Acts 10:44-48

We catch the apostle Peter literally mid-sentence in this passage in Acts. What comes before these verses is an important part of the story. Cornelius, a Roman army officer and Gentile in Caesarea, a believer in God but not a Jew, has a vision that he is to send for Peter. It so happens that Peter, a devout Jew, has a vision as well. He’s praying on the roof of his friend’s house in Joppa, anticipating a fine meal being prepared by his hosts. He falls into a trance and sees a sheet being lowered down from the heavens, filled with all of the foods that good Jews aren’t supposed to eat – animals considered to be “unclean.” He hears a voice: “Get up Peter, kill and eat.” Peter responds, “No, way! I’ve never touched this stuff, let alone eaten it!” He hears this answer: “What God has made, you must not call profane.” This happens three times, which is God’s way of saying, “And I really mean it, Peter.” And while he’s still trying to figure out what it is that God means, Cornelius’ men are knocking at the door to invite Peter to Caesarea.

A good Jew wasn’t supposed to hang out with Gentiles, but the Holy Spirit gives Peter a nudge out the door. He travels to Caesarea, meets Cornelius, and realizes this Gentile is having a genuine experience of God. Peter starts preaching about this God who’s giving Cornelius visions, and about how Peter has been awakened to a reality he never understood before: “I truly understand,” he declares, “that God shows no partiality.” But before Peter can finish his sermon, the Holy Spirit short-circuits the usual order of things, and that’s where we pick up the story. The Holy Spirit “fell on all who heard the Word,” on a whole crowd of Gentiles, as evidenced by their ability to speak in tongues and their inclination to praise God.

Rick Morley notes that the two words in this passage that “stick out as if they have neon lights attached to them,” are “astounded” and “even.” Gentiles are coming to faith in God in Christ, and the Christians of Jewish descent are “astounded” that the Holy Spirit of God is being given to “even” the Gentiles. In other words, they didn’t expect this. They couldn’t have predicted this. I suspect they didn’t even want this.

God is doing something new, something that the apostles couldn’t control, predict, or anticipate. This passage is often preached to remind us that the Church should be inclusive, but limiting this passage to who is included or excluded from the Church feels like a conversation for 25 years ago. Certainly, God expects churches to be inclusive. But God doesn’t stop there and to limit our analysis to the Christian Church feels oddly self-referential in 2024. As if God can’t be reached by other routes. As if the apostles’ understanding of God, or ours, is the only right way, the only possible way. As if we control God’s Holy Spirit.

Limiting the conversation to church puts us, in the Church, in a position of privilege and control. We welcome you. We let you in. Aren’t we special? When the point of this passage is that God is already at work in places and in ways beyond our imagination, in ways that will astound us. The Church needs the stranger, the foreigner, the “other” to show us the Holy Spirit isn’t the Church’s property. Otherwise, we might start thinking there’s limited space under the tent, or that it’s our job to make the tent bigger, when the thing is, it isn’t our tent. It’s God’s tent, and we don’t know the extent of it, the size of it, the reach of it. Morley writes, “It’s like when we look out into the world around us, we see just a sliver – just the tiniest wedge of possibilities. But, God sees the whole sky. The whole infinite expanse of the universe brimming with possibilities.”

At least the apostles in Acts were “astounded,” as opposed to “disgusted,” or “dismayed.” There’s some hope there.

William H. Willimon writes, “Faith, when it comes down to it, is our often breathless attempt to keep up with the redemptive activity of God, to keep asking ourselves, ‘What is God doing, where on earth is God going now?’” As with Peter, it’s an ongoing conversion.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Rick Morley, “Even Astonished – A Reflection on Acts 10:44-48,” http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1585
William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988)