… from Fred Clark at Slacktivist:

Getting down on his knees and taking unclean things in his hands was more than just a pattern with Jesus — it was something like an obsession. This goes beyond a mere motif or refrain in the Gospels. Jesus looked at the purity codes and the holiness codes and the long lists of people and things that were unclean and never to be touched and he treated these like he was collecting points on a scavenger hunt.

Lepers, women, Samaritans, Samaritan women, menstrual women, gentiles, Romans, collaborators, dead girls, cripples, prostitutes, crazy naked guys in cemeteries — the Gospels read like Jesus was on a three-year sprint to touch, to embrace, as many unclean people as he possibly could. And that meant, according to the same set of rules that he was so determinedly violating, that he was unclean as well.

[...]

“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him,” Peter said. “But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.”

Not a word there about calamari or bacon. That’s not what the vision was about. It was about people. God has shown us that we should not call any person impure or unclean — that we should not treat any person as impure or unclean.

So here’s an invitation or a challenge for the New Year: Sign up for the scavenger hunt. Take the Big List of the unclean and the untouchable and turn it upside down and inside out. Seek out those people instead of avoiding them. Touch them and let them touch you.