This kid came into my life when I was in grade school. His name was Billy. Billy wanted to fit in, Billy wanted to be accepted. Billy wanted to be like everyone else. But he wasn’t.

Peter didn’t want to accept the likes of Cornelius. It wasn’t even on Peter’s radar that people like Cornelius and his family would want to become part of this fledgling movement within Judaism. A movement started by Jesus. And since his death, resurrection and ascension, it was a movement carried on by his followers... all Jews.

Cornelius was not Jewish.

Billy was the last one to be picked for most everything. Someone Billy’s size wasn’t very fast on the baseball field. I know it hurt his feelings to be left out, but that’s just the way it was. Kids can be so cruel...

Perhaps you knew a Billy too...

The scripture from Acts sort of skips to the end of the story. It’s a great story, too. A story with drama, ‘who’s acceptable, who’s not’. Peter isn’t ready to even consider the possibility that non-Jews might be a part of God’s people. After all, he’d been raised thinking that the Jews were the chosen people... the only chosen people. And for many generations that had been the assumption. Why would that change now?

This kid came into my life when I was in high school. Truth be told, and I’m a bit embarrassed about this, but I don’t even remember his name. What I do remember is that he was a proud Native American. He was a cool kid as I remember... he was tall, a great athlete, and really nice. But he had a hard time in high school. As I said, he was very proud of his Indian heritage, and lots of people found that strange. Our little community in Montana had it’s share of Native Americans, my mom, who grew up in the valley, went to high school on an Indian Reservation.

Even though they were a part of our culture, I think there were certain expectations of the Native americans, mainly that they stay in their place and not try to push their way into white society. Only this kid wasn’t following the rules... and who could blame him?

If there was a fight after school, there was a 90 percent chance that this kid was involved. He never started the fights, as I recall, but there were lots of boys lined up to teach him a lesson. Kids can be cruel...

It wasn’t long before he started missing school more and more frequently, and then, one day, he just never came back.

Perhaps you knew someone like this boy...

Peter has this very strange dream... you know the one... where all the animals come down on this large blanket and Peter considers some of them ‘unclean’ and ‘unacceptable’. That’s when God informs him that if God created them, they're not unclean.

Peter eventually interprets this to mean that all people are to be included in God’s family. Including Cornelius and his relatives. When visiting Cornelius... as if to drive home the point, God sends the Spirit upon them as a sign on acceptance. It’s then that Peter says basically... How can we deny them baptism and a place in the church if God has already accepted them?

This kid came into my life when I started playing the french horn in band. His name was Duane. He played the clarinet. He was a small kid, always nicely dressed, always neat and tidy. Very neat and tidy. Overly neat and tidy. His pants always pressed. His shirts always ironed. He had a way about him... a feminine way about him.

Thinking back on it. It’s a wonder that Duane made it through school... but he did. Kids were always picking on him, calling him sissy and pushing him around. Actually they called him more than ‘sissy’, but I’m not going to say it. But you know...

Kids can be so cruel...

Perhaps you knew someone like Duane too... some of them don’t make it through school. Some of them don’t make it to adulthood...

I think that God must get really tired of all the ways people make life hard for other people. Peter had to go back to Jerusalem and convince the rest of the ‘Powers that be’ in the church to let other Gentiles into the family. They weren’t easily convinced, in fact it took a number of years before it became acceptable to allow non-Jews into the church without first making them convert to Judaism.

Sounds odd to us now, doesn’t it. Or does it?

This kid came into my life in college. She felt a calling to go into the ministry like the men. Only the church, our church, wasn’t a very accepting place towards women in ministry at that time. She persevered, she studied and trained and worked her way through seminary, giving birth to two children along the way. She was delighted to be ordained into the ministry shortly after graduation. She went to her first church, and after a short time was told by the chairMAN of the board that he was personally against having women in the ministry. He happened to hold such control over that small, rural church that he soon made her life in that church unbearable... she resigned after only a year and a half. The church can be cruel...

Perhaps you know someone like my wife...

The church has always been slow to open the door to outsiders. Peter and the other apostles were no exceptions. But through my experience, the church is only hurting itself when it isn’t welcoming.

And time after time, I’ve seen the Spirit of God working in the lives of the very people who the church labeled as unacceptable.

For instance... my friends... Bill, Joan, Laurie, Ben, Shane’, Richard, Virginia and William who are all Disciples Clergy in whom I have seen the Spirit of the living God active, both in their ministries and lives. And yet, like Duane, they are put into boxes and labeled as unacceptable by many.

But not by God.

Peter learned a valuable lesson that day in Caesarea... don’t put limits on God’s grace. We humans are of a limited understanding in the ways of God. Even we humans who devote our lives to trying to understand the ways of God. There’s always a part of God... a big part of God that is beyond our knowledge and grasp. It’s dangerous to think that we’ve got God figured out or try to limit God to a recorded message - regardless of how much love and respect we have for that recorded message - namely the Bible.

The Bible is our best record of God’s interaction with humans ending nearly 2,000 years ago. While the record ends there, God’s interactions with humans didn’t end there. God is still alive and acting and interacting with us. The Spirit of God continues to guide and direct the church. Just like Peter, we find it difficult to believe that God would include people who have traditionally been excluded from the church.

God’s ways are sometimes confusing and challenging, especially when they go against the rules that our parents, grandparents and countless generations before them, held dear.

But the Spirit of God is moving among the very people we would exclude.

It took a long time for the church to come around to including people like us. People not born into Judaism. You’d think that ought to be reason enough for us to welcome with open hearts and open arms every person who is looking to grow closer to God and God’s people.

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This kid came into our church...