Acts 16:9-15

Easter 6 - Year C

Acts 16:9-15

Last week Peter had a vision. This week Paul has a vision. Beware, next week you will have a vision and unexpectedly travel to stay with someone.

Last week Gentiles were welcomed in. This week Gentiles are traveled to. Next week "Gentiles" (by whatever measure of being left out, marginalized, exiled, etc.) will continue to open their hearts (a miracle in itself that one could wish upon the religious insider).

"Gentiles" as Gentiles, women as Gentiles, foreigners as Gentiles, any discriminated against individual or group as Gentiles: plead for non-Gentiles to finally get a vision that will trigger compassion within themselves and stop the discrimination and physical/economic/spiritual violence against "Gentiles". This is a call to the insiders to stop being blind to the consequences of their decisions and actions. For Paul it is an extension of his first encounter with Jesus. His blindness became more than simple blindness, it was also a motivation to not be blind again, to see Jesus everywhere, even in heathen Macedonia.

It is in our conversion that we find hope to be converted and reformed again and again. The goal of a once and always reforming Church is a good one for an individual. The Spirit of a Living G*D, revealed again and again in vision after vision, continues to push us to join the Jesus, Peter, and Paul tradition of an expansive and expanding view of G*D's presence in this world.

To extend Lydia's closing comment, "If you have confidence we are growing deeper in G*D by doing so together, let us stay with one another, be guests of one another, and, together, envision others, now separated from us, joining us." Would this be something that your congregation would be comfortable with as a practice and not just a nice thought?