Action – God crossing the line
(Show a coloring page) Who recognizes this? It’s a coloring page, which most of us can remember from when we were children or from when we had children...
And for most of our lives, we have learned that this is what we are to do with it (show a well coloured version), different colors kept in by the lines. But I think that God is more interested in this (show “badly coloured” version, with lots of colors mixed with no regard for the lines)
Intro line: God is not interested in staying inside the lines
Intro idea – Maccabean history
A couple thousand years ago, after the Israelites made it back into the land following the Exile; there was a series of conquerors and powers that overshadowed Israel. One of the worst times was just one hundred and fifty years before the time of Christ. There was a systemic persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, where those who kept to purity laws involving what to eat, as well as to the Sabbath and other outward signs of Judaism such as circumcision, were often killed or driven out of their homes. There was a decision that had to be made, was showing your faith, keeping to what was true...was it worth dying for.
Because these Purity laws were there for a reason.
The purpose of the barrier – protect Israel from falling into idolatry and sin.
• The dietary laws were an analogy meant to teach them about holiness – they were meant to teach God's people about their own stubborn wicked hearts.
• These barriers were meant to protect them from going back!
The practice of disassociation was a precaution – for no pious Jew desired to become ceremonially unclean and such associations would do just that. And for the time of the early church that we are reading about today, the ancestors of the Jewish Christians had died to stay true to God and his call on their lives, died because they kept to the circumcision, to the purity laws, to maintaining that separation and that requirement
Over time, even before the time of the persecution, but certainly much more pronounced afterwards, this call to be different did not just help them or teach them, but it also did something that God was not so interested in, as people developed this us/them mentality, with a thought that “we” are better than “them”...which as we all know, has never been a problem within the church...oh wait.
• But these laws morphed into this idea that the Jewish race was “better” than others.
• Even in the OT God addressed this attitude in his people: The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. (Dt. 7:7)
• There was nothing special about Israel – for Abraham was called out of a people group that worshiped false gods.
So this is the background of this whole purity laws part of the life of Jewish people in the time of Christ and why some people were very upset at some of the things that Jesus did, because if your grandfather died because he stayed strong and showed that he took his faith seriously, then how dare he do those things. (Eating with tax collectors and sinners, working on Sabbath, to non-Jewish people...). But God was doing something outside the lines and the Jesus program is taking it up a step or two.
Acts 11:1-18
The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3 and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
4 Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’
8 “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
9 “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
11 “Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14 He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’
15 “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?”
18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.”
So, word is getting out of what happened in the last chapter, that the gentiles are getting the word. Luke has just made a point last chapter as God revealed to Peter that he was not interested in staying in the lines, and now he is going to repeat it, because this is something Luke does not want anyone to miss...you need to see this...and so Luke is trying to raise the tension by saying that the news was out, and making us anticipate the shock and upset that it would be for many who had seen this as a Jewish only blessing.
And for each of us, who have received Christ here, this is pretty important, because I don’t think any of us would be here if this line was not crossed...and the danger lies in the new lines that we each sometimes unintentionally draw.
We have people with issue with Peter, what have you done!
These religious codes aren’t just small cultural differences; these are a huge deal. The dietary laws marked faithfulness as they knew it. If you lowered the bar on purity codes, who knows what would be next...and even more than that, it made all the past ways of knowing who was who, who fit where moot. It pushed against the idea that there was one special people of God and those that fit that category were in and everyone else was out. It was about status and how God picks people.
An old barrier existed between Jews and Gentiles, a legal barrier which did not allow a Jew to step foot into the home of a Gentile, whether they be God-fearer (a non-Jewish follower of the God of Israel) or not! This barrier seemed destined to remain for eternity. Luke tells us that it was Peter who crossed over that barrier and declared it had been made obsolete by the cross. By stepping into the home of Cornelius, Peter was crossing an ancient barrier: he was starting an avalanche...and so there was the accusation!!
Reminiscent of Jesus being accused of eating with sinners, now Peter criticized for eating with uncircumcised. This is a purposeful parallel being drawn by Luke, that the gentile mission is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry and it works with the path that began in Jesus, this is not planned, this is not part of the “action steps” this early church has begun, but rather something completely shocking to a group that had written off anything like that from ever happening.
Driving it further is this vision that God gives Peter, which is repeated for the second time in this passage, and God is telling Peter the key to this passage, God is all about ignoring the lines, mixing the people, creating a new one with no respect for lines of division, drawing all over the page.
At the same time as God is preparing Peter, he is also orchestrating events to bring Cornelius’ invitation and desire for God to bring about his life changing work through Peter. And so he goes at the spirits leading and starts to speak, with 6 people with him.
Peter noted how the event interrupted his sermon. He added that the Spirit came upon them just “as he had come upon us at the beginning.” The comparison is to Pentecost. Peter made explicit here what was implicit in 10:46. He continued to draw the comparison in v. 16, which harks back to Acts 1:5 and Jesus’ prediction of a baptism with the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ prediction was fulfilled for the apostles at Pentecost; for Cornelius and his fellow Gentiles it was fulfilled with the coming of the Spirit to Cornelius’ house. God is including the gentiles in this motley crew or mixed multitude and is forming them into one people that breaks the walls apart, the separation and regulations are gone as God does something to push past our desire to say that this is just for us…which is certainly a good thing for us who were once outside
The issue is addressed:
God looks to the fringes, to those that don’t fit, he welcomes in ways that don`t fit, except that it fits with God surprising us and so the issue is raised…what do we do with Gentiles, because unless something changes, they cannot have any connection with Gentiles, no going into their houses, no sharing food (even communion)
Do not call anything impure that God has made clean…first relates to food, but they play off that for people…the one is tied to the other. Peter ties the food dream to the non-Jewish people, and the Holy Spirit is right there too.
Between Peter`s account, the 6 other witnesses and the coming of the spirit, the opposition that was so set against it at the beginning were won over, because as set in their ways as they were, when they saw what God was doing, they did not harden their hearts, which means that they worked with god instead of fighting him.
The celebrations commence:
And here is the great part of it...as much as it was not in the plan, as much as it was a stretch and they had to move past the fact that God was coloring outside the lines...once they got it, and once they were sure this did not mean that Peter was working against God...they celebrated, they rejoiced because God`s message, God`s grace...was even bigger than they thought.
The application:
The cross demands that we give up our prejudices and preconceived ideas about who God can call and how.
We need to be a people that allow people to belong when they don’t look like us
We need to be a people who are not closed in our social circles.
Christ`s call to peter is a call to us to not stay in our own cultural preferences and contextualize to reach others, this might mean that we do not get things our own way all the time. (music)
Christ`s calling means that there need not be any outsiders, that none are unclean, permanently separated.
A call to see the vision of God instead our own little understandings.
