The Same Gift
Piety
“If then God gave
them the same gift, he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?" When they heard this, they
stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, "God has then granted
life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too."
Act 11:17-18
But whoever enters
through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him,
and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them
out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep
follow him because they recognize his voice. John 10:2-4
Study
The Good Shepherd discourse that started on the fourth
Sunday of Easter continues into this week and it resonates with the message in today’s
first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
The Good Shepherd discourse differentiated between good
teachers and bad teachers. The sheep will
only follow the real, authentic shepherd.
However, it made no distinctions about the sheep (followers/disciples). That is exactly the challenge in the first
reading.
[i]The
Jewish Christians of Jerusalem were scandalized to learn of Peter’s sojourn in
the house of the Gentile Cornelius. Nonetheless, they had to accept the divine
directions given to both Peter and Cornelius. They concluded that the setting
aside of the legal barriers between Jew and Gentile was an exceptional
ordinance of God to indicate that the apostolic kerygma was also to be directed
to the Gentiles. Only in Acts 15 at the “Council” in Jerusalem does the
evangelization of the Gentiles become the official position of the church
leadership in Jerusalem.
As the church emerges, there was no distinction between Jew
or Gentile, Roman or Samaritan. The
distinction was between believers and non-believers. The Church Jesus left behind for Peter, Paul
and the rest to build was a church based upon BOTH/AND, not EITHER/OR.
Action
Are you ready to make your church a church of BOTH/AND? Not young or old. Not traditional or progressive. Not an immigrant or citizen.
Jesus does not equivocate. He definitively states that
his saving power is for all who follow Him. Not just the Jews. Not just Catholics.
Not just the Anglicans. Not just the Methodists. Whoever enters through me will
be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
Who are our Gentiles? With whom do we refuse to talk? Just
as the Jews were challenged to be more accepting of those who accepted God, we,
too, are so challenged.
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