The Cross Cultural Conversation
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Over the last month we have looked at 5 conversations. We looked at our conversation with God. That we as the church are called to have forgiving conversations. We
are called to have challenging conversations correctly. We are called to have encour-
aging conversations, good news conversations. The last message for this series is the
cross cultural conversation.
The church has a mandate to care about, pray about, talk about and go to people who are not like us.
That is our mandate in the Scriptures and throughout church history, that has been one marker in the church that has kept it different than every other organization. We would love our enemy, we would go to the outcast, the lost, the lonely, the refugee.
We would actively look for others who were not like us because those like and not like us need the Gospel. This has been the case since the events of Acts 10 which we will look at this morning. Having cross cultural conversations is how you and I got here this morning. Acts 10 is the beginning of how a small band of people of Jewish faith, who trusted in Jesus. Became a worldwide, history wide movement.
It is because, for 2000 year, men and women have crossed boundaries. Have left what’s comfortable, have left who is comfortable and have crossed boundaries.
Have you ever crossed a boundary?
Maybe you have been to a different culture,
that is crossing a boundary. Way to be Gospel active! Maybe you have crossed a rela-
tional boundary. You’ve had conversations with someone who is unlike you. Maybe
they are racially different or maybe they have a different sexual identity. Maybe they
don’t look, act, talk like you. But you have crossed a boundary to interact and care for them.
That is Gospel active!
But it’s hard! It’s difficult to cross boundaries. Because you don’t know what to do
or how to act.
I’ve been grateful to be able to travel in my life. And a couple of years
1ago when Robin and I were in Uruguay we took some time to take a walk around the
neighborhood. We walked into the local grocery store to get some stuff for lunch. We
had to get some lunch meat and walked to the counter. I had been working on my
Spanish so I thought I would try it out and I failed miserably. I was nervous, I was anx-
ious. I didn’t know what to do or say. We had a list and Robin took it and just pointed
and got what we needed.
The point: If you are going to cross cultures, take Robin with you.
The real point: crossing boundaries is difficult!
It’s hard because we would often rather stay where it’s comfortable. We would often want to stay where we know with who we know. And so we often want to cozy into
what is most comfortable and stay there. When we do that we have conversations with those we love and care for. And that is good. But the call is to care for and share with those who are very much unlike us. IT’s too easy to forget the call to cross boundaries.
It takes constant reminding, almost part of the process of following Jesus in the world is to grow more and more cross cultural the more we trust Christ. This is where our primary conversation comes in.
When we are reconciled to Christ. When that relationship is restored, then we recognize God has met our need in Christ, we overcome the reality that life is all about us. We are saved from the idol of ourselves and recognize there are bigger things in the world.
Central to the Bible is the reality that God has crossed every boundary imaginable to come to us. He left glory. He came to the earth to seek and save us. In Christ God knew shame, and anger, and sadness, and loss. God knew pain and death.
There is no rock left unturned, no boundary left uncrossed for God to find us.
Central to the Bible is that the reality is that God calls us to cross boundaries as followers of Christ.
We are called not to leave rocks unturned or leave anything uncrossed.
God has crossed every boundary so that we could do the very same as the church
God has crossed every boundary so that we could do the very same as the church
So as we look into this narrative in the book of Acts we are reminded of how much God has done and how He calls us to cross boundaries for the sake of those He loves.
This story in Acts 10 will primarily deal with a guy named Cornelius and a guy named Peter.
Peter is a disciple of Jesus and Cornelius is a guy who is spiritually curious. He is looking for God. And God hears him.
The Need
The Need
At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, “Cornelius.” And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea.”
We are constantly entering into ongoing conversations. We rarely start one from scratch.
We bring up something from awhile back. “Remember that time we were on vacation together.”
We enter in halfway through. “What are we talking about?”
Even when we think that we are starting a conversation, it has to do with some-
thing that we already have an idea about? “Have you ever seen the tv show Lost?”
When we speak we are pulling in other ideas, thoughts, historical realities, concepts, stories and otherwise.
The conversation this morning begins with the idea that we didn’t start the conversation.
When we think about the people God has called us to serve: one another and our neighbor, we are entering into a conversation already started.
Peter is where this conversation is started but the the only way to understand what
Peter is dealing with is to understand how God cares for people who are unlike Peter.
We meet Cornelius in this passage. He was a high ranking official in the Roman Army living in the center of Roman political power in Judea. Cornelius is not a Jewish
man. But he is devout the Scripture says. God meets with Cornelius to tell him that he needs to talk with someone.
God begins the conversation.
We are always catching up.
So Cornelius hears that God wants to tell him something and that he should sent for Peter.
Peter is going to be following up to what God is doing.
This will be difficult for Peter.
Cornelius is not a Jewish man.
Peter is a Jewish man.
Peter, based on the OT, on Jewish Law, would never enter into anyones home. It
would not have been looked on upon as good or redemptive. IT wouldn’t have even
crossed his mind as something necessary to doing.
But God has already begun the conversation. There is a need that Peter is called upon to answer
There is a need that the church is called upon to answer.
Every person who is unlike you is a person God has begun a conversation with. Whether you would like Him to or not.
Here’s the wonderful thing about God, He is not waiting for our opinion on who to love and who to save. He does it and calls us into it.
Cornelius sends some of his staff to Joppa to find Peter. While they are travelling, Peter is dealing with his own issue.
With God
With God
The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.
This is an interesting story. Because it has some very specific cultural items we have to understand.
So first, Peter gets hungry and wants a snack. Not a problem. He goes up while it’s
being prepared and then the story gets strange real quick,
So Peter gets a spiritual vision of a large sheet like a tablecloth that begins to descend and there are all sorts of animals on it. And the voice of God tells Him to “kill and eat.”
But what is strange about this image ais that it is filled with “reptiles and birds.” Peter, as a Jewish man, had to adhere to all sorts of dietary laws in his faith. He could eat certain kinds of food and couldn’t eat others. The animals on the sheet were animals he couldn’t eat.
But the voice of God was insistent that Peter should kill and eat. The laws that had restrained him no longer do. Three times God tells him to eat the food he would not have been able to earlier. The rules and laws that distinctly made him Jewish no
longer applied in the same way. In Christ, all people are drawn to Himself and are not limited by cultural or dietary laws. On it’s own that is a wild story, but it really clicks into place in his connection with Cornelius.
Peter was challenged to do something other than what he had otherwise always done. And Peter, right after this vision will be challenged to go somewhere he otherwise would not have gone.
And this Challenge arrives entirely by the voice and activity of God.
And it wasn’t just that Peter had to discern what was right, in the next moment, he had to act. There was a collision that God had been orchestrating that Peter got to be a part of
The Other Side of the Door
The Other Side of the Door
And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”
So Peter leaves and goes with this group to Cornelius’ house. And Cornelius has
gathered guests and families to listen to whatever Peter had to say. God told Cornelius to get Peter so whatever was going to be said, Cornelius made sure as many
people as he could find heard it.
And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.”
Peter opens with his lesson. What he learned.
Peter would not have done the day before what He was doing now because of what God had done. To entirely break up his ethnocentrism. A Jewish man should not associate or visit with another nation.
The world Peter knew on the other side of the threshold is entirely different than on the one he found himself on with Cornelius. But God moved him into that room.
And Peter goes on to tell them
So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all),
God set everything up.
This is where we see freedom. Because the Gospel is never bound. And Peter is no longer bound by his own ethnocentrism and Cornelius is no longer, in Christ, bound in his sin.
It is on the other side of the doorway where there is freedom in Christ.
Crossing the line of this doorframe was a significant boundary for Peter. Without the work of God we will likely find it hard to do as well.
We like people like us. We like things that we like. Boundaries are there because we want to keep like things together. It feels natural and normal. But according to God’s work in Christ Jesus, it is not.
Because when we group like things together, we dismiss all things not like that thing.
Our brains are category making machines.
We can’t help but not. But in doing so we create boundaries. We create these
boundaries and call them good. We feel good about them. They make us feel cozy.
And that may be true. For you. But it is not true for the Gospel.
I know immigration is at the top of the political and cultural list right now. And no matter what you think about the state of the country, and no matter what you think about the policies of the country, if Christ is Lord this morning, we have to think differently about how we handle people unlike us. Historically Christians has crossed lines other people refused to. There is no reason that changes. We are called to those unlike us.
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
Jesus destroyed the dividing wall of hostility. Called so because when we create boundaries that keep people apart it creates automatic hostility on those people who aren’t like us. The cross obliterated our option to keep people apart and separated. Jesus died so we would not have to contend with the poison of hostility. Your role, my role, is to go to the other side of the threshold.
God is constantly, endlessly, perpetually colliding needs and acts. The needs of others who are crying out with the call from Christians to act.
That collision is often cross cultural. And if you call on the name of the Lord Jesus this morning, who crossed boundaries for you, then the call is to follow Him in crossing boundaries for others.
This is the story of our denomination.
In 1881 the founder of our denomination, AB Simpson, resigned from a fancy
pants church in New York City because it was not crossing cultural boundaries. He felt
called to invite people into relationship with Christ who had been otherwise over-
looked in culture.
So he went down to the harbor in New York City and began preaching the Gospel
to Italian dockworkers. These were men who had just immigrated to America who
everyone else had ignored or scorned. Simpson preached. He crossed the doorway.
You and I are here today because of acts 10 and here today because of Simpsons
work in NY on the docks.
HE found the people most unlike him a most forgotten and preached the Gospel.
We go to people unlike us. Who is the person most unlike you that you are on a collision course with?
Who doesn’t look like you? Who doesn’t act like you? Who has done things different than you?
God is colliding needs and acts. You are an act. Someone is a need.
It is beyond borders. And the call of the church is to look and find those very unlike us.
Lead through a song
Then video about love from above
Then Dawn comes up
