The birth of the universal church

Peter's dream, by Domenico Fetti

Reflection at morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on 12th December 2023

Today’s reading (Acts 11:1-18) records one of the most important moments in the life of the earliest church, the moment when it began to move from being a purely Jewish sect to being a church which accepted Gentiles as full members. In this moment we witness the birth of the Church Catholic – the universal Church.

In the paragraphs before today’s reading, the author of Acts tells us how Peter had come to associate with Gentiles in Caesarea.

Peter had an extraordinary dream while he was visiting disciples in Joppa, now a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel. He heard a voice commanding him to kill and eat animals which as a Jew he had been taught to believe were unclean – they disgusted him, they were taboo. And a voice from heaven declared to him, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane’. We have our own food taboos in Ireland today. Most people are horrified at the thought of eating horse-meat. But I tried it once in the Netherlands, and I can confirm it is delicious.

Just as Peter was processing this shocking dream, three men arrived at the door asking for him. They had been sent by a Roman Centurion called Cornelius, a pious and God-fearing gentile, who asked Peter to come with them to visit him in Caesarea, about a day’s walk away. Peter felt the Holy Spirit urging him to agree, so the next day he went to see Cornelius. But we should notice that he took the precaution of bringing 6 witnesses along too. Under Jewish tradition if seven people give the same testimony it must be accepted as true.

When Peter arrived at Cornelius’s house, he tells him and the assembled household, ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection’. Clearly Peter has been reflecting on the meaning of his strange vision, as we walked to Caesarea.

Cornelius tells Peter, ‘All of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say’. Peter replies, ‘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’. And he goes on to proclaim the Gospel to Cornelius’s household.

Cornelius and his household receive Peter’s teaching with great joy. We are told that Peter and his 6 witnesses were amazed at their response. They could see that these Gentiles had received the gift of the Holy Spirit, which they had all received at Pentecost. Seizing the moment, ‘(Peter) ordered them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ’.

Now we pick up the story in today’s reading.

When Peter got back to Jerusalem, news of his visit to Cornelius had arrived before him. The Jewish Christians were outraged that Peter had consorted with gentiles, in breach of Jewish law and tradition – and he had even gone so far as to have them baptised. ‘Why’, they ask him, ‘did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’.

Peter then, in front of his 6 witnesses, tells them the whole story we have heard. He concludes saying, ‘If then God gave (Cornelius and his household) the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’. The critics are silenced, and they praise God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’.

Let us praise God with the Jewish Church in Jerusalem, because God has given to us as well, as Gentiles, the repentance that leads to life!

The story of Cornelius & Peter

An address given at Templederry, Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 12th January 2014, the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, celebrated as the Baptism of Christ.

What image does the name Cornelius conjure up for you?

If you’re a certain age like me, it might be that wise old elephant Cornelius with the wrinkly forehead, who was Babar’s friend and trusted counselor in the children’s book. Or if you’re a bit younger perhaps it’s Cornelius the chimpanzee archaeologist in the cult SciFi movie Planet of the Apes, who believed that apes descend from humans.

How many of us, I wonder, would think immediately of Cornelius the Roman centurion, whom St Peter addresses in today’s 2^nd reading from Acts 10:34-43? Not many probably! Which is a shame, because the story of Peter and Cornelius is important for our faith. To understand why, I’m going to focus on that story today.

Now the lectionary reading, as so often, is only a small fragment of the larger story, so I’m going to try to summarise it for you. But I do urge you, when you have a moment, to take down your Bible at home and read the whole thing, from the beginning of Acts Ch10 to the middle of Ch11.

The story begins with Cornelius.

Cornelius was a centurion in the Roman army, stationed in Caesarea, the Roman administrative capital of Palestine. He was in charge of a company-sized unit of around 100 men, equivalent to a Captain, or perhaps a Major or Commandant in today’s army - a man of substance and authority.

He was a ‘God-fearer’, we are told. These were people who were not Jews, but believed in one God, admired the ethic of the Jewish religion and sometimes attended synagogue – many thoughtful gentiles at the time were feeling their way to a monotheistic faith and no longer believed in the old pagan pantheon of Gods.

One afternoon Cornelius had a vision. In the vision an angel told him to send messengers to fetch Peter from Joppa where he was staying - a day’s journey away on foot. Perhaps he had heard tell of Peter’s preaching, and realised he should hear what Peter had to say. Anyhow, he did as the angel asked him.

The next day Peter also had a vision, just as Cornelius’s messengers were approaching Joppa. He fell into a trance as he waited hungrily for his mid-day meal. He saw a bag-full of unclean animals in front of him and a voice told him to kill and eat them. He protested that the Jewish law forbade him to eat unclean meat, but the voice said, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane’. While Peter was still puzzling over what this meant, the messengers arrived to ask him to go with them to Cornelius.

The next day Peter set out for Caesarea with the messengers and some disciples from Joppa. Cornelius had called his family and friends together and was waiting for them. When Peter arrived he said to them, ‘You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean’. His words would have been shocking to a pious Jew – he has begun to question whether the strict Jewish law is really what God wants.

It is at this point that Peter gives the address we heard in today’s reading.

First he reassures Cornelius, his family and friends that God does not reject them because they are not Jews - ‘I truly understand’, he says, ‘that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him’.

Peter goes on to speak simply and powerfully of what he knows from his own experience. He tells them about Jesus’s special relationship with God: his baptism by John, his healing ministry to the people of Galilee and Judah, his death and resurrection, his command to the disciples to continue his teaching. And he interprets the words of the ancient prophets to show that ‘everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name’.

While Peter is still speaking, we are told, ‘the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word’. Peter’s words, shot through with personal conviction, so excited Cornelius, his family and friends that they became ecstatic, ‘speaking in tongues and extolling God’. Perhaps it was something like a charismatic prayer meeting today, with hand-waving, clapping, dancing and whoops of joy. Peter recognised that despite being Gentiles they had received the Holy Spirit, just as the disciples had at Pentecost, and ‘he ordered them to be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ’.

The story continues with Peter’s return to Jerusalem.

Word has got back to the apostles and believers there about what had happened at Joppa, and they take Peter to task for consorting with Gentiles.

So Peter tells them the story from the beginning, finishing by justifying his actions in these words, ‘“If then God gave them the same gift (of the Holy Spirit) that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” …  And (the believers in Jerusalem)  praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”’

Those who wished to maintain a Jewish exclusiveness were silenced, at least for the time being - though as we know the issue continued to bedevil the Christian community for many years to come.

The story of Cornelius and Peter is a story of many epiphanies.

It’s worth reminding ourselves what an epiphany is. The English word comes from a Greek root meaning ‘showing forth’. It is used in two senses. First, in everyday speech, it means a sudden insight experienced by someone – a ‘Eureka!’ moment. Second, in a religious context, it means an event in which God reveals himself to human beings. An example of an Epiphany in this 2^nd sense is the Coming of the Wise Men which we celebrated last Sunday, a day early, in which God reveals his Son to the Magi in the shape of the baby Jesus. Another is the Baptism of Christ which we celebrate today, in which God through a voice from heaven, accompanied by the Spirit in the form of a dove, marks Jesus as his Son.

The story begins with Cornelius’s vision, a little epiphany in the everyday sense – a ‘Eureka’ moment in which he suddenly realises that the preacher Peter might have something important to tell him.

Then we have Peter’s vision, another little epiphany in the everyday sense, which causes Peter to question the rigidity of the Jewish dietary laws in which he had been brought up, which had become such a barrier between Jews and gentiles.

How marvellous it is that these little epiphanies are brought together to make possible the greater Epiphany, in the religious sense, in which the power of God as Holy Spirit was revealed to Cornelius, his family and friends - just as the apostles and disciples experienced it at Pentecost, and indeed as Jesus did at his baptism. They were the first gentiles we know of to experience it.

But the whole story, taken together is an even greater Epiphany – this is why I believe it is so important!

It shows us God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, revealing his nature to be inclusive – God seeks to include in his kingdom all people who turn to him and do what is right. This is revealed first to Peter and then through him to the first Christians in Jerusalem in the context of race: ‘God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’.

But the Holy Spirit didn’t stop there. St Paul later received the insight that God’s inclusive nature extends beyond race, to social status and gender too. As he wrote in Galatians 3:28, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Some found this difficult to accept - Paul like Peter had to contend with those who preferred an exclusive God – but as time moved on eventually Paul’s teaching was accepted by all.

In our own days I am convinced that the Holy Spirit continues to work for inclusion. More and more Christians are being led to understand that those attracted to the same sex are one in Christ with the rest of us. There is resistance of course – some of it frankly quite shocking - but that would not surprise Peter or Paul.

I hope and pray for, and look forward to, the time when the Holy Spirit has brought us all to accept one another as fellow disciples of Christ no matter what our sexual orientation, race, social status or gender may be.

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!

Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!

In a few minutes, just after the Rector consecrates the bread and wine, we will all join in this great acclamation, which is sometimes called the mystery of faith. On this joyful Easter Day, surely it is appropriate to reflect on these words.

The 1st reading we heard (Acts 10:34-43) is just a part of the story of the baptism of Cornelius - it’s worth summarising the whole of it.

Cornelius, a Centurion in the Roman army and a gentile, is a devout man who fears God – today we might describe him as a God seeker. He is prompted in a vision to send for Peter to visit him, and Peter too is prompted in a dream to go to Cornelius.

When Peter reaches Cornelius’s house he gives the speech that is our 1st reading. In it he tells Cornelius and his family the good news about Jesus – about his life, death, resurrection, and by implication his second coming as judge and forgiver of sins. In fact Peter is proclaiming the mystery of our faith - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!

And Cornelius and his whole family respond to it immediately. The Holy Spirit falls on them, we’re told - they begin to praise God and speak in tongues, just as the disciples did at Pentecost. Peter then arranges for their baptism - they are actually the very first gentiles to be baptised.

What a suitable reading it is for today - because today is not just Easter Day, it is a joyful day of baptism for Molly Sara Shelly and her family!

No human eyes saw Jesus rise from the tomb on that first Easter day.

None of the Gospels suggest any such thing. But they do describe incidents that day in which several different disciples encountered Jesus after he had done so. Let’s remind ourselves of them.

We are told in today’s reading from John’s Gospel (John 20:1-18) how Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb early in the morning. She sees the stone which sealed it has been moved. She rushes to tell Peter and another disciple that the tomb has been robbed – tradition says the other disciple is John. Peter and John find it hard to believe, so they race to the tomb to see for themselves.

Mary also goes back to the tomb a little later, more sedately perhaps. She sees two angels, as if in a vision, and then a man she takes for the gardener. She does not recognise him at first, until he speaks her name. ‘Mary!’, he says, and immediately she recognises him to be Jesus and answers ‘Rabbouni!’, which means teacher. She goes to embrace him, but he forbids her – why is that I wonder? Instead he says, ‘go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’

Mary is the first to see the risen Christ.

Let’s go back to Peter and John running to the tomb - John gets there first. From outside he sees the winding sheets lying there, but he does not go in. Peter, brave Peter, goes in first, followed by John. They confirm with their own eyes that the body is gone. But they do not see Jesus, nor do they yet understand that he has risen from the dead.

Peter must have seen the risen Christ later in the day, though, because Luke’s Gospel tells us so. When Cleopas and his friend, the two men who went to Emmaus, return late at night, the disciples in the upper room tell them, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon’ Peter.

Cleopas (Luke 24: 13-35) then recounts the story of their journey to Emmaus, and the stranger who walked with them. When the stranger spoke their hearts burned within them. They persuaded him to stay and eat with them. And it was only when ‘he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them’ – as he had done three nights before at the Last Supper - that they recognised the risen Christ.

Later still that night - as the disciples talk about these amazing events, trying to make sense of them - Jesus suddenly appears again to a large group of them, gathered behind closed doors in the upper room.

Throughout that first Easter Day, God gradually opens the minds of Jesus’s disciples to understand that Christ is risen.

What are we to make of these appearances of the risen Christ on the first Easter Day?

On the evidence of the Gospels the risen Christ is rather different to the man Jesus. His close friends do not recognise him by sight, but by such things as a tone of voice or a characteristic action like blessing bread. He appears and disappears, unlike any human being.

For the disciples who knew Jesus before his death, meeting the risen Christ seems as much a spiritual as a physical experience. But whatever the nature of their experience, it changed them completely – it drove them to go out and preach the good news, even at the cost of their lives.

They described it as Jesus risen from the dead, and we might as well call it the same thing.

Christians ever since continue to meet the risen Christ, as a spiritual if not a physical reality.

It is a dynamic process that goes like this, I think:

• God prompts those who seek him to investigate the good news about Jesus;
• they come to faith, accepting Jesus as Christ their saviour, through the witness of his disciples - that's you and me;
• God responds to their faith with the gift of his Spirit;
• and the Spirit leads them to understand that Christ is risen, and what this means for them.

In other words: We come to believe in the resurrection because we first believe in Christ – rather than the other way about. We do not come to believe in Christ because we first believe in the resurrection.

This process is displayed in the story of Cornelius. And Christian disciples still seem to be made by this process today. So I believe it must also be true for Mary Magdalene, for Peter & John, for Cleopas and the other disciples too - though their faith came not from the witness of disciples but from personal knowledge of Jesus.

Before his death Jesus promised his disciples that he would come again (John 14:3)

He tells them that he is going away to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, but that he will come again and take them there to be with him.

Christians sometimes imagine the second coming as Christ returning in glory at the end of time, in a last great judgement of the living and the dead to usher in God’s kingdom. But I think the end of time is better seen as a metaphor for any & every time - a typical time if you will. I prefer to imagine that Christ will come again to each one of us, at just the time that is right for each one of us personally.

In our hearts we will hear his voice. He will speak our name. And we will reply as Mary did,
‘Rabbouni – my teacher.
Now I understand -
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!
Let me be your disciple now and always.’

Jesus heals the Centurion's slave

An address given at Templederry on 14th February 2010, the Sunday before Lent.

Luke tells us a fascinating, vivid little story in today’s NT reading (Luke 7:1-10), about Jesus healing the Centurion’s slave in Capernaum.
Matthew gives a slightly different version of what is clearly the same episode (Matt 8:5-13). Scholars tell us that most likely both Luke and Matthew took this story, with others, from a collection of stories about Jesus written down before either of their Gospels were written. In this story we may have an eye-witness account at just one remove of a real incident in the ministry of Jesus.

Let’s look at the story a little more closely and then see what we might still learn from it in 2010.

The scene is set in Capernaum, a fishing village on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
Jesus was well known in Capernaum. He settled there after leaving Nazareth, Matthew tells us. Peter and Andrew, and James and John, lived there, and it was there that Jesus called them to be his first four disciples. And Jesus himself taught on the Sabbath in the Capernaum synagogue, exorcising a man who was being disruptive, according to Luke.

Jesus is returning home after a day spent preaching to the crowds outdoors in the countryside. We now call what he said that day the Sermon on the Mount, since Matthew places it on a mountain, though Luke merely refers to Jesus standing on a level place. That was the day he taught the Beatitudes – ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…’

Jesus is met by some Jewish elders as he gets back to Capernaum. They have been sent by a Centurion living there, to ask Jesus to come to his house to heal a slave he valued highly, who was seriously ill. They tell Jesus that the Centurion, ‘is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.’

When Jesus heard the Centurion’s plea, he would surely have remembered today’s OT reading (1Kings 8:22-23, 41-43), in which Solomon prays as he dedicates the 1st Temple, ‘When a foreigner comes and prays towards this house … do according to all that the foreigner calls to you.’ So Jesus heads for the Centurion’s house.

The Centurion must have been a remarkable person.
He was a career officer in the Roman army, commanding around 100 professional soldiers. He would have been a man able to command respect or he would never have held the rank that he did. As he says of himself, ‘I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’

As a representative of an imperial power on colonial service, you might think that he would despise the natives. But not so - he loved the Jewish people, we are told, and even paid for a synagogue to be built where he was stationed. I wonder if he was one of those gentiles called God-fearers, who were attracted by Jewish faith and ethics and attended the synagogue, but had not formally converted or been circumcised. The Acts of the Apostles tells us of another God-fearing Centurion Cornelius, whom Peter baptised with all his family (Acts 10).

For all his high social status, the Centurion was considerate, even humble, in his approach to Jesus for help. He would have known that Jesus might be embarrassed to visit his home, because a strict Jew was forbidden by law to enter the house of a gentile. Rather than command Jesus to attend, when Jesus responds to his plea through the Jewish elders, he sends other friends with a message, to say, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.’

We often echo his words today when we say, after the consecration in the Communion service, ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.’

The Centurion also had an unusual attitude to his slave.

In Roman law a slave was defined as just a tool of production, with no human rights. His master could ill-treat or even kill him if he chose - and often did, if the slave was no longer able to work. Yet this Centurion highly valued his slave and would go to any trouble to cure him. He was compassionate, a good master.

But the Centurion may have been more than compassionate – he may have loved his slave. Luke uses the Greek word παῖς ‘pais’ translated here as servant, and Matthew uses the same word throughout his version of the story, not the Greek word δοῦλος ‘doulos’ meaning slave. Scholars say that in Greek παῖς ‘pais’ sometimes means the young male lover of an older man, rather than a plain servant.

Gay Christians take comfort from the idea that this text shows Jesus accepting homosexual relationships, and so accepting them. This interpretation is controversial and uncertain. Many reject it. But I would be slow to dismiss it myself. There is ambiguity in the translation, and nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus explicitly reject homosexual relationships – in fact he has nothing to say about them at all.

Rather, what Jesus is concerned about – is amazed by – is the Centurion’s faith.
He says, ‘Not even in Israel have I found such faith.’

The Centurion’s faith is not I think the same sort of faith that we have been raised in. Our faith is mediated by 2000 years of Christian teaching and recitation of carefully crafted scripture and creeds. His is a much simpler faith. Through his Jewish friends he has heard about Jesus, this charismatic wandering healer and teacher, who can cast out the demons then believed to cause disease. And he trusts him. He trusts that Jesus will respond to his plea, and he trusts that with a single word Jesus can heal his highly valued servant. And his trust is rewarded: because of his simple faith – his trust in Jesus – his servant is healed.

I wonder, too, about the faith of the servant. Had he too heard of Jesus? Had he asked his master to seek help for him from Jesus? Did the servant’s simple faith and trust in Jesus contribute to his cure?

Jesus uses this example of a gentile’s simple faith and trust to publicly challenge the smug self-satisfaction of many of his fellow Jews. Their faith had been formed by millennia of Jewish teaching and ancient scriptures. But they could not respond to Jesus with simple faith and trust, in him and in his healing message.

So finally, what can we learn from this little story?
Among lessons just as relevant today as they were 2000 years ago are these, I think:

1. Jesus will respond to us today, if we trust him and ask for his help, just as he did then.
2. We must not let the complex faith we have inherited get in the way of our personal relationship with Jesus.
3. The structures of religious institutions, their buildings, their creeds and doctrines, are only of value to the extent that they bring us closer to Jesus.

May God grant us, like the Centurion, a simple faith and trust in Jesus Christ, our healing saviour - for that is what it means to be a Christian.