Acts 10: Hospitality That Breaks Down Barriers

Introduction

"Sometimes something unexpected happens and leaves us speechless." With these words, Bruce Naden, pastor at Streatham Baptist Church in London, opens the fifth week of the series "40 Days of Hospitality." Today's text is Acts 10:24-48: the apostle Peter enters the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion.

To illustrate the unexpected, the pastor tells the story of his football team, Leicester City. A band of "misfits, outcasts and rejects," promoted to the Premier League, saved from relegation by the skin of their teeth, then handed to a manager who had just been sacked by the Greek national team. The bookmakers put the odds of them winning the league at 5,000 to 1, longer than the odds of finding the Loch Ness Monster (2,000 to 1) or of Elvis Presley turning up alive (2,500 to 1). Gary Lineker even promises to present his show in his underwear if Leicester win. Leicester win. Commentator Peter Drury sums it up: "Leicester and the world are left wondering, wide-eyed, delighted, bewildered: how is this possible?"

That is how, says Bruce Naden, we should turn the pages of the book of Acts: in it, God mobilizes a movement of misfits that shakes the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. The previous week, the series looked at Pentecost and the shared life of the early church. In chapter 9, Saul meets the risen Jesus: "Once a persecutor, now a proclaimer." In chapter 10, God opens the door of salvation to the Gentiles. It is not only a centurion who is converted, but also the apostle Peter. From this, the preacher draws six lessons on hospitality.

Outline of the message

1. Hospitality begins when our boundaries are challenged

Peter receives a vision of a sheet full of animals considered unclean. But it is about much more than food: Peter holds deeply rooted ideas about who is pure, who is acceptable, and who is worthy of sharing his table.
Leviticus contains a long list of unclean foods and people. In the vision, the Spirit of God is clear: "What God has cleansed, you must not call unclean."
God is not correcting a labeling error in the Old Testament. The unclean things of the Torah point to a reality: "We are all rebels. We are all unclean because of our sin. But in Jesus, all things and all people can be made clean." The Old Testament is a shadow that announces the truth fulfilled in Jesus.
All of Peter's categories shatter when the Spirit moves: "God had to change Peter's guest list before he could make him a hospitable host."
The pastor rejoices in a God who gives visions, dreams, prophetic words and words of knowledge, and he asks for more of them for the church. But he insists: "We do not need a vision, a prophetic word or a dream to become a people of hospitality. God has given us his Word."
From Genesis to Revelation, hospitality runs through the Bible. God welcomed us in creation, he welcomed us in salvation, and he will welcome us in eternity. "Everything is grace," and our welcome of others is a response to that grace.

2. Hospitality moves from theory to practice

Peter does not simply approve of the vision in theory. As soon as there is a knock at his door, he brings in the three men sent from Caesarea, puts them up for the night, and then leaves with them.
Then he enters the house of Cornelius. The gesture is radical: Cornelius is not only a Gentile, he is a Roman centurion, an occupier of the land, someone Peter was expected to hate. Sharing his table meant being seen as a traitor to the nation.
The preacher makes an aside about his own country: some people today want to redefine what it means to be British or English according to skin color or origin. He mentions those who call the lifeboat crews of the RNLI traitors because they rescue everyone who arrives by boat, whoever they are. "They are not traitors."
Peter crosses political, cultural and religious barriers. This is no longer a theory, it is a call to obey.
The pastor returns to the story told the week before: ducks go to the ducks' church, the duck pastor preaches passionately that they have wings to fly, they all shout their "hallelujahs" and "amens"... and then waddle home. "God keep us from being only hearers of the Word and not doers."
His question to the congregation: "Over these few weeks, have you moved? It does not matter how big the step is, but have you moved?" What would hospitality look like if it were practiced across cultures and generations, in the street, in cafés, in workplaces and in neighborhoods?

3. Hospitality sees the person, not the label

Cornelius gathers his relatives and close friends. When Peter arrives, a whole household is waiting to hear what God has to say. Peter begins to understand that God shows no favoritism.
It is so easy to see people through labels: immigrant, asylum seeker, racist, rich, poor, foreigner, unbeliever, Muslim, Hindu.
Hospitality invites us to look beyond the category: a person created in the image of God and, even more, someone for whom Jesus agreed to die.
The gospel undoes every attempt to make ethnicity, nationality, social rank or cultural familiarity a condition of belonging.
"Hospitality begins when we stop asking, 'Are these people our kind of people?' and start asking, 'How might God already be at work in this person?'"

4. Hospitality creates space to share the gospel

Cornelius does not invite Peter for a simple chat or a coffee. He gathers his people because he wants to hear what God has to say. The house becomes the place where the gospel is proclaimed and encountered.
Cornelius already feared God. He had abandoned idols and, a sign of a reoriented life, he gave to the poor, something a Roman, and even more an occupier, would not have done. Peter could have told himself that he did not need to share the gospel with him. "You probably know people like that. They believe in God. They do good. But they do not know Jesus."
Around a table, trust is built, people feel seen, and they lower their guard. The table becomes a place of listening, prayer, testimony and discovery.
Bruce Naden learned this as a sports chaplain. When people asked him what he did, he answered: "I hang out with intention." Getting to know people, loving them, serving them, and praying that God would open opportunities to give an account of the hope that was in him. His training kept telling him: "Remember that you are a guest." So he was welcomed and fed: breakfast, lunch, sometimes dinner. "All I did was pray, show up and eat a lot."
A Muslim player, who later became captain, met him every week over coffee to talk about leadership. After six or seven weeks, he said to him: "Bruce, I want to know more about this Jesus." He came to Christ and was married at a Christian wedding. "It does not always end like that," the pastor says. "All it took was to pray, show up and love well."
A young player of 18 or 19, from a Jewish family who were not very observant, wanted to reconnect with his roots. Rather than explaining right away how Jesus fulfills all of this, the pastor walked alongside him, taking an interest in his discoveries and his festivals. One day, the young man wanted to talk about Jesus. The pastor has lost touch with him and does not know where he is now, but he knows that he was drawn by the truth of the gospel.
"We set the table, but it is God who meets us there, us and others." What if our meals, our home groups, our community cafés and our circles of friends became places where honest questions about faith can be asked safely?

5. Hospitality changes the host as much as the guest

"Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism." Peter arrives convinced that he is the one bringing the message, and he does have good news to proclaim: life, forgiveness and a new beginning in Jesus, who died and rose again.
But Peter is also being formed as a disciple. God uses the encounter to broaden his understanding of God and of what the good news offers.
The pastor repeats a line from the previous week, which he himself calls "annoying" but true, and which he discovered in South Africa: "You cannot be fully formed as a disciple by your own tribe," by people who look like you, think like you and received the same upbringing.
Everyone has blind spots, emotional, psychological, worldview-related, and cultural. Some certainties inherited from childhood need to be dismantled, by the power of the gospel and through the eyes of a disciple of Jesus from another culture.
"I cannot become more like Jesus without you. And you cannot become more like Jesus without a loud-mouthed, white, working-class bloke from Leicester."
We think of hospitality as something we do for others. By welcoming, we discover that we have as much to learn as they do.

6. Hospitality leaves room for the surprising work of the Holy Spirit

Peter has not finished speaking, he has not made any appeal, when the Holy Spirit comes down on Cornelius and his household. If confirmation was needed, here it is: the sign of entry into the people of God is no longer circumcision, it is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in every child of God who receives Jesus by faith.
"Not circumcised, but baptized." The pastor rejoices in this, he who was a pagan who came to Christ at 17.
Where does the Spirit come down? In a house. God is not confined to our buildings, our programs or our cultural expectations. "Do not put a fence around the places where you think God has the right to work." People are saved in church, but also in locker rooms, canteens, prison cells and around tables.
Peter reminds us that the witnesses "ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." Jesus ate and drank before his resurrection, and after it. As the Father sent him, he sends us.
"What if revival happened one table at a time? One house at a time? One encounter at a time?" The pastor makes clear that this is not about stopping coming on Sundays, God also meets people in worship. But "we have asked the Sunday morning gathering to carry the whole load, and that is not its role."
The main place of the Spirit's work is outside the walls, in the ordinary. For him, it is a stadium seat at AFC Wimbledon, in League One, next to a friend undergoing cancer treatment. "Why would the Holy Spirit not meet us there?" God wants to meet his people and others in the ordinary, and then do the extraordinary.

7. Conclusion: being a Sea of Galilee people

Israel has two seas. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee receive water from the same source. The Dead Sea keeps it, and it is dead. The Sea of Galilee lets it flow on, and it overflows with life.
Above the congregation, a banner proclaims that wherever the river flows, everything will live. The pastor sees in it the picture of the life to which God calls us: to receive his grace and let that life flow to others in welcome and hospitality.
The Spirit breathes new life into a community marked by radical shared life, which overflows into a hungry and thirsty world and brings down the barriers of ethnicity, race and class.
"If you have received it, share it. Let us be a Sea of Galilee people."
His closing prayer asks forgiveness for the barriers we have built and the people we have neglected, and for the courage to put hospitality into practice: "Help us to see people, not labels, to recognize where you are already at work, and to join you there."

Key takeaways

God had to change Peter's guest list before making him a host: hospitality begins when the Spirit shakes our boundaries.
You do not need a vision to welcome people: God's Word shows from beginning to end a God who crosses boundaries, and our welcome is a response to his grace.
Behind every label is a person created in the image of God, for whom Jesus died, and in whom God may already be at work.
The table creates a space where the gospel can be heard, and the encounter transforms the one who welcomes as much as the one who is welcomed.
The Holy Spirit is not limited to the church building: he works in homes, locker rooms, stadiums, in the ordinary of our lives.

Personal application

Since the start of this month, have you taken a step, even a small one, from the theory of hospitality toward its practice?
What labels do you spontaneously put on certain people, and how could you look for where God is already at work in them?
Whom could you invite to your table or meet over a coffee, with the intention of getting to know, love and serve them?
Who around you comes from another culture or another generation, and what could they teach you about Jesus?
In which ordinary place of your week have you unintentionally put a fence around the work of the Holy Spirit?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

What does the vision of the sheet given to Peter in Acts 10 mean?

For the preacher, the vision speaks of much more than food. Peter had fixed ideas about who was pure, acceptable and worthy of sharing his table. God tells him not to call unclean what he has cleansed: in Jesus, all things and all people can be made clean. God had to change Peter's guest list before making him a hospitable host.

Why was Peter's entry into the house of Cornelius so radical?

Cornelius was not only a Gentile, regarded as unclean by a Jew. He was a Roman centurion, an occupier of the land. Sharing his table meant being seen as a traitor to the nation. Yet Peter crosses the political, cultural and religious barriers, because God taught him to call no man unclean.

Do you need a vision or a prophetic word to practice hospitality?

No. The preacher rejoices that God still gives visions and prophetic words, but he affirms that we do not need them to become a people of hospitality. God has given us his Word, and from Genesis to Revelation it shows a God who crosses boundaries and welcomes. Our welcome of others is a response to his grace.