Monday, May 12, 2014

Peter's Discimination Challenged by the Lord


In today’s first reading, Acts 11:1-8, Peter is given a vision of all kinds of creatures, ”four-legged animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky,” and hears a voice saying to him: “Get up, Peter. Slaughter and eat.” Peters immediately objects: “No way.” He insists on remaining true to the Jewish dietary laws.  God retorts him: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”  The Spirit then instructs him to accompany three men to the home of uncircumcised men: “Accompany them without discriminating.” I wonder, what instructions the Lord would give the Church and  us, as we continue to discriminate against one another, men against women, women against men, Christians against those of the Jewish, Islamic, Muslim, Hindu, Methodist, Baptist, Protestant, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and other religions and them against us; Whites against Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese,  Arabs,  Mexican,  Indian, Native American and other races and them against us.  “Accompany them, include them, speak to and about them ‘without discriminating’; stop your prejudice,” I think the Lord would say to us, challenging  us,  and the Church, for the ways in which we discriminate against anyone in our everyday practices.

As Peter insisted upon the Jewish dietary laws, upon what man-made laws do we continue to insist?  Where do we need the Lord to say to us, as He said to Peter: “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane”?

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