Detail of stained glass "Saint Cornelius the Centurion," 1910 by Tiffany Studios, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
February 7, 2018
Cornelius the Centurion
Acts chapters 8-15 tells a wonderful
story of how, gradually and bit by bit, the early Church welcomes the gentiles—not
members of the people of Israel—into its common life. The Church gradually comes to recognize that
God has already included these outsiders.
First, there is the unusual and one-off case of Philip privately sharing the Gospel with the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26ff). This guy is not only a gentile, but also has a physical impairment that the Scriptures specifically taught should prevent full participation in the worship of God’s people (Lev. 20:20). The culmination of the story is the Ethiopian Eunuch’s simple question, “Here is water. What is there that possibly keeps me from being baptized?” In this new economy of grace, what scripture taught was an insurmountable impediment is no longer an obstacle at all.
The real turning point, however, is in Acts 10, when Peter publicly brings in Cornelius the Centurion (celebrated in today’s calendar of the saints). Cornelius is the commanding officer of the Italian Cohort, a famous military unit known for its harsh suppression of anti-Roman nationalism. Yet he is a believer in the one God, but one who has not converted to Judaism by being circumcised, or observing Jewish the dietary laws. Cornelius prays, reads scripture, and gives alms. Because of his faith, he is told by an angel to go and find Peter, who will tell him what God wants him to know. He sends messengers to set up a meeting.
Meanwhile, Peter takes a noon-day nap and has a dream where he sees a giant picnic cloth. On it is every kind of animal, most of them forbidden as food by the Hebrew Scriptures. A voice tells Peter to butcher some of the animals and eat their flesh. Peter is understandably reluctant, saying that he has always tried to keep the commandments of God and he doesn’t want to start disregarding them now. “I try to keep kosher, like God commands. Those creatures are unclean. I can’t eat them. You’re testing me, right?”
Place yourself in Peter’s
position. Think of something you have always been taught is wrong,
something that you have a visceral revulsion against. The dream is
telling you to go ahead and pursue this. You say, no thank
you.
Relentless, the voice replies, “Don’t call unclean what God has declared clean.” This happens three times, and Peter wakes up, deeply troubled. Just at this time, the messengers from Cornelius arrive. The synchronicity is too great for him to ignore. He agrees to accompany them to see Cornelius.
Cornelius is a gentile. Eating with gentiles or even having extended dealings with them is a contaminating act under the careful and strict interpretation of the Law. His ‘kind’ has been seen for centuries as unclean by most Jewish religious leaders of any stripe. It’s the written Word of God that makes the distinctions, and for many, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it. No more questions allowed.”
Yet God has other plans. Peter has seen the vision of the unclean foods turned clean, and has heard the chastising voice when he is reluctant to follow the voice’s instructions. And now he meets Cornelius, a gentile, someone his faith tells him is unclean, and he wants to hear the Gospel.
Peter preaches the Gospel to Cornelius and his companions, and begins with “I understand that God shows no partiality.” He declares that “no matter what nationality, anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.” As Peter preaches, the Holy Spirit falls on those gathered, even on the gentiles (Acts 10:45), astounding him and his Jewish coreligionists. Peter declares, “can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
Peter and the other leaders of the
early church did not want to welcome these marginal people, these people
without God’s Law. And they were surprised and shocked when they began to
see in the lives of these unclean strangers the very signs they saw in
themselves of God’s action and engagement.
Peter, against his perceived religious duty to God, openly baptizes gentile Cornelius. It takes a dream vision and huge amounts of “coincidence” to bring him to do it, but he does it nonetheless because he recognizes in the lives of these strangers things he knows from his personal experience come from God. Acts continues the story: the onetime persecutor of the Church Saul, now Paul, preaches widely and succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Large congregations of Gentiles become the mainstay of the Church. And so in chapter 15 of Acts, the Church must meet and figure out in Council how to manage the new reality, Gentiles as Christians. They are clear in accepting the newcomers as gentiles and not requiring them to become Jews even as they ask that they respect a few basic standards Jews believed are imposed by God even on Gentiles (no idolatry, no consuming of blood, no sexual promiscuity).
In this, there is a moral for us
today. Some argued against (and still
argue against) the full inclusion of women, or gays and lesbians, or
transgendered persons in the life of the Church: this was forbidden by the plain
teaching of the Bible, they claimed. But
earlier scripture teaching against eunuchs and gentiles being part of the
congregation of Israel was clearer and more emphatic. And this did not prevent the early Church
from embracing them when they saw in personal experience that God was at work
with these outsiders clearly excluded by scripture every bit as much as God was
at work in their own lives.
When someone argues for exclusion or
repression saying “the Bible says,” we need to reply, “and what else does the
Bible say?” We need to put ourselves in
the Bible narrative, and ask, “what does God call us to do here and now?” We
need to remember that Jesus said, “God … is God not of the dead, but of the
living” (Matt 22:32). We need to take the
Ethiopian Eunuch’s practical approach: “Here is water. What is there to prevent us from baptism here
and now?”
Grace and peace.
Fr. Tony+
The Angel appears to Cornelius the Centurion, by Gioacchino Pagliei (1852–1896).
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