Dear Faith Family,
As we delve into scripture, listen to sermons, or read reflections like this, we almost instinctively ask, 'How does this apply to me?'
"What's in there for me?" is not a bad question or a wrong question. In fact, the question is valid and crucial, especially in our journey with God's word, as the apostles Paul and Peter affirm,
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness... (2 Timothy 3:16)
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us...For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
(2 Peter 1:3, 21)
Still, our conditioned pursuit of practical relevance sometimes leads us to skip over the most fundamental wonder of our faith stories: they are history. The events, whether directly depicted or functioning as the foundation for the exhortations and admonishments written, are more than chronological recordings of applicable narratives. They were actual happenings in time and space that shaped the time and space that followed, including ours.
Of course, the event that fosters wonder and worship most is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. A real happening that we remember every time we gather in the broken bread and the poured juice. An event in time and space that shapes our lives every day, in no small part because it led to another historical moment. The story of Acts 10, as we shared on Sunday, is especially important for you and me. It is, as one commentator notes, where,
"we see into the world of the Bible,
then in an instant we really see our world,
there and here, our world in all its intensity…
[shinning] through because we see that
our world is actually God’s world."
(Willie James Jennings)
In Acts 10-11, we see the history of God’s blessed to be a blessing people (Gen. 12:1-3) colliding with the history of Jesus and, for the first time in the freed life of Abraham’s descendants, the explicit crossing of ordained boundaries not as an act of mercy but as an expansion, the ordained expansion, of God’s desire. Once the boundary of Jew and Gentile was crossed, and since it has been crossed, there is no going back. Praise the Lord for that, for you, and I would not be here today otherwise.
But, since we are here, as Paul would later say, we
"formerly...Gentiles by birth...excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise... now in Christ Jesus...are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people...built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone...being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Eph. 2:11-22).
While there are treasured applications to draw from the stories of The Book of Acts, especially in Acts 10-11, before we rush too quickly to what we can get from the story, might we marvel at the millenniums merging at that moment in history that has given shape to the millenniums connecting us to that moment and one another through Jesus.
Praise the LORD, all nations!
Extol him, all peoples!
For great is his steadfast love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD
endures forever.
Praise the LORD!
(Psalm 117)
Love you, faith family! God bless.