“I truly understand that God shows no partiality…” I don’t think we can truly understand the magnitude of that statement. Everything Peter had been taught about God would have led him to believe the opposite. God is very particular about who is acceptable and punishes those who are not, showing partiality to one people, out of all the people in the world, as a treasured possession. “I will be your God and you will be my people. You don’t get any more partial that that. Even Jesus came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, or so Peter heard him say on more than one occasion. But all that changes when Peter is led by the Spirit to the house of a Roman centurion named Cornelius and sees the Spirit fall upon the Gentiles in the same way it fell upon the disciples the day of Pentecost. And so Peter, who was pleased to be one to whom God was partial, enters the house of Cornelius and eats and drinks with “goyim” and that is definably not kosher. I wonder what sacred cows we would give up if like Peter we came to a new understanding and the God we thought we knew by living inside our religious box told us to eat and drink with those who color outside the lines because God is not as partial as we are.
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