Richard Hollingsworth serves Braeside Pastoral Charge in Renfrew Presbytery. His reflections will be added several times a week.

April 26, 2010 : Easter V: Through Us!

Hi and good morning from beautiful downtown Braeside!

We have returned from our wondrous trip through northern Italy and southern Switzerland.  I was privileged to stand in the chancel where Ulrich Zwingli translated the Bible into Swiss German and before the altar where he preached that baptism was not a rite of the state but the profession of a believer.  I was privileged also to stand in the transept where Galileo Galilei watched the incense burner’s pendulum swing and realized that the earth was not flat but round, and…

Anyway, enough of me, this week I will be looking at Acts 11:1-18, Revelation 21:1-6, Psalm 148, and John 13:31-35.  Today, I am looking at Acts 11:1-18.  I grew up in a culture and was part of a denomination which was plagued by a “them and us” attitude.  We did not live, work, much less worship with black people, nor people from other racial minorities.  As I became more politically active and spiritually alive I began to examine that way of thinking and to search the scriptures.  I could not find one bit of scripture or any example of Jesus that would let me exclude any person from worship because of the colour of their skin or their economic status.  “Why did you go and have dinner with them?” the apostles and believers in Jerusalem asked Peter.  While the question they were asking was about food, the real issue for those apostles, and for the culture of my youth, was the idea that Christ’s spiritual food was not just theirs alone.  Through Peter, Jesus spoke to those apostles and believers to invite all of us to lives of inclusiveness and compassion.  I know that Christ’s call is difficult, but I also know that God can and will give to us the eyes of Jesus that we may see all people in the way he did and does.  Thanks be to God.

May God this day free us from the sins that so easily beset us and bring us to God’s joy that lasts forever.

God bless,
Richard