July 16, 2004, on this blog: The Abominable Shellfish: Or Why Some Christians hate gays but love bacon
Peter gets it. In this new community that God is building, this church, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. No one is excluded as unclean.
This is the unsubtle point that Luke is hammering home for his gentile friend Theophilus. The surrounding chapters of Acts read like a hyper-P.C. after-school special on celebrating diversity. The church embraces Jews and gentiles, Roman soldiers and slaves, men and women, Africans, Greeks and even a token white European.
In our fondness for Easter ham, we Christians have fervently clung to the surface-level meaning of Peter’s vision. But we haven’t been as enthusiastic about embracing the larger, more important lesson God was teaching him there on the rooftop. When the “unclean” outsiders knock on our doors, we don’t like inviting them in.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In