Acts 10:27-28
27 Talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. 28 He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.”

In this passage, Peter is addressing the large group of people that have gathered at the house of a man named Cornelius, who is “God-fearing” yet not Jewish–in other words, a Gentile. In this time period, Gentiles and Jews just didn’t mix, for cultural and traditional reasons such as the one Peter mentions here. In fact, many Jews of the day considered Gentiles just as heathen as complete nonbelievers. So it was no wonder, when Cornelius sent for Peter to come, that people came to see what would happen–it was quite a spectacle indeed.

But Peter by this time is not a Jew any longer himself, but a Christian–a follower of Christ, who has died and risen again. And he’s experienced so much, not only walking with Jesus but preaching Jesus’ message; he knows now that Jesus is the Savior of all, not just the Jews. In short, he knows that the cultural and traditional divide between Jews and Gentiles is merely human law, and not God’s. Tradition dictates that Peter can only visit, help, and witness to certain folk; Jesus showed him that everyone could be visited, helped, and witnessed to.

This passage is a teaching moment for the whole crowd–no longer is religion just for a few privileged people, but for anyone who believes. This inclusiveness and accessibility by all was what set Christianity apart from Judaism and other established religions right from the start. Yet even today, the modern Christian church struggles with accepting quite all of the curious and the faithful. Certain people are deemed “not good enough to go to OUR church,” and so they are never witnessed to. Or, sometimes believers are discouraged from coming back to a church because they get the message “you’re not OUR kind of people.”

These are messages we must eradicate from our minds if we are to serve God purely. God made clear that as long as a person believes in Him and accepts Jesus’ sacrifice, they are saved; who then are we to judge them “unfit” to attend our churches, or “not good enough” to visit us or for us to visit them? We humans divide ourselves up like this all the time, often for reasons of “tradition,” but tradition doesn’t always come from God. Dividing humanity up along the lines of socioeconomic status, political parties, races and ethnicities, cultures, genders, etc. does nothing except to splinter the church apart, and keep us from witnessing to and prayerfully serving anyone whom God has put in our path.

So, this is our challenge as Christians, then: to aid and witness to anyone who needs God and needs our help, no matter if they are unwashed, no matter if they are poor or of a different race, no matter if we know their past legal history, etc. As Peter says here, “God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean;” that goes for us, too.

Acts 19:8-10
8 Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. 9 But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. 10 This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

In this passage, Paul has visited Ephesus and is doing missionary work there, preaching about Jesus and sharing the various truths of the gospel with the Ephesians. Here, we see that a few people become resistant to Paul’s message and disparage it. Yet, rather than sit there and verbally duke it out with the few resisters, Paul simply leaves them, and takes his discussion elsewhere (namely, the “lecture hall of Tyrannus,” who was likely a philosopher or teacher of rhetoric of the day).

This does not mean that Paul was angrily giving up on these people, nor that they “won” the debate somehow. Instead, Paul knew that any angry argument with these resistant people would only obscure the message for others, and would degrade the quality of his witness. There was no point to argue with people who were only interested in shouting him down.

But notice that Paul doesn’t leave Ephesus entirely. He still has daily discussions with people who are interested, and the discussions seem to be open to anyone and everyone. He is preaching to both Jews and Greeks (both people of Abrahamic descent and people of other ancestry); he is presumably speaking to anyone who is interested in learning the gospel, and no one is left out. And Paul stays in this same location two years more doing this, so that everyone hears at least something about the gospel, and those who are interested can come and find out more if they wish.

To me, Paul’s open sharing of the gospel, staying away from conflict and instead inviting peaceful discussion, is what we as Christians should aspire toward. Too many times, modern Christians make headlines because they act too confrontational and angry, and in fact that is the way many nonbelievers see Christianity–as an angry, self-righteous faith, quick to judge and even quicker to condemn. Just as indignant confrontation would have only muddled Paul’s message in Ephesus, such negative communication can only damage us modern Christians and keep others from ever wanting to hear our own stories of how God has worked in our lives.

Any time we talk about Jesus with someone, we should make it as serene as possible, being willing to share our own experience and answer any questions the other person/people may have. Not everyone will want to hear our message, and that’s okay; they can make the choice for themselves, just as we did. Accepting and respecting their choice, whether it’s to listen or to walk away, is part of our job as witnesses for Christ. And, just as Paul did, we can continue to share our testimony and our understanding of the gospel elsewhere if need be.