"Breaking Bread Together"

It’s not just what Peter is preaching, but to whom and where. Yes, Jesus is risen, and that’s at the heart of the message the apostle brings to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and his household. But it’s also the fact that Peter is not only preaching to honest-to-goodness citizens of the Roman Empire but is breaking bread with them that constitutes the real miracle. And it is the Holy Spirit that makes this not only possible, but inevitable!

            On July 1, 1968, the popular comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz showed Charlie Brown staring sadly out to sea. His sister Sally had thrown his beach ball into the ocean, and then told her brother, “Your beach ball just left for Hawaii.”

            It was just one more defeat for the long-suffering Charlie Brown. Suddenly a boy named Franklin walked up and asked Charlie Brown, “Is this your beach ball?” After thanking him the two worked on a Sand Castle together, talked about baseball, shared a little family history (Franklin’s father was in Vietnam, Charlie’s father was a barber but served in a war — Charlie wasn’t sure which one), and after Franklin’s mother told him it was time to go home, Charlie Brown shouted after him, “Ask your mother if you can come over sometime and spend the night! We’ll play baseball and build another sandcastle.”

            Charlie Brown’s happy ending didn’t last long. His sister walked up to announce his beach ball was floating off to Hawaii again.1

            Oh, and the significance of this moment? Franklin was the first black character introduced into the Peanuts cast. He went on to become a regular character involved in the same schools, sports and activities as the rest of the gang.

            At the time, Schulz had been resisting introducing such a character, but only because he was worried about “patronizing” his African American fans, something we might now call cultural appropriation.

            However, 1968 was a racially charged year, with both peaceful non-violent demonstrations as well as civil unrest that led to rioting. Later that year an openly racist governor of a southern state ran for President and won five states, dramatically altering the November election.

            Most importantly, a few months before Franklin walked across that beach, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. This caused Harriet Glickman, an LA school teacher, to write a letter to Schulz asking him to create a black character for his comic strip.2

            It’s hard to imagine today just how groundbreaking this was. The world of popular media was as segregated as much of American society. Schulz admitted later that one Southern newspaper editor asked him not to show black and white characters sharing the same classroom. Schulz simply did not reply.3

Okay, but this is Easter Sunday

            Interesting, to be sure, but why bring up this story today? It’s Easter Sunday — and if bunnies and baskets seem gently irrelevant then certainly this story of Peter preaching to the Centurion Cornelius and his household also seems to have little to do with the women visiting the tomb only to find the stone is rolled back!

            It might be better if we contrasted the Easter meal you may either be hosting or traveling to — usually with familiar family and friends, with the accusation some Christians leveled at Peter after this event: “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”4

            You see, there was a great divide between Judeans and Romans in the Empire. They might have had contact commercially, but they did not eat together. Just as Charlie Brown and Franklin’s casual time together seems innocuous today, we may not truly understand how groundbreaking it was, and how many barriers were broken, in Peter’s visit with Cornelius — until we roll back the calendar 2,000 years for a closer look at the rest of the story in Acts 10.

            The story begins with the prayers of the centurion, who we are told was “a devout man who feared God.”5 Surprisingly, he gave alms to the Judeans whose region he helped administer on behalf of the occupying Roman armies. An angel delivered God’s reply, instructing him to send some of his people to Joppa to bring Peter back to his home.

                    Meanwhile Peter had a dream from the Holy Spirit, in which the apostle was commanded three times to eat from among animals declared unclean in the Hebrew Scriptures. “What the Lord has made clean, you must not call profane,” he was told.6 Peter was “greatly puzzled” about this vision when a knock at the door and a further message from the Spirit led to him visiting Cornelius.

            Now Peter had been staying with Simon the Tanner, whose profession made him ritually unclean.7 Perhaps this earlier experience of crossing boundaries helped, but even so, it must have been only with great difficulty that Peter crossed into the home of Cornelius — but this led to his astounding pronouncement — “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.”8

            Peter would go on to tell Cornelius and his household that he, among others, “were chosen by God as witnesses ... who ate and drank with [Jesus] after he rose from the dead.” Very soon the apostle and the Centurion’s household would be sharing the same table, eating and drinking together as well, as the previously mentioned accusation against the apostle went.

            This was revolutionary — and crucial to our understanding of Easter Day!

Break bread together

            The Acts of the Apostles begins with the commission of the resurrected Jesus to the apostles at his Ascension, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. It continues in earnest when Stephen’s martyrdom sends the disciples fleeing to Samaria, Decapolis and other spots throughout the Syria Province of the Roman Empire, taking the Good News of Jesus with them.

            But the narrative really pivots on Peter’s encounter with Cornelius. After that nothing stops the headlong rush towards inclusion of all. The Council of Jerusalem leads to Paul’s ministries throughout Asia Minor, Phillipi and the Greek peninsula. After an eye infection leads Paul to an encounter with the Celts of Galatia, whose way of looking at the world is radically different from the Roman and Judean world, that apostle champions their inclusion in the Body of Christ.9

            The Resurrection of Jesus foreshadows the resurrection we will all share. It is also a sign that the audacious plan of God to bless all nations through Abraham, making us one family, will be accomplished in time, before eternity!10

So, what am I doing here?

            So, where are we in this picture? Right now, many of us may be thinking more about that big Easter dinner I mentioned earlier instead of what we might set out intentionally to do to remove barriers and restore God’s vision for all humanity. But we believers in Jesus, confronted with resurrection, must be ready to face up to our prejudices and preconceived notions, and to cross over beyond the barriers that have separated much of humanity. We must cross those barriers in order to bring the resurrection to life in our churches. It’s not a matter of just welcoming the stranger, the outsider, the alienated, into the pew, or even into our pew, but also crossing the doorway and entering into each other’s homes.

            When we consider the fractured nature of societies around the world, including the community around our Christian faith, where lines are drawn and people are excluded and differences are exaggerated and exacerbated until believers no longer recognize each other as even human, we see how far the world has to go until we too can look into heaven and see all nations, tribes, tongues and languages praising God together, as the book of Revelation describes11 where the leaves of the tree of life “are for the healing of the nations.”12 Yet that is the Good News that we preach on Easter — Jesus is risen!

            This is not easy. Paul will recount an episode where Peter takes a step backward in the Spirit’s drive towards removing barriers.13 But it is necessary, if we are to be the body of the risen Christ.

            Around half a century ago it shocked many people who considered themselves Christians when Franklin walked up to Charlie Brown on the beach and the two got to talking baseball, dads and sandcastles. Today no one blinks an eye about such things. A couple thousand years ago it shocked Christian elders when Peter ate with Cornelius the centurion and his household.  Let’s hope we 21st-century followers of the risen Jesus don’t give a startled glance when someone ethnically, racially or economically different takes a seat in our church.

            Because we are meant to be one people, enjoying our different backgrounds while becoming one people in Christ, recognizing, in Peter’s words, “that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.”.

1 Schulz, Charles M., The Complete Peanuts:1967 to 1968, Fantagraphics Books, 2008, pp. 248-249.

2 Numerous citations for Glickman’s story can be found on the “Franklin” Wikipedia page.

3 Inge, M. Thomas, Charles M. Schultz: Conversations, University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p 256.

4 Acts 11:3.

5 Acts 10:2.

6 Acts 10:15.

7 See Leviticus 11:39-40.

8 Acts 10:34-35.

9 Galatians 4:13-15. For more on this see Irish Jesus Roman Jesus, by Graydon F. Snyder, pp. 26-27, 33.

10 Genesis 12:3.

11 Revelation 7:14; 21:24-26.

12 Revelation 22:2.

13 Galatians 2:11-14.