As the three travelers were approaching the town, Peter went out on the balcony to pray. It was about noon. Peter got hungry and started thinking about lunch. While lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the skies open up. Something that looked like a huge blanket lowered by ropes at its four corners settled on the ground. Every kind of animal and reptile and bird you could think of was on it. Then a voice came: “Go to it, Peter—kill and eat.”

Peter said, “Oh, no, Lord. I’ve never so much as tasted food that was not kosher.”

The voice came a second time: “If God says it’s okay, it’s okay.”

This happened three times, and then the blanket was pulled back up into the skies.

As Peter, puzzled, sat there trying to figure out what it all meant, the men sent by Cornelius showed up at Simon’s front door. They called in, asking if there was a Simon, also called Peter, staying there. Peter, lost in thought, didn’t hear them, so the Spirit whispered to him, “Three men are knocking at the door looking for you. Get down there and go with them. Don’t ask any questions. I sent them to get you.”

Peter went down and said to the men, “I think I’m the man you’re looking for. What’s up?”

They said, “Captain Cornelius, a God-fearing man well-known for his fair play—ask any Jew in this part of the country—was commanded by a holy angel to get you and bring you to his house so he could hear what you had to say.” Peter invited them in and made them feel at home. (Acts 10:9-23)

Jesus sometimes spoke in parables, because a good story was like a picture: it was worth a thousand words.

Jesus appeared to Peter while he was waiting for his lunch. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Peter had a dream about food. But it was non-Kosher food. Jesus told him to eat it anyhow, not once but three times.

Jesus was not trying to give Peter new regulations about what was Kosher. Like most Jewish people, Peter believed that gentiles were excluded from the love of God, just as pigs were excluded from his plate. When Jesus told his disciples to take the gospel to the whole world, they thought he meant taking it to the Jewish people scattered throughout the Roman Empire.

Peter’s vision helped him, and the rest of the church, to realize that the gospel message was for all humanity, not just the Jews. No human being was unclean. God could make everyone holy.

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