Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 18, 2025
“If God then gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
- Acts 11:17 -
Since the beginning, the Christian church has had factions, groups that disagree with each other. Sometimes those disagreements have been over silly things, sometimes over extremely important things. Today there are around 40,000 different Christian denominations. 
The first division in the church had to do with Jews and Gentiles. These two groups of people had never worshipped together before. In fact, they weren’t even supposed to eat meals together. And now, they were all together in the church. The early Christians had a hard time figuring out how to deal with that. Some people thought the two groups could each continue to do their own thing. Others thought that the customs of one of the groups should become the customs of everyone. Others couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about.
This disagreement got quite unpleasant in the early church. The different sides accused each other of not teaching the right things. They accused each other of not understanding what Jesus had come to do. They accused each other of blindly clinging to their own traditions. 
Eventually the leaders of the church came to understand that the distinctions they were making such a big deal about just didn’t make sense.  What mattered was that God had given them all the same gift, the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. It didn’t matter what kinds of foods they ate. It didn’t matter who their parents were. It didn’t matter if they washed their hands a certain way or observed all the laws of the Old Testament. What mattered was that Jesus had given them new life — everlasting life.
The same gift that Jesus gave to those first Christians is the gift he gives to us. We have all sorts of different customs and traditions. We disagree on things that are important and things that are silly. But finally, what unites all of God’s chosen ones is that we have been made right with him through Jesus. We have been given the gift of salvation, not because of our merit, but because Christ decided to give it.
Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 18, 2025
“If God then gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
- Acts 11:17 -
Since the beginning, the Christian church has had factions, groups that disagree with each other. Sometimes those disagreements have been over silly things, sometimes over extremely important things. Today there are around 40,000 different Christian denominations. 
The first division in the church had to do with Jews and Gentiles. These two groups of people had never worshipped together before. In fact, they weren’t even supposed to eat meals together. And now, they were all together in the church. The early Christians had a hard time figuring out how to deal with that. Some people thought the two groups could each continue to do their own thing. Others thought that the customs of one of the groups should become the customs of everyone. Others couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about.
This disagreement got quite unpleasant in the early church. The different sides accused each other of not teaching the right things. They accused each other of not understanding what Jesus had come to do. They accused each other of blindly clinging to their own traditions. 
Eventually the leaders of the church came to understand that the distinctions they were making such a big deal about just didn’t make sense.  What mattered was that God had given them all the same gift, the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ. It didn’t matter what kinds of foods they ate. It didn’t matter who their parents were. It didn’t matter if they washed their hands a certain way or observed all the laws of the Old Testament. What mattered was that Jesus had given them new life — everlasting life.
The same gift that Jesus gave to those first Christians is the gift he gives to us. We have all sorts of different customs and traditions. We disagree on things that are important and things that are silly. But finally, what unites all of God’s chosen ones is that we have been made right with him through Jesus. We have been given the gift of salvation, not because of our merit, but because Christ decided to give it.