Saturday, August 30, 2014

Saturday, August 30, 2014 

Acts 11:1-18

How often do we look at others who are different from us and make a  judgement that excludes them from our company because their ways are strange. In a sense, today's passage is from an early page of the Church's history when the membership consisted of followers who had been raised within Judaism and it was taken for granted by the rank and file of these members that this was a norm: that to be a Chrisitan,you would have to had a Jewish background and probably followed many of the Jewish guidelines regarding conduct and diet. So when others who were not Jewish also fell the call of Jesus, at first this caused some consternation by the Church members in Jerusalem because  potential gentile Christians  didn't have a familiarity with the history of the Law & the Prophets, nor  a need to follow Jewish dietary guidelines. Peter's vision from God dispels the dietary requirements and his hospitality to these Gentile Chrisitans and the  observance of God's Holy Spirit upon them as well was a wakeup moment for the Church, as it expanded beyond Jerusalem into the Gentile world beyond.

Today when we live in a time when many live good lives yet maybe worship God by other names, hailing from other parts of our global village, it moves those of us who are Christians to search out any common ground where the Spirit of God is moving in all of our lives and to recognize that we are all children of this Spirit.  It may well be that some just haven't yet achieved that sense of awareness that allows us to see the goodness in each other, and so at times we may need to be just present and available in a quiet gentle way, and yet not intrusive nor exclusive.

Archdeacon Ken Cardwell