Sunday of the Samaritan Woman; The Repose of our Venerable Father Theodosius, Hegumen of the Monastery of the Caves at Kyiv and Organizer of the Cenoebitic Life in Rus’; The Holy Martyrs Timothy and Maura. Polyeleos Feast.
Acts 11:19-26, 29-30; Hebrews 13:7-16; John 4:5-42; Matthew 11:27-30.
Read Acts 11:19-26, 29-30
Windows aren’t just for looking out of; they also allow us to look in. The glimpse we get through a window of the interior of a house can pique our curiosity about the culture of the home and its inhabitants. Today’s epistle reading gives us a quick peek through two “windows”, providing two sightings of the grace of God.
The Greeks in Antioch that were spoken to by “those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen” were not Jewish converts, they were religiously as well as ethnically Greek. Peter had just been called upon to explain himself to some Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who didn’t think he should have gone to the home of the Gentile Roman centurion, Cornelius. Peter’s report convinced them that, “to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life.” Even so, in Antioch, when “a great number that believed turned to the Lord, news of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch” on a first-century version of an apostolic visitation. He “came and saw the grace of God.”
Flash forward a year, after Paul and Barnabas had grounded the new converts in the faith, and we see those Gentile Christians, previously considered suspect, determining “everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea” during a great famine – a second sighting of the grace of God.
This is a home with an attractive culture in which belonging, forgiveness, and kindness have been nurtured, transforming the people and the emotional environment they generate – a vibrant parish. “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2:4-5)