a sermon for the 5th Sunday of Easter
Most of us would not qualify to be a Jew in Jesus’ day. We would all be considered unclean, outcasts, outsiders, because we do not follow the purity rules that are plainly laid out in the Bible. According to the community standards under which Jesus and the disciples lived, we are all goyim – gentiles – people who are part of some other clan or tribe. We wouldn’t have been allowed to be Jews, and if we were not Jews, then we could not be Christians.
So Jesus came up with a different rule…