The New Testament makes many references to “Gentiles.” Let's stop a moment and examine that what that word meant to the early followers of Jesus. One of the few Hebrew words I learned to read was “goy,” plural “goyim,” which referred to anyone not a Jew. Greek Bibles used the word "ethnikoi" which meant exactly what it sounds like: ethnic groups that were not Jewish. The Latin equivalent was "gentile," from the word "gens" which my Latin teacher taught me to translate as: “tribe” or “nation.” (As in the hymn “We’ve a Story to tell to the Nations.”) Gentiles were specifically not Jews, and when Jesus’ followers divided their world into “us” and “them,” we, as Gentiles, would have been “them.” Eventually, there were more Gentiles than Jews in the movement, and “the Jews” became the reviled “other.” May we think in terms of “us” rather than “us” and “them.”