Wednesday, 8th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 8:1-14

Jesus had given his disciples their marching orders: “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). But up until this point in the story, they have stuck very close to Jerusalem, even more closely to the Temple. That makes sense. Take the Capital and you take the country. But perhaps there was also some reluctance in their staying in Jerusalem.

Samaria, to the north of Judea, had long been the enemy of Israel. They had apparently been settled in the land of Israel after the Israelites had been conquered and exiled. At a time when people assumed that there were many gods for many different countries, the new arrivals adopted the God of Israel. But when the Jews returned from exile, they considered the Samaritan version of Judaism a false version, and swore to have nothing to do with them. Needless to say, Jew and Samaritan had been hostile to each other for centuries since.

While the disciples of Jesus might have had their marching orders, they didn’t seem to have much of a plan on implementing those orders. But God has a way of breaking through our inertia. After Stephen’s murder, the authorities appear to have held the Greek-speaking Christians responsible, and chased them out of Jerusalem, while leaving the 12 Apostles alone. So now we have an enthusiastic group of Jesus’s disciples, like Philip, who can’t help but speak of the Good News wherever they go. And there is Samaria, just north of Judea, and you know the rest of the story.

Did God plan for Stephen to be killed? Absolutely not. We are not God’s puppets, and God does not pull us around as though we are on God’s string. But God is the Great Improviser. God had a plan for the early church. And when the enemies of Christ tried to it out, God knew how to work through the schemes of human beings to accomplish his will. As it was 2,000 years ago, so it is today. And whatever human beings do, or don’t do, to further God’s plan, God has a way of working with us in a way that brings his plans to full fruit, with us or in spite of us.