“CORNELIUS”

            The Apostle Simon Peter, deemed the Rock of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, had been sent away with a flea in his ear by that upstart Paul from Tarsus. This humiliating story is told in Galatians chapter 2 when Paul rounded on Peter why he believed that all Christians, whether Jewish or not, should live the same as Jews.

            The Galatians themselves were an example of this unnecessary victimisation. They had little or no background in what we call the Old Testament so Paul had to start from square one to present to them the good news about this Jesus whom he called Christ. This epistle is the result of the events in Acts 14:8-23,27. After Paul had left, the area was visited by Christians from Jerusalem determined to ensure the Galatians Christians filled in the missing Jewish gaps.

This included the whole law of Moses, especially the dreaded Leviticus, including the stipulation that all faithful males be circumcised (ouch!), a painful practice from which we males are thankfully now exempt. And Peter had, without thinking this through, had gone along with this. Paul was livid at this misguided leadership display when they met at Antioch and told Peter so.  

The flea in Peter’s ear had not retreated when he arrived at Joppa (Acts 10). While waiting for lunch, he dozed off on the roof and dreamed of all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds coming to him and a command to kill and eat from them. Being still a good Jew, Peter protested to God, quoting from Leviticus as one does as if God cannot read, aghast at eating anything “common or unclean”.

Back came the voice, “What God has cleaned, you must not call unclean.” The penny was beginning to drop for Peter as he was invited to visit the centurion Cornelius from the Italian Cohort, as Gentile as they come. The rest is history continuing into Acts chs 11, 15. Several of the chapters in Acts are out of sequence when first compiled but once sorted out the message becomes clearer.

Because of that historic meeting between Peter and Cornelius, stimulated by Paul, the good news of Jesus Christ has come down to us. Peter probably accompanied Cornelius when he returned to Rome so here we are.

We are here because our spiritual ancestors were prepared to step out of their comfortable box to include those they had previously left out. Cornelius keeps coming to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church through our yesterdays and today, knocking on the door, strangers to what we have become used to, to seek inclusion.

Cornelius comes from different ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, from women seeking ordination, from those with all sorts of disability, and from people of differing and diverse sexual orientation. That voice still comes back to us, again and again, just when we thought we were comfortable in our own familiar ways, “What God has cleaned, you must not call unclean.”