OK, still working on the consistent blogging thing. I blame the wonky keyboard of my laptop!
We’re moving on to the New Testament now for some further examples of God breaking down barriers and using the “outsiders” to share His message. Again, for lack of a better word I’m using “Reflexivity” to describe this phenomenon. As I see it, Mission/the Word of God/Revelation comes from God, but our previous concept has been that it comes from God, then channels through us, the “people of God” and moves on to the outside world.
There are times, however, when we need to hear something from God and have closed our ears or even our gates to what He is trying to say. I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that we continually narrow who we consider a “person of God” but we’ll go more into this later. As Jesus said, the message will come through, even the rocks will cry out. Here is the next part of the reflexivity paper regarding Acts 10:
This story illustrates the reflexivity of mission in a succinct and clear manner. Mission is flowing two ways, from Cornelius to Peter as well as from Peter to Cornelius. Who is the “person of God” in this passage? I contend that both men are men of God, with pieces of a larger puzzle. It takes their interaction to learn the truth about God showing no partiality to a specific people group (Acts 10:34-35).
The central notion to this passage is that God is doing a new thing and wishes to teach his people more about himself. This seems to be, however, a lesson that Jesus’ early followers were not getting on their own (and still struggled with vehemently after Peter and Cornelius’ meeting). It was not a part of their missionary practice or strategy, so God sends a missionary to the circumcised believers in the form of Cornelius.
Lesslie Newbigin relates that most of the advances he has seen during missionary experience mirror the Peter and Cornelius model rather than a strategic plan of sharing and witness. About this passage Newbigin states, “It was not part of any missionary ‘strategy’ devised by the church. It was the free and sovereign deed of God, who goes before his church” (Newbigin 1995:64). The people of God, if they are to truly be his people, must follow the Spirit wherever he leads, even (and especially) when he leads us where we do not want to go.
Charles Van Engen argues that the true conversion in this passage belongs to Peter and not to Cornelius. Much like Jesus’ reinstatement of Peter on the beach in John 21, Peter is told three times to rise and eat, not deeming unholy what God has made clean (Van Engen 2004:137-39). Likewise, the whole of the circumcised believing community are receiving the revelation that they may no longer remain a simple sect of contemporary Judaism (Glasser 2003:271). God is establishing a new understanding of and in his people, and the borders formerly drawn are no longer applicable. Indeed, one is led to wonder if these borders ever were.
Peter is given the extremely visceral illustration of the household of Cornelius being seized by the Spirit and speaking in tongues. The same Spirit has fallen on this Roman household, and there can be no doubt that what God has given to the Jewish believers is for the whole world. Helen Barrett Montgomery quotes Goethe in pointing out that the Bible is the Book of nations, not simply Israel, and Peter is given a first-hand lesson in this reality (Montgomery 2000:7).
It is important here also to note that Cornelius sent for Peter, and not vice versa. Both men are engaging in cross-cultural mission, but Cornelius, by the prompting of the angel, is the initiator of the two. This is not simply an example of centripetal mission. Cornelius, a God-fearing Roman, is responding to the prompting of God to send for Peter. It is not a matter of Peter living a certain life in public, which is in turn attractive to certain people.
God is seeking to lead his people into a new area of mission understanding and uses a surprising person in order to accomplish this task. The two servants and the soldier Cornelius sends to seek out Peter are later identified as sent by God himself (Acts 10:20). It would seem, then, that this group is the second set of cross-cultural missionaries in Acts (Phillip and the Ethiopian being the first example). Mission in this passage is revealed to be reflexive because there is no simple receiver of the message. The revelation is dynamic, not static, and both Peter and Cornelius are giving and receiving. Both men are converted in their way, and it is clear that God has torn down a cultural wall built by his people.
is it ok if i use this post when our homegroup talks about cornelius in a few weeks? i like it a lot.
yes indeed. i’d say anybody can use anything here, but i would ask that you let me know what came of it. where there good rebuttals? other things that i missed? anything that keeps the conversation going i’m all for.