Tribes - Today's Sermon - 5/19/19

Tribes

(based on Acts 11:1-18)

Do you remember last week’s New Testament passage?  If not, let me remind you;

It came from Revelation 7:9

“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.”

These words came from John, who had a vision about heaven and what would be there.  And in his vision, John saw that there was such a large number of people that no one could count them, there was so many.  And surprise, surprise, they weren’t all the same.  There were people in heaven that didn’t look like one another – there were tall people and short people, fat people and thin people, there were people who had pale skin and people with dark skin.  Among them, they spoke many languages, not all of them spoke Greek or Hebrew, but they spoke Spanish and Italian, Japanese and Russian, English and Germany, Swahili and Tlingit.  They came from every nation on earth.  Currently, there are 195 countries in the world.  And there were people from every one of them in heaven.  And if you want to get really specific, every tribe was represented, as well.  So, not just every nation, but every group of people that gathers on earth for a cause or a belief or an interest – every tribe!

Yet, if you recall your Old Testament history, the world was separated by language, tribes and nations, nearly from the beginning.  Do you remember the story, from the Tower of Babel in Genesis?

So how do we go from not understanding one another in Genesis and separating ourselves among only people of like interests, skin colors, languages, nations, or tribes to a vision of heaven where everyone is together?

This passage in Acts is supposed to help show us how.

The early church was a Jewish Church.  Jesus was a Jew, his disciples were Jews, and Jesus’ ministry had been spent among the Jewish people.  And although Jesus’ commission to his disciples in Matthew 28:19 was to “go and make disciples of all nations,” up to this point the followers of Jesus were still mostly just Jewish.

But now the church was beginning to see Gentiles, or non-Jews, coming to faith in Christ, and this posed some significant theological and practical problems.  For example, the Jewish Christians continued to observe the Old Testament food laws and circumcision, and one question that arose was should Gentile Christians observe these same laws or not.  If not, how were Jewish believers to maintain their own obedience to food laws when fellowship in Christ involved eating with unclean Gentiles?  And how would close association with Gentile believers affect the relationship of Jewish believers with other Jews who did not share their faith in Christ? These issues were serious theological issues.  They were not to be dealt with lightly.   The Holy Scriptures from God had told the Jewish people that THIS, what was written in the sacred text, was to be their law.  It was to be how they conducted themselves before their God and in life.  And now, the admittance of Gentiles into the fold of believers was threatening the very core of their beliefs. 

What we see is potential divisions emerging between Jewish and Gentile Christians.

“What God has made sacred, you must not call profane!”  With these words the Apostle Peter set off shock waves within the early church gathered in Jerusalem.  The early church that had been so united in its common experience of the resurrection of Christ and the Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit is now being threatened with a theological controversy that could bring about upheaval and division.  

How can Peter betray and abandon the sacred traditions of his people?  Just like John wrote in Revelation years later, Peter, the rock upon which Christ said he would build his church, has had a dream.   And this dream, if it was to be taken seriously would turn upside down everything that this gathering of Jewish Christians held dear; the laws and customs of Judaism.  What is at stake here in our text from Acts is the very future of Christianity.  Would the Jesus movement be for Jews only remaining an obscure Jewish sect never venturing beyond the boundaries of ancient Israel?  Or would the Gospel of Jesus Christ transcend its Jewish roots and become an explosive force spreading in every direction across the known world?  

It is remarkable that Luke, the author of Acts, is willing to show us an episode in which schism threatened the fellowship of the very first Christians.  But I think Luke wants us to see the church at its most vulnerable moment when it was in conflict; why?  Perhaps to show us that we’re no longer talking about a religion that is separate from the conditions of the human heart.  That this faith is about being real and honest, vulnerable and compassionate – because that is who God is. 

So, here the new sect of Jewish Christians have the theological question about whether or not a follower of Christ (A Christian) had to be Jewish.  They were wrestling with the question of how they were called to uphold all the laws and customs that Jesus and the Apostles grew up with and practiced as faithful Jews; about what to eat and what not to eat as laid out in scripture.    

It would be easy for us to dismiss this as irrelevant to us today, except the first church was dealing with a profound issue that continues to grip the church today.  It is the appropriate question of how a community of faith defines who is in and who is out; who belongs and who doesn’t.  But what do you do when some new-fangled idea comes along, something different from the way we were raised, something challenging to what we believe?  

Or, to put it another way: how do we know something is from the Lord or not?  Let’s see what we can learn from this story of conflict.  First thing we might notice is that the conflict itself is acknowledged.  This story from Acts reminds us that sometimes we have to talk about difficult subjects that have the potential to divide us.  

The critics within the Jerusalem church said, “Wait, hold on Peter!  What are you trying to tell us?”  And it’s good that they did because you can’t just go with every new thing that comes along without questioning it.  It must be tested.  So, the Jewish people had their traditions.  Those traditions had been practiced for centuries.  They were written in the Sacred text as law coming directly from God.  Because of those traditions and laws, in the chaotic world of the ancient middle east, the people of Israel were able to say this is who we are.  We are not Edomites or Egyptians or Assyrians or Phoenicians.  We are the people of Israel.  This is what we have done over centuries to define ourselves; it is our way of life.  It is how we celebrate that we are a people set apart by God.  Because we believe ourselves to be a chosen people, we seek to follow God’s ways in being careful about what we eat and who we eat it with.

When you have been raised this way, to believe a certain thing like this - it is not just an opinion, or even a belief or practice.  It becomes part of your very DNA.  For Jews the idea of eating unclean food was simply revolting.  It brought about an emotional, almost chemical sense of revulsion.  This deep-seated feeling doesn’t easily yield to theological arguments.  You can’t really even debate it no matter what you say or how rational you might be.  A change of heart regarding a subject like this for the Jews can only come from an even deeper place.  

And that deeper place according to our story is when one sees with one’s own eyes the Spirit of God doing a new thing; when one sees the Holy Spirit working in people’s lives that you might have considered unclean, outsiders, and even worse.  It is only in this way that one is shocked into a new awareness.  And that is what happened to Peter.  But notice what happened next.  Peter did not respond to his critics with countless theological arguments.  He did not angrily confront those who disagreed with him.  He didn’t engage in an “us vs them” debate.  He simply told them a story - his story.  

He said these people came to me and invited me to go with them.  And to see what their lives were like.  And I went.  And yes, I knew that I could be defiled by associating with the unclean, but I went.  I felt like God wanted me to go.  And I saw that God’s spirit was working in them in powerful ways.  And this changed my heart.  This is my story, but it could just as easily have happened to you.  What would you have done if this had happened to you?

This text offers this very important clue about conflict in church.  We will more likely be able to resolve our conflicts and discern the will of God when we share our stories.  Not debate.  Not arguments.  Not name-calling.  Just, this is my story.  This is what I have experienced for myself.  That’s what Peter did.

          Now, there are a lot of years yet to go between Genesis, when all of the people on earth were separated into various tribes, and the Revelation as seen by John regarding heaven.  This story from Peter, recorded in our Holy Scriptures, is just one story about how we go from Genesis to Revelation.  And that story, that quest, to be more Heavenly, to usher in the Kingdom of God continues, even today.

          Some day there will be a grand celebration when all the Children of God sing and worship together before the throne of the Holy One.  Until that day comes, we share our tribal stories.