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Context No. 2831 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 10:7-13: in context

7When the angel who spoke to him had departed, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier of those who waited on him continually. 8Having explained everything to them, he sent them to Joppa. 9Now on the next day as they were on their journey and got close to the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray at about noon. 10He became hungry and desired to eat, but while they were preparing, he fell into a trance. 11He saw heaven opened and a certain container descending to him, like a great sheet let down by four corners on the earth, 12in which were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild animals, reptiles, and birds of the sky. 13A voice came to him, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat!”

Cornelius, a devout Gentile officer, has been told by an angel to send for Peter, and his men are already on the road. As they near the city, Peter goes up on the rooftop to pray around noon, gets hungry, and falls into a trance. He sees heaven open and a great sheet let down by its corners, full of every kind of animal, clean and unclean together, and a voice says, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

This is the hinge of the early church. Peter, a devout Jew who has never eaten anything unclean, is being made ready for something he cannot yet imagine: that the gospel is for the Gentiles too, that God is cleansing what Peter had always called common. And notice God's method. He meets Peter in an ordinary hungry moment on a roof and uses a vision about food to begin cracking open a far larger assumption about people. God often starts to overturn our settled prejudices with one small, disorienting nudge in the middle of a normal day.

Is God trying to unsettle a "that is unclean" I hold too confidently, and am I willing to let him rewrite it?

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