Thought for the Week 5th Sunday of Easter

Down came the blanket with those creepy, crawling snakes and vultures and other weird animals on it. In fact, the heavenly blanket came down three times. And each time the blanket descended, Peter said, "No, not me!" Peter's response to God's picnic invitation was not mere squeamishness. Peter found the menu repulsing. None of those animals was acceptable food. Peter's "no" welled up from deep within him. An observant Jew, Peter had spent a lifetime trying to remain ritually clean. His "no" to the heavenly invitation was the visceral, reactive, reflexive result of years of religious conditioning.
In our passage from Acts, the blanket from heaven carried with it the promise of God's unimaginable generosity for all humankind. God's blanket was blotting out the boundary between Jew and Gentile, a boundary that God found unnecessary. What God had made clean was clean indeed.