Homily for Thursday, 7 May 2015– Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 15:7-21; Psalm 96:1-2a, 2b-3, 10; John 15:9-11

Have any of us ever found ourselves at a crossroads in our lives? Perhaps we have experienced the arrival of a loved one or new family member; a child, grandchild, great-grandchild, niece, or nephew. Maybe it was when we were married or a marriage or relationship broke down. Maybe we have experienced the loss of a loved one. Maybe it was a new job, or the loss of a job. Maybe we were faced with one or more important decisions in our lives. Maybe we have experienced severe illness or that of a loved one.

Many events can place us at a crossroads in our lives. In the Acts of the Apostles today, we hear of a point at which the whole Church was at a crossroads. And what placed the Church at this crossroads? It was love that placed the Church at this crossroads; God’s love for us.

A key to the entire Book of Acts is the action of the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit is the presence of God’s love in our world. The Holy Spirit is continually portrayed as somewhat scary and mischievous, but always for our good. The Holy Spirit, the presence of God’s love in our world, is not held back or contained by the limits we can sometimes place on God; on God’s love.

Very quickly after Jesus’ disciples experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in our world, at the first Pentecost, they realize how unlimited the Holy Spirit; how unlimited God’s love for us is. God’s love is still with the Jewish people, the first to hear God’s Word, but now it has expanded to include the Gentiles as well: People with foreign cultural customs, different religion, different languages, and who ate food the Jews would have considered unclean.

Peter is moved to accept these people as Christians as they confess their belief in Jesus and are baptized. These Gentile Christians receive and act by the Holy Spirit just as the Jews who accepted Jesus as God before them did. Peter asks why these Gentiles should not be accepted into the Christian community, the Church, just as the Jewish Christians had been. After all, God’s love is not limited to Jew or Gentile.

But Peter brings together the first Apostles, the leaders of the early Church, in Jerusalem to discuss this issue of Church expansion to the Gentiles. God’s unlimited love has placed the Church at a crossroads, and so Peter convokes a kind of “council” of Apostles. We can think of many times at which the Church has been at a crossroads, perhaps faced crises, and has called councils of its leaders. We think of Nicaea and Constantinople to discuss the full divinity of the persons of the Trinity in the fourth century; Trent in response to the Reformation; most recently Vatican II.

The small but significant Council of Jerusalem in Acts was a response to God’s love that defies our limits; that is for Jew and Gentile alike. The Church, at its first major crossroads, trusted the Holy Spirit, the presence of God’s love in the world. And Peter’s and the other Apostles’ example invites us to trust in God’s Spirit of limitless love, especially when we are at a crossroads.