We are back in the story of Acts.  Back in the story of all that Jesus continued to do and continues to do through the Holy Spirit in his church.  This is a good story to be in, as we have just celebrated and given thanks for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  God with us.  God is making a home within us.  We will continue to pray that we will be a Spirit-filled and Spirit-transformed and Spirit-led people.  We need leading.  Not just from leaders, though we’re thankful for leaders and recognize the importance of their task.

Particularly when it comes to matters on which we disagree.  There is an old saying in Baptist circles that goes “Where two or three Baptists are gathered, there are at least four opinions.”  We joke about it, but we may also have experienced the damage that is done to the church when meetings are characterized by bickering or “my way or the highway” or “my budget” or…  If you haven’t experienced this, I pray you never do.  May we not experience such a thing in our church?  We make jokes about it, but the question remains, “What does the church do when we disagree?”  Do we sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away?  Do we leave? 

The story that we’re looking at this morning is not fundamentally about conflict but about the grace of God.  This is our foundation, and grace is to characterize all that we do and say as a church.  It’s a story about taking care not to cause needless offence.  It’s a story of a church who, at the end of a process of discerning God’s way said “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”  It wasn’t about what feelings or sentiments or the opinions of leaders.  It wasn’t even about what a majority vote said to do.  They sought to discern the will of God together.  The story also speaks to why we may eat pork and wear poly-cotton blends.    

By the time we get to Acts 15, the good news of Christ has spread out from Jerusalem and reached the Gentile world.  The earliest followers of Jesus were Jewish.  We read the story of Peter and Cornelius some months ago, so let me recap. While Peter was staying in the coastal town of Joppa, he had a vision of a large sheet coming down from the sky.  In it were all kinds of animals/reptiles/birds, many of which he was could not eat due to ritual law.  God’s voice tells Peter to “Get up, kill and eat.”  When Peter protests, God tells him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Not long after, Peter travels to Caesarea, where he meets up with Cornelius (a centurion of the Italian regiment).  Cornelius had also had a vision instructing him to send for Peter and listen to what he has to say.  Peter goes into Cornelius’ villa and finds the centurion there along with his family and the friends he has invited to hear the apostle.  There’s a wonderful picture of them all gathered, waiting for Peter to speak.  Peter tells of the understanding he’s been led to - “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (10:34)   Yes.  Listen to what happens next.  Acts 10:44-48.  Barnabas and Saul take their first missionary trip in chapters 13 and 14, during which more Gentiles take up Jesus’ call to follow him.  They end up back in Antioch, the church from which they had been sent, and we read 14:26-28.

So far so good.  But…  Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.”  The believers who were saying this were believers.  Their faith is not in question.  They don’t have a problem with the kingdom of God being open for everyone, including Gentiles.  Their position was that Gentile believers should follow the law of Moses as it is described in the first 5 books of the Hebrew bible.  This should include the ritual law that governs things like what is permissible to eat and circumcision.  Moral law and ritual law – I want to pause here and address a question that may be asked at this point.  Do not we Christians see all of scripture as God-breathed and useful teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness?  100%. A distinction has been made between moral law and ritual or ceremonial law. Moral law – encapsulated in the 10 Commandments – continues to define how we are to relate to God and to one another.  Ritual law (including matters like sacrifice/dietary restrictions/circumcision) was about a specific people in a specific context and had more to do with being a mark of identity as God’s people than morality.

Let us not be too hard on these Pharisee believers. Keeping the law, including being circumcised, was a mark of being faithful for Jews.  It had been for over a millennium and a half.  Circumcision was an identifying mark for the people of God, going back to Abraham.  People were serious about this.  People had died for this.  It’s not hard to understand where they were coming from.

You can also understand the side of Peter, Saul and Barnabas who must have been thinking, “I thought we had already settled this when we saw the Holy Spirit coming upon Gentiles.”  Nothing further was needed.  Circumcision was no small deal.  Requiring non-Jewish Christ followers to adhere to the law of Moses was no small deal in terms of it potentially representing a barrier.  No small dissension and debate is had.

They make a really good decision.  They decide to talk about it.  How many times can something be resolved or even headed off by sitting down and talking about it?  The first ever recorded Church Council.  Where we get together and talk about things.  In later years, this kind of gathering would become known as a synod – literally walking together.  Which is a really good idea.  How do we walk together through this or whatever issue or question is facing the church?  Someone has said that “purity by schism has never worked well for the church.”  How many times have we heard someone say how hard it is for them to grasp or get Christianity when it seems that there are so many different kinds of it?  How many people have been put off by internal bickering or back-channelling or parking lot conversations after deacons' meetings (I know cos I’ve had them) or any of the myriad ways in which we attempt to deal with disagreement or discord on our own (or not deal with it at all)?

They sit down and talk about it.  They look to leaders.  Christian leaders are not meant to be simply bureaucrats, functionaries, or CEOs overseeing an organization (if we’re thinking of pastors).  The same goes for any Christian leader, though.  Leaders are not to be chosen simply to fill a spot on a board or a seat at the table.  Throughout this book, we’ve seen Luke talking about Spirit-led leadership.  Pray for your church leaders.  These leaders are looked to, but everyone is involved.  Paul and Barnabas are welcomed by the church, the apostles, and the elders.  Paul and Barnabas report all that God had done with them. 

But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”  It’s a big question that is before the Jerusalem church here.  This is a question of salvation. Of being saved.  Delivered.  What is God’s plan here?  Will these newcomers to God’s plan need to live their lives exactly like us?  This is the question.

Peter stands up and begins to speak.  He speaks of what has been experienced.  He speaks of what God has done.  “God made a choice among you,” he says, “that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers.  And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith, he has made no distinction between them and us.”

This is God’s doing.  Look at what God has done.  On top of that, says Peter, we ourselves were unable to bear the yoke of the law.  Does this mean that the law was all bad and should be thrown out?  Neither Peter nor any other Jewish follower of Christ makes this assertion.  The law was part of their identity as the people chosen by God through whom God would work His saving plan.  “Look at what has happened,” says Peter.  We have seen God pour out his Spirit on Gentiles without any requirements regarding circumcision or any other ritual law.  Which leads to Peter’s wonderful doctrinal statement of the passage.  This is what we believe – “On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

All is grace.  The whole assembly kept silent, we read.  Silence can be a good thing.  All is grace.  Let us sit in silence with this truth.  In silence, we can contemplate what is important, what lasts, what is real.  The reign of God.  The grace of God.  The big stuff.  In silence, we may come to a better understanding of what is of eternal significance and what is merely passing.  Silence ensues.  Then Paul and Barnabas add their voices to Peter’s.  Telling the group of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.  It’s always about what God does.  What’s God doing among us?  What is God doing within you?

Then James speaks.  The brother of Jesus.  He’s taken on a leadership position in the Jerusalem church.  “Simeon has related how God first looked favourably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name.”  This idea that God in Christ and through the Spirit is creating a people.  This agrees with the words of the prophets, or the words of the prophets agree with this.  We look to the authority of Scripture, which relies on the authority of God.

The prophets who told of what God would do.  God, who has been making these things known from long ago. The prophet Amos put it like this – “On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom all the nations who are called by my name, says the LORD who does this.” (Amos 9:11-12)

It’s happening.  We have had a common experience of the Holy Spirit.  The prophets agree.  Let them not be troubled.  The end.

But not quite.

Not following Jewish ritual law does not mean it’s a free-for-all.  It’s rather a case of no needful circumcision, not needless offence.  Paul will pick up the same idea writing to the Corinthians – “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial.  All things are lawful, but not all things build up.  Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.” (I Cor 10:23-24)  As one of my  brothers so wisely told me when I was younger, “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.”  We should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.  You don’t want to cause needless offence.  Where Peter was speaking of something doctrinal – We believe that everyone is saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus – James is speaking of a matter of discipline.  Of a matter of what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ.  Just because something is lawful does not mean it’s beneficial, and may God help us to discern such truths so that we’re not causing needless offence.

 Of course, it’s not just about not causing offence.  The essence of the law is/the greatest commandment: love.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Love your neighbour as yourself.  Love for God.  Love for one another.  Love for oneself.  Idolatry is misdirected worship.  Misdirected love, in other words, that gets in the way of love of God and love of others and love of self.  These stipulations about idolatry and fornication are not simply about being careful not to offend others, but rather making an idol of sex (or money or addictions or power or fame or popularity or fill-in-the-blank), so don’t do it, and by the way, don’t eat meat sacrificed to idols either, because – well… idols.  Be careful about involvement in any activity that would claim to be of foundational importance, or that would make a claim to your allegiance that is not God.  It’s not about a prescribed set of rules, but it’s more about asking what does love look like in any given situation – meaning love of God, love of neighbour and love of self – remembering that love is not simply nice feelings, but that love is a verb and the action implied is the seeking of the other’s highest good and that is how God loves us.  It always starts and ends with God.

The message goes out.  A letter is written describing what “has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”  This is what walking together looked like for the early church.  May God’s Spirit help us to do the same thing as we walk together.  May this be true for all God’s people of every nation.

Amen