Caryn Rivadeneira 00:09
Welcome to Elmhurst CRC's daily dose of the Word of God. It's Wednesday, January five, and Sundays coming. This is Caryn Rivadeneira, I serve as Director of Care and Worship Planning. And I'll be reading from Acts 8:14-17. "When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the Word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them. They had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed our hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit".
Caryn Rivadeneira 00:47
This passage contains a few head-scratchers, not the least of which is if these Samaritans believed, were baptized in Jesus's name, why were Peter and John's hand seemingly required to usher in the Holy Spirit? And yet, that question isn't the most intriguing thing happening here, at least not to me. Instead, it's that Peter and John are back in Samaria. That's what grabs my attention. After all, not that long before this, these guys would have been repulsed by the Samaritans, long the enemies, the bad cousins, if you will, of the Jewish people. When they traveled with Jesus, I imagined Peter and John likely balked at Jesus's suggestion to cut through some area. Certainly, they were shocked at the sight of Jesus deep in conversation with a Samaritan woman. And yet now, they catch wind of Samaritan believers and rush over to lay hands on them. What a difference Jesus makes. Since Jesus's earliest days in ministry, Jesus taught and showed that our call to love our neighbors, went way beyond being kind to those who are like us or whom we'd like. Instead, Jesus helped his people move from being disgusted to being welcoming from seeing those who live or worship differently than we do as so-called others to seeing them as brothers and sisters. And from avoiding the undesirable to rushing right over. In this new year. I hope to see love like this explode all around us. We've got lots of reasons to disagree about lots of things, but we've got an even better one to love anyway.