We’d favor that God do all the pieces unexpectedly, however typically that isn’t what we ourselves want. Earlier than doing holy work, we should first grow to be individuals able to such work. When the individuals of Israel have been referred to as to be the chosen individuals, they have been taught to see varied issues as unclean, as a part of separating themselves (“turning into holy”) from the individuals round them. They have been to not stay as the remainder of the individuals in Canaan. In order that they got a regulation wherein, by ritual and prohibition, they’d stay as these set aside.
But this was by no means the divine endgame. From the very starting, Abraham obtained a promise that by him God would bless all individuals, not simply the individuals of Israel. Thus a stress has at all times existed between the Jewish legal guidelines of separation and the divine purpose of blessing all individuals. That stress discovered its decision within the particular person of Jesus Christ.
St. Peter couldn’t merely come to grasp this intellectually. He wanted to expertise why Christ reveals God’s grace pouring forth on everybody. His imaginative and prescient focuses on the dietary legal guidelines of the Jewish individuals, so that when St. Peter realizes that no meals may be unclean in itself, however is able to being blessed, he could make the connection that the identical is true of individuals.
Turning into individuals that may let the complete imaginative and prescient slowly emerge in our lives means accepting that we’re not prepared for the complete story, however God is busy making us prepared.
Michael Fitzpatrick is a doctoral pupil in philosophy at Stanford College. He attends St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, California, the place he serves as a lay preacher and instructor.
The Diocese of Nevada – The Episcopal Church
St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, Shreveport, Louisiana
