Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 10:17-33 (January 12, 2026)

January 12, 2026:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 10:17-33

Blessings and Peace be with you on this beautiful sunny morning. What a gift the weather has been this winter in the desert! Along with you, I love the warmer trend of our desert winters, but I also know how important it is for us to remember that environmental change means that there is something wrong in the world that has caused that change. We have seen it in raging floods in the Carolinas, severe weather in the deep south of our nation, drought with which we live and struggle here, too cold and snowy in the upper mid-west and around the Great Lakes. The one saving grace this past year is that no hurricanes hit the lower 48 states, but the increasing warmth in the Gulf means that it is only a matter of time, and the storms may be larger than we have ever seen before. I am hopeful that God's creation will work to rectify itself in the years ahead if we are careful in our stewardship of this planet on which we all live. If you are from outside of our congregation or not at worship yesterday, I want to let you know that Kandice Kartchner, our member in Hawaii has died following a long battle with cancer. Please keep her wife Lisa, friend Alexis, her parents who live on the big island, her sister and her brother who live stateside all in your prayers for comfort and peace in their loss, that the certain hope of the Resurrection will sustain them all, and us too. 

I believe that our reading from Acts for today is helpful for us as our congregation, and whole Church of Jesus Christ on earth struggles with member numbers and resources. In the early life of the Lutherans, we were divided by cultural and ethnic heritage into communities of remarkably similar people. Over the second half of the 1900s the LCA, and ALC, the main Lutheran bodies aside from the Missouri Lutherans, came together in unity in the mid-1980s, became one church, and set about the task of inclusiveness for all people who would enter our congregations.  Both groups had already begun the ordination of women, and after many years of struggle and acknowledgement in the ELCA were able to finally recognize the many gifts for ministry in the LGBTQ+ part of our faith communities and ultimately moved to provide for ordination and marriage too.  Our reading from Acts about Peter, his vision, his eyes and heart for people of the Jewish community where the Apostles had their primary mission, and learning about all those who he had previously seen as unclean and undesirable for inclusion in Christ's new Church.  First, we need to note that Cornelius was known for his kindness and generosity towards the people who had been conquered by Rome. That was extraordinary! Normally soldiers would conquer and then begin the brutality of the victor during the occupation of the people, but not Cornelius. He had been intrigued by the Jewish faith in only One God, and that God being beyond any manipulation by the actions of those who worshiped YHWH. However, according to the reading, when Peter arrives, Cornelius has already arranged for his family and friends to be present to hear what Cornelius' vision had revealed to him, that Peter, who had been summoned by Cornelius would have the Word of God to share with all those who had been called together.  All of this was a lesson from God for Peter about the new openness to those previously thought as outside of faith by no fault of their own other than being born outside of Judaism. Through Paul, Peter would truly come to understand that the greatest successes of the New Christian mission would be outside of the traditional Jewish communities to which Peter felt called. Those outsiders would take a generous collection across their lands and nations for the support of the continuing, but nearly failing, mission to the Jews. The sense of what was clean and unclean was carried by all the original Apostles. It was their ingrained heritage, but Peter welcomed the envoys from Cornelius into the hospitality of Simon's home and traveled with them to the hospitality of the Roman gentile home, where he was received with a sense of awe by those who met him, and had come to hear him speak.  Without that roof top vision, Peter would have been unable to move forward with such boldness and confidence in taking on the new! I am hopeful that this experience for Peter will help us all think of how we can become more open to those who are new, who we often deem as too different, who are searching in faith for the love of Christ for their lives, and the lives of people around them.  Peter found the new with bravery and love. How will you and I respond to the vision that changed Peter's world?

God's Word in Christ is a gift for all of creation.

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim