Daily Liturgy and Scripture

The way God brings the Church together isn't always the same. The reasons for that are known only to God, but this is a pretty good example of that. For Peter and Cornelius, he came through visions and dreams. He didn't do that for the entire church, because it's a partnership that God has made with man. In this case, he let Peter take the stage. Of course, the Spirit is in all of it, but it's very humbling to think that God allows us to play important roles in his plan.

The work of the Spirit is playing out among the people: the dream given to Peter and the vision given to Cornelius are coordinated works to expand the Kingdom. That is exactly what happens, as Peter recognizes. No longer are the Jewish believers excluding those outside the Jewish faith, because the Spirit can move in all. Good news for those of us who weren’t born Jewish!

God truly builds his own Church. Peter never saw this coming: the inclusion of non-Jews, which is what his dream meant. Following devout diet laws was as strict in Jewish practice as circumcision, and both of those things indicated who was “in” with the religious crowd. Jesus came to open a new gateway: now everyone was included, and he was the key.

It’s really interesting to see how Peter has grown as a disciple. He’s come from being the one who swears to die with Jesus, to the one who denies knowing him, to the one preaching at Pentecost, and now he is raising people from the dead. It seems like he’s been inconsistent, maybe even undependable. But there’s another word for what he’s been: human. Where he is now and what he is able to do is only possible because of the way God has formed him in the hard times.

This is a big moment in the history of the Church. God has made a man who was the enemy of the Church into its greatest evangelist. What Paul got out of the deal was blindness, but he had already been blind. When the scales fell from his eyes, he got more than his physical sight back. He certainly must have seen the world in a new light.

The fact that God entrusted the progress of his Kingdom to the hands of people is mind-boggling. The Bible is full of people who fail royally, disgrace God's name, turn their back on him, and doubt his goodness. And yet, God continues with plan "a." On All Saints Day, we celebrate the many who have come before us, an unbroken line from Jesus (and really, before) until now. That includes the Ethiopian eunuch in the reading from Acts!

Poor Simon. He almost had it. He heard the message, and he wanted to be part of what was going on. The problem was, his idea of the Kingdom of God was transactional. He saw himself as some sort of superstar magician among these new, Jesus-style superstar magicians. But the Kingdom isn’t transactional. We can’t go through a series of actions to get the things we need to be successful. The road to the top is upside down, and instead of a transaction, God asks for transformation.

It’s really mind-boggling to watch the way God works things out. The scene with Stephen is obvious: he stands up for Jesus, preaching a sermon for the ages. He uses Jewish history to appeal to Jewish leaders, and indeed it was an appeal. But among those leaders is a young man named Saul, mentioned as an afterthought at the end. Stephen’s passing of the Spirit will come powerfully in another few verses, but you have to wonder how the young Saul might have processed his message as he held the coats of Stephen’s murderers and then set out to end the work of the Church.

It took real guts to stand up in front of the Jewish high council and quote Jewish history. Of course they already knew it, but they didn’t know it in light of Jesus. This was Stephen’s mission: to help them understand how their prior knowledge of God fit into the new work he was doing with Jesus. Plus, the accusation from the lying witness was that Jesus came to change the customs given by Moses. Indeed that was true, but not without context. Hopefully, some present in that room understood how the picture fit together.

Today we remember Jude and Simon, two of the more obscure Apostles. Both of them shared names with other Apostles (Judas Isacariot and Simon Peter, respectively) and very little is known of them otherwise. One thing we do get from Jude, here at the end of John’s account: his clarification of why Jesus wasn’t appearing to the whole world. It’s a legitimate question, and an important one. God’s plan, which included Jesus, wasn’t meant to be unfolded all at once. Of course, it’s hard for us to think like God. Jude demonstrates that in this passage, which should be a comfort to us when we don’t fully understand what God is doing.