Eastertide
April 30, 2018
Scripture Reading: Acts 10:44-48
While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
The Jews of Jesus’ day lumped “the other” into one group and called them Gentiles. They had some outcasts of their own kind. Lepers were considered outcasts. Tax collectors and prostitutes were shunned. People of various colors were related to their tribes and some tribes might have been considered outcasts. Race, however, as we know it today did not exist during Jesus’ time. It was first scientifically identified in physical anthropology around the mid-19th century and has since been debunked.
We are more sophisticated or at least we think we are in our exclusions. Race remains a part of our culture’s mainstays of differentiation as is any sexual or gender differences. We now can treat lepers, but we shun the mentally ill and people with physical deformities and at least since 9/11 are wary of people who look middle eastern.
One word I loved in my college Anthropology class was ethnocentric which means
1. centering upon race as a chief interest or end
2. inclined to regard one’s own race or social group as the center of culture
3. exhibiting an incapacity for viewing foreign cultures dispassionately*
We fear the different, but history shows that learning from difference is the path to greater knowledge, understanding, and less warfare and violence. Something to consider.
Prayer: Holy One, you created us in diversity for a reason, help us learn to appreciate and grow to love the diversity in our world. Amen.
*http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/ethnocentric