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Christ is risen!

I grew up in the volatile 1960’s when the Civil Rights movement was really getting traction. I watched as a boy as marches and riots occurred around the country and our nation struggled with throwing off the scourge of racism. By the way, how is it possible that the pigmentation of someone’s skin could make them less a human than someone else? It was a troubled time. And, as usual, we humans did this badly.

And yet, how often through human history have we watched and, God forgive us, even participated in dehumanizing the other based on preferences and prejudices. If it is, as we Christians insist, that all humans are created in God’s image, then partiality based on how a person looks, or where a person is from is, frankly, ridiculous.

Look at our lesson today in Acts 10:34-43:

IN THOSE DAYS, Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses to all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and made him manifest; not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

St. Peter preaches that the coming of Jesus and the coming of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost opens his eyes to how God sees all humans. This is the natural result of becoming like God because Jesus opens the way to we humans seeing as God sees.

Peter is a good son of Israel. He knows the story of how God promised the Father of the Faith, Abraham, that God would make Abraham’s name great; that God would make Abraham’s children as numerous as the sands of the seashore; and that God would bless the whole world through Abraham. He knows the story of God delivering the nation of Israel from Egypt; how God gave His Torah, His Law through Moses; and how God led the people through the desert for 40 years, teaching them to depend on Him for their lives and for their insights into God’s ways. Peter knows the story of the way God gave Moses the vision of heavenly worship and how Moses was instructed to make the “Tent” of Meeting like what God showed Moses how worship was done in heaven by the angels. Peter was in a long line of Jewish people who had been shaped and formed for centuries by the stories of “God’s chosen people” and how God’s people were to live differently than those who did not have God’s wisdom for living.

But this was never meant by God to create a superior race. It was meant to be an example to all humanity how everyone was meant to be.

They forgot this was eventually supposed to include everyone. And this amnesia to the truth reduced these people to something they were never meant to be: Proud of their status instead of seeing themselves as servants to the whole world. This spiritual blindness cost them so much!

Today, have you forgotten that God shows NO Partiality. Have you fallen for the trap of pride in a bloodline or a culture or even a status that makes you think that you are better than someone else? If you have, then you’re headed the wrong direction. Our Faith is meant for everyone, and we who are God’s people, His Church, are meant to show everyone the Way Home by being Orthodox on Purpose!

5 Comments

  • Edw. Ruffin
    Posted May 14, 2020 at 7:35 am

    Fair enough, Father, but the Gospel is not a suicide pact, and there is nothing therein that precludes us from noticing that God separated the peoples into different languages and nations for a reason. Also, I hear a lot from people about the “scourge of racism,” but I’m never sure what that means. The body count generated by black-on-black crime in, say, Chicago, far surpasses the allegedly grim and brutal days of Jim Crow by several hundred orders of magnitude. Also, I’d invite you to review “Black Twitter.” Not exactly the most warm and welcoming spot for a person of pallor, so the never-ending chant that blacks are subject to brutal oppression is really not supportable.

    One would hope that the Orthodox Church would be willing to speak honestly on these subjects rather than prattling the same tired, progressive bromides which, let’s face it, bear little or no relation to the world as it is. But I guess not.

    • Post Author
      Fr. Barnabas Powell
      Posted May 14, 2020 at 11:39 am

      Wai t a second, you start with “Fair enough” and end with an accusation of “prattling the same tired, progressive bromides.” So which is it; is it “fair enough” or “progressive bromides?”

      • Edw. Ruffin
        Posted May 15, 2020 at 6:54 am

        Good point, and I’ll go with “progressive bromides.” I look forward to your response.

    • Yvette Cathers
      Posted May 17, 2020 at 8:39 pm

      Um, ew?

  • Fr William Keebler Jr
    Posted May 14, 2020 at 11:31 am

    Very nice Father. I was born in ‘55 and in north Florida (heavy Spanish moss) and remember separate schools and separate places to swim, but not in church. Mass wasn’t in English back then and the church was mixed; white and a two black families. None of that was questioned until I wanted to go to the other side of Lake Stella because the black people got a new slide. In short order I was told to get that idea out of my head. A different world that was.

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