The theme of Acts 11:1-18 is the justification of the behavior of Peter that Peter offers for what he did in the gentile household of Cornelius. The specific issue of the departure of the early church from Jewish rules regarding clean and unclean foods is a good case study of how and why the church should be flexible in its approach to tradition.
The closing section of the story of Cornelius retells Cornelius' vision. Luke explains that the table fellowship upset the church at Jerusalem (when baptism or circumcision is more likely). Luke shies away from this possibility. It would have occurred sometime between 36 and 50 AD. According to some scholars,[1] the story may also reveal the beginning of the congregation in that city. The converted person was Cornelius, a Roman soldier stationed there. He was a “God-fearer,” a person unwilling to adopt the Jewish rituals, but attracted to the moral teaching of Judaism. We may question certain details of the story of Luke. However, we have no reason to doubt that Peter admitted the first gentile and that the Jerusalem church acknowledged the legitimacy of his action. Many of the issues raised by scholars arise from the Tubingen school of the 1800s, which assumed that gentile Christianity was of one single type that Paul created. The reality was that Peter was also on the Hellenistic side of Judaism.[2]
1Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. Luke presents this conversion not as an isolated case but as a fundamental turning point. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, 3 saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Many readers of the Bible forget that the Jewish community debated the matter of inclusion in the Jewish community after the Babylonian exile, in the 400’s and 300’s BC. The camp exemplified by Ezra and Nehemiah favored the complete expulsion of all foreigners who had joined Israel and sought to settle with them in the restored territory of Judah (Ezra 9; 10:6-17; Nehemiah 13:23-31). In this period, Jewishness meant ethnic purity through the line of the mother. The only way to guarantee the purity of Israel was to close the door to all foreign influence. However, we find another outlook in Jonah and the latter part of Isaiah, especially Isaiah 56:3-8. Such views urged Israelites to consider opening the doors to all Gentiles who would worship the God of Israel. In this vision, Israel would survive by letting the world in — by inviting the entire known world to see their “light to the nations” and come to the religion of the one true God. In a way, Christianity’s decision to seek actively the conversion of the Gentiles is a continuation of this thoroughly Jewish mindset — namely, that all creation should return to the worship of its Creator. In this view of Israelite religion, it is the job of the faithful Israelite to spread the religion of Israel’s God as widely as possible. In this case, the recently turned Christians in Jerusalem accuse Peter of table fellowship with gentiles. They have no problem with him baptizing gentiles. They resent the implications that this new gentile mission has on the traditional Jewish emphasis upon clean and unclean foods. Peter must explain to them why he has made the bold move of accepting non-Jews into the Christian community. Peter is discovering a new way of being the people of God when he returns to Jerusalem after his coastal swing through Lydda and Joppa. Back home in Jerusalem, the center of religious and cultural life, other leaders debriefed him about his activities in the homes of non-Jewish persons who had received the good news with enthusiasm. Some disciples had criticized Peter for having table fellowship with non-Jews. Did their unity in Christian baptism mean that in Christ, God wanted the social barriers between Jew and Gentile broken down? His explanation, however, does not end discussion of this issue by any means. Paul and Peter continue to argue this issue with the Jewish part of the community for many years to come. Many scholars refer to the problem that Peter has trouble eating with non-Jews in Antioch, as recorded in Galatians 2:11-13.[3] The argument that this incident robs Paul of his originality in relation to the mission of the church to gentiles is weak. Paul preached to Jews, of course, just as Peter preached to gentiles. However, even a notable exception does not make Peter the Apostle to the Gentiles. Nor on the other hand does Paul ever claim that he was the first to preach to Gentiles. His sense of independence and originality sprang not from that but from his conviction that Christ called him directly to do for the Gentiles what others were doing in the main for the Jews. The fact that Paul calls Peter the apostle to the circumcision no more proves that Peter never preached to Gentiles than does Paul's claim to be the Apostle to the Gentiles prove that he never preached to Jews; we know in fact that he often did so (I Corinthians 9:20). 4 Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step. The report in verses 5-16 does not schematically repeat all that Luke related in Chapter 10. The fact that Luke tells the story of the vision of a Jew eating unclean food and the conversion of Cornelius twice was an ancient dramatic device to emphasize the importance of the event.[4] Luke regards the conversion of Cornelius as an event of supreme importance. He even adopts the literary device, common in epic writing, of twice reporting every detail in the story. Peter repeats everything that the narrator tells in 10:9 ff. in his defense in 11:4 ff. while Cornelius himself describes the vision of the centurion in 10:3 ff. again, on Peter's arrival at Caesarea, in 10:30 ff. Luke can put such stress on the incident only because Luke regards it as the first case of the admission to baptism of an uncircumcised pagan. Further, Luke ascribes the initiative in this new departure, not to Paul, but to Peter. 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. 6 As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7 I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’
In his book What’s So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey tells of a time the pastor asked him to present the sermon in his church. He started out with a children’s sermon and invited all the children in the church to join him. He held up a bag, from which he pulled a package of barbecued pork rinds for them to munch on. Next, he pulled out a fake snake and a large rubber fly, which led to squeals from his young audience. Yancey and a few of the children then sampled scallops. “Finally, to the children’s great delight,” he writes, “I reached cautiously into the bag and extracted a live lobster. Larry the Lobster we called him, and Larry responded by waving his claws in a most menacing fashion.” After the children departed, Yancey explained to the congregation that Levitical laws specifically forbade everything they had just eaten. No Orthodox Jew would touch any of the contents of his shopping bag. This is why the message in Acts 11: 9 is such radical news: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”
10 This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. Another traditional storytelling element is present in this story, namely “trebling.” Trebling simply refers to the practice of noting that something in the story occurred three times in a row. In both accounts of this story, Peter notes that the sheet in his vision that descended holding the unclean animals did so “three times” (Acts 10:16; 11:10). Folklore scholars believe trebling to be another way of underscoring the importance of a given detail in a story. Luke appears to want to make it clear that Paul, even if as an apostle to the Gentiles, carried out his ministry in continuity with Peter and the church in Jerusalem. Luke also wants to emphasize the divine origin of this outreach to non-Jewish people by the dream given to Cornelius and Peter. Of course, human beings made decisions, but Luke wants us to see the traces of divine guidance in this new dimension of the mission of the church.[5] 11 At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. Some scholars think the chronology may be a little off as recorded by Luke. They suggest the escape of Peter from prison in 12:1-17 should occur before the incident in Caesarea. Their reasoning is that the revolt that followed Herod Agrippa’s death in 12:20ff led to the Romans establishing a garrison at Caesarea. Obviously, the point is that the occupying army of Rome would have stationed Cornelius in Caesarea at that time. A consequence of this rearrangement of the sequence of events would be that Peter's activities at Lydda, Joppa, and Caesarea would be taking place during much the same period as the early mission work of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, and all three would return to Jerusalem to give account of their missions at approximately the same time.[6] 12 The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; 14 he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ Those who practice infant baptism look to passages like this for biblical support. We can draw no firm conclusions as to the baptism of infants from such statements relating the baptism of the household. Such verses inform us that turning to faith in the message about Christ was not always an isolated individual decision. From early times, it might be a family matter.[7] Such passages remind us of the importance of the ancient household to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of ancient life. 15 And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ In Luke 3:16, John the Baptist speaking of Jesus says, “I baptize you with water, but … He [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” We could acknowledge that between the two passages, Luke is getting the sense of it correct. Of course, the attribution of the saying to Jesus rather than John is curious. More significantly, we see here that primitive Christianity found in the gift of the Spirit the decisive feature of Christian baptism as an effective sign of salvation, especially in distinction from the baptism of John. Although the text does distinguish between Spirit and water baptism, the aim is to show the connection between water baptism and reception of the Spirit.[8] 17 If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Good question. Until now, the early church clearly had positioned itself solidly within the traditional Jewish religious context. This experience, however, began a separation process in which the new, young faith that would be known as The Way, whose followers would soon be called Christians in the non-Jewish city of Antioch, would soon emerge with its own identity, quite distinct and apart from its Jewish roots. The reference of course is not to the Spirit-baptism that has already taken place, but to the water-baptism clearly willed by God. 18 When they heard this, they were silenced. This story about Peter changing his mind can teach us a lot, especially that it is okay to change one’s mind, opinion or point of view. Peter's opponents hold their peace. This is precisely opposite of what is going on today. We are many things, but one of them is that we are not silent. We are too busy shouting, condemning, and being unloving and unkind than thoughtfully wondering if there might be more going on here than we realize. We will generalize, scrutinize, jeopardize, antagonize, stigmatize, demoralize, victimize, brutalize, ostracize, and marginalize, but we will not under any circumstances apologize, harmonize, or even socialize with those who may be leading us into new territory. These saints, however, were silent. Imagine that! Today, the church continues to struggle with how to engage with the issues of our times. Let us take time to listen to our prophets as did our ancient forebears to the apostle Peter. Let us be silent and engage in prayerful reflection. And then let the church erupt into praise and thanksgiving. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” They recognize that God has now admitted the Gentiles to the community without their first having to become Jews.
Luke views this portion of his story as showing the resistance within the church that even Peter encountered. We know from the accounts of Luke and Paul that this incident does not settle the question of gentiles and the early church. The Council in Jerusalem, which occurred around 48 AD, recorded in Acts 15 and Galatians 2, seems to re-consider the legitimacy of opening Christian baptism to non-Jews. The proceedings of the council imply that the legitimacy of Gentile missions had never been before the mother church, and that it was the arguments of Paul that first induced the apostles to give their sanction to the new development. Yet, the council at Jerusalem took place at least ten years after Paul's conversion. By then, Paul had already been preaching to Gentiles, as he states in Galatians 1:16. The church at Jerusalem must have been aware of what he was doing. The question of the legitimacy of such a Gentile mission must have occurred to its leaders. Further, the leaders in Jerusalem “glorified God because of me” in Galatians 1:24, so clearly, they approved. Moreover, Galatians suggests that the new factor that precipitated the trouble later at Jerusalem was not the preaching to Gentiles for the first time, but the renewed question of its legitimacy. The "false brethren" (Gal. 2:4) had come only recently into the limelight and did not represent the hitherto prevailing attitude of the Jerusalem church. Thus, the fact that the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity was re-examined at the council is no proof that at an earlier date the Christians in Jerusalem at least tacitly recognized its legitimacy. Such recognition may well have come first because of just such an event as the conversion of Cornelius. I grant the puzzling nature of the flow of events. If this incident in Acts occurred, why did he need the correction provided by Paul as recorded in Galatians? However, this problem overlooks the difference between accepting people into Christian baptism, which Peter clearly accepts in this story, and participating in table fellowship with non-Jews, which was another step that Peter needed to take as a Jewish Christian. For example, in Acts 11:3, the disciples at Jerusalem criticize Peter for having table fellowship with non-Jews. The vision concerning eating unclean foods seems to have the same emphasis. However, the church “glorifies God” in 11:18 because of the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity and baptism. It was quite another step for the church to suggest that Christian Jews no longer followed Jewish law in matters of purity and impurity. In other words, did their unity in Christian baptism mean that in Christ, God wanted the social barriers between Jew and Gentile broken down? Peter's behavior toward Cornelius is entirely in line with his impulsive nature, and shows the same uncalculating spirit that later led him to throw aside traditional scruples and live in intimate fellowship with Gentiles at Antioch (Gal. 2:12). Yet, again, if the story of Cornelius is indeed historical, how are we to explain Peter's subsequent change of front when "he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party"? If the circle around James had sanctioned Peter's conduct with Cornelius at Caesarea, they could hardly have found fault with him for doing the same thing at Antioch; nor could Peter have been so vacillating as thus to disown the crucial step he had taken when he admitted Cornelius to fellowship. This objection rests on a misunderstanding that, we must confess, is due partly to Luke himself, who is throughout confusing two distinct questions—social intercourse between Jews and Gentiles, and the admission of Gentiles to the Christian community. In Acts 11:3, the disciples at Jerusalem criticize Peter for having table fellowship with non-Jews, and it is to this question that we are to relate the vision Peter received on the housetop (cf. also 10:28). The question to which Peter successfully directs his defense is the admission of Gentiles to Christian baptism—a quite different matter. Note too that at 11:18 the church "glorifies God," not because the social barriers between Jew and Gentile have been broken down, but because "to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life." In other words, in the conversion of Cornelius the Jerusalem church recognized what, after renewed criticism by the "false brethren," they reaffirmed at the council—the legitimacy of Gentile Christianity. They did not yet admit the right of a Jew to disregard the social prohibitions of the Jewish law. Luke may not have clearly realized the distinction between these two steps; hence, he too, like modern critics, may have been so puzzled by Peter's vacillation at Antioch that he omitted the incident altogether from his narrative. A clearer perspective may not excuse Peter's conduct, but it at least makes it understandable.
The notion of food that is ritually clean or unclean is not a live one for most of us. For Orthodox Jews and Hindus, it remains a live issue. When a religion goes down this path, it limits its circles of friends. The positive side of this approach is that you can maintain your identity for a long time, for your primary influences are with each other. The negative is that it limits the ability of a religion to become part of the culture and therefore witness to it. Realistically, some cultures do not allow such influences. I think of military dictatorships, communist governments, and Islamic governments. In some cultures, the church must take on the character of a close-knit culture within a culture. We can be thankful for not being in cultures like that.
The church confronted such questions early in its life. It was slowly moving toward making disciples of those who did not share the Jewish tradition. An important part of that tradition was ritual purity laws. Some of these rules related to food. Do not make the mistake of thinking that Jewish dietary laws are silly. Israel has endured centuries of scorn and persecution by its pagan neighbors by lovingly adhering to these laws. Laws about food were not only clear in Scripture; they were a life and death issue of Israel. Another related to circumcision of males. Another related to women. The list went on. In the end, the focus was on maintaining Jewish heritage in distinction from the world around it. Many of these rules focused upon separation of Jews from their culture. It certainly inhibited friendships with non-Jews. Other religions, Hinduism being another example, would develop different rules, but having the same effect. It kept them so separate that it inhibited friendship with others. Through the ministries of Peter and Paul, the church was able to break down some of these barriers. Jesus himself, of course, was not afraid of challenging the purity rules of his time. He set the example.
In any case, I think this passage illustrates the difficulty of altering traditional practices. It clearly suggests that the Holy Spirit wants to move us in new directions for the sake of the witness of the community in the world. The church needs to develop some openness and sensitivity to the leading of the Spirit.
What Does God Want? Peter said that it is best not to hinder God. But hinder God at what? About what should we not hinder God? It could be that God wants us to remember that God is a God of new things. Gracie Allen of the 1950s comedy duo, Burns and Allen, put it this way: “Don’t put a period where God has placed a comma.” What does God want?
Every human community or culture is a mixture of the old, tried, and true things that have stood the test of time, on the one hand, and the possibility of the new thing that has come along on the other. How and why does the community embrace the new thing? Granted, most of us know churches for their ability to conserve the past. Yet, they have often shown the strength of their faith and the power of their God by their willingness to make significant changes to accomplish their mission.
This passage raises the tricky question of how the people of God are to distinguish themselves from the culture in which they live. Some people will argue for the notion of accommodate and include. The people of God are to approach the future by leaning toward accommodating its ways to that of the modern world. Such persons have a predisposition to expand the boundaries of their previous views and to reach out to include people. In their attitudes and actions, Christians who seek to accommodate belong in the "Christ of Culture" category that Richard Niebuhr described in his classic book, Christ and Culture. Rather than being exclusive, accommodators are inclusive. Acknowledging and valuing diversity is only a beginning for accommodators. In their enthusiasm for inclusiveness, they are ready to cherish and embrace divergence. Accommodators see and celebrate the beauty of God's creation in everything. Their confidence in the goodness of the human spirit brings buoyancy to relationships and the hope for a better future. In contrast, they give limited attention to the darkness of sin. Accommodators focus more on a theology that extols the benefits that flow from God as Creator than on the need to encounter Christ as Redeemer. Because they are more attracted to love than to truth, they are more drawn to the Great Command than to the Great Commission (Matthew 22:36-40 and 28:18-20). These people of God would not likely attend a conference based on the theme "Biblical Directives for Being Different." Accommodators appeal to people who believe in the inclusiveness of God's love for all creation. Their love for God motivates a concern for people. When it comes to compassion for others, they rate exceptionally high. Their conviction soars when people trample upon the rights of others.[9]
First, that which precedes dramatic change is the challenging task of dismantling of what people might think of as the tried and tried and true practices du jour. People do not embrace such agents of change quickly. Many people have invested themselves in that which is tried and true. One can expect opposition. Thomas Kuhn, in his book, The Structures of Scientific Revolutions, called these changes paradigm shifts, a phrase that writers used widely in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Galileo chopped down the tried and true. He helped to move us from a pre-Copernican and geocentric view of the cosmos to a modern, solar-centric universe. Martin Luther. Louis Pasteur. Thomas Edison. Alexander Graham Bell. Orville and Wilbur Wright. Henry Ford. Albert Einstein. Thomas Watson. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King Jr. Steven Jobs. Bill Gates. All these persons chopped down what people thought of as the tried and true as they reached out for the new possibilities. A paradigm shift changes the way we view the world and therefore reality. The world has not so much changed as our understanding of it. It affects the way “facts” fall into place for us.
Part of the job of a pastor is to be open to new understandings, and to share these developments with the congregation. We have the example of Jesus, of course. He was not afraid to chop down some tried and true notions of the Jewish faith. Jesus knocks down the old law to replace it with a new love.
When I attended Indiana Wesleyan College I was slowly becoming aware of some these issues within Christianity. In the early 1970s, for example, I celebrated such things as new translations of the Bible. They were helping me read my Bible more. Yet, some Christians said that the only translation that was valid was King James. Another controversy was the emerging Christian rock music. Personally, I found myself thrilled to sing the faith in the same type of music that I grew to love to as a teen in the 1960s. Yet, some Christians argued it was music “of the devil.” In both cases, I hope we can say something like, “Who am I to hinder God?” As followers of Christ, we need to ask ourselves the question: What is the tried and true of our day that may need challenging for the sake of effective Christian witness?
Second, at the same time, God calls us to be faithful guardians of the big picture of Christian faith while being open to fresh expressions of that faith. I want to be quite honest here. It is difficult for a minister to know how much to change and how much to preserve. I “draw the line” in a different place than my clergy colleagues and probably than some of you. We need to make the time to see the big picture.
A brief example might help. A GPS can be a great tool, but it can also lead to a kind of tunnel vision that causes drivers to focus so much on the route on the screen and the directions given by the voice that they fail to see the full picture of the road in front of them. In 2011, three women were in a rental SUV on their way to a Costco convention in Washington State when they followed their GPS instructions to the letter: down a boat ramp and straight into a lake. Neither of the other two passengers in the car stopped the driver. They just did what their GPS told them.
Many Christians may view God's instructions the same way, focusing only on what we perceive to be our one and only path and not on the big picture context of God's mission in the world. Many are the Christians who have doggedly stuck to their own theological or hermeneutical interpretation of Scripture without listening to the Spirit's guidance for the larger context. As a result, they wind up off track and in deep water. We can become like the Pharisees whom Jesus called "blind guides" who "strain out a gnat but swallow a camel" (Matthew 23:24). To put it another way, we sometimes miss the forest for the trees!
Rita Snowden tells a story from World War II. In France, some soldiers brought the body of a dead comrade to a cemetery to have him buried. The priest gently asked whether their friend had been a baptized Catholic. The soldiers did not know. The priest sadly informed them that in that case, he could not permit burial in the churchyard. The soldiers dug a grave just outside the cemetery fence. They laid their comrade to rest. When I read that, I thought of how the church has too often drawn lines that have unnecessarily painful and hurtful consequences. However, that does not end the story. The next day the soldiers came back to add some flowers — only to discover that they could find the grave nowhere. Bewildered, they were about to leave when the priest came up to speak to them. He could not sleep the night before, so troubled was he by his refusal to bury the soldier in the parish cemetery. So early in the morning he left his bed, and with his own hands, he moved the fence — to include the body of the soldier who had died for France. Truth demands that we build some fences. Nevertheless, grace demands that the shape of those fences be flexible.[10] We need to be discerning as to where in our lives we need to build the fence, and when we need to move it.
The world of tomorrow will not look like the world of today. We have known for a long time that the West, the cradle of Church, has become a mission field for the church. North America is a mission field. Society is becoming increasingly hostile toward Christian teaching and values. Clergy and laity are forging a new relationship, with some analysts suggesting the distinction will disappear. Improving what they are doing will not be a fruitful approach to the ministry of the church. Improving the success of yesterday may well be the sure way to fail in fruitful ministry. We can see hints of the reason for the decline of many Protestant denominations as they maintain bureaucracies and traditional structures. Yet, churches need to remember that amid it all, Christ is the center, and the Bible is the primary source of faith and practice. As the Body of Christ, the churches are to find a way to faithful witness to Christ in their setting.[11]
We might use the image of reinventing the church. Resistance to such reinvention exists everywhere. We will deny the need for change. We pretend as if nothing has changed. We have not looked out the window to see the changes that have taken place. We will experience depression. We focus our energies on maintaining patterns that no longer work. We deplete our imagination. We bargain. We try to use something that used to work long ago, wondering why people do not respond the way they used to. We have anger. Pastors become the easy scapegoats for everyone. Denominational leaders tell the pastor that he or she is the reason the local church does not accomplish its mission. Laity blames the pastor for every failing while every success belongs to someone else. Churches that want to be faithful witnesses today cannot cling to the tried and true of the past without considering the possibility that the Spirit may well be leading them into unfamiliar territory. The tried-and-true tradition may need to find a new way to communicate their meaning to this setting. Leaders will need to communicate why they remain an important part of the life of the church. Leaders will also need to be open to developing and integrating new traditions into the life of the church.
The forms and structures that have served denominations well in the past no longer accomplish their purpose. Churches normally change slowly. The church likes to take its time. The church has never had to deal with the need for rapid structural change. The church is in fresh territory. The pain is obvious. Relationships among congregations, as well as between local congregations and the hierarchy, continue downward. People do not trust the hierarchy. Nothing the hierarchy does will change this attitude. The financial structure breeds competition between churches and strains relationships from top to bottom. We have become increasingly cooperative with other denominations, thereby making denominational structures less significant.
Churches will need to re-examine their relationship with the peoples of other religions.
The passage in Acts 11 reminds us that Christian faith demands witness or testimony. Yet, in this passage, the early church finds itself on strange ground. A Roman, a Gentile, an army officer, part of the occupation forces in Jerusalem, has been converted, baptized as a Christian. How did this happen? Peter’s testimony of his vision and his move “even to the Gentiles” is the basis of the story. He tells a strange tale of the leading of God. He went to the Gentiles, not by his own design, but through the leading of God. Any faith that does not go and tell, that is not so full of good news that demands that adherents share it, is not the Christian faith, is not the good news of Jesus Christ.
Yet, a major impediment to faithful and joyful witness today may be our lack of faith in and wonderment at the church. Pastors and leaders of the church have seen the church at its worst. We also need to see its great possibility. Churches gather without regard to race, gender, social class, or economic condition. We must never stop our amazement at this. In a society where there is great loneliness, a group of people who have gathered to feel someone else’s pain more than their own, could take responsibility for people who are not in their immediate family. This is a strange and miraculous thing. This is not happening all over town. Sometimes, congregations do not realize what a gift they have. Here is a group of people who care for and about one another. This gift, the gift of this congregation, the Body of Christ gathered here, ought to find its participants eager to share its life with others. Churches ask people to ponder deep, important, and demanding matters. Churches encourage people to take responsibility for someone beyond the immediate family. A group of people will know you and miss you when you are absent. The beauty of the music and setting can attract you. People will love your children. In your everyday life, where will you talk about God? You will do so in church. The church will talk about failure and sin. The community treats you as valuable.
Some aspects of our practices need to remain, and some we may need to put behind us. What we do need is what Alan Wolfe, author of The Transformation of American Religion, calls the “thinning” of the faith. Truth without grace is cold and empty. However, grace without truth is shapeless — warmth simply dribbling away. I want to be quite clear. It is no longer love when you fail to share the truth you have within you. The church, therefore, must sift through what inhibits us from genuinely loving the world, as God has loved the world, welcoming the world into a love relationship with God. The focus, I think, is love. If the rule gets in our way of loving, we need to ponder, to pray, and to see if we need to make a change. We have so much help in this, if only we would pay attention. For me, guarding the faith brings me back to some core biblical teaching. In morality, I think of the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the list of virtues and vices by Paul. In terms of who Jesus is, I keep coming back to Paul, especially in Romans. I accept the basic creeds of the church, such as the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, as adequate summaries of what the church teaches. Of course, as a United Methodist, I will listen to John Wesley and the opening pages of our Book of Discipline.
I realize that the mind of a reader may go to many “What about …” types of questions. My point here is not to resolve such questions. Rather, I am suggesting that the path of change is not easy. Church history is full of changes that failed. We call them heresies. Yet, the failure to change has led to a failure of the church to fulfill its missionary change from the risen Lord. If we are aware of the difficulty of these issues, maybe we can be more empathetic with those who may draw the lines in different places. We know what to guard, if we are open to the past. We know what to change and why, if we are open to the Spirit guiding us. We dare not settle for an isolated, righteous remnant. We must be open to apostolic witness.
[1] Haenschen
[2] The Beginnings of Christianity (Vol. I, p. 312)
[3] On this account, radical scholars summarily dismiss the incident as unhistorical, and use it as one of the chief arguments against the Lukan authorship of Acts. The visions and angelic appearances, they allege, give the whole story a legendary coloring. Had Peter been enlightened in so unmistakable a manner about the lack of distinction between clean and unclean food, he could hardly have been guilty at Antioch of the equivocal conduct described in Gal. 2:11-13. Such a vision and the experience that followed it must have been regarded as conferring on Peter not only the right but the duty to evangelize Gentiles, and Peter, rather than Paul, would have to be considered as God's chosen instrument for the pioneering missionary work among pagans. On the contrary, 11:20 appears to record the first genuine case of preaching to Gentile Greeks, and it cannot have been anticipated by this incident. Finally, a motive for the insertion of this "legend" is ready to hand: From 15:7-9 our author actually did think it important to show that it was not Paul but Peter who was the pioneer of Gentile missions. This assumption is the reverse side of his overemphasis upon the Judaistic aspect of Paul (e.g., the circumcision of Timothy in 16:1-3, and his compliance with James in the matter of fulfilling temple vows in 21:17 ff.) Luke desired to gloss over any suggestion of conflict between the Pauline and Petrine parties within the church.
[4] Haenschen.
[5] Haenschen
[6] Interpreter’s Bible
[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 258.
[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 241, 259-60.
[9] Donald Posterski from True to You, Wood Lake Books, 1995, p.38.
[10] Susan Andrews, “Full of grace and truth: Demonstrating the divine,” Sermon preached January 24, 1999, at National Capital Presbytery, Covenantnetwork.org.
[11] Inspired by William Easum, Dancing with Dinosaurs, 1993.
No comments:
Post a Comment