Why would you do such a thing? This question was put to Peter in today’s first reading. What did Peter do? “You entered the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them.” (Acts 11:3). Some Jewish Christians (“circumcised believers”) were aghast that Peter would enter the house of the Gentile “Cornelius, a centurion of the Cohort called the Italica” (Acts 10:1). Peter not only entered but also had a meal with them. These Jewish Christians still saw Gentiles as unclean and to be avoided so they objected strongly to Peter’s actions.
Peter replied that he did not want to do it but God made him. In a vision God made clear to him that “What God has made clean; you are not to call profane.” This vision happened three times just to make sure that Peter got the message. Peter had learned and was now trying to teach his fellow Jewish Christians that God had made these Gentiles “clean” and no one should call them unclean. As we hear at the end of today’s first reading, they got the message: “When they heard this, they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, ‘God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.’”
We see the struggle of the early church as they tried to embody the message and mission of Jesus. The final words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel were a commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20). The early church, like the church throughout the ages, had to overcome its cultural and religious biases, its tendency to exclude the “unholy.” There is a tendency for religious people to judge and exclude people who are not “clean enough” or holy enough. God challenges us not to judge: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” We are commissioned like the first disciples: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19).
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