We live in a world where feelings run high against the United States of America; the superpower of the 21st century. The bombings in London no doubt have a connection with the fact that Britain is allied to America in the operations taking place in Iraq. I do not want to comment on the rights or wrongs of that conflict, simply to note the resentment and hatred engendered by the combination of Arab nationalism and religious beliefs that fuel the suicide bombings in Iraq and to a lesser extent spill over onto the streets of London. Whatever powers the government take, whatever laws they implement the anger is still there.

But of course such feelings of anger and resentment have always featured in the affairs of the world, and there are many similarities between our world today and the period in which the book of Acts is set. In the first century of course it wasn’t the Americans that attracted the resentment and hatred; it was the Romans.

Always, just below the surface in Israel there was this seething resentment towards the occupying power. The Jews hated paying taxes to the Romans. They hated their occupation of their homeland. Their religious beliefs reinforced the resentment. Weren’t they God’s chosen people? Wasn’t their land the Promised Land? For many, their expectations of the messiah was that like King David who killed Goliath and delivered them from the Philistines; the messiah would deliver them from the Romans.

This was deeply ingrained into the Jewish people, and still very much to the fore in the minds of Jesus disciples, even after he was raised from the dead. At the start of the book of Acts, we find them asking Jesus ‘are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ What they meant was ‘are you going to free us from the Romans?’

There were often attempts to undermine the Roman domination, always put down brutally by the Romans. It was not too many years later that wholesale rebellion against the Romans broke out in Judea. Of course Jesus refused to be involved in violent resistance against Rome. He wept over Jerusalem because it’s people refused to accept the ways of peace; and he prophesied what the result would be.

His prophecy came true in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. Three years later the resistance forces committed mass suicide when the Romans overran Massada, the mountaintop fortress by the Dead Sea. So the early Christians, initially all of who were Jews had this natural aversion and resentment towards the Romans.

But God was about to bring about a dramatic change both in policy and attitude of the church to Romans and other foreigners as well. God had to speak unmistakeably to get through the ingrained attitude of those early believers. You find that Luke records this story at length and in great detail; he regarded it as of crucial significance in the purposes of God.

God was showing his people that in Christ people of all nations were acceptable to him. There was to be no barrier between Jew and gentile. This was not something that the apostles found easy to accept. Initially Peter is indignant at the suggestion that he can waive the rules about what was acceptable for him to eat. But he has learned that in the end he must be obedient to God.

We see God acting powerfully and decisively in the story. Initially God speaks through an angel to Cornelius. Notice that Cornelius is praying at the time. God works when people are open and receptive to him. God tells Cornelius that his prayers have been answered. He tells him specifically to send to Joppa and fetch Simon Peter.

The guidance is so clear and precise that Cornelius immediately puts the matter in hand. He sends three servants, after explaining the angel’s message to them. Joppa is thirty miles away, and it is mid-day the next day when they near the town. Meanwhile Peter has gone up on the roof of the house to pray, but he becomes a bit peckish.

While his hosts are preparing food for him, he falls into a trance. He sees heaven opened, and a large sheet held by it’s four corners being let down with all sorts of animals in it. But they are animals regarded by Old Testament Law as unclean; as a Jew, he would certainly not consider eating any of them.

But God speaks. ’Get up Peter, kill and eat’. Peter is shocked. ‘No Lord, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.’ The voice replies; ‘do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’

The same thing happens three times over. Peter’s ingrained beliefs are being challenged in a profound way. Sometimes God does do that with us. Sometimes the ideas that we imbibed with our mother’s milk are ideas that God wants us to change. It was certainly so for Peter. He ponders what it all means and as he does so, the Spirit speaks and tells him that three men are downstairs looking for him. God has sent them. Peter needn’t be afraid; he must go with them.

The laws that Peter would have been brought up with, not only forbade him to eat unclean food, they also decreed that gentiles; non-Jewish people were also unclean. A Jew like Peter would certainly have avoided sharing a meal with a gentile; it wasn’t just the food that was unclean, it was the company that was unclean as well.

But now there are three Gentiles at the door, and the Spirit has told him that God has sent them. Peter welcomes them in. The next day, along with the three servants Peter sets out to visit Cornelius. He takes as well as some of the Christians from Joppa. In due course they arrive at Caesarea, at the home of Cornelius. There is a real sense of expectation. Cornelius has assembled his household in anticipation. He tells how the angel had told him to send for Peter, and now what has Peter to say to them?

Peter, in spite of his upbringing and the habits of a lifetime is realizing that God is leading him out of his comfort zone. He is realising the implications of Jesus’ commission to go and teach all nations. The implications are that God has no favourites; his love is for people of all nations. So he preaches the gospel. He tells the story of Jesus; the one foretold by the prophets. He tells of his death and resurrection. He tells of forgiveness made possible through Jesus.

While he is still preaching, the Holy Spirit falls on all who heard the message; they begin to speak in tongues, praising God. The men who have come from Joppa were amazed that Gentiles could receive the Holy Spirit, but the evidence was before their very eyes.

They had to acknowledge that God was at work. He had given the Holy Spirit to Cornelius and his household, just as he had given it to the believers on that day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. If God had accepted and blessed gentiles in that way; who was Peter to say they couldn’t be part of the church? So the new gentile believers are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes there is lot of difference between knowing the theory, and actually putting that theory into practice. Peter would have known the theory of a gospel for all nations; now the Holy Spirit had helped him to make that theory a reality. Opening the church to gentiles was not just an option that the early church chose to embrace.

It was a definite deliberate part of God’s plan. Both Cornelius and Peter were clearly guided in the matter; the Holy Spirit being given to the new believers confirmed the reality. It was also consistent with what Jesus had taught. He had encountered a Roman centurion, and commended the man’s faith. He had said that many will come from east and west and take their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

The church was also learning that the rules regarding clean and unclean food had been superseded. Somehow through Jesus, things that had once been regarded as unclean had been cleansed. Not only certain types of food, but men and women from every nation under heaven, made clean through Christ’s death on the cross.

These events that we have thought about today are so momentous, they meant that you and I could be included in God’s family. I suspect like Peter, we all have our fixed ideas; in our minds we put limits on who can or cannot be part of our church.

But God is showing us clearly today, he wants us to open our eyes and see that God accepts men and women from every culture and every nation who fear him and do what is right.

God continues to guide and bless his church. Across our world today people are reaching out in prayer to God. Our passage this morning reminds us that God hears those prayers. I believe it also tells us that he answers those prayers, by sending his people out with the good news of the gospel, that men and women in this troubled world might know the reality of God’s love and forgiveness through Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Amen.

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