Them and Us

Readings Acts 11:1-18 

Sermon – Rev. Kate McFarlane

A revolution – that’s what today’s reading from Acts is – a revolution. It changes the church forever because it is the point at which the first Christians realise that Jesus’s message was not just for the Jews but for the world.

In it, we hear that evocative phrase; them and us…them and us! –  an idea that has been so exploited for political gain and a phrase to ponder critically in the week ahead as we ponder how to vote next Thursday.  And let’s be clear, in this story ‘we’ are not the ‘us’. We are ‘them’; as non-Jews we are the profane ones, the ones outside the boundaries of true religion, outside the laws for right living and we were not wanted! But in today’s reading we, the non-Jewish Gentiles, receive God’s Spirit and become ‘us’.

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