Second Conversion

Acts 10:9-23

October 31, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

There is a story told about a young C. S. Lewis, maybe when he was six or seven years old. One day he came to his father and said, “Daddy, I have a prejudice against the French.” His father looked at him and asked him why, to which young Lewis replied, “If I knew that, it wouldn’t be a prejudice” (Wright, Acts for Everyone: Part One, pgs. 161-162). I don't know if that story is true or not, but the idea certainly is. Here’s the truth: we live in a prejudiced world. Here’s even more truth: we all like to pretend that we have no prejudice, and then we find ourselves in a situation where it all comes to the surface. It’s a reality to some degree or another for all of us. And sometimes it shows up in quiet ways, and sometimes it shows up in violent ways.

Prejudice is part of the story we read in the book of Acts this morning. We're continuing our journey through the book of Acts, the story of the first Christians, in this series I’ve called “The Unfinished Story.” In each of these stories of the early church, we’re looking for how we’re called to enter into the story, how we can continue the mission they gave us—“to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” And if there is any story that is relevant to our time and our setting, it may just be this one. But to see that relevance, we’re going to need to understand what’s happening here on a rooftop in Joppa.

In the beginning of this story, there are two visions seemingly given at about the same time. God can do that, you know. There is a centurion in Caesarea named Cornelius. He was stationed in Caesarea with the Italian Regiment, and he would have personally commanded between sixty and one hundred soldiers. Today he would be an army captain or a company commander (cf. Larkin, Acts [IVPNTC], pg. 153. Caesarea was an “important garrison town.” It was a seaport, with beautiful breezes coming off the Mediterranean, a “key port in a key strategic zone,” and it was the place where the Roman governor over Israel preferred to live. The governor generally only went down to Jerusalem during the religious festivals when he had to. Other times, he preferred to stay in beautiful, wealthy Caesarea. So Cornelius would have been an important soldier; no ordinary soldier would be assigned to the governor’s town (Wright 158). And yet, he was also God-fearing (10:2). That’s the Jewish way of saying he believed in God but he wasn’t willing to go all the way and be circumcised in order to become a full-fledged Jew. Still, he lived out the faith. Luke says, “He gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly” (10:2). And because of that, God visited him one day in a vision and said, “Send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter” (10:5). And so he does exactly that.

Peter, meanwhile, is staying in Joppa, another seaside town about 30 miles down the coast from Caesarea (Wright 159). You might recognize that town as the place where Jonah ran when he was trying to get away from God. It’s the place where he got on a ship bound for the other end of the world (Jonah 1:3). Today, Joppa is known as Tel-Aviv; it’s where we will fly into next January. (Shameless plug.) Anyway, Peter is there and about noon, he goes up onto the flat roof of the house to pray. And then he gets hungry, so hungry that he begins to have a vision of things to eat. That generally happens in our office around 11:30 or so when Pastor Rick begins dreaming about lunch. No, seriously, Peter’s vision comes while he’s waiting on lunch, and it’s—to him—a disturbing scene. Down comes a sail full of “all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds.” And then he hears a voice: “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat” (10:12-13). You know the times we say, “I’m so hungry I could eat a—“? Well, here’s Peter’s chance to prove it. You’re hungry? You’re hangry? Here’s a buffet for you, Peter. All you have to do is kill it and eat it.

Peter is revolted. You see, for every good Jew, there were strict dietary laws. Leviticus was clear: if you are going to be one of God’s people, there were things you could eat and things you couldn’t. And it wasn’t so much a matter of diet, though there certainly were those concerns. But more than that, the diet was one thing that marked the Jews as being a distinct people. It was a matter of obedience, of identity. And that’s why Peter resists so strongly. He says, in essence, “I have never eaten what I’m not supposed to. I can’t, because if I do, not only am I breaking God’s law, but I’ll also be unable to be part of the worshipping community” (cf. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts, pg. 96; Larkin 158). And then the voice comes back clearly: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (10:15). And all of this happens three times, just in case Peter missed any of it. He can get it on the instant replay. And when it’s all over, Peter sits there, thinking about what has happened (cf. 10:17).

“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (10:15). Is God really talking only about food here? Or is God preparing Peter for what comes next? Because what comes next challenges the ethnic purity Peter has always lived with. Not only were there laws about food, but there also very strict lines about who you could hang out with and who you couldn’t. The prejudice was just assumed, never questioned. Basically, other Jews were in, Gentiles (you and me) were out. It was even said by some that you couldn’t help a Gentile woman who was in labor because that would only bring another Gentile into the world (Barclay, The Acts of the Apostles, pg. 80).

Except—Luke tells us Peter is staying with a man named Simon, a tanner who lives by the sea. Now, we think of a house by the sea as ideal, or at least desirable, right? On one of our trips to Israel, they double booked our hotel so we had to go to a different place for one night. And the tour host apologized over and over and over. Until we got there. The new hotel was on the coast and all of the balconies overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. Yeah, you can double book me anytime! But that was not the case in the first century. Houses by the sea were there because they were unclean or their owners did a job that made them unclean, which is exactly why Simon lived outside the city, by the sea. He worked with the dead bodies of animals, which made him permanently unclean. If Peter was as concerned as he says he is about clean and unclean, he should not have been in this house! And yet, Peter recognizes Simon as a brother in Christ, even eating his food. God is already working on Peter, moving him beyond clean and unclean when it comes to people who are made in God’s image. And that prepares him for a knock on the door.

Those men Cornelius sent arrive just as the vision is ending, and they ask for Peter. I sometimes wonder if they had arrived before the vision, would Peter have sent them away? But God’s timing is perfect, so Peter welcomes them in, gives them a place to stay for the night, and goes with them the next day. When he arrives at Cornelius’ house, he immediately names the elephant in the room. Peter says, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile.” Or, to paraphrase that: “I’m not supposed to be here.” Then he says, “But God…” I love that phrase. “But God.” When God shows up, things are going to change. “But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (10:28). This is Peter’s second conversion (cf. Kalas, The Story Continues, pg. 78). The first conversion was his change from unbelief to belief in Jesus as his savior and Lord. The second conversion is his change from a law-based life to a grace-based life. And while the first kind of life sounds more difficult, it’s actually this grace thing that is harder to live into. With a law-based or a rule-based life, the boundaries are clear. Eat this, don’t eat this. Associate with this person, don’t associate with that person. If they believe differently than you, write them off, unfriend them, don’t go to church with them. And in that system, prejudices are easy and usually unconscious. If it’s different, it’s wrong. That’s law-based, rule-based. Like Peter, we are often unaware as to how much laws and rules lead us to prejudice which—well, rules our live. The unfinished story here is our need for a conversion from law to grace, a process Ellsworth Kalas calls “the slow process of tumbling walls” (cf. Kalas 73-83).

And here’s the difficult point: grace is not an excuse for “anything goes.” We still serve a God who is holy, who cannot be in the presence of sin, who calls his people not to compromise with the brokenness of this world. Peter will later quote the Hebrew scriptures when he tells his church, “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written, ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16). And there is always, in every generation, a temptation to compromise. In every generation there is incredible pressure to give up your distinctiveness, forget about your faith, and just “go along to get along.” Be a good citizen of the Empire; that’s what these early believers heard. For the Jew—just eat a little pork. It won’t matter. (For heaven’s sake—how could they resist the smell of bacon?) For the Christian—just offer a pinch of incense to worship the emperor. What will it hurt? Here’s how it will hurt: give up a little here, a little there, compromise just a bit and before long, it’s all over. A bacon sandwich, a pinch of incense, give in here and give up there, and how long is it before the community is completely obliterated (cf. Willimon 96)? How long is it before this community doesn’t look any different than the world around us?

Of course, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, it could be that this is exactly our problem and, maybe, why people are not that attracted to Jesus these days. His people don’t live any differently than anyone else. Today is All Hallow’s Eve, which we use as an excuse to beg for candy, but originally it was a night when you would purge the sin from your life in order to celebrate tomorrow, which is All Saints’ Day. All Saints always makes me think of those in my own life who have gone on to glory in the last year, but it also makes me think even further back in history to those who have paved the way, those who have been examples of faith to me, whether I knew them personally or only read about them. Saints are saints not because they got everything right; they are saints because above all else they wanted to please God and live for Jesus. In the United Methodist Church, we don’t have a “formal status” for saints like the Roman Catholic Church does because the New Testament refers to everyone who faithfully follows Jesus as a “saint.” That’s why this sign exists—St. Dennis! Seriously, though, our calling is to be a saint—to live in a way that honors and points to Jesus. We want others to see him through us.

And that brings us back to Peter’s story. He had always believed that the rules were what made him holy. This grace thing was difficult for him. We’re called to live in a distinctive, God-honoring way; at the same time, we still should welcome, love and associate with everyone because everyone is made in God’s image. The story that comes to mind is Jesus and the woman taken in adultery. She is thrown on the ground, caught, we’re told, in the “very act” of sin. The religious leaders want Jesus to condemn her; that’s what he would have to do if he was going to follow the absolute letter of the law. And Jesus doesn’t deny her sin, but he does call her to “sin no more” (cf. John 8:2-11). That’s grace and truth wrapped up in one. Peter does the same thing in Acts 10. He goes to the house of Cornelius (thus breaking the rules and confronting his own prejudice) and shared the Gospel of grace.

So in that light, let me push a bit on this and bring up a couple of current issues that are probably going to make us all uncomfortable to one degree or another. Over the last year, we’ve heard more and more about racial reconciliation, especially since the murder of George Floyd over a year ago. Coming in the midst of a pandemic only served to make tempers flare even more than usual, and over the last year or so I’ve done a lot of reading, had a lot of conversations, and spent a lot of time praying. There have been movements here in our community trying to pursue reconciliation on some level, as there have been many times in the past, and it’s still a process. There have been laws proposed and, probably, some laws passed, which is what much of the reading I have done seems to say is the answer. Pass the laws, that will make everything equal, everything better. But will it? I’ve rarely seen legislation bring real change. I mean, the law says the speed limit is 55. How many people drive 55? It is nearly impossible to legislate people’s hearts, and the problem in racial relations is a problem of the heart. We don’t see each other as being made in God’s image. Peter didn’t see Gentiles as God’s image-bearers, and we don’t see “the other” as God’s image-bearers. I may be in the minority, and I might be completely wrong, but I don’t believe any law is going to change that. What will change it, what changed Peter, is a work of the Holy Spirit in his heart. The Spirit brought his prejudice, his hatred, his bigotry to the surface and Peter had to deal with it. And he had to do it quickly! The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart, and until we learn to love each other the way God loves, we will never solve the problem. I’m not saying we shouldn’t work for justice; the clear call of the Scriptures is that we should. But at the same time we have to work on our own hearts, knowing that change will only come when we see each other differently. “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (10:15). Will we be the generation to finish that story?

Let me get a little closer to home and maybe a little more uncomfortable. We are and have been in the midst of a wave of denominational dysfunction in the United Methodist Church. It used to be funny when I would go to type “United Methodist” and accidentally type “Untied Methodist,” but it’s not really so funny anymore as we are likely facing a denominational divide in the near future. Now, my wife the counselor will tell you that there are things called the “presenting issue,” which is what someone comes into counseling for. You go to a counselor and say, “I’m feeling a little down,” and that’s probably true but it’s probably also not the real issue. It’s the counselor’s job to get from the “presenting issue” to what’s really going on. Our denomination’s “presenting issue” surrounds human sexuality—specifically our disagreements on LGBT matters. I’m going to tell you that the real issue is much deeper than that. It has to do with what we believe about the Bible, how we interpret it, and even what the nature of the church should be. The divisions and disagreements are deep and they did not happen overnight. The divisions are so deep that a professional mediator was brought in to negotiate an amicable separation, a proposal that will come before General Conference whenever they next meet. Now, I tell you all that to tell you this: we have forgotten how to see each other as God’s image-bearers. The last time our Indiana Annual Conference met in person, the lines were already drawn, the camps were formed, and no one would talk to each other. We were all so busy promoting our own positions and arguing with those on “the other side” that we forgot we are all God’s image-bearers. And over the last two and a half years, I’ve continued to have that experience with those who should be my brothers and sisters in Christ. The “other” is the enemy. We’ve experienced that politically this year, too. The “other” is the enemy. We’ve deafened our ears so that we can’t hear God say, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (10:13).

Now, I’m not saying that we should “go along to get along.” I hope I’m clear on that. There are battles we must fight and convictions we must hold. There are beliefs and doctrines we cannot give up. But we must not forget what Paul told the Ephesians: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood [in other words, it’s not against people who are made in God’s image], but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). There is an enemy of your soul who wants to “steal, kill and destroy” (cf. John 10:10). He wants to divide and conquer and most of all, he wants you to see “the other” as someone who is less than, as someone who is not made in God’s image. He wants you to believe a lie, as Peter believed at the beginning of this story. He is the enemy, not the other person, and we defeat that enemy by doing what Jesus told us to do: love one another (cf. John 13:34). “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “if you love one another” (John 13:35). Give up your prejudice, your hate, your resistance and love the other person. And by doing so, you will demonstrate what the Gospel is all about. By doing so, you will make Jesus attractive to the world once again.

One of my favorite Tony Campolo stories—and I may have told it here before, so bear with me if you’ve heard it—is the story of Campolo walking downtown Philadelphia one day when he noticed an apparently homeless man walking toward him. The man was covered with dirt, and he had rotten food stuck in his waist-long beard. The man had a cup of McDonald’s coffee and he was staring down into the dark liquid. Suddenly, he looked up and saw Campolo. “Hey mister,” he shouted, “ya want some of my coffee?” Campolo didn’t want the coffee, but he couldn’t refuse the man’s generosity and so he said, “I’ll take a sip.” As he handed the cup back to the homeless man, Campolo said, “You’re getting pretty generous, aren’t you, giving away your coffee? What’s gotten into you today that’s made you so generous?” And the man looked right into Campolo’s eyes and said, “Well, the coffee was especially delicious today, and I figure if God gives you something good, you ought to share it with people!” And Campolo assumed at this point he’d been set up. “I suppose there’s something I can do for you in return, isn’t there?” he asked the man, who said, “Yeah! You can give me a hug!” Campolo said he’d rather have given him money. But they embraced, there on the street, and the homeless man held on a long, long time. People were passing by. Some people were staring. Listen to how Campolo describes it: “I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. Then, little by little, my embarrassment changed to awe and reverence. I heard a voice echoing down the corridors of time saying ‘I was hungry; did you feed Me? I was naked; did you clothe Me? I was sick; did you care for Me? I was the bum you met on Chestnut Street…did you hug Me? For if you did it to the least of these, you did it unto Me’” (Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story, pgs. 29-30).

“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (10:15). Where in your life do you need a second conversion? Or a third or fourth? What lines is God calling you to cross? Who do you need to love better? How can you finish this unfinished story? Let’s pray.