God's Discretion

The church has never been far from scandal, even as far back as its very beginnings. In the early days, the biggest scandal facing the church was...the Gentiles. 

For as long as they had considered themselves God's people, the Jews had believed that God was theirs and theirs alone. Then, along comes this Jesus guy who says that it's not just for them; it's for everybody (which is actually what God first told Abraham all the way back in Genesis, when He said that He was going to bless the nations through the faithful man). And the early Jews-turned-Christians spent the first several decades of the church trying to figure out exactly what 'everybody' meant. 

Does it mean everybody? Like, even the Gentiles? 

To demonstrate that everybody means everybody and that yes, that even means the Gentiles, God comes and gives the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles in exactly the same way that He gave it to the disciples and the Jews who gathered early. 

And the faithful are like...wait, what? Can this be real? Is this really what God is doing? 

But God acts at His own discretion. He does what He chooses to do, whether it fits our human understandings or not. Whether we agree with it or not. And that's really the conclusion that the early church comes to - 

God does what He does, and who are we to argue? He gives to those He chooses to give to in the ways that He chooses to give to them and invites who He wants and welcomes who He wants and the only thing we can do with that is agree and go along with it (Acts 15:8-9). 

Two thousand years later, this is still hard for us. 

It's still hard for us when the person we don't think is worthy clearly gets what we think they don't deserve. It's still hard for us when someone we think ought to be on the outside ends up somehow on the inside. It's still hard for us when someone we don't agree with still manifests the love of God somehow, and we can't argue with that. 

It's still hard for us when we're so busy trying to draw lines and God is still drawing circles. 

But if we look at what's actually going on, if we step back and really consider it, there's actually not much to argue with. If we, who were present to receive the Holy Spirit, see someone else receive the same Holy Spirit, how can we keep trying to draw lines around that? If we, who know God's love, see someone else come to know that same love, how can we say they don't deserve it? 

Have we looked in a mirror lately? 

God acts at His own discretion. He is good and welcoming and loving and merciful and gracious and kind to whoever He chooses to be those things to, and it's not up to us and it's not up to our understandings and it's not up to our traditions and it's not up to our doctrines or our dogma or our bylaws or our opinions. It's not up to us. 

And thank goodness it's not or even we might not be on the receiving end of His love.