Acts 15:1-21: Church Fights - They've Been Around Awhile

I'm sending this blog from the holding room for Reece's surgery. If I have time, I may send Tuesday's reading as well.

I have heard it said that the only place there is no conflict is the graveyard. Whoever said that has never been a pastor. I have seen some pretty intense conflict with families at funerals. But the point of the saying is that dead people don’t fight and where there is life there will be conflict. People don’t look alike, think alike, have the same experiences or even see colors the same. That’s why it’s foolish to think that the church will be conflict-free. In fact, one of the major problems in the church is that we hide from our conflicts (not addressing issues, not struggling together for God’s vision) because people have taught us that conflict is sin. Disunity is sin in the church, not conflict. Unfortunately, in chapter 15, we will have both conflict and disunity.

Paul and Barnabas return with their good report, but for some there are some things that are not so good. In the words of the converted Pharisees, “Before they are saved, they need to get circumcised and become like us.” How interesting this must have been for Paul, who was once a radical Pharisee himself. I have had similar conversations when I have done Spanish language choruses and hymns in worship. People will say outright, “We don’t need to become like them, they need to become like us. After all, we’re the majority.” Sometimes that will be followed with, “After all, Will, this is America.” Similarly, the argument between Paul and Barnabas and some of the Jewish leaders is about more than beliefs. It’s about culture. The traditions over time have become holy.

Peter is the one to first make the case for not making the Gentiles be circumcised.

“God who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.”

Unfortunately, the Pharisaical Christians did not have a sheet dropped before them, nor had they the experience of seeing Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit.

In verses 12-21, Barnabas and Paul (notice the order is back to Barnabas first out of respect to his place in the Jewish Christian community) make their presentation. The compromise Paul suggests is to discourage the Gentile Christians from eating food that had been committed to idols. Even that becomes an issue for compromise in the book of Romans. Luke’s version of this argument is rather tame compared to Paul’s version in Galatians. For that reason, after tomorrow, we will break from Acts and read the letter to the Galatians.

This argument over circumcision reminds me of many different arguments in the history of the church: over holy communion, over baptism, over scripture and how it is to be interpreted, over worship. John Wesley wrote a sermon entitled “The Catholic Spirit,” in which he made the distinction between those things that are necessary and those that aren’t. For him, faith in Jesus Christ and love of our neighbor were necessary. While differences in celebration of communion and other things were lesser concerns. He conceded that there would be disagreements, but when it was not over things necessary for salvation and central to the ministry of the Church he said, “If your heart is as my heart, take my hand.” The Holy Spirit is amazingly varied and loose. The best volume I have seen that captures that is The Shack. Thus God keeps making us make room for His ways “that are higher than our ways” and God still reserves the right “to be whatever God chooses to be.”