“Prayfaithfully” is the prayer ministry website of the Northern Great Lakes Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I wrote the Daily Devotions for this week.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Text: Acts 15:12-19
“The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, ‘My brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,
“After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
from its ruins I will rebuild it,
and I will set it up,
so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—
even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.
Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.”
Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God.’”
Paul caused a lot of trouble when he went out to preach to the Gentiles. Even after Peter’s experience with Cornelius, he and the other apostles in Jerusalem still believed that the Judean people were the only ones worthy of receiving the good news of the risen Christ. Paul’s missionary journeys to the Gentiles were so scandalous that a council had to be called in Jerusalem. Ultimately James, the leader of the church, decided that yes, the Gentiles should be included in the church, and that the Judeans should no longer trouble them over it. Not that it would have made much of a difference to Paul—with or without Jerusalem’s permission, he was going to continue his mission to those left out by the Jerusalem church.
The church has always struggled with reaching out to those on the margins, the outcasts, those left out and forgotten. Whether it was Gentiles, Romans, women, eunuchs and sexual minorities, former “enemies”, people of other ethnicities and nationalities, the poor, or anyone else typically left out by society, the church has had to overcome its own prejudices to truly see and understand the radical nature of God’s welcome and availability of God’s grace.
It’s a never-ending process of self-discernment, self-reflection, self-criticism, and yes, self-forgiveness. We’ll never get it perfect. We’re human beings; human beings striving for something better, something greater, but human beings nonetheless. Despite our best efforts, we’ll fall short. It’s important that we recognize it, work at, and forgive ourselves when we don’t live up to God’s expectations for us.
But the history of the church is also one of an ever-expanding tent that will not stop until it covers every people, every group, every outcast. God has worked tirelessly and impatiently to keep sewing additions to the tent so that none will be left out in the sun. And God has always used people like us—like Mary, Saul, Simeon, Peter—to do it. Through us, God rescues the outcast, the forgotten, those on the margins; and through them, God rescues us. Thanks be to God!
Let us pray: God of all people, in your eyes, none are forgotten, none are outside, none are left out. Take your vision of the church from concept to reality, from unfinished to finished project; and may your grace know no bounds, no limits, no prejudices. In the name of your Son we pray. Amen.
Featured Image: “Ceske Pivo” by Chris Waits is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Living an Ecumenical Life 