God is making the Church in the way that only God could have done it. Adding new kinds of people who were previously outside the chosen, bringing them together with the children of Abraham, making a harmony of different pieces that would endure. It isn't the way any of the apostles would have done it, but it was the way that was needed.

Peter follows through on the directive he had been given, and how strange that must have felt. The laws he had followed all his life were no longer the policy of the Kingdom of Jesus, because the purpose those laws served found fulfillment in the person of Jesus.

God is opening his Church to more than the Jews, but Peter and the other Church leaders aren't being pushed aside. This movement includes men, and Peter is at the top of the list. This is how God builds the Church, sometimes with the people we don't think belong.

The spreading of the Kingdom with Jesus brought is about bringing wholeness, and this is what Peter brings in this passage. This wasn't parlor tricks, but raising the dead (and of course, not every dead person was raised) served the purpose of more than just seeing friends again, it also grew the Kingdom.

It's odd who God picks to be his workers sometimes. Paul was the chief adversary of the movement of Christianity, and yet he became one of its most important advocates. The potential he had and the conversion he underwent could have only been realized by the work of God.

Today we remember those who have come before us to pass along the faith that we have today, and we remember that God has made us partners in his plan. Like the long list of believers in Hebrews (and the Ethiopian in Acts), we stand in a long line of witnesses who keep building the Kingdom that is both now and not yet.

Kind of a cool pairing of Old and New Testament Scriptures. In Chronicles, we see one half of the Kingdom carrying off their kinsmen to Samaria, being rebuked by a prophet, and turning around. In the New Testament, we see the gospel which came from that conquered kingdom being brought to Samaria and repentance (turning around?) becoming the result. While a lot of the northern kingdom had been scattered, the Lord had not abandoned the place of his promise. The promise had been fulfilled.

A sermon that ends with the public execution of the preacher is a little wild. The religious leaders who had arranged the killing of Jesus did not want his message or his followers continuing. As difficult as this situation was, it actually helped grow the church: as the followers of Jesus dispersed, they took the message to the other parts of the world.

The deacon Stephen, preaching to try and win over the Jews who (tragically) are heading to kill him, pulls out a portion of Jewish history that seems to point to the futility of violence as a tool of serving the Lord. Of course, it was violence that ended Jesus's ministry with a cross, and it would soon end Stephen's as well. Maybe he was onto something important.

Today is the Feast of the apostles Simon (the Zealot) and Jude, two men about whom we know almost nothing. The quote attributed to Jude asking why Jesus was showing himself to the apostles and not the whole world is short, but fitting: Jesus made the first church of these apostles, and that includes the almost-nobodies who were walking with Jesus but didn't make it into much of the story.