God has an interesting way of speaking to us through what appear to be coincidences.
This past week in the class I teach at church we came to Acts 15 where the original “first” Church in Jerusalem met to discuss the prospect of incorporating non-Jews into the ranks of the followers of Jesus. The joint testimonies of Peter and Paul had challenged the assembly’s presumption that Gentile believers ought to adopt Jewish practices like circumcision. Even though the council agreed to let go of this requirement for new converts, it wasn’t easy for everyone to accept. Take a look at Paul’s letter to the Galatians to get a clearer picture of that resistance.
That was my Wednesday. On Friday I attended my first ever theatre conference as part of my role as a trustee of People’s Light, the regional theatre near my home. Our daylong meeting focused on “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.” How can theatres respond to the increasing diversity in our population by expanding the subject matter of our storytelling, as well the demographics of our staffing and audiences?
It occurs to me that this push to be more inclusive in the theatre specifically, as well as in our country generally, echoes back to the experience of these early Jewish Christians discussed in Acts. When God presents us with a mandate to spread the gospel, it’s more comfortable to interpret it as though the Lord were calling us to make everyone like ourselves. But as Acts and the work of Paul demonstrate, God has in mind something bigger, harder, but ultimately better than that.
Except as a demographic metric, faith never came up at the theatre conference. I would not be surprised if many of the people in Friday’s meeting didn’t make any connection between the call for equity, diversity and inclusion and Christianity.
But I see it as Christianity in disguise. Isn’t the impulse to care about the marginalized the very foundation of the Jesus story? Don’t we invoke the Golden Rule to “walk in someone else’s shoes”?
Count on it: the Holy Spirit stands ready to connect each of us with a role in building God’s Kingdom made up of “all the families of the Earth” (Genesis 12:3). May we have eyes to see through any disguise.
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