Hi Class!
We hope the New Year is off to a great start for you all.
We are picking up our study in Acts, and hope you all can join us as often as possible. We are in the midst of conversations about conversion experiences, focusing on the ministries of Saul/Paul and now Peter in Acts, chapter 10.
Peter stays at the home of Simon, a tanner. Imagine a home workshop of a tanner, who makes leather. To say the least it might have a very unique smell and appearance, perhaps with tools of his trade and skins of various creatures hanging and laying about and reeking in all stages of the tanning process. Whether this was the environment or not, it could account for the reason Peter went up on the roof, in the open air, to pray. This also is not as strange as one might think, as homes in that part of the world often have living space on the flat roof, since the lower floor would often be shared with family livestock or serve as home work space.
Did the setting prime Peter's imagination and prepare him for a vision involving many different kinds of animals? Regardless God gave him a dramatic and convincing picture of a new inclusiveness, as the large sheet contained all manner of creatures considered, in Jewish faith, unclean to consume. Yet Peter is commanded, against his instincts and religious training, to rise, kill, and eat heartily.
Meantime, visitors who have received their own vision in a dream are on there way to Peter to invite him to speak to them. Peter welcomes them, goes to a Gentile home, enters it against Jewish custom, and stays with these devout people, sharing the story and invitation to follow Jesus. In this process the Holy Spirit comes upon these Gentile converts, convincing Peter that God indeed calls no one, anymore, unclean.
In a very nice coincidence, or an act of the Spirit, this lesson came to us on the Sunday we celebrated the civil rights work of Martin Luther King, Jr.
We will move, this Sunday, to a discussion of the meaning of this text for our lives, church, and world.
Dan and Laura
