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Theology - Liturgical: Eucharistic meditation

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Acts 10:28: Peter said, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.”

Peter summarizes all the hubbub of the New Testament in this one verse. This is what most of Paul’s conflicts were about, and what the book of Acts was about, and what the book of Revelation is about.On the one side, you have traditional (not biblical) Jewish rules about avoiding contact with foreigners, and especially avoiding table fellowship. To eat with Gentiles is, for a Jew, to share their pollution, and to be unfit for life in Israel. So the Jews kept their distance.

Then along comes Jesus eating with tax gatherers and other sinners, and then His disciples come along preaching the gospel to Gentiles and incorporating Jews and Gentiles into a single community, assembled around a single table. It is a social revolution, and the Jews don’t like it.

But in opposing this, the Jews are quite directly quenching the Spirit. As Pastor Sumpter has pointed out, the Spirit is the main player in this whole episode. After Peter sees his vision, the Spirit reveals that men, Gentiles, are looking for him (10:19), and the Spirit tells him to accompany the Gentiles despite his misgivings (11:15). While Peter speaks to Cornelius and his friends, the Spirit falls on them, so that Peter and the Jews are amazed that the gifts of the Spirit are poured out on Gentiles (10:33-34). Following the Spirit’s lead, Peter says that the Gentiles should be baptized, marked with the mark of Jesus, just like the Jews (10:47). Throughout, the Spirit is the one pressing Jews and Gentiles into association, to eat together at the same table.

And two thousand years on, the Spirit still hasn’t finished. He won’t be done until He has driven Serbs and Croats and Bosnians to this table, until Palestinian and Israelis both exhibit the gifts of the Spirit and are washed to share this meal, . The Spirit will continue blowing where He will until an innumerable multitude from every corner of the globe is here, at this table, sharing in the bread and wine. Jesus said the temple was a house of prayer for all nations; and when the temple fell, this table was left standing, a Eucharistic feast for all tribes and tongues and nations and peoples.

This table is part of the epiphany of the Son, the manifestation of His glory to the Gentiles.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 7:51 am

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Theology - Liturgical: Eucharistic meditation

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