Acts 10:1-16
Interesting how the most momentous, historical events can take place in the most ordinary of times. Cornelius sees an angel “at the ninth hour,” that is, at 3 pm; while Peter’s vision comes at “the sixth hour,” Noon. There were seven “hours” set aside at different parts of the day and night for prayer. Cornelius and Peter were simply doing what they did regularly, taking some brief time out of the day that had been appointed for prayer.
Just like any human love and friendship, it takes time to nourish and develop a relationship with God. That time may seem rather habitual, and when it becomes a “habit,” it can become easy to ask ourselves why we do it. The reason we do it is so that we can get into the habit of talking to God; and when God talks back, we will know how to recognize that this time, the prayer is very, very different. It may not be an angel. It may be voice within us that says something we never would have thought of on our own. However our visions come, they spring from a foundation of habit.
This tradition of prayer at a fixed hour continues in our “Common Prayer.” I try to make the riches of this common prayer available in person at 9 am in the church, and online. I hope you can find the time for this life of prayer. Sometimes, I wonder if I should offer Morning Prayer earlier, for those who could come by on their way to work. What do you all think?
Now we come to Peter’s earth-shaking vision. “What God has made clean, do not call common,” Peter hears his God tell him. Eating was always done in community. Classifying certain kinds of meat as “clean” or “common” was one way of ensuring that the community of Israel would remain “holy,” set apart from the peoples of the world who failed to perceive the one God.
But now Peter hears the Lord tell him that his distinctions between the “common” world untouched by the divine, and the world that God himself has “cleaned,” are not God’s. And what of our distinctions? Are there things that we have counted common that God calls clean? Or are there things that we have presumed clean that God does call common? These are crucial questions for which an answer is demanded of us as a church. Where do we find these answers? Here we come back to where we began: with the habit of common prayer?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 9:32-43
In today’s reading from Acts, Peter is doing what his and the other Eleven’s successors do today: visiting the smaller communities that make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Our apostolic successor, Bishop Henry Parsley, will visit us on Wednesday, January 20. But Peter, it is said, “came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.” At this point, Luke doesn’t refer to the community as a “church.” They are all “saints.” That is, they have been sanctified, made holy, literally “set apart” for the work of God. To be a saint doesn’t mean they are without fault and perfect in all things. It just means that they have been chosen by God. So have we at Christ Church also been set apart by God, which means that we too are Saints.
So, for what are the saints set apart? The surprising answer will be revealed later this week. But for now, there is a foreshadowing of that answer in today’s reading. When Peter says to the dead Tabitha, “arise,” note that he does not touch her. As I explained a few weeks ago; because she was dead, Tabitha’s body was “unclean” according to Jewish law. To avoid becoming “unclean” himself, Peter did not touch her. But Jesus, when he raised the daughter of Jairus, had no fear of being made unclean.
At this point, Peter is still a full adherent of the Law of Moses, and pointing to Jesus as its fulfillment. Starting tomorrow, his categories of clean and unclean, of right and wrong, will begin to crumble. Ironically, the saints who have been set apart by God will find that their mission is to no longer be set apart from the world, as though some people are holier than others, but to make the whole world holy. No longer will some parts of the world be considered unworthy of God’s presence. Join us for tomorrow’s episode.
In today’s reading from Acts, Peter is doing what his and the other Eleven’s successors do today: visiting the smaller communities that make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Our apostolic successor, Bishop Henry Parsley, will visit us on Wednesday, January 20. But Peter, it is said, “came down also to the saints who lived at Lydda.” At this point, Luke doesn’t refer to the community as a “church.” They are all “saints.” That is, they have been sanctified, made holy, literally “set apart” for the work of God. To be a saint doesn’t mean they are without fault and perfect in all things. It just means that they have been chosen by God. So have we at Christ Church also been set apart by God, which means that we too are Saints.
So, for what are the saints set apart? The surprising answer will be revealed later this week. But for now, there is a foreshadowing of that answer in today’s reading. When Peter says to the dead Tabitha, “arise,” note that he does not touch her. As I explained a few weeks ago; because she was dead, Tabitha’s body was “unclean” according to Jewish law. To avoid becoming “unclean” himself, Peter did not touch her. But Jesus, when he raised the daughter of Jairus, had no fear of being made unclean.
At this point, Peter is still a full adherent of the Law of Moses, and pointing to Jesus as its fulfillment. Starting tomorrow, his categories of clean and unclean, of right and wrong, will begin to crumble. Ironically, the saints who have been set apart by God will find that their mission is to no longer be set apart from the world, as though some people are holier than others, but to make the whole world holy. No longer will some parts of the world be considered unworthy of God’s presence. Join us for tomorrow’s episode.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Monday, 9th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 9:10-31
It’s one of those small things that are easy to miss, except that it’s really a major moment in this story. And it comes at verse 20: “And immediately [Saul] proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” Many times, Jesus has been called the “Christ,” or “Messiah” (both which mean “anointed”). This is the first time that any of Jesus’s disciples have called him God’s Son. What did they mean by this?
In the Old Testament, the beast known reference to being a son of God comes in the promise of God to King David, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son…my steadfast love will not depart from him…And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. (2nd Samuel 7:14-16). Sadly, it had all gone wrong. David’s kingdom had not been sure forever. Too many of David’s royal sons had failed to act in such a way as to deserve being called God’s sons. In a time when no one conceived of such ideas as democracy, the only kind of government under which people felt secure and free was that of a good king who protected his people as a shepherd protected his sheep.
So. God had made a promise to his adopted son. How was that promise to be fulfilled when David’s successors had failed to be good, protective shepherds? God’s own eternal Son came, as God’s perfect representative. As a human being, he was also the perfect human representative, representing the fullest experience of human joy and hope, human grief and anguish. As God, he triumphed over human suffering, so that no human experience of suffering and sin is beyond the power of God to redeem. In this world, we want protection from injustice, pain and grief. God’s own son did not shield himself from those things. He redeemed them.
In all this, those faithful Jews understood Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to David, which made him the “Anointed,” the Messiah, the Christ that has been long promised them. What Saul first began to grasp was that this “Son of God” had fulfilled Israel’s promises, while transcending them at the same time. What this might mean, practically speaking, we will begin to see later this week.
It’s one of those small things that are easy to miss, except that it’s really a major moment in this story. And it comes at verse 20: “And immediately [Saul] proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” Many times, Jesus has been called the “Christ,” or “Messiah” (both which mean “anointed”). This is the first time that any of Jesus’s disciples have called him God’s Son. What did they mean by this?
In the Old Testament, the beast known reference to being a son of God comes in the promise of God to King David, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son…my steadfast love will not depart from him…And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. (2nd Samuel 7:14-16). Sadly, it had all gone wrong. David’s kingdom had not been sure forever. Too many of David’s royal sons had failed to act in such a way as to deserve being called God’s sons. In a time when no one conceived of such ideas as democracy, the only kind of government under which people felt secure and free was that of a good king who protected his people as a shepherd protected his sheep.
So. God had made a promise to his adopted son. How was that promise to be fulfilled when David’s successors had failed to be good, protective shepherds? God’s own eternal Son came, as God’s perfect representative. As a human being, he was also the perfect human representative, representing the fullest experience of human joy and hope, human grief and anguish. As God, he triumphed over human suffering, so that no human experience of suffering and sin is beyond the power of God to redeem. In this world, we want protection from injustice, pain and grief. God’s own son did not shield himself from those things. He redeemed them.
In all this, those faithful Jews understood Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to David, which made him the “Anointed,” the Messiah, the Christ that has been long promised them. What Saul first began to grasp was that this “Son of God” had fulfilled Israel’s promises, while transcending them at the same time. What this might mean, practically speaking, we will begin to see later this week.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Sermon for the 9th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Maybe I’m over-reaching, but I wonder if you could trace all the problems in our world, our divisions, our arguments, our wars, to this one sentence: David captured the stronghold of Jerusalem and named it the City of David. “Jerusalem my happy home…There David stands with harp in hand as master of the choir: ten thousand times would one be blest who might this music hear.” But there is also this: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Luke 13:34). Today, we say O Jerusalem, city of three faiths worshiping the same God, claiming the same place as their holy place, unable to live there in peace.
Yet still the dream endures, in ways that David could never have imagined. How could he have imagined that another people would arise thousands of years later, and make their way to a New World. When John Winthrop told the first Puritan settlers that they would be “as a city upon a hill,” he meant that they were to be as Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and the Americans as a chosen people.
On the one hand, that sense of destiny has blessed us with the confidence to overcome obstacles that other people have just accepted in a fatalistic way. Looking ahead to having to fight two implacable enemies, with our Navy crippled and our Army undermanned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made this promise to the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941: There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.” Look at our history from one perspective, and you get this sense of inevitability, of ‘chosenness” about us.
But for what did we fight and win that terrible war? To be the richest country, or the most powerful? Abraham Lincoln once recalled reading the story of Washington crossing the Delaware river to attack the British at dawn in Christmas Day. Was it merely the independence of one nation that was at stake in that struggle, Lincoln asked. He called us the “almost chosen people.” There’s just enough sense of our destiny in that phrase, without giving us a blank check.
Of course, if Jerusalem is any sense a city on a hill, our happy home, the stronghold of God, it is that because of this almost chosen man who captured it and named it for himself. If the story of King David as we have it in 1st and 2nd Samuel, conveys anything to us, it is the sense of God choosing, not by any human category, but by grace. His story starts when God sends his prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse, where God promises to reveal one of Jesse’s sons, whom Samuel is to anoint as the future king of Israel, never mind the current king, Saul. Son after son parades before Samuel, from the oldest to the youngest, and yet Samuel keeps hearing God say, “No, not this one.” It is, indeed, the 8th son, who has to be brought in from the field, that God chooses, and Samuel anoints.
That is hardly the end of the story. But day by day, year by year, every obstacle in David’s way is removed, including Saul and his sons, until there is no one left but David, the one whose very name means “beloved of God.” And throughout the Old Testament, there are many whom God chooses and rejects, blesses and curses. But only of this man is it ever said that God loved him.
So that’s the end of the story. David ruled a happy kingdom in peace and power for 40 years, and lived happily ever after? If David was “chosen,” if we were “chosen,” it cannot be for our selves only. What were David and his city chosen for? The clue is in the verses that were omitted from our reading. The Jebusites holding Jerusalem taunt David and his men: This city is so secure we can defend it with our lame and disabled they say. Now sadly, it reads as though when David occupied Jerusalem that he expelled the lame and disabled. But as the story of this people moves through the centuries, their understanding of Jerusalem’s purpose will expand. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” the prophet Isaiah will write a few centuries later.
David was a shepherd boy, then a soldier in Saul’s army, then an outlaw on the run from Saul, then a fairly successful king of a decent-sized empire. But what God started through him was so much greater than he could possibly imagine. We have been a free people for a few centuries now, certainly much longer than the Greeks' Democracy or Roman Republic., but still a very brief time within the scope of human history. We’ve had our “American Century.” Rome had 800 years. If we are, as Lincoln said, “almost chosen,” it cannot be about our power, our wealth, or even our freedom. If we are as a shining city on a hill, it cannot be for our glory, but for God's glory. And the glory of God is a world of nations reconciled: one city of God, in peace and liberty with justice for all.
Yet still the dream endures, in ways that David could never have imagined. How could he have imagined that another people would arise thousands of years later, and make their way to a New World. When John Winthrop told the first Puritan settlers that they would be “as a city upon a hill,” he meant that they were to be as Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and the Americans as a chosen people.
On the one hand, that sense of destiny has blessed us with the confidence to overcome obstacles that other people have just accepted in a fatalistic way. Looking ahead to having to fight two implacable enemies, with our Navy crippled and our Army undermanned, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made this promise to the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941: There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.” Look at our history from one perspective, and you get this sense of inevitability, of ‘chosenness” about us.
But for what did we fight and win that terrible war? To be the richest country, or the most powerful? Abraham Lincoln once recalled reading the story of Washington crossing the Delaware river to attack the British at dawn in Christmas Day. Was it merely the independence of one nation that was at stake in that struggle, Lincoln asked. He called us the “almost chosen people.” There’s just enough sense of our destiny in that phrase, without giving us a blank check.
Of course, if Jerusalem is any sense a city on a hill, our happy home, the stronghold of God, it is that because of this almost chosen man who captured it and named it for himself. If the story of King David as we have it in 1st and 2nd Samuel, conveys anything to us, it is the sense of God choosing, not by any human category, but by grace. His story starts when God sends his prophet Samuel to the house of Jesse, where God promises to reveal one of Jesse’s sons, whom Samuel is to anoint as the future king of Israel, never mind the current king, Saul. Son after son parades before Samuel, from the oldest to the youngest, and yet Samuel keeps hearing God say, “No, not this one.” It is, indeed, the 8th son, who has to be brought in from the field, that God chooses, and Samuel anoints.
That is hardly the end of the story. But day by day, year by year, every obstacle in David’s way is removed, including Saul and his sons, until there is no one left but David, the one whose very name means “beloved of God.” And throughout the Old Testament, there are many whom God chooses and rejects, blesses and curses. But only of this man is it ever said that God loved him.
So that’s the end of the story. David ruled a happy kingdom in peace and power for 40 years, and lived happily ever after? If David was “chosen,” if we were “chosen,” it cannot be for our selves only. What were David and his city chosen for? The clue is in the verses that were omitted from our reading. The Jebusites holding Jerusalem taunt David and his men: This city is so secure we can defend it with our lame and disabled they say. Now sadly, it reads as though when David occupied Jerusalem that he expelled the lame and disabled. But as the story of this people moves through the centuries, their understanding of Jerusalem’s purpose will expand. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,” the prophet Isaiah will write a few centuries later.
David was a shepherd boy, then a soldier in Saul’s army, then an outlaw on the run from Saul, then a fairly successful king of a decent-sized empire. But what God started through him was so much greater than he could possibly imagine. We have been a free people for a few centuries now, certainly much longer than the Greeks' Democracy or Roman Republic., but still a very brief time within the scope of human history. We’ve had our “American Century.” Rome had 800 years. If we are, as Lincoln said, “almost chosen,” it cannot be about our power, our wealth, or even our freedom. If we are as a shining city on a hill, it cannot be for our glory, but for God's glory. And the glory of God is a world of nations reconciled: one city of God, in peace and liberty with justice for all.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Friday, 8th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 9:1-9
And so “Saul” the Church’s most feared persecutor became “Paul” the apostle who brought the Good News to the Gentile nations.
“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” wrote Paul to the Philippians (Phil. 3:4-6). As he hunted down followers of Jesus Christ, Saul’s motives were as pure as the driven snow. He wasn’t acting for financial gain, or out of any desire to cause hurt. He truly believed that he was doing the will of God.
And then, in one literally blinding instant, Saul was forced into a 180° turn. He was absolutely sure that he was on God’s side. But now, to his horror, he realized that he and God were on opposing sides. He believed that he was totally in the right. But now he saw that he was in the wrong.
We all have convictions; beliefs on which we base our lives, like points on a map that help us stay oriented in a confusing world. But what if, in an instant, you realized in one second that your religious convictions or your political philosophy were completely wrong? How would you deal with the shock? Like a soldier in shock, who can’t see, even though the doctor finds nothing wrong with his eyes, Saul was paralyzed, in his body and soul. He had been judged. What way out did he have? The answer on Monday.
And so “Saul” the Church’s most feared persecutor became “Paul” the apostle who brought the Good News to the Gentile nations.
“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” wrote Paul to the Philippians (Phil. 3:4-6). As he hunted down followers of Jesus Christ, Saul’s motives were as pure as the driven snow. He wasn’t acting for financial gain, or out of any desire to cause hurt. He truly believed that he was doing the will of God.
And then, in one literally blinding instant, Saul was forced into a 180° turn. He was absolutely sure that he was on God’s side. But now, to his horror, he realized that he and God were on opposing sides. He believed that he was totally in the right. But now he saw that he was in the wrong.
We all have convictions; beliefs on which we base our lives, like points on a map that help us stay oriented in a confusing world. But what if, in an instant, you realized in one second that your religious convictions or your political philosophy were completely wrong? How would you deal with the shock? Like a soldier in shock, who can’t see, even though the doctor finds nothing wrong with his eyes, Saul was paralyzed, in his body and soul. He had been judged. What way out did he have? The answer on Monday.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thursday, 8th Week of Ordinary Time
Acts 8:14-25
It’s interesting how a few Bible verses can be interpreted quite differently. Verses 14-17 of today’s reading are usually taken as the scriptural basis for the rite of Confirmation, where baptized Christians confirm the faith their parents first professed on their behalf. More evangelical Christians cite this verse as proof that getting dunked once isn’t sufficient to be “saved.” You must also be baptized in the Holy Spirit and be “born again.” But there is no indication in ch. 2 of Acts that the 3,000 who became Christians on the day of Pentecost were baptized twice.
What links the baptisms in Jerusalem and Samaria is the presence of the 12. They were the acknowledged leaders of the Church, the ones who could speak for all the believers, and who marked the boundaries of the Church. When they heard in Jerusalem of what Philip had accomplished in Samaria, they realized that something needed to be done to make it clear that this was not a private party, an isolated thing. The Samaritans needed to know that they were a part of something bigger than themselves, a Church that, as Jesus promised, would stretch to the ends of the earth.
In the Episcopal Church, bishops are seen as the successors to the 12. They represent the wider Church. Thus they must be present at confirmations, to remind those confirming their faith that they are part of something bigger than their little congregation. Of course, when a Christian, baptized in Christ, confirms their faith, and has the hands of the Bishop laid on them, they also become “Episcopalians,” as opposed to some other kind of Christian. So, just as their horizon of what constitutes “The Church” expands, they also mark out the boundary of their particular “church.”
Thus, “Confirmation” can be a very inclusive act, and exclusive at the same time. I like to think of the Church sometimes as an amoeba. That single celled creature has very flexible boundaries. It can adjust its outer membrane to new movements. Sometimes, it can even merge with another amoeba. But, it always retains its membrane, its individuality. The 12 faithful sons of Israel were flexible enough to recognize Jesus at work even among their longtime enemies, the Samaritans, and to join themselves and the Samaritans together.
As Episcopalians, may we be flexible enough to recognize the Spirit in unfamiliar places, while retaining the particular gifts God has given us in this reformed yet traditional, evangelical yet catholic, church.
It’s interesting how a few Bible verses can be interpreted quite differently. Verses 14-17 of today’s reading are usually taken as the scriptural basis for the rite of Confirmation, where baptized Christians confirm the faith their parents first professed on their behalf. More evangelical Christians cite this verse as proof that getting dunked once isn’t sufficient to be “saved.” You must also be baptized in the Holy Spirit and be “born again.” But there is no indication in ch. 2 of Acts that the 3,000 who became Christians on the day of Pentecost were baptized twice.
What links the baptisms in Jerusalem and Samaria is the presence of the 12. They were the acknowledged leaders of the Church, the ones who could speak for all the believers, and who marked the boundaries of the Church. When they heard in Jerusalem of what Philip had accomplished in Samaria, they realized that something needed to be done to make it clear that this was not a private party, an isolated thing. The Samaritans needed to know that they were a part of something bigger than themselves, a Church that, as Jesus promised, would stretch to the ends of the earth.
In the Episcopal Church, bishops are seen as the successors to the 12. They represent the wider Church. Thus they must be present at confirmations, to remind those confirming their faith that they are part of something bigger than their little congregation. Of course, when a Christian, baptized in Christ, confirms their faith, and has the hands of the Bishop laid on them, they also become “Episcopalians,” as opposed to some other kind of Christian. So, just as their horizon of what constitutes “The Church” expands, they also mark out the boundary of their particular “church.”
Thus, “Confirmation” can be a very inclusive act, and exclusive at the same time. I like to think of the Church sometimes as an amoeba. That single celled creature has very flexible boundaries. It can adjust its outer membrane to new movements. Sometimes, it can even merge with another amoeba. But, it always retains its membrane, its individuality. The 12 faithful sons of Israel were flexible enough to recognize Jesus at work even among their longtime enemies, the Samaritans, and to join themselves and the Samaritans together.
As Episcopalians, may we be flexible enough to recognize the Spirit in unfamiliar places, while retaining the particular gifts God has given us in this reformed yet traditional, evangelical yet catholic, church.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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.
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.
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