One of the consoling things about the Bible is its portrayal of people just like us. For example, we read in the Acts of the Apostles that “the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews.” Dealing with foreigners, with immigrants was as neuralgic in the first century as it is in the twenty-first. Racism is nothing new. Like those first followers of Jesus we must find a way to deal with the differences, with the difficulties that inevitably arise when you are dealing with human beings. The followers of Jesus — both yesterday and today — exhibit the effects of sin in our attitudes and behaviors. The task of the Church is to develop structures and procedures so that the gospel can take root even among such as us.
