The sheet, and the soldier

Cornelius is a Roman centurion — an officer of the occupying army — who prays and gives generously to the poor. An angel tells him to send for Peter. Meanwhile Peter, praying on a roof and hungry, sees a sheet lowered full of animals his law forbade him to eat, and a voice says kill and eat. He refuses three times. What God has made clean, do not call common. Then the messengers arrive, and Peter understands the vision is not about food. He goes into a Gentile house — something he would never have done — and says out loud: truly I perceive that God shows no partiality. While he is still speaking the Spirit falls on everyone in the room, and the Jewish believers who came with him are astonished. The door was open from the beginning; it took a vision to get Peter through it.