This sermon begins by taking a look at the Levitical Holiness Code, and asks the question: What were the reasons for the distinctions between clean and unclean animals, food, and people? The answer may surprise you, and has to do with the development of Creation Order Theology (still a popular way many Christians look at the world, despite Jesus’ teaching against it, and this story in Acts). This way of looking at the world had become so ingrained in Jewish thinking in the ancient world, that even when God gives Peter a vision and insists, “You must not call unclean what I have declared clean” – it takes Peter three distinct times experiencing this vision to finally begin to understand its meaning. His real understanding occurs when he is called to the house of a Gentile–a Roman Centurion named Cornelius–who is known in Christian history as the first Gentile convert to the Christian faith. Seeing God’s Spirit fall upon the household of Cornelius, Peter admits that nothing but their faith matters – and proceeds to baptize the entire group. Peter learns important lessons in this experience that remain astonishingly significant for where the Church finds itself in today’s religious and political culture.
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