Acts 10:34-43 (Easter)

Year A - Easter or Assured

April 20, 2014

Acts 10:34-43

Talk about your resurrectional vision, Peter’s vision that precedes this speech is a good example of an everyday Easter experience. Its equivalent in science is that of the thought experiment or sudden insight that changes the way we see the world around us. The same sort of breakthrough happens in every arena of life from the relational to manufacturing to music.

At moments in our own life there comes a new understanding equivalent to, “I truly understand that G*D shows no partiality.” These are as unconscious as learning to walk and as intentional as evaluating a vocational choice.

At those wonderful in-between moments where we can see our gifts contributing to the common good by staying where we are and also by moving on to another arena we see G*D’s impartiality. Both are good and our partnership in discernment is needed. (This is different than just climbing the ladder to grasp as a better-for-me than wrestling with a better-for-us or sticking to a first call through thick and thin or innocently pursuing each new opportunity.)

This week has been a week of choices. Did we do Palm or Passion Sunday? Were we sensitized to injustice with plots by the strong, rigged trials, false claims of impartiality or innocence dramatized with washed hands, capital punishment for stealers of class-driven capital, centurion revelations, intentional betrayal and scared, passive betrayal? Did our walk through the week change us so we are different than last Easter?

Each choice carries the potential of being an Easter choice. Is this really an impartial choice? We usually act as though it were as we choose to stay with what we know rather than risk learning something new.