Hello and welcome to Wednesday’s podcast. This week we’ve been considering what it means to be a witness for Christ, to tell our story of Jesus in words and actions in the places where God has put us.

Today, we’re going to think about what it means to be a people of welcome. Our reading is Acts 8: 4-25; we are going to focus on verses 14-17:

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

REFLECTION:

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve been really made to feel not welcome?

For me, secondary school, especially in my early years, was a somewhat challenging experience. For those who know me they will attest to the fact that have been blessed with a rather vibrant hair colour. As a younger man, some folk told me it would one day go brown. I’m nearly 33 and I’ve yet to see any evidence of that. My hair is still a fairly fiery red shade! Now I’ve grown to love my cool hair but in school it was rather different. Some of the stuff was fairly tame. ‘You look like Paul Scholes’, people used to say. To be fair, I’d take that. But some of the behaviour towards me was pretty rough. I once remember being chased and then picked up and thrown into a bush. All because my hair was a little bit different to everyone else. Bottom line – It was a form of bullying which I never really reported or dealt with properly. Whilst there were loads of happy moments in secondary school, it’s fair to say that I didn’t always feel welcome there.

To not feel welcome somewhere is a pretty horrible feeling. I know this isn’t an uncommon experience for lots of young people growing up and often the effects of this can still extend in adulthood. Indeed we live in a world which is seemingly still finding new ways to exclude people: what they wear, what they look like, gender, sexuality, race or beliefs.

The truth is, that is not what God wants for his creation. He wants us to know that we belong.

We see this in today’s passage. The church scatters under persecution. A man called Saul – who will hear more about later in the week – is one of the leading figures in this movement – going from house to house and dragging followers of Jesus to prison. The church begins to scatter as a result. And as it does, the good news about Jesus spreads even further. As we’ve already looked at this week, under pressure, in the face of opposition, Jesus is revealed to those who would listen and people continue to come to faith in an ever growing number. Today we read about Philip, one of seven commissioned Deacons by the Apostles, visiting a town in Samaria. Hated by both Jews and non-Jews due to their mixed racial heritage – the Samaritans were the definition of outsiders. They were the people that nobody welcomed.

And yet Philip finds himself there. He tells them about Jesus. He witnesses to them – in word and action – and people come to faith. The word of what has happened gets back to the Apostles in Jerusalem and they send Peter and John to go check it out. I love what happens next. They just simply do as Jesus did for them and they pray that these new Christians would receive the Holy Spirit. It’s beautiful! Why? Because now no one could question at all that these were now people who were part of God’s new covenantal family. The Spirit was given to show that these people who were thought to be outsiders – they now belonged.

Paul writes this to the church in Ephesus:

You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home.