Weekly Message from Rev. Matt Handi
Message from
The Rev. Matt Handi
May 14, 2025
Perhaps it doesn’t matter how one gets to the Lord, only that one does get to the Lord. Some say that through our baptism, we are marked as God’s own forever. Others call for an adult profession of faith is required.
I fall into the camp that says we are all God’s children and even when we try to run away from God, God still loves us as God’s own and will never give up on our salvation. We have our entire lifetimes and after that, our eternal lives in which to recognize God as our savior and realize salvation.
Yet sometimes we want to exclude those whose experiences with faith are different from ours. Some say Jesus is the only pathway to God; any other belief system cannot lead us to the kingdom. Still others say, “Okay, God can be found in many ways but you have to believe in something.”
And again, to all of that I say God does not stop pursuing us. First by showing us the glory of Creation; the cycles of the seasons and all of the beauty found within it, we have an opportunity to see God in that creation. And it goes from there.
Throughout our lifetimes, we are given the opportunity to meet God. In loving our neighbor, we know what it is like to love, and love is a gift from God. In being loved by others, we are able to realize the gift of love is not a one-way street, but bi-directional. When we are loved we love, and when we love, we become loved.
All of these things are but mini samples, a tasting menu of God’s love for all of us. That we are Christian or Jew, Muslim or Hindu might not matter as much as accepting God into our lives and giving thanks for that perfect love we wish to experience in our earthly selves and after.
If we acknowledge that all people are loved by God and for each individual to realize that love, we only need to accept God into our lives, then we might be open to the fact that there are other methods that lead to salvation rather than the one only professed by Christian doctrine.
Now, I am a Christian because I believe in Christ and salvation through Christ. This is the best mode to experience God for me. But I will not deny another’s faith because I am not familiar with it or it just doesn’t make sense to me. Who am I to judge? And yet, because of my familiarity with the Christian faith and because of the love I find within it, I do wonder about such things. I do not judge, but I wonder...
So, sometimes we do wonder. And sometimes we do judge. And that brings us now to our first reading this week from the book of Acts, chapter 11. And the reading brings us in the middle of an argument. Folks with a Jewish background who now accept Christ are asking how Peter could have gone and shared a table with those who did not have a Jewish background. Now, this is not a Christian/Jewish argument but one about purity. Those who were circumcised were deemed to be more pure than the uncircumcised. This is how they were raised, this is what they believed. And they carried that faith tradition into their budding Christianity.
Yet Peter explains it this way. He saw a vision and the Holy Spirit spoke to him: Peter’s understanding of the purity laws from ancient times were now evolving. God has made things clean so it is not up to humans to define what is clean and unclean. This evolution applied to dietary restrictions as much as it did to other purity laws. Essentially, it was okay to share a table with the uncircumcised as God has made all people clean. Upon hearing this the Judean apostles, those folks with a Jewish background said, "Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."
For a while, Christianity and Judaism didn’t quite split but walked parallel paths. Eventually they did split, yet that is a human decision. God has made all things clean and gave all peoples “the repentance that leads to life.” That is on us to remember.
It is important that we all have a relationship with God, but how we get there is a path for each of us to navigate. In Christ, all things have been made new. Through God, all things have been made clean. We are all children of God. Believer and unbeliever alike.
All of us.
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