The story of Peter and Cornelius is punctuated with “and the Spirit said” as God talks to both of them conversationally, and through angels. I wonder how the disciples responded when they heard such stories. Like us, were some of them excited and seeking such things for themselves while others were cynical? How did they decide on when a hearer had heard the true voice of God? These are problems the Church continues to have no real answer to today.
Only God can make things pure. Nothing can be impure if God has made it pure. This is a revelation to Peter, shocking indeed. The vision he has in this story will change the whole course of faith history for followers of Jesus, marking a key shift away from Judaism. If we truly believe that only God makes things pure or impure, it is not for us to spend the whole of our lives worrying about the impurity of others and what they choose to do. Wouldn’t we be better served thanking God for the undeserved gift of grace, freedom and purity that is offered to all? We should all check ourselves and discern whether we prefer being declared pure by God, or if we’d rather use our faith and our Scriptures to declare others impure, and to denote our supposed superiority. We’re all prone to this. It does us no God, and fails to honour God in any conceivable way.