Peter’s strange dream, where he found himself eating giraffe, and antelope, elephant and parrot, wasn’t a call to give up being vegetarian and tuck into all kinds of meat. Nor was it a promise that he would soon be going on the sort of exotic holiday where you get to eat something unusual - like my son who recently went to Peru and got to eat alpaca, which he said was delicious. He also spent a night in the jungle but I haven’t heard yet whether he got to eat any juicy ants.
Peter could have woken up and thought, ‘Oh good! I’m going on holiday!’ and made his way round to the estate agents. But he didn’t, and that’s because just as he woke up some people who weren’t Jewish knocked at the door and asked him to come and help them, and their families and friends, to join the Church and become followers of Jesus. That made Peter realise that the dream was about building bridges and breaking down walls. People can look different, and have different languages and customs, but in the end we’re not that different, and we can all be one in Jesus.
One of the most exciting moments in my lifetime was when ordinary German people broke down the wall that had separated them for forty years in Berlin. Many people had been shot trying to get over the Wall. Many families had been separated for all that time - some stuck in the East while their brothers and sisters were living in the West of the City. To our amazement the East German government gave up the struggle to keep their people behind the Wall and let the people on both sides break it down.
It’s heartbreaking to see people building walls between people once again. Peter’s dream reminds us that followers of Jesus are called to build bridges not walls.
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