Acts 10:1-16
Andrew Scales
October 15, 2023
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During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I worked as an intern on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. And, no offense to the many fine PC(USA) churches in the metro DC area, but I found myself drawn to Sunday services at St. John’s Episcopal Church near my apartment. One week, I heard a sermon there in which the priest, Rev. Luis Leon, began with a simple statement: “God has no grandchildren, only children.”
“God has no grandchildren, only children.” It sounded odd, but then the priest began to explain. God speaks to people in each generation to bear witness to peace, love, and justice. Maybe God is calling you to participate in God’s story. Not someone else who’s older or wiser or more equipped and you get to tag along, but you. What would it look like to answer?
That sermon has stuck with me for the past twenty years, and sometimes I’ll say it to our students in Princeton Presbyterians: “God has no grandchildren, only children.” There’s something in that saying that gets at the radical freedom of God. The Holy Spirit can call anyone to get involved in the work of healing that the world needs. They do not need permission from a parent, a religious institution, a political authority, to do what is right in their time and place. While we can learn from the past, the Spirit of God is alive in this time, too, and our task is to try and catch up to what God is doing today.
This morning’s reading from the Book of Acts is about members of two communities between whom reconciliation seems impossible. Luke introduces us to Cornelius, a high-ranking officer in the Roman army. He’s stationed in a bustling coastal city called Caesarea Maritima, the epicenter of Roman life in ancient Judea. He is the paterfamilias of a traditional Roman household, the patron of a complicated network that might include a spouse and children, extended relatives, business associates, slaves and servants, visiting guests, and soldiers under his command. By Roman standards, he is a pillar of his community, honorable for his sense of duty to those depending on him.
Cornelius’s life could not be more different than Peter’s. Since the resurrection of Jesus, Peter has been planting new churches all over Judea and Galilee, often on the run from the authorities. After raising a woman named Tabitha to life in the coastal town of Joppa, Peter decides to stay with a tanner named Simon. The process that tanners used to soften and treat animal skins in order to make leather was really gross, and it meant that the whole house smelled. Peter seems to be on his own as a guest in a house that’s so stinky it stands on the coast outside the town limits for the sea breeze and the isolation. Luke loves to heighten contrasts, and so you have a story about someone who’s a platinum member of the local Roman baths, and someone who’s stuck in a smelly house.
There are deeper divisions that keep these two men apart than their immediate circumstances. The common wisdom was that by custom, by religious conviction, by personal preference, Romans and Jews like Cornelius and Peter do not associate with each other. They do not visit one another’s homes, they do not share meals, they avoid talking to one another if they can help it.
But neither Peter nor Cornelius’s lives fit into these neat boxes. Luke describes Cornelius as a “Godfearer,” someone who deeply loves and admires Jewish faith and life. He has not made a full conversion to Judaism, but he devotes himself to two markers of Jewish piety: regular prayer to God and generous almsgiving to people in need. And Peter likewise has engaged with Romans in positive ways before.
The seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel tells of Jesus healing a centurion’s servant and commending his faith. Peter has seen his teacher and friend hold up a despised Roman officer as a model for trust in God.
While Cornelius prays in a private room of his bustling townhouse near the town plaza of Caesarea Maritima, and Peter climbs up onto the roof of his guesthouse to pray, and maybe to escape the smell, both men experience the presence of God in a vision. The Spirit of God speaks to them and tells them to seek one another out. They hear God’s voice and set out to find each other.
That’s the end of our reading, but it’s not the end of the story. Because the Book of Acts goes on to describe this astonishing encounter in which Peter and Cornelius listen to one another and see each other as human beings bearing the image of God. Cornelius, whose life has been marked by a profound longing for God, is told by Jesus’ closest friend that it is true, he is precious in God’s sight, he belongs in the family of God.
And Peter, who has been told to avoid and be afraid of Roman centurions his whole life, has this realization God has broken past the barriers of his religious tradition to include anyone who hears and says “yes” to the Spirit’s call.
In their time, Peter and Cornelius were able to acknowledge God’s ability to do something new between two human beings despite passionate enmities that had persisted between their communities for generations. The signs of God’s work included two people listening to one another, engaging in dialogue with one another, respecting each other as a fellow child of God. When it comes to the hard, sometimes seemingly impossible work of reconciliation, maybe it’s true to say that God has no grandchildren, only children.
This week, I’ve found myself at a loss for what to say as we reckon with the news of conflict in Israel and Palestine. It was sobering to hear my chaplain colleagues Rabbi Gil Steinlauf and Rabbi Eitan Webb share about the fear, the anger, the trauma of a terrorist organization like Hamas committing acts of horrific violence against civilians.
These are fresh and deep wounds that are layered upon generations of conflict and an even longer history of anti-Semitism. We have a responsibility to speak out and condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms.
This weekend, Israeli Defense Forces have ordered an evacuation of more than one million Palestinians from the northern half of Gaza, a demand that the United Nations describes as “impossible.”[1] We have seen on the news the grief and suffering of the Palestinian people as they contend with hospitals without power, no access to clean water to drink or fuel for vehicles to take people to safety.
The voices of Middle Eastern colleagues and friends from Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt come to mind and their longing for Palestinian refugees and members of Gaza and the West Bank to live in a free and just society.
Right now, hope for peace seems bleak amid escalating violence in Israel and Palestine. What can neighbors—neighbors in Princeton, neighbors from a different faith tradition, neighbors who know and love Jews and Palestinians–what can we do in a time like this?
I think we begin by reminding ourselves that God cares deeply about what is happening right now in our world. God is not indifferent or far off from us. God is grieving with us and calling upon anyone who will listen to join the work of peace.
And the work of peace involves seeing the image of God that lies deeper than the divisions we have inherited for ourselves and our neighbors.
You and I, members worshipping here at Nassau Presbyterian Church, we are not going to resolve the deep political crises and escalating war in Israel-Palestine. And yet the call of the Spirit of God comes to us not to stand apart or pretend that it doesn’t matter to us. Because our Jewish neighbors are grieving. Our Palestinian neighbors are grieving. These are people we know, and work with, and love, and they are in deep pain.
And when someone we love is in pain, we commit to the work of making them feel seen and heard. Like Cornelius and Peter, we can refuse to accept broad assumptions and easy stereotypes about communities that are different from us, and see instead human beings who are beloved by God. We can gather the courage to listen to them, sit beside them in their hurt, and engage in dialogue as friends.
We can do the work of learning about this crisis—its deep history and its current challenges—from respected sources. And when we have done these things, we can find ways to get involved that contribute toward a vision of a just and free society for everyone. Showing up, listening, learning about the crisis, discerning appropriate ways to help… these practices are the beginnings of understanding and solidarity.
As we said before, God doesn’t have any grandchildren, only children. God speaks to people in each generation to bear witness to peace, love, and justice. Maybe God is calling you to participate in God’s story. Not someone else who’s older or wiser or more equipped and you get to tag along, but you. What would it look like to answer?
[1] Steve Hendrix, Louisa Loveluck, et al, “Israel orders 1 million Gazans to evacuate; U.N. says that’s impossible,” The Washington Post. October 13, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/13/israel-gaza-hamas-war-west-bank/. Accessed October 14, 2023.