While Saul is stowed away in his native Tarsus, the action moves back to the cities of Lydda, Joppa and Caesarea in Palestine, along the Mediterranean seacoast. Peter is now center-stage. He heals Aeneas, a paralyzed man, and raises a woman, Tabitha (Dorcas in Greek), from death (9:32-42). Just as in his Gospel, here Luke pairs male and female characters in related stories.

But Acts 10 records the event that shakes the theological foundation of the early church: the encounter between Peter, a devout Jew, and Cornelius, an uncircumcised Roman centurion. Since readers probably know about Cornelius’s angelic vision and Peter’s heavenly sheet full of unclean animals, I will focus on secondary but significant details from this ancient cultural context.

First, note Peter’s location in Joppa. It was from Joppa that the prophet Jonah fled from God in a ship going west so he would not have to preach to his enemies in Nineveh to the east. Both Peter’s and Jonah’s stories focus on God’s mercy to Gentiles who belong to enemy empires that have conquered Israel.

Second, we read four times that Peter’s host was Simon the tanner (9:43; 10:5-6; 10:17-18; 10:32). It is no accident that Simon’s house is located by the seaside, since tanning was a smelly occupation involving cleaning hides of rotting flesh and using uric acid from urine to treat the hides. What surprises us is that Peter — outspokenly kosher-observant Peter — was staying in the home of a man with such an unclean profession!

Third, Acts 10:44-48 climaxes this account. At Cornelius’ house, the Spirit falls upon “all who heard the word,” astounding Peter’s circumcised companions. Observe that this happens while Peter is still preaching to Cornelius and the assembled group. The Spirit acts on its own timetable, sometimes coming before sermonizing or baptizing, as at Pentecost, and sometimes after, as in Samaria (8:15-17). (Perhaps Peter, the disciple with the big mouth, needed such an interruption. At critical moments, such as Jesus’ transfiguration, he would blabber, “not knowing what he said” [Luke 9:32-33].) This entire experience converts Peter emotionally and theologically, just as Saul’s encounter with the risen Jesus converted him in the previous chapter.

Our text for Oct. 25 repeats much of the material in Acts 10, so a casual reader is inclined to skim over it, as we do Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7. But again, small differences are important! Acts 10 ends with Peter staying at the home of Cornelius for several days, and this news travels quickly to Jerusa­lem. “Peter, why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (11:2). Since Peter stayed with Gentiles for several days, he obviously ate with them — all forbidden by Jewish law.

Remember that the Jesus-renewal movement is entirely Jewish up to this point. All the Hellenists and visitors from 14 prov­inces in the Greco-Roman world at Pentecost are either Jewish or circumcised proselytes. Thus we should expect that the leaders in Jerusalem would question Peter’s uncharacteristic behavior. So, in order to convince his audience, Peter (now back in Jerusa­lem) chooses his words with considerable political savvy.

In verse 4 (NIV), Peter reports everything “precisely as it had happened” — yet deliberately omits any reference to Simon the tanner’s house! He stresses that when the sheet came down from heaven, it came “close to me” and “I looked at it closely.” When describing the animals, Peter now adds “beasts of prey” not mentioned by the narrator in 10:12. His original objection to eating these animals — “I have never eaten anything profane or unclean” (10:14) — is strengthened to “nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth” (11:8).

Peter omits his moments of puzzlement (10:17) and says, “At that very moment three men arrived (11:11). We first learn here that he took six brothers with him (a number paralleling the seven table-servants from Acts 6:1-6). Peter further embroiders what the angel told Cornelius in 10:5-6 by adding that Peter “will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved” (11:14). But Cornelius would hardly have known what “being saved” meant at that point.

Then Peter says the Holy Spirit came on Cornelius’ household “as I began to speak, just as it had on us at the beginning” (11:15). Well, not quite (see above lesson).

Peter ends his defense by using the same effective technique Gamaliel did with the Jerusalem council in 5:39: “Who was I that I could hinder God?”

For discussion: Was Peter’s account close enough to the narrator’s to be truthful? Then clarify the drastic theological shift this story created for Bible-believing Jews who understood Jesus as their Jewish Messiah. Have Mennonites ever confronted such a momentous change in Anabaptist theology?

Reta Halteman Finger is retired from Messiah College, teaches Bible part-time at Eastern Mennonite University and has written Of Widows and Meals: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts.