Then Peter began to
speak to them: “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.” Acts
10:34-35
Here
is an important principle for our understanding of God. All that is created in original blessing
remains in this blessing as best we know and rests in the core of God. But this is not and has not always been held
to be true by the people of God. The
journey of Israel to be the place of God’s self revelation in a polytheistic
world began with an understanding of particularity. They as a people, a growing nation, were
granted this self revelation of the One True God that this fullness might find
a clarifying voice in the life of a people. This is
no minor gift.
Peter
was raised as were his contemporaries in Judaism. They understood the pure loyalty of the
Jewish people to this revelation was their heritage, duty in the world. How this particularity is to be held has often been
the great tension in Judaism ranging from Hasidic Jews to Reformed Judaism in
our day. That is a conversation unto
itself. But for Peter the call was not
to mingle the Jewish faith with the gentile world, the culture that held power
and sway in Peter’s day.
His conversion to a deeper view happens over days. He has
the dream of the sheet holding an abundance of food forbidden in the Jewish
diet. He is commanded to eat. He resists and is told again to eat. “What God has
made clean, you must not call profane.”(Acts 10:15) He has now been
taken by connecting dreams and instructions to Caesarea,
a major trading and Roman political center in the coast of Israel to the house
of a Roman Centurion, Cornelius. Here is
a gathered assembly, presumably mostly gentile waiting to hear Peter speak to
them a message from the heart of God. He
comprehends the dream message to mean these are as much God’s people under the
revelation of Jesus as he is.
It is no minor thing to come to
the place where we can see God active in other places than the one that is
ours. The history of Christianity is one
of struggling for pure revelation only to have history prove that there are
many nuances in how we come to believe, how God enters into our understanding,
passes through our defenses, opens new understanding or God broadens or trims
in what we hold as truth. Read any
denominational history and this is what you will find. On the upside, so much energy has been spent
trying to be faithful to God’s self revelation as people can grasp it. On the down side, we have travel roads of
perhaps unnecessary distrust of one another. On the upside, we have understood
how precious a thing it is to know and be known by God. On the down side, we have behaved as if
someone else’s experience of the Holy might weaken our own.
What Peter holds as core is important
here. Jesus comes preaching peace. This
peace was exemplified in his teaching and his healing ministry. Yet he was hung n the cross only to rise from
the dead and appeared to the faithful with one solid request.
”He
commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained
by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about
him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his
name.” Acts 10:42-43
And
this then is what we are left to do. We
may be comforted by our version of pure faith.
We may well do best to house it as we can and live in its care. Yet we must also know that God being God
enters life through any porthole that opens.
Those openings will influence each other’s understanding of how God
reveals God’s self. The core test of
truth of these moments of revelation is, from the Christian perspective, do they
enlarge our care, our love, our ability to reflect forgiveness and seek
understanding. Is our faith enhanced in the core love of God we find in
Jesus? If so we may be standing in the
place of God’s unity of self. Walk
reverently.
That
is what Peter is learning to do.
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