missionary to the Gentiles, would later write to the Romans: The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew and then for the Gentile. Before Acts 10, the church didn’t know this. (Or maybe they had heard it, but couldn’t believe it, or wouldn’t believe it.)
But after Acts 11:18, the faith community of Jesus became a largely Gentile community, and within 20 years there were followers of Jesus scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, in all the major cities, including a large population of Christians in Rome, even among the Emperor’s own guards. And because Peter, the other apostles and the church leaders were willing to have their paradigms shifted by God, we as North Americans in the 21st Century with roots all over the world, are able to worship here as the Body of Christ, the people of God.
Let’s look at that sentence, starting with the simple phrase ‘the Gospel’. What is the Gospel? What is it that is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe? Well, it is a message.
Acts 10:34 ...as for the word he sent to Israel preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ.
11:1 The Gentiles had received the word of God.
11:14 Peter quotes the angel’s word to Cornelius: ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He will declare a message to you by which you will be saved.
When God wants someone to be saved, he sends someone to declare and proclaim a message.
That’s important. People need to hear certain truths and understand them. That’s what Paul meant when he wrote in Romans 10 – How are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching?
Stop here for a second: have you wondered yet why the angel himself didn’t preach to Cornelius? Would not an angel be a more effective messenger? Why would God make Cornelius go to all the trouble to send three men on a day’s foot-journey to get Peter, who then had to make another day’s journey back?
A couple of reasons: First, God wants to use people. Certainly, God could do it all without us, but he wants to include us in what he is doing. Second, there was something that had to happen in Peter, too, a prejudice to be dealt with. But I think the real reason (and this is just me speculating here), is that an angel cannot be a more effective messenger of the Gospel of salvation, because an angel does not know what it means to be saved.
But what is that message? What is the Gospel?
Here is, what the apostles in Acts considered the essential Gospel:
Jesus of Nazareth, in his life and ministry, was clearly authenticated by God himself as God’s chosen one. Jesus was crucified, but was raised again to life by God, a resurrection of which the apostles and other early believers are witnesses. Jesus is Lord, Savior and Judge of mankind, and forgiveness of sins is through him alone. And all of this is exactly what God had said through his prophets in the Scripture, what we know as the Old Testament.
That’s it. That is the message that repeatedly gets declared throughout the book of Acts. Now, there’s lots more truth that we need to get to know, and as we progress in faith, we learn about the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the nature of the church, the practices of prayer and worship and generosity and so on. There’s an almost endless depth of truth to learn and live. But the Gospel at its core – the message that saves – is profoundly simple. And this gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
Everyone.
That is the point of today’s passage. The Gospel is global. God’s mission is global. God so loved the world, Gentiles included. The people you are absolutely sure cannot be saved. The ones you believe deep down, even though we’d never say it, God himself doesn’t care for: Muslim extremists, gay celebrities, arrogant next-door-neighbors, your grumpy boss. The Gospel is for them. That’s exactly the kind of truth that got Jesus in trouble: ‘He’s a friend of sinners. He fraternizes with tax-collectors, prostitutes, lepers…’ The prejudices of the Jews made them refuse to believe that God loved or was even interested in the people they looked down on.
Gentiles, sinners …and you. And that is the real beauty of the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God for the salvation of ‘everyone who believes’. Who does that leave out?
I think we are tempted to leave out two kinds of people: the rapists, killers, and profoundly and flagrantly immoral… and ourselves. Seriously. There are some of you sitting here today who do not believe that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ saves you. You say you believe it. You know you should believe it. You know it’s the right answer if anyone asks you. But you don’t believe it.
You’re trying to make up the gap between Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and what God needs from you to win his approval. You are trying to make it up through faithful devotions, or acts of service, or being at the church whenever there’s something happening here. If you don’t read the Bible or pray as much as you want to, you feel guilty, because you are not doing ‘your part’.
You don’t think God was serious when he said that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and that nothing can separate you from his love for you in Christ, and that it is by grace we have been saved, through faith, not by works so that no one can boast. We feel a lot of condemnation. We don’t really know that God loves us. And we think, usually subconsciously, that it really is our works that push across the line of salvation.
To that, Peter and Paul say, ‘If you throw yourself on Jesus, by virtue of the death and resurrection of Jesus you will receive forgiveness from God’. That is what the Bible means by ‘believe’.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. Everyone. When Jesus commended people in the gospels for their faith, it was always when someone had a need and simply came to Jesus thinking he could help them: the four men who brought him a paralyzed friend, a centurion with a sick servant, a woman with a demon-possessed daughter, another woman who had bled for 12 years. They did not have a well-developed theology. They were not particularly religious or godly people. They were just desperate for whatever reason, and in their desperation turned to Jesus. That is the essence of faith or belief: to recognize our need, and turn to Jesus in that need.
That is the crux of it all, for the Gospel that saves is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you wonder, as well, why anyone had to come to Cornelius at all? He was a God-fearing man, who gave to the poor, prayed faithfully, and influenced his whole family and at least one of his soldiers to also order their lives under the reality of God. Surely that was good enough? What else did he need?
He needed Jesus.
He needed the truth about Jesus, the Gospel. He needed to know who Jesus was, what he had done. He needed to know that it was not his praying and alms-giving that made him acceptable to God, even though God found them pleasing. He needed to know that it was in Jesus that his sins were forgiven. Because the Bible says that it is in Jesus that we stand in grace before God, that he who has Jesus has life, he who does not have Jesus does not have life, that salvation is found in no one else. And so what happened to Cornelius was that he moved from being a God-fearer, a genuine and religious man, to having his life centered in Jesus.
A lot of paradigms shifted in these chapters:
Peter was forced to re-think his understanding of what he thought God considered common or unclean. The church had to as well. They discovered that God’s umbrella is much wider than they had thought. They were shocked to discover that God’s kingdom included the Gentiles, even though the fact that God was going to include Gentiles had been clear throughout the Scriptures.
If, while you are in prayer, God was going to lower a sheet before you, who would be in it? Who is it that you find you cannot love? Who is it that, if God was going to say, ‘I am sending you to speak the truth of Jesus and show the love of Jesus to this person, to this group of people’, you might respond and say, ‘Surely not Lord!’ Someone who has treated you badly? some race of people you think you cannot deal with? the homeless? your street? God loves and is committed to those people, to that person! His kingdom is for those people. As Jesus demonstrated, the Gospel is for tax-collectors, lepers, sinners, women, children, Jews and Gentiles.
Cornelius also had a paradigm shift. He had to re-think what it meant to be in right standing before God. His religion, prayer and generosity were signs that he was genuine about God. But then God sent him the message about Jesus. Cornelius had to make the shift from being merely God-fearing, to being a Christian. He thought that his good deeds (for which God commends him) was enough. We would do well to ask ourselves today: ‘Am I merely God-fearing, or am I a Christian? Am I a church-goer, who prays and tries to ‘do it right or have I thrown myself on Jesus? The easiest way to answer that question may be to reframe it, and answer this question: On what am I counting to be ensured of God’s love and favor: my performance, my goodness, my devotions, my service, my church involvement, my morality, or the death and resurrection of Jesus?
Or let me ask it yet another way: is our Christian life a response to the security of knowing God’s acceptance of us, or is it spent trying to prevent his rejection of us? Maybe your paradigm needs to shift today. Maybe your assumptions about what God values needs to be upended. Maybe you see yourself in the sheet as unclean, and you need to get yourself clean.
That is a religion from hell, a false gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is simply that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Son who died and rose again for our forgiveness. He is Judge, yes, but he is Lord, who deserves and requires our very lives. He is Saviour. So the Lord of all, in whose hands is the judgment and eternity of all people, is the very one who died for us – for you – out of love and a desire to forgive. Do we think we will stand before the king of eternity someday and say, ‘I know you gave your life for my sins, but I brought along some extra currency – my religion, my morning devotions and my attempts at goodness – just to be sure the cost of sins was covered.’ Of course we won’t.
Let us learn to trust that God has cleaned us, in Jesus. If you have believed in Jesus, you are accepted by God. There is nothing more that needs doing.
Today, if you need to repent that you have sat in judgment over someone, thinking God did not or could not accept them, then you need to repent. That someone may even be yourself, thinking you have sinned too often or too badly for God to be interested in you. Open your heart to God’s expansive love for people. Let him adjust your thinking. Change your paradigm. The Gospel of Jesus is the power of God to save you.
Amen.