Acts 10:1-23
June 16, 2002
Give Up Your Small Ambitions
Francis Xavier sat at his desk, far from his native land of Spain. He wanted to convey the tremendous needs that existed in the Orient, where he now resided. In the 16th century Xavier was one of the first missionaries to venture into Japan with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He thought of his colleagues back in Spain and the students at the University of Paris, who were satisfied with the status quo, merely mimicking words without ever grasping the life transforming power of the gospel. Their ambitions seemed so mundane. He wanted to challenge them to see the world as God sees it. So he picked up his quill and wrote: “Give up your small ambitions.”
Unfortunately, few heeded the challenge to give up their small ambitions. Far too satisfied with comfortable surroundings, their predictable and controlled lives yielded predictable and controlled results. The trouble with small ambitions is that they are not bad desires, they are not evil aspirations. But the call to give up small ambitions is one which we must consider, for far too often our small ambitions are nothing more than safe alternatives of pursuing the good at the cost of the best.
Our passage is just such a call to give up small ambitions, a challenge to our aspirations with the promise of a life that is so much more full, freeing and satisfying. Acts 10 is a pivotal point in the life of the church. It is the point in which small ambitions are set aside in lieu of God’s powerful work of tearing down old barriers. Up to this point the promised power of the Holy Spirit certainly lead the apostles to move outward from Jerusalem to Judea and eventually to Samaria. But those challenged by Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection were of like kind. The church was essentially Jewish. Their ambitions were far too small. READ Acts 10:1-23.
God graciously guided Cornelius to give up his small ambitions
Cornelius sought the good, but God was about to give him the best. As Luke introduces us to Cornelius, we get a glimpse of a good man. Caesarea was a garrison city named after Augustus Caesar, the administrative capital of the province of Judea, boasting a splendid harbor built by Herod the Great. This is the very place one would expect to find a Roman military officer in that day.
Cornelius was a centurion of the Italian Cohort. A cohort was comprised of 600 men and for every 100 men there was a company commander called a centurion. The Roman historian Polybius described centurions as "not so much venturesome daredevils as natural leaders of a steady and sedate spirit, not so much men who will initiate attacks and open the battle as men who will hold their ground when hard pressed and be ready to die at their posts." (Histories vi. Xix-xlii)
This is not the first Roman military captain Luke describes with such approval. Early in Jesus’ ministry it is a centurion whose concern for his sick servant causes him to send for Jesus, to which Jesus pronounces: “I tell you not even in Israel have I found such faith.”(Lk 7:9). At the end of his life, after Peter denied even knowing Jesus and all had fled, it was the centurion at the foot of the cross, seeing how Jesus had died pronounced Jesus’ innocence and deity (Lk 23:47; Mk 15:39).
Luke describes Cornelius as devout, moral and reverent. This piety is described with a common word used of Gentiles who had adopted the ethical standards of Judaism – he feared God.
A God-fearer was one who abandoned the immorality and false philosophy of polytheism and attended synagogue services, but had not become a full proselyte and been circumcised. They were often conversant with the prayers and Scripture lessons, some observed even the Jewish sabbath observance and abstained from certain foods. But without circumcision, they were stilled viewed as an outsider, excluded from God’s covenant with Israel.
This rejection of Roman heritage to embrace God’s revealed morality was not just something that Cornelius did, but his entire household became involved. The depth of his piety is seen as he typified the ideal pater familias, the head of a household, as all in his house feared God. His piety was not only inward as he prayed to God, but expressed in acts of kindness as he gave alms to the poor.
Cornelius’ devotion is seen in v3 as he prays at the ninth hour.
Recall back in Acts 3:1, the ninth hour of the day was the time of prayer for Jews. It was the time of the evening sacrifice in the Temple, so that even those who were not physically present in Jerusalem would join with all those who worshipped Jehovah at that time.
While doing that which is good, he has a vision of an angel in which he is told there is something better. It is important to understand what is said by this angel, lest we think that God is merely rewarding his piety.
The phrase in v4 “your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God” has sacrificial connotations referring back to the grain offerings of Lev 2. In response to the sin offering, where blood is shed, there is a grain offering which symbolized the person’s request to God for help. At the time of his prayer, the evening sacrifice is made, which pointed to the work of Christ as the once for all sacrifice for sin. With God’s wrath propitiated, God now hears his prayer.
Now God offers Cornelius the best. God graciously intervenes while Cornelius is doing good with a promise of something better. Cornelius’ devotion, his fear of God, his alms and prayers are good, but they are but small ambitions. Good is never good enough as God demands perfection.
Cornelius is instructed to send for Peter who is 30 miles down the coast in Joppa. Rather than inform Cornelius himself, the angel merely directs Cornelius to the place where the truth may be found.
God graciously guided Peter to give up his small ambitions
Just as God moves Cornelius from the good to the best, to give up his small ambitions of piety for life transformation, so Peter too must give up small ambitions. A transformation is about to take place in Peter’s life that is nothing short of an overturning of centuries of thinking.
For so long Peter sought the good. In the years since his call by Jesus, Peter had changed. The foot-in-mouth disease of his early life is gone. Before he denied knowing Jesus, but in Acts he stands before multitudes proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth is the messiah promised by God.
Peter demonstrates how the gospel has transformed his life. In Acts 8 we read of how he and John went to Samaria to welcome those people the Jews hated so much. The walls of cultural alienation are crashing down. What is more, his lodging, repeated several times in this passage for emphasis, shows the great change that has happened in his life
The home in which he is a guest would raise many eyebrows with pious Jews of the day. In 9:43 and in 10:6 we are told what kind of house he is now calling home – a tanner. This lodging would be considered unclean, as a tanner spends his life surrounded by dead animals. The rabbis considered a tanner a social outcast. Peter’s presence shows his open-mindedness, his liberality. But God is about to take that which is good and show him what is best.
Peter’s piety is portrayed in this passage. It is not that Luke is holding up any of this goodness for ridicule, but that even in the face of so much good, there is something so much greater.
Peter goes to the housetop to pray at the sixth hour, about noon. The flat roofs of Mediterranean homes were great places to get away from it all. The interior of the homes were often dark, cramp and smelly, but up on the roof, it was open and breezy. Often stretched out over the roof were awnings to shield one from the sun. Prayer at the sixth hour was not uncommon, but often only for the most devout of Jews. His devoutness is further insinuated in v10 as he was hungry.
The common dining schedule in the ancient world was a meal in the late morning and then a heavier meal later in the afternoon. To be hungry at noon may be because Peter had not yet eaten that day, perhaps he was fasting. While he prays, waiting to eat later, stomach growling ... he falls into a trance. What he sees in his hungry condition is not a kosher buffet, but the most vile and disgusting combination imaginable. All sorts of animals gathered in the sheet mixed together. Animals considered clean and impure. Animals that the Jews were allowed to eat and those that were forbidden by their dietary laws.
Then a voice speaks, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat. The mere thought repulsed Peter. "You've got to be kidding. There is no way I would touch a single animal. Some of them are unclean, forbidden by law. Momma raised me kosher, God! Ham and Swiss on rye has never touched my lips!"
No doubt his stomach turned, his head became light, his heart rate increase. It would be like the dining scene in Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom, a feast of crawling, slimy, slithering creatures, a feast of slugs, centepeds and bats. Not something to tempt the tummy. What made all this worse is that God himself was commanding Peter eat this mess.
In the vision the Lord corrects Peter not once but three times, telling him that what God has made clean is now clean. The vision was confusing for Peter and it may well be for us, too. People often wonder what the kosher food laws mean and how does this vision force Peter to give up his small ambitions.
When God handed down the Law to his people through Moses, God explained what set them apart from the rest of the nations. What they put in their mouth represented how they were to live. In Leviticus 11 these foods are grouped according to specific aspects of different animals. But why these laws? Arbitrary? Rationale known only to God, revealed as a test of obedience? A divine “Because I said so”? Such a view may sound pious, but it is not likely to satisfy.
There is a cultic explanation. Those animals forbidden were used in pagan worship or associated with particular non-Israelite deities. As a mark of fidelity to the covenant Israel must shun these animals entirely. While pigs were sacrificed by pagans, so were clean animals. The bull was sacrificed by the Egyptians and Canaanites, but eaten in Israel.
There is the hygienic theory. This seems very practical to us today as we read time and again of bacterial poisoning from e coli. Oyster lovers have been warned about the dangers of such Epicurean delights. Unclean animals carried diseases, while clean ones are safe to eat., Pork carries trichinosis. Fish that are bottom feeders carry bacteria as do birds of prey. This theory is attractive to moderns obsessed with health. So some conclude that God gave rules for their health, protecting Israel from a bad diet, dangerous vermin, and communicable diseases.
But hygiene accounts for only some prohibitions. Some clean animals are more questionable on hygienic grounds than some of the unclean. Trichinosis is rare in free range pigs. The passage does not hint that health is a concern. The issue is holiness, not health. If health, then why no warnings about poisonous plants? Why did Christ pronounce them clean by the 1st century AD?
The symbolic view sees dietary regulations as neither arbitrary,, nor cultic, nor hygienic, but constructed to teach them an important truth. What could and could not be eaten reinforced the call to holiness, that God demanded perfection.
As the animals are divided into three groups, those animals which may be consumed are those adhering to the prescribed means of locomotion and digestion which correlates to that creature. There is an over-arching order here. Land animals should behave like land animals (split hooves and chew cud), fish should swim fish, birds fly. This is not a moral distinction. It is not that lobsters are morally inferior to perch, but God constructed Israel’s diet to remind them of the need to order their lives. Holiness was crucial and holiness meant living the way God intended for people to live. So these dietary laws became the mark of the Jews which separated them from the unclean Gentiles. Every meal was a lesson.
The food laws taught a good thing, but by the first century that good thing became nothing more than a small ambition – I will keep myself pure even if it means that I do not love my neighbor. In fact, the good (personal righteousness) was maintained at the cost of the best, seeing another come to faith. Peter could set himself apart from Cornelius so much so that he did not have to love him and he could still feel good about himself.
Peter would have maintained that way of thinking had not God sent those messengers and directly commanded this great apostle to receive these visitors and accompany them.
Just as the distinction between beef and pork was over, just as now all God’s creation could be consumed, the pursuit of personal piety which demeans others is not a part of one’s life. Peter understood this when, in v28, he pronounces: “God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.” What Jesus pronounced in Mark 7, Peter now realized, pleasing God is not what I put inside of me, but what God declares me to be.
God will graciously guide us to give up our small ambitions
What are your small ambitions? They need not be bad, misguided nor habits you need to shed from your life. Small ambitions are often the good we do that shields us from the best. It is often that middle class morality, a pleasantness that insulates our lives from ever having to confront our own sinfulness, for it never pushes us outside of our own comfort zone. What is more, our small ambitions may simply be a pretext to avoid people who need to hear the gospel.
Small ambitions look so good, but are so deadly. The answer for Cornelius is not to be more obedient to the law of God, but to have faith in the one who was obedient for him. It is not that prayer and alms are bad, of course not. The trouble is, they can become nothing more than small ambitions, an easy answer to avoid the heart wrenching truth that we can’t be good for God.
The dream taught Peter how to respond. It was not enough that he stay in Simon’s house, a Jew that engaged in unclean work. After the vision he does the unthinkable – he invites these Gentiles in the home and the next day he goes to their place. His vision and actions show a food-fellowship connection.
Food in ancient world was the great uniter, eating with another established a bond which should not be broken. How about us? Can you see the inconsistency of our own lives, that as we shut people out of our home here on earth by refusing to be hospitable, we communicate the same loveless attitude about their eternal home? We may even cite the good, “I have so little time with my family...it’s too expensive to entertain...I wouldn’t know who to invite or what to discuss...” But even good reasons can be nothing more than small ambitions God wants us to give up.
Our excuses may not have to do with time or effort. We may be quite pious in giving reasons not to open our lives to others. Our small ambitions may have the air of morality. To interact with those people may cause me to conform to the world, they may drag me down. Christians are good at creating a theology of isolation, a small ambition erected to avoid the greater good of investing our lives in those who do not know Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Our small ambitions may even be our own theology. Cornelius and Peter weren’t wrong for their praying, but prayer would not bridge the gap, it was not enough. So for us, we can list a multitude of reasons for never coming face to face with someone unless we agree at every point. I recently read a description of this same habit in a sermon by Alexander Whyte from Free St. George’s in Edinburgh:
... how we also bundle up whole nations of men and throw them into the same unclean sheet. Whole churches that we know nothing about but their bad names that we have given them, are in our sheet of excommunication also. All the other denominations of Christians in our land are common and unclean to us. Every party outside our own party in the political state also. We have no language contemptuous enough wherewith to describe their wicked ways and their self seeking schemes. They are four footed beasts and creeping things, Indeed, there are very few men alive, and especially those who live near us, who are not sometimes in the sheet of our scorn; unless it is one here and one there of our own family, or school, or party. And they also come under our scorn and our contempt the moment they have a mind of their own, and interests of their own, and affections and ambitions of their own. (Hughes, Acts, 146)
There is an oft repeated story of a church in a Midwestern college town. The people dressed elegantly and loved the great hymns of the faith that flowed from the pipe organ. Their standards of appearance and formality were deeply ingrained in the culture of the church. Every September, the church's attendance increased dramatically by an influx of college students. On one particular September Sunday morning, the sanctuary was almost completely filled. The ushers had to help people find what little seating remained available. 10 minutes after the service began, a freshman walked through the foyer. He was scandalously dressed in sandals, shorts and a T-shirt. As a startled usher handed him a worship folder, the strange visitor replied, "Thanks Bro.!" As he pushed through the ushers and made his way down the center aisle during a hymn, people stared, but no one made an effort to scoot over and let him have a seat. Finally, he arrived at the front, still without a seat. So, he just sat down cross-legged, right there in the middle aisle by the first pew! Gasps were heard all over the sanctuary. The organist lost her place. The worship leader started the first verse all over again! About that time, Bill Oakly, a stately senior church member began making his way down the aisle. Everyone thought, "Thank God, for Bill Oakley, he'll take care of this rude young man." The deacon was dressed in a beautiful navy blue suit and a colorful silk tie. He ambled down to the young man and to the further shock of the congregation, slowly lowered himself to the carpet beside the young visitor. He extended a hand to the freshman and said, "I'm Bill Oakley, welcome to our church." They sat there on the floor throughout the service.
Whatever blocks you from loving your neighbor, whatever excuse you give saying you can not reach out to someone different than you, the good thing that keeps you from the best ... that is a small ambition. But how can we ever change? How can we be different?
The answer is found in Ephesians 2 read earlier. There Paul gives the theological explanation of the historical account we examined this morning. The union of Jew and Gentile came about not by denying the good, by ignoring what God commanded, but was created for us in Christ.
Verse 14 – he is our peace, he has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. How? V15 by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances that he might crate in himself on new man in place of two, so making peace. The power you and I need to step out of those places that are so comfortable and easy, the means by which we give up small ambitions which hinder us from loving the unlovely is nothing short of the gospel. What we require is nothing short than the mind of Christ, seeking his guidance in how we live each and every day. As we acknowledge that we cling to our small ambitions, let us pray that God would propel us into a world, empowered by his Spirit, to love his world.
