Dining with Cornelius

Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35

Free Community Church

May 2, 2010



I forgot to put in my preaching dates in my calendar and was prompted by Su Lin’s posting on Wednesday followed by an SMS the next day. My hope of a relaxing week evaporated. As it turned out, the Lectionary readings are fixed and the roster of regular preachers follow an order and the theme for this Sunday happen to be The Inclusive God, an important concept.



The passage in Acts finds Peter the “Pope” of the emerging church in Jerusalem after the death of Jesus dreaming about food on the rooftop in Joppa. The Psalmist sings about how inclusive God the Creator is in the entire creation. Revelation reveals the new thing that the Divine Creator is doing. And the Gospel John commands us to engage in a relationship of love for one another.



The critical charge leveled at Peter by exclusive Pharisees was “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Behind this question is that in traditional Jewish law circumcised Jews do not eat with uncircumcised Gentiles. There is a gulf or a chasm between the two communities. Jews do not sit around the dinner table or floor with the Gentiles. Jews exclude Gentiles.



Table fellowship is an important act in the ministry of Jesus as we recall. When Jesus encountered the tax collector up in the tree He stopped and called up to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house” (Lk 19:5). The response of the crowd is telling. “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner” (Lk 19:).

In this feature of table-fellowship Jesus shared with the marginalized, oppressed, rejected, despised and stigmatised. The Pharisees questioned Jesus’ behavior by asking his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mt 9:11; see also Mk 2:16; Lk 5:30). They further made the accusation against him. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Lk 15:2). Jesus was even maligned by some of being “a glutton and a drunkard” (Mt 11:19).

It is our custom that we eat together as family members for bonding and with others to establish friendships, strengthen relationships and develop trust. But increasingly we are not spending enough time for table fellowship these days and eat and run at best. Many kitchens in our homes are closed and we depend upon kopitiam kitchens in the community. As a result we dine alone and exclude others.

The German theologian Walter Kasper points out,

In the east, even today, to share a meal with someone is a guarantee of peace, trust, brotherhood and forgiveness; the shared table is a shared life. In Judaism fellowship at table had the special meaning of fellowship in the sight of God. Each person at the table ate a piece of broken bread and thus received a share in the blessing spoken by the master of the house over the whole loaf. Finally, every meal is a sign of the coming eschatological meal and the eschatological fellowship with God.”

The American theologian Albert Nolan saw “the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation and guilt. By showing them that they mattered to him as people he gave them a sense of dignity and released them from their old captivity. The physical contact which he must have had with them at table (Jn 13:25) and which he obviously never dreamed of disallowing (Lk 7:38-39) must have made them feel clean and acceptable. Moreover because Jesus was looked upon as a man of God and a prophet, they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God’s approval of them.”

Whenever the Church gathers at the Lord’s Table, the Eucharistic table, sinners, the broken, the marginalized are reconciled to God and to the human family. It is a table of inclusion and none is excluded.

It was not just a simple meal that Peter had with Cornelius with his relatives and close friends in cosmopolitan Caesarear. Luke had given us a fuller account of this event in Chapter 10. Cornelius was a Roman Centurion, a commanding officer, a Gentile but a devout man who fears God. He sent emissaries to Joppa to look for Peter and invited him to come to his house. Meanwhile Peter had his vision in Joppa where he saw “something like a sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air” (Acts 10:11-14) for him to eat. Peter hesitated for tradition regarded them as unclean and profane. But he was convinced by God who said “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

With that perception Peter leapt over the wall that separated the Jews from the Gentiles, crossed the line between the sacred and the profane and broke down the barriers between clean and unclean. He then proclaimed to the family of Cornelius and said: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” After he baptized all of them they praised God by saying: “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (Lk 11:18).

In this account in Acts, the Divine Creator regards all living things as sacred and clean. In Psalm 148 the Psalmist praises the Creator for sun and moon, heaven and waters, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy winds, mountain and hills, fruit trees and cedars as sacred objects. Like Luke wild animals and cattle, creeping things and flying things are clean creatures. The Psalmist also included kings, princes and rulers of the earth and all peoples, young men and women alike and old and young together as persons of sacred worth. This is what Revelation teaches us about the Creator making all things new. This is the grand vision before us.

Jamie was on target when she preached last Sunday about our concept of God and how we shape our lives according how we view God to be. Both of us have our tertiary education in biology and I went on to study theology. We have been influenced by the scientific method and trained to analyze and find out the cause and effects of any event. We keep an open mind. When she visited me last week for lunch together I shared with her the reading of new theological book published in 2006 with the title “Theology Matters”

The author raised the issue of different images of God in today’s complex and challenging world. He wrote that “Christian tradition is saturated with personal images of the Divine: father, son, advocate, teacher, rabbi, shepherd, mother, lover, friend. Jamie preached that too and added other interesting images including that of driver, master chef and even GPS to navigate our travel on this earth.

The leading feminist theologian in our time, Sallie MacFaque is critical of the dominant traditional patriarchal and monarchic God images. Whenever I hear only of Father God even my masculine ego is troubled. Whenever I hear only of Lord God and King I feel uneasy. We leave out women, half of humankind, who hold up the earth. These images convey domination and hierarchies in relationships. That is why the Jews were so critical of Peter dining with the Gentile, Cornelius, one of another tribe, race and ethnicity.

They have constructed the image of God as the one who played favorites and regard themselves as Chosen People. Their God is the King of the Hill and subjugated all other tribes and nations in warfare and killing the innocent women and children of their enemies in battle. All these is chronicled and glorified in the pages of the Old Testament. Yahweh is the victorious warrior who rules over all and is the Judge and the Lawgiver. We are pre-occupied with sin and salvation. Jews have nothing to do with the non-Jews or Gentiles for God is partial only to Jews. They and they alone are God’s people and all others are even referred to as “no-people.”

The Jews enacted the purity laws and ceremonial rituals to exclude others in their select and elite community. Leviticus chapters 11–26 listed in detail clean and unclean foods, rituals after childbirth or a menstrual cycle, regulations for skin infections and contaminated clothing or furniture, prohibitions against contact with a human corpse or dead animal, agricultural guidelines about planting seeds and mating animals, and decrees about lawful sexual relationships, keeping the Sabbath, and forsaking idols These legal and religious codes encompassed every aspect of being human—birth, death, sex, gender, health, economics, jurisprudence, social relations, hygiene, marriage, behavior, and certainly ethnicity, for Gentiles were automatically considered impure.



It may come as a surprise to many to learn that what we view early Christianity or traditional theology a progressive force at that time. Judaism was the conservative force. Early Christianity was a force then that is the cutting edge and the radical religious movement of the day. They were the ones who explored the radical and explosive new thing of including the Gentiles in the early Church.



It was with this understanding of God that they acted. Jesus, Peter and Paul reacted in promoting inclusivity. I must quickly add that inclusivity does not imply uniformity.



We need to value the distinctiveness and uniqueness of God’s people.

“A wise teacher was speaking to a group of eager young students. He gave them the assignment to go out and find a small, unnoticed flower somewhere. He asked them to study the flower for a long time. “Get a magnifying glass and study the delicate veins in the leaves, and notice the nuances and shades of color. Turn the leaves slowly and observe their symmetry. And remember that this flower might have gone unnoticed and unappreciated if you had not found and admired it.” After the class returned, the teacher observed, “People are like that. Each one is different, carefully crafted, uniquely endowed. But you have to spend time with them to know this. So many people go unnoticed and unappreciated because no one has ever taken time with them and admired their uniqueness.” The book that I mentioned earlier has for its front cover the details of a green leaf.

It is time for us to more seriously affirm diversity and recognize differences in the human situation. We are to embrace the principle of inclusivity in spite of our differences and respect them. We are to acknowledge that our Creator has created each one of us unique. We are called through our uniqueness and differences to interact with one another and to follow the parting commandment of Jesus that the Gospel of John recorded:
”I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35).

It is not easy to love those who reject you. It is a challenge to love 75 million Anglicans whose leaders formed the Global South and whose reason for existence is to proclaim that homosexuality if a sin.

It is a further challenge to love Kong Hee of City Harvest Church for posted this Daily Devotion especially for his 32,0000 members. It is published last week on April 26, 2010.

“ l Corinthians 5:6 Explicitly referring to sexually immoral Christian, Paul says, “But now I have written t you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral…not even to eat with such a person”(5:11). Again referring to Christians who live unrighteous lives: “Do you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, no adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites…will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you…” (6:9-11). If a Christian is living in sexual immorality, and you offer him your fellowship, not only do you profane God’s Word, you are excusing him from the responsibility to repent and forsake his sin.

This is the challenge to our church today. FCC as a unique inclusive Christian Church has an important mission to fulfill in a divided and conflicted world and demonstrate inclusivity. In our present context we are called to embrace the world and find out where God is already working in and then together to participate in that divine continuing work of making all things new.

God’s inclusive nature is reflected in creation according to our Psalm and according to Peter in dining with Cornelius. How can we in FCC reflect this inclusive God.

Affirm diversity in all dimensions

Accept inclusivity in all situations

Acknowledge creativity of God in all conditions

And reflect our inclusive God.