Spirit on a Hot Tile Roof

Delivered May 13, 2012  Video

Acts 10:44-48

Today we are going to look at a story about a man named Cornelius. That is a name you don’t hear much these days. Biblical names seem to be coming back into style. All three of my kids named their children with OT names: Noah, Jonah, Elijah. But there are not too many Corneliuses in hospital nurseries. I had a pastor friend in Pennsylvania named Cornelius.  I was the pastor of the First Baptist Church in town, and he was the pastor of the Second Baptist Church. He was an African American pastoring an African American congregation. We used to do pulpit exchanges - preach in each other’s churches. There is nothing like preaching in a black church. Lively music and lively preaching. The congregation talks back to you during the sermon and before you know it, you lose your place in your sermon notes and the congregation is taking you places you never intended to go. White worship services are much more predictable.

Today we are going to look at another man named Cornelius. He was a Roman centurion, part of the Italian regiment stationed in Caesarea, which was the Roman capital of Palestine. Our scripture reading only gives us the end of the story of Cornelius, but I am going to retell the whole story for you. I will tell you the story under three headings.

I. First, God orchestrates spiritual encounters between people. It is sometimes said that there are no coincidences - that coincidence is really God-incidence. In his book The World as I See It, Albert Einstein said, “Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”  This is the Christian doctrine of providence. God is in control. God is working behind the scenes of history. We certainly see this in the story of Peter and Cornelius. God has a plan to bring these two people together. Chapter 10 of Acts starts off with two separate individual encounters with God.

The first encounter was in the form of a vision given to Cornelius. The chapter describes the Roman soldier Cornelius as “a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people, and prayed to God always.” One day at 3:00pm, the afternoon hour of prayer, while he as praying at his home in Caesarea, he had a vision of an angel who told him to send some of his men to Joppa to the home of a tanner named Simon who had a home by the sea, they would be told want God wanted him to do.  That was it, and Cornelius did as he was instructed.

The other spiritual experience happened to the apostle Peter who was in Joppa staying at this house of Simon the tanner. Joppa is near present day Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean just down the coast from ancient Caesarea.  Peter was devoting himself to a day of prayer and fasting. He went up on the rooftop to have some privacy. (Hence my title: Spirit on a Hot Tile Roof.) Only part of the roof was tiled. The other part was a flat roof like what we might call a Widow’s Walk here in New England, a place where you could catch the breeze coming off the ocean on a hot day. People put an awning or tent up there on the roof, and it was a very comfortable place. Peter was up on the hot roof praying, and he got light-headed from the heat and fasting and fell into a trance. He had a vision of a huge sheet being lowered down from heaven to earth.

Verse 12-16 describes the vision: “In it [the sheet] were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. ¹³ And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”¹⁴ But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.”¹⁵ And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” ¹⁶ This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again.” Then the Spirit told Peter that there were three men downstairs at that very moment seeking him, and that he was to go with them for God had sent them.

God orchestrates human encounters, not only in the Bible but in our lives. They are probably not as dramatic as the Biblical stories, but when they happen they seem to be a lot more than just a chance coincidence. I believe that they are God incidences – incidences of God working his purpose out in our lives. We are here for a reason, and the reason is the people around us.

II. The second point in this chapter is that God breaks down barriers. That really is the main point of this chapter. Peter is a Jew who all his life had carefully followed the OT dietary laws about ritually clean and unclean foods and contact with unclean substances and people. Jews and Gentiles did not relate to each other back then. This attitude continued in the earliest Christian church, which was composed exclusively of Jews. But through this vision, God was telling Peter that those barriers were coming down. The vision that Peter had on the rooftop was not just about foods, it was about people, which becomes obvious later in the story.

Peter comes down off the roof and meets the men that the Roman centurion Cornelius had sent. He invites them to spend the night, and the next day he went with them to Caesarea to meet Cornelius. Cornelius had gathered all his relatives and friends together to hear what Peter had to say. It must have been quite a shock when Peter entered that door. He was going into a Roman centurion’s house filled with Gentiles. Jews did not go into Gentiles’ houses. Peter explained this to Cornelius in verse 28 “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore I came without objection as soon as I was sent for.”  As soon as Peter entered the house of this Roman officer, the soldier fell down on his knees before Peter. Things like that just don’t happen either. God was working in both Peter and Cornelius to break down barriers between people.

This is still the case today, or at least it should be. There are lots of barriers in society these days. There are racial barriers. Whenever we think that we have made some progress on racial matters then something like the Trayvon Martin killing happens, and we know that we have not made as much progress as we thought. The immigration issue is another area that is exposing the ethnic divides that exist in our nation. Another area is that of sexual orientation, a topic that has caused much division in mainline Christian churches and denominations. The Occupy Wall Street movement has highlighted the increasing division between the wealthy and the poor in our nation.

People take sides on these and other issues and fall into another division – that between political and social liberals and conservatives. That is one of the biggest and most contentious divisions these days. The incivility surrounding political discourse and elections these days is distressing. What is a Christian to do? What is a church to do? There are different answers to these questions. A lot of Christians and churches choose to get right into the fray, taking a stand in the culture wars. But too often taking a stand just erects more barriers that you are taking a stand behind. A line is drawn in the sand and that becomes a barrier.

I am no Solomon and I don’t have great wisdom when it comes to the divisions and hostilities that we face as a society and as a world. And I do not judge those who choose to fight it out in the legal and political arenas. But as a pastor I try to transcend the differences as a way to breach the barriers. Some of my colleagues see that as a cop out – a way to avoid the hard choices.  I hope that is not true. I have taken enough stands in my life and ministry, and I have paid the price personally and professionally. Now I see that the most good is done on the individual level rather than the level of mass movements, political parties, religious denominations, and countries. If we as individuals can build relationships across these barriers that divide people, then we have done a great work. If we relate to people as persons and not representatives of some group – whether racial, ethnic, political, economic, or religious – then a barrier has come down and we are closer to the Kingdom of God.

God broke down barriers when he got Peter and Cornelius together. God broke down the barrier between Roman and Jew, the occupier and the occupied. God broke down cultural and religious barriers that day. Most importantly he broke down a spiritual barrier. Peter understood what was happening and said in verse 34, “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. ³⁵ But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.”

III. That brings me to the third point. It has to do with the Holy Spirit, which is the topic of that small portion of Acts 10 that I read for you. God embraces people by filling them with his Holy Spirit. Peter preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to those who had gathered in Cornelius’ house, and then the Scripture says, “⁴⁴ While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.⁴⁵ And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. ⁴⁶ For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.”

We are approaching Pentecost in the church calendar. It happens in two weeks. This passage is often described as the Gentile Pentecost, the day that the Holy Spirit fell upon and filled Gentiles like he did with Jews on the Day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is not well understood in mainline Protestant or even evangelical circles. I don’t think the Holy Spirit is well understood even in Pentecostal churches, which emphasize the work of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God at work in us. The Holy Spirit is God indwelling us and empowering us. The Holy Spirit is the experiential aspect of God, the most practical part of Christian theology.

This segment of scripture tells us some important things about the Holy Spirit. First it tells us that the Holy Spirit is a gift. Verse 45 says, “⁴⁵ And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.” The Holy Spirit is a gift. A gift is something that you do not deserve. You don’t earn gifts. Gifts are an expression of love from the gift-giver. The Gift of the Holy Spirit is special insofar as this gift is never something we possess. This gift is God giving himself to us. We in no way can say that we possess God. God possesses us.

This scripture also tells us who received the gift. Verse 44 “the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word.”  It is accurate to talk about the Spirit working in the world and in all people. But this passage is talking about something more specific than the general work of the Spirit. It tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon and empowered those who heard and believed the Word of God. Faith in God and in Christ opens us to a new and different level of God’s work in our lives. This is an experience of God. People want to experience God. People want more than a set of beliefs or a community of people to connect to. They want and need an experiential connection to the divine. That is what the Holy Spirit provides. The Holy Spirit is God in us connecting to God outside of us. The Holy Spirit is God working in us and through us. We experience the reality of God through the Holy Spirit.

This passage also talks about these members of Cornelius’ household speaking in tongues. That is another very controversial issue. I am not getting anywhere near that controversy today! I don’t really want to get into the position of judging whether my Pentecostal brothers and sisters have got it right or not - whether what they experience is the same as what the Book of Acts describes.  But I need to address what it means in our text. It means that the gospel was breaking the language barrier. God does not just speak Hebrew or Greek or Latin, but he speaks to all peoples in their own language.

Then is the baptism in our story. Everyone could see what was happening, and Peter declared, ⁴⁷ “Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” ⁴⁸ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord.” The church confirmed by baptism what God had already done in these persons’ lives. God gives himself to us in the person and the power of the Holy Spirit. Theology is made real in experience. It is the church’s role to affirm what God is doing and confirm it through its rituals. That is what Peter did here, and it opened up a whole new chapter of church history. Suddenly the church was not just a small Jewish religious movement. Suddenly it became a movement open to all people. Barriers were broken down and the gospel began to spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. The Spirit knows no boundaries, nor race nor language. For God is the Lord of all the earth, and he gives himself unreservedly to all who will acknowledge him.