Multiculturalism and the Church in Acts
6.12. The Interactions of Peter with the Gentiles
It was easy for Peter to boldly challenge sickness and death in his ministry, but how was he respond to the challenges of racial and religious discrimination? Jesus had given Peter the 'keys of the kingdom', and he used it wisely in his ministry to open the kingdom to Jews on the day of Pentecost and then to the Samaritans soon afterwards. Now he is to use them again to open the kingdom to the Gentiles; by evangelising and baptising Cornelius at Caesarea (Stott 1990: 185).
Comelius was a religious figure and God-fearing, possibly, not a full proselyte in every sense of the word. He was still a Gentile, an outsider, excluded from God's covenant with Israel.
According to Stort (1990) God had a purpose for the Gentiles:
It is difficult for us to grasp the impassable gulf which yawned in those·
days between the Jews on hand and the Gentiles (including the 'God- fearers') on the other. Not that the Old Testament itself countenanced such a divide. On the contrary, alongside its oracles against the hostile
nations, it affirmed that God had a purpose for them. By choosing and blessing one family, he intended to bless all families of the earth. So psalmists and prophets foretold the day when God's Messiah wold inherit the nations, the lord's servant would their light, all nations would 'flow' to the Lord's house, and God would pour out his Spirit on all humankind.
The tragedy was that Israel twisted the doctrine of election into one of favouritism, became filled with racial pride and hatred , despised Gentiles as 'dogs', and developed traditions which kept them apart. No orthodox Jew would ever enter the home of a Gentile, even a God-fearer, or invite such into his home. On the contrary, all familiar intercourse with Gentiles were forbidden and no pious Jew would of course have sat down at the table of a Gentile.
This, then was the entrenched prejudice which had to be over-come before Gentiles could be admitted into the Christian community on equal terms with Jews, and before the church could become a truly multi-racial, multicultural society. Acts 8 records the special steps God took to prevent the perpetuation of the Jewish-Samaritan schism in the church; how would he prevent a Jewish- Gentile schism? Luke regards this episode as being so important that he narrates it twice, first in his own words( Acts 10), and then in Peter's when the latter explained to the Jerusalem church what had happened (11:1-18) (Stott, 1990: 185-186).
In summary, Acts 10, contains the vision of Corneluis seemg an angel, who instructed him to send for Peter at Joppa. Peter also sees a vision of a sheet of four- footed animals, as well as reptiles ofthe earth and birds ofthe air. Peter was asked in this vision to kill and eat. While thinking what this vision meant, three men stood outside his door, asking him to come to the house of Cornelius. Peter then goes with them to the house of Cornelius. At the house of Cornelius, Peter preaches the gospel, and the household of Cornelius, a Gentile centurion, embrace Christ and the Christian faith. He is ultimately accepted in the 'family of God'.
Stott (1990) says that this initial incident set the stage for what followed. For the primary question was how God would deal with Peter. How would he succeed in breaking down Peter's deep-seated racial intolerance? The principal subject of this chapter is not so much the conversion ofCornelius as the conversion of Peter.
Peter thereafter went to Jerusalem to give a report of the whole incident of the vision and the conversion ofComelius and his house-hold (Stott, 1990:192).
On arrival in Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised Peter for having entered· the house of uncircumcised men and having eaten with them. Some have suggested that Peter's critics were 'the circumcision party', that is, 'the right -wing Jewish Christians,' 'the extremists' or the rigorists'. But the Greek phrase need only mean 'those who were of Jewish birth' (NEB), namely the whole Christian community in Jerusalem, all of whom up to that time were Jews (Stott 1990: 192).
Recent events in Caesarea had naturally disturbed them (referring to Peter's interactions with Comelius). Peter explained everything to them precisely as it happened (Acts 11: 4-17).
Peter was quick to draw the inevitable deduction. Since God had accepted these Gentile believers, which indeed he had (Acts 15: 8), the church must accept them too. Since God had baptised them with the Holy Spirit (Acts 11: 16). How could the sign be denied to those who had already received the reality signified? Chrysostom expatiated on this logic. By giving the Spirit to Comelius , and his household before their baptism, God gave Peter anapologia megale (a mighty reason or justification) for giving them water-baptism. Yet in a sense their baptism 'was completed already', for God had done it. Peter was clear that 'in no one point was he the author, but in every point God.' It was as if Peter saying to them: 'God baptised them, not me'
In recounting Peter's vision, the whole vision, including the order and the rebuke was repeated three times, so that that the heavenly voice addressed him six times altogether with the same basic message .In consequence, Peter grasped that clean and unclean animals, were a symbol of clean and unclean, circumcised and uncircumcised persons. As Racham in Stott (1990) puts it, 'the sheet is the church', which will contain all races and classes without any distinction at all, even though the full import ofthis dawned on Peter only later (Stott 1990: 192, 194).
6.13. The Mission To The Gentiles