About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel…saying to him, “Cornelius… Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.” Acts 10:1-8
Can any good come of it if we let our mind deliberately roam? Why not be daring and let it wander to Rome! Let it fall in with the hundreds of foot soldiers being freshly mustered and marched out to press the ruthless yoke of its Caesars on the ever restless population of Palestine. Let it fasten itself on Cornelius, a noncommissioned officer of the Italian Cohort (one tenth of a legion) with one hundred men under him. They disembark their ship at Caesarea and take up residence in the garrison there.
Strangely, the centurion’s mind is fast straying from Rome’s religious and cultural milieu. In fact, Cornelius finds himself falling in love with the occupied land and its opinionated people. A helpful man, he gives alms to the poor. A spiritually starved soul, he seeks solace in praying to the “Holy One of Israel.” As his awareness of a living God grows and he finds his faith mysteriously nourished, the Roman now acutely hungers for His Word fleshed out in the fullness of grace and truth. When an angel appears to the centurion, he grasps once and for all that the “divine” glory of the Caesars is as fool’s gold in view of the Majesty whose throne is in heaven and whose foot stool is the earth. Part 1 of 2
Comment: Cornelius prayed at the 9th hour, while Peter did so at the 6th hour. “What gives?” a curious reader might ask. Based on references in Paul’s letters, Luke is a Gentile and a physician. His name means “bringer of light,” which comes from the Greek Loukas, which is a shortened form of the Latin name Lucas. As the author of his gospel and Acts, Luke identifies Theophilus as his primary reader, known to him as “lover of God.” By addressing him as “most excellent” in both of his books, he was likely a person of high social standing. Luke was eager to provide a detailed account of Jesus’ life and the early church, aiming to strengthen his faith. Since English-speaking Presbyterians were already on the Holy Spirit’s radar at Pentecost, He did us an enormous favor by letting a winsome “outsider” write the “Acts of the Holy Spirit.” This inquisitive Greek had immersed himself into the Old Testament and learned from Exodus 29:38-39, “Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two lambs…day by day regularly. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.” The sacrificial Lamb of God died at 3 o’clock, the ninth hour. Acts 3:1 says that “Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon.” When Luke specifies that Cornelius prayed at that time, he is telling us that the Roman soldier was already observing the traditional Jewish prayer hour, having been irresistibly drawn to the concept of a living God who predated legendary Roman history by millennia. The angel in the centurion’s vision immediately assured him that God was answering his prayer at that very instant. Why does this make me think of a local Cornelius, perhaps sitting in a pew near me, hungering for a living Jesus, but never having had tastebuds developed for denominational pluses and minuses?
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