When Peter went to visit a Roman centurion, he found that God had decided to welcome all people among those who followed the Way of Jesus.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 11:1-18). This is a story that Luke, the author of Acts as well as of Luke’s Gospel, thought so important that he told it three times.
This is the third telling of the story and it’s the one in which Peter reported on his activities to the council of the apostles, the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem. They wanted to know why he had eaten with Gentiles.
Well, the answer was simple.
He’d received a summons (after he’d received a strange dream) and the summons was to go to visit this Roman centurion named Cornelius. When he went there, he talked to them about Jesus, and the Holy Spirit came upon the people of the household. Seeing that, Peter said, “How can we withhold the waters of baptism?”
When he finished the story those who heard it were astonished, because it meant that God had done a new thing, and that the Way of Jesus Christ was now open not just to those they expected, to the Hebrew people, to the followers of Judaism, but to Gentiles, those from other faiths and other nations, as well.
This is perhaps the most important story in the book of Acts, because it marks the place where the Church opened its doors to all people.
Now to this day, we struggle with this. In theory, we should be able to welcome anyone, and I mean anyone, into the Church. We all know that is not true, that there are people who come to the door and we turn them away. Peter’s experience was that God would not be moved by our refusals. God would not be limited by the boundaries that we set. God would welcome, God will welcome all the people of creation into the way of Jesus Christ.
How can we refuse the welcome that God extends?
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
