Acts 2:14a, 36-41

Year A - 3rd Sunday of Easter or Assured ³
May 4, 2014
Acts 2:14a, 36-41

To everyone who lives in Judea or Jerusalem, is a pretty grandiose introduction. Likewise with the entire house of Israel. I'm here to express surety and that has a certain amount of persuasive power. You should believe things known to be true: I know Jesus as Lord and Messiah: therefore you should know this, too.

See how well this works, some 3,000 people agreed to the point of baptism (not legally binding as it is today). Presumably folks were not caught up in crowd pressure, but were called. (This is an out, though, for those whom Peter was not able to reach with his extravagant rhetoric.)

While it may have been this easy, the odds are that the response is out of proportion with the stimulus. This makes a good story.

Today is a "dialog" set up as a result of an intervention by Love Prevails last November. A task force with no known LGBTQ presence has set up a panel "dialogue" about "the gays". Not an auspicious beginning. It should be interesting to see people dance around the United Methodist weird-speak of "incompatibility with Christian teaching" (Note: original language was about "Christian doctrine" and was changed to the more generic "teaching" a day after the "doctrine" language was passed. Folks caught on early that they the doctrine language would not stand scrutiny and fudged to the generic and highly interpretable "teaching".)

LovePrevailsUMC.com and LovePrevailsUMC on Facebook and Twitter will be looking to see if there is a miracle that happens from a benign panel to a conviction of needed repentance for 42 years of intentional discrimination and a commitment to change the current harmful legislation. This is no more a long-shot than Peter's speech leading to 3,000 spontaneous baptisms.

[Note: One of the clearer tweets about the live streaming "die-a-log" — Soulforce: "This is not a first step or just the beginning or historic day. This is going sideways not forward. We need leadership."]