Wednesday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 10:1-16

Interesting how the most momentous, historical events can take place in the most ordinary of times. Cornelius sees an angel “at the ninth hour,” that is, at 3 pm; while Peter’s vision comes at “the sixth hour,” Noon. There were seven “hours” set aside at different parts of the day and night for prayer. Cornelius and Peter were simply doing what they did regularly, taking some brief time out of the day that had been appointed for prayer.

Just like any human love and friendship, it takes time to nourish and develop a relationship with God. That time may seem rather habitual, and when it becomes a “habit,” it can become easy to ask ourselves why we do it. The reason we do it is so that we can get into the habit of talking to God; and when God talks back, we will know how to recognize that this time, the prayer is very, very different. It may not be an angel. It may be voice within us that says something we never would have thought of on our own. However our visions come, they spring from a foundation of habit.

This tradition of prayer at a fixed hour continues in our “Common Prayer.” I try to make the riches of this common prayer available in person at 9 am in the church, and online. I hope you can find the time for this life of prayer. Sometimes, I wonder if I should offer Morning Prayer earlier, for those who could come by on their way to work. What do you all think?

Now we come to Peter’s earth-shaking vision. “What God has made clean, do not call common,” Peter hears his God tell him. Eating was always done in community. Classifying certain kinds of meat as “clean” or “common” was one way of ensuring that the community of Israel would remain “holy,” set apart from the peoples of the world who failed to perceive the one God.

But now Peter hears the Lord tell him that his distinctions between the “common” world untouched by the divine, and the world that God himself has “cleaned,” are not God’s. And what of our distinctions? Are there things that we have counted common that God calls clean? Or are there things that we have presumed clean that God does call common? These are crucial questions for which an answer is demanded of us as a church. Where do we find these answers? Here we come back to where we began: with the habit of common prayer?