Prejudice abandoned (Acts 10, 11):
The scripture we just read today tells the unusual story of a Roman centurion named Cornelius who was seeking to know more about the God of Israel, and how the apostle Peter, putting prejudice aside, went to visit him and his family. Cornelius, a wealthy nobleman and also a righteous Gentile, is praying to God for more light. An angel appears to him and tells him to send for Peter to come and teach him the truth he has been looking for. Peter agrees to come, the Holy Spirit is poured out on all those present, everyone begins speaking in tongues, and Cornelius and his household become baptized members of the new faith.
It is the first major story of the New Testament indicating that the gospel of Jesus Christ was to be made available not only to Jewish Christians, but also to the Gentiles. The importance of this story is implied by the fact that the whole story is twice related in full, even though writing material, as we know it today, was scarce. The narrative is told once in Acts chapter 10 and again in chapter 11.
Let’s look at the story more closely. We’re told that Peter went to stay in the town of Joppa, which is the Jaffa/Tel Aviv area of Israel today. We are also told that he went to stay at the house of “Simon the tanner,” which the Bible says was “by the sea.” Now, this provides us with some interesting insights into the business of tanning. This is the only reference in scripture to the trade of tanning — the processing of animal hides into leather and other goods.
Tanning was an extremely unpopular trade in ancient Israel. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, explains why it was so disliked: “Simon’s house was by the seashore, as is true of the tanneries along the Syrian coast today, so that the foul-smelling liquors from the vats can be drawn off with the least nuisance, and so that the salt water may be easily accessible for washing the skins during the tanning process. These tanneries are very unpretentious affairs, usually consisting of one or two small rooms and a courtyard….” The tanning process is further described… and we’ll spare ourselves all the gory details here, other than to say that tanning produced an unsavory sight and smell involving, among other things, the use of fermenting liquids and dog excrement!
In fact, tanning, which incurred ceremonial defilement as it involved working with animal carcasses, was so despised by the Jews that the Mishnah (Kethuboth 7.10) lists only three exceptional cases where a woman of that time could legally divorce her husband: (1) if he contracted a dreaded disease such as leprosy; (2) if he tried to force her to leave the Holy Land; or (3) if he was a tanner!
So when Peter decided to stay “many days” at Simon the tanner’s “house by the sea,” he was not expecting to book in at the Hotel del Coronado! The fact that Peter was willing to reside there indicates he was already overcoming some of his previous prejudice as a Jewish Christian.
Peter becomes hungry:
Now it says in our story that Peter went up on the flat rooftop to pray at about noon. This was not the usual “hour of prayer” for Jews, and some have speculated why he went up at this time. But think of it for a minute. Where would you rather be: downstairs in the crowded room, with the stench of the tannery and dead animal skins all around you, soaking in tannic acid, or up on the flat rooftop with the fresh ocean breeze blowing over you?! Where would you rather meditate and pray?
While he was up on the rooftop, it also says in the story that Peter became very hungry. Perhaps he had lost his appetite from staying downstairs too long! Imagine the scene. The Bible says he fell into a “trance” (ekstasis [“ecstasy”]), which is somewhat like a vision. As he looked over the blue Mediterranean, it says he saw a huge “sail” or sheet (the same word) being let down from the sky, and in the sheet were all kinds of animals. We’re not talking here about sheep and cows and chickens. We’re talking about snakes and crocodiles and monkeys, all considered “unclean” by Moses’ law (Leviticus 11 — and, quite honestly, considered unsuitable as food by most of us today). Suddenly he’s not hungry any more! Poor Peter. He’s just come from downstairs hoping to get fresh air and a new appetite, only to see more animals, and a heavenly voice telling him to “kill and eat.”
We know that Peter must have found this vision to be shocking and contradictory. It appeared to him three times, just to make sure he didn’t think he was dreaming. Each time the voice told him that he should not call what God had cleansed unclean.
Emissaries arrive to fetch Peter:
What could this vision mean? As Peter was no doubt puzzling over its purpose, Cornelius’ messengers were knocking at the door downstairs, asking for Peter. The meaning of his vision becomes almost immediately apparent. Without even thinking of customary social and religious taboos in dealing with Gentiles, Peter welcomes the men, who are standing outside the door, and invites them into the house to stay there overnight. Surprising things are starting to happen. Barriers are beginning to crumble. The next day, as Peter proceeds on the 30-mile trip to the house of Cornelius and sees the Holy Spirit poured out over the household of Cornelius, he begins to understand the words of his vision where he was told, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” It is a new day for the Christian Church.
“God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life” (11:18):
We today can hardly begin to grasp the enormous significance of the changes taking place in the 10th and 11th chapters of the book of Acts. Laws that God himself had given centuries before through Moses and the prophets concerning Israel’s relationship to the peoples surrounding them, were now radically being altered. Can you imagine if everything you had always believed to be true was now being questioned or challenged? It would probably take time to “sink in,” and for the first Christians it also took trial and error before they finally understood what they needed to learn (Acts 15). Jesus put it another way when he said, “You have heard it said [of old]… but I say unto you…” (Matthew 5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43)
This story is one of the great turning points in the history of the Christian Church, truly a watershed moment. For the first time a Gentile was being admitted into its fellowship. The Bible says of the leaders in Jerusalem that, “when they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’” (Acts 11:18)
This story is typical of the work of Christ. When the true spirit of Christ is allowed into the heart, there is no room for barriers, differences, or prejudices of any kind within the Church of Christ. We are all brothers and sisters of the same family of Christ. We are all free to worship in God’s house.… No one can ever truly be denied access to God, in God’s Church, or in everyday life.
An animal lover is born:
I have entitled the meditation today “Religious Taxidermy.” Now why “taxidermy”? Well, to understand that you need to know that I have always had a great love and fascination for animals (and nature as a whole). One of the endearing memories from my childhood was going with my Dad to the Woolworth’s Store in downtown Nairobi every Friday noon, paying 2 shillings, and picking up the latest edition of the weekly Animals Magazine, which had just been flown in from England. (I later bound them, and still have those magazines at home.)
By the age of 10, I had familiarized myself with the Latin species names of hundreds of different animals. I was also fortunate enough to be able to live near to the world-class Coryndon Museum of Natural History in Nairobi, with room after room of thousands of taxidermy collections and exhibits of East African birds, mammals, fish, insects, & reptiles. As a young person I even seriously considered becoming a zookeeper or a marine biologist.
And, of course, then there were the pets! You name it, I probably kept it at some point in my life: African hedgehogs, tortoises, white mice, dogs, hamsters, crested cranes, antelopes, peacocks, tropical aviary birds, and more. How my parents put up with the animals that escaped in the kitchen or got under their dresser I will never know!
And then, as a teenager, I got an idea.
A budding taxidermist:
The dictionary defines taxidermy as “the art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of animals with lifelike effect.” The animal is not alive; it just appears to be alive! It is an attempt to preserve or perpetuate an illusion. The more lifelike the result, the better is the taxidermist’s job. Sometimes the finished product is constructed from the original animal, sometimes, especially with saltwater fish, only a mold is made of the animal, and the finished product is entirely artificial.
Interestingly enough, tanning and taxidermy share a common history as the following quotation indicates: “By the 1700s almost every small town [in the U.S.] had a prosperous tannery business. As the demand for quality leather and skins grew, the methods became more and more sophisticated…. In the 1800s, hunters began bringing their trophies to upholstery shops where the upholsterers would actually sew up the animal skins and stuff them with rags and cotton. The term ‘stuffing’ or a ‘stuffed animal’ evolved from this crude form of taxidermy. This practice produced some terrible looking mounts and gave taxidermy a bad reputation that still haunts the industry to this day. Professional taxidermists still shudder and take offense at the term stuffing. (The preferred word is mounting.)”
So taxidermy quickly developed an image problem!
Now I am fully aware that not everyone shares my fascination for taxidermy. Working with dead animals is not exactly appealing to many. As someone wryly put it, “The only animal I want stuffed is my Thanksgiving turkey!”
However, there are many reasons people choose to have an animal mounted professionally. Some fishermen want to remember their prize catch, “the one that didn’t get away!” Other people simply can’t bear to say goodbye to their pets and so have them stuffed so they can still talk to them. And then there’s the more “scientific” mindset that wants to study animals as they appeared in real life. But all taxidermy is an attempt to hold onto the past.
I was determined to try my hand. The first animal subjected to the indignity of my early attempts at taxidermy was a small African mammal called a “rock rabbit” or hyrax, known in the Bible as a “coney.” A rock rabbit looks a bit like a small groundhog. At least, it’s supposed to look like a groundhog when it’s finished. I’m not really sure what mine looked like! Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), in all the moves we made over the years, I lost this and the handful of other small animals that I stuffed.
“Never have your dog stuffed”:
Yes, there are all sorts of reasons people want to stuff animals. Bestselling author Alan Alda, recently wrote an autobiography entitled Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned, where he describes how, as an eight-year old boy, he had a beloved pet dog named Rhapsody. When his dog died, Alda was so grief-stricken about burying it that his well-meaning father decided to have the dog stuffed instead! Alda was horrified by the results. “We kept it on the porch and deliverymen were afraid to make deliveries,” he said. And then, referring to the title of his book, he comments: “There are a lot of ways we stuff the dog, trying to avoid change, hanging on to a moment that’s passed.”
“Never have your dog stuffed” – move on in your life. Make progress in your understanding of God and truth. God intended that we should grow in our understanding of who he/she/[it!] is, and we do her as well as ourselves a disservice when we choose the comfort and security of the past rather than walk in faith to the future.
Religious taxidermy:
Religious taxidermy is like trying to stuff today and tomorrow into yesterday. There may be seemingly good reasons for this: spiritual security (or insecurity); staying within one’s spiritual “comfort zone”; lack of vision; inability to face change or be open to God’s leading.
It’s been a human problem since the beginning of time. Even in the New Testament Church, some Christian teachers were telling Gentile converts that they could not be saved just by becoming a Christian. They also had to be circumcised and follow all of the Mosaic Law…. “Unless you are circumcised according to the Law, you cannot be saved…. Unless you follow our rules, God cannot save you.” The church was no more than 10 or 20 years old, and already they were trying to stuff it into the past!
Some Christians will do anything they can to preserve the comfort of the status quo. Yes, there’s a time and a place, of course, for tradition. But there must always be a place for the open mind, in life as well as in the church.
The scientific quandary: how big is your God?:
Our God is not a god who can be put in a mold, or who can be put in a taxidermist’s form and kept there. Our God is far bigger than that. Our God challenges us to discover, day-by-day, more of who God is. Nowhere is this more of a challenge for Christians today than in the realm of science and faith. Scientific reason seems to affect everything we do and everything we believe. Not so in Bible times: when Daniel and his friends needed information, their first thought was prayer, not research!
If you want a head-scratching look at how far some Christian scientists are willing to go to “stuff” their scientific understanding of God and the universe into the past, see “The International Conference on Absolutes” (www.geocentricity.com). On that website physicist G. Bouw, Ph.D., says he believes the Earth “neither rotates daily nor revolves yearly about the Sun”. Why? Solely because he believes the Bible says so. It’s safer, more comforting to believe in Absolutes that can be stuffed into the past, than to be willing to follow where God or science may lead today.
Surprising as it may be to mention, the renowned astronomer and skeptic Carl Sagan is probably not so far off when he challenges Christians to expand their concept of God, saying: “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed.’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” Pale Blue Dot, p. 52 (1994)
“God is still speaking” today:
As our church slogan so aptly puts it, “God is still speaking” today. Just as God revealed the truth to Israel at Sinai, to Cornelius and Peter and the apostles in New Testament times, to Martin Luther in the Middle Ages, to church leaders through the ages, so today God still speaks to us.
A stuffed animal only appears to be alive. It has no future.
“God is still speaking” today: can you and I hear what God is saying?
