"Pentecost Dreams"

Sermon Text: Acts 2:1-21

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS

May 23, 2021: Pentecost 

Back when I was in seminary, I spent a summer in CPE – Clinical Pastoral Education. CPE is a rite of passage for many seminarians. My CPE unit happened in a hospital on the far west side of Indianapolis. Right where the city starts to become rural again. I spent 40 hours a week for 10 weeks in the hospital. A lot of the time was spent learning how to provide pastoral care as a chaplain. I went into strangers' rooms and sat with them. I did some praying. I did a lot of listening. 

Another key component of CPE is intensive work with a small peer group. Six of us gathered around a table every day that summer. We talked about God, our families, our ministry. It was a little like group therapy boot camp. Often unpleasant but always enlightening. Our supervisor was named Beth. Beth had this unbelievable ability to ask a brief question that caused the ground to fall right out from under your feet. She was like a ridiculously demanding personal trainer…for the soul. I loved and despised her in various moments. I wouldn’t trade the things she taught me for the world. 

On the first day of CPE, we were all sitting together in this windowless, beige conference room and Beth asked us, as our first exercise, to go around the room and introduce ourselves. Only instead of sharing our favorite ice cream flavor, she asked us to share, in one sentence, our truest thing about God. Nothing like jumping right in with no warmup, right?

I mean, just sit with that a minute. Your truest thing about God. How do you even begin to tackle that question?

So we sat and we stared at those beige walls and we thought. My truest thing came to me right away and then I had to ponder it for a bit….turn it over and see if it was really true. What I said that day was this, “I believe God is a dreamer.” 

So that was back in, let’s see….2008, I think. A lot has changed in my life since then. Depending on what day you catch me in 2021, this may or may not still be my truest thing about God, but it’s still there near the top of the list on most days. 

God is a dreamer. 

When I read our sacred texts, when I hear the stories of Jesus-followers from centuries ago, when I read words by contemporary theologians that make my heart tingle, when I join my spirit with yours on Sunday morning for worship….I experience God as a dreamer. 

Story after story has been passed down to us about our God dreaming reality into existence. In the beginning…..God dreamed. After the flood….God dreamed. In the desert….God dreamed. As our faith ancestors struggled and fought with themselves and others…God dreamed. As a young woman encountered an angel who told her, “Don’t be afraid”….God dreamed. As that infant grew into a man and wove incredible stories of the world being turned upside down…God dreamed. As that man was executed by an unjust government…God dreamed. And when Jesus’s closest friends discovered that death could not conquer Love….God dreamed. 

God dreamed some wild stuff. Some of it defies explanation and seems, literally, incredible. 

Today’s story from Acts is no exception. Here we have the friends of Jesus, heartbroken and wandering, trying to figure out what to do now that Jesus has left the building. They gather together for the Jewish celebration of Shavuot – the holy day that marked fifty days after the Passover Feast. 

This ragtag group of followers were all together in one place. Perhaps deflated. Unsure of what should happen next. Suddenly, a rush of wind fills the room, fills the disciples, and the air is filled with the sound of many people talking in various languages. And as the cacophony of their voices filled the streets below, Jews from all over the known world who were present in Jerusalem came to the house to see what was going on. At first, they laughed, saying, “These guys must be drunk. How can they be speaking my language?” 

But then Peter began to speak. And people stopped laughing as a radical new vision poured forth from Peter’s lips. 

Peter remixes an ancient prophecy from Joel, proclaiming that God’s Spirit will come to all people. People of all genders will prophesy. The young and the old will see visions and dream dreams. Those who have been enslaved have received the gift of God’s Spirit, and they will prophesy. And everyone who seeks a new life will find salvation.

Peter and Joel’s shared vision is radically inclusive. The idea of all people being recipients of God’s Spirit? Radical. The admonition to listen to both the young and the old, finding new dreams and visions? Radical.

Pentecost is all about God dreaming a new world into existence. In the midst of any great trial, God is there with us, casting a new vision of hope for a weary world. 

When we’ve hit rock bottom and we’re not sure how to get back up, the Holy Spirit is there filling in the empty places and propping us up so we can continue to stand. When the phone call comes and the voice on the other end has the worst news, the Holy Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. When depression sets in; when the argument with someone we love feels too big to heal; when we have no idea where our life is headed; when the one we can’t possibly live without has ascended to heaven; when our hatred of ourselves seems too real to overcome; when the pandemic drags on; when toxic systems of violence threaten to overwhelm….the Holy Spirit is there, quietly and mightily sustaining us.

Pentecost is the advent of the Spirit in our midst. And Pentecost is not a one-time event. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit – happens several times in the Book of Acts alone. Just remember Philip’s baptism of the man from Ethiopia; or Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus; or Peter’s encounter with Cornelius, when he discovered God had much wider plans for the followers of Christ than anyone had previously imagined.

In all of these cases, the Spirit comes along and breaks things wide open. The Spirit comes to places of great emptiness and longing and brokenness and rushes in like a straight-line wind in a big field at the beginning of the storm, knocking us off our feet with surprise. But the Holy One also comes in a spirit of gentleness, breathing on us a cool and refreshing breeze, inviting us to be partners in dreaming a new way of living into reality. 

Pentecost is the season for dreaming, my friends. 

Many of us who are adults are a little out of practice when it comes to dreaming, aren’t we? Made in God’s image, it seems to me that we need to remind ourselves that it’s okay to take time to dream. It’s more than okay, actually. In fact, if we are called to be co-creators with the biggest dreamer of all….then dreaming is our birthright. 

We are called to set aside our fear of change and wonder what it might be like to live in a different world. We are called to say, “Shhh. Be quiet for now,” to those insistent voices in our heads that say, “But what about this or that? This is never going to work.” 

We are called to gather together as a church to encourage dreaming. Wild and crazy, preposterous dreaming! We follow the One who laughed in the face of death, flew up into the heavens in a cloud, and sent God’s Spirit to fill us….to make us overflow with Love...to cause us to shout it out in languages we can’t even understand. 

As we walk together through this strange pandemic time of transformation and change, we have a unique opportunity to pay attention to our dreams. When everything has unraveled and we’re not quite sure how it’s all going to go back together again…? What better time could there be for listening to the movement of the Spirit as she dreams through us?

You may be thinking – who, me? I couldn’t possibly. Dreaming is for….fill in the blank. Kids? Those who know more about the subject? People who don’t have so many things to worry about? People who aren’t so darn tired?

Ah, yes. But dreams come to those who are exhausted, too, don’t they? 

We dream when we’re asleep...and we can dream when we’re awake, too. Many wise people have said that when we dream - whether asleep or awake - we are tapping into the movement of God’s Spirit within and among and beyond and through our own spirit. We just have to have eyes to see and ears to listen. 

May the Holy Breeze of Pentecost blow through each of us, through our congregation, through our community, and through our whole world…..may we be wise enough to dream dreams with our Stillspeaking God. And may we be bold enough to share those dreams of hope, resilience, and a just world for all with one another as we dream together with the Spirit. 

"Movement"

Sermon on Acts 1:1-11

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS 

May 16, 2021

It’s not too often a sermon from the 12th century gets quoted in this pulpit, but as the season of Easter draws to a close, there are some words from St. Bernard of Clairvaux that are just begging to be shared. I’ve updated the language a bit to make it more accessible for 21st century ears. Listen, now, for the movement of the Spirit and see if you can find yourself anywhere in these old, old words: 

For some people, Christ has not yet suffered. They avoid hardships and still fear death as though Jesus didn’t already conquer all hardships by enduring them...as though Jesus didn’t already conquer death by dying. 

For some, Christ hasn’t yet risen. They experience death all day long. They are trapped in unending anxiety about their works and the pain of regret. They haven’t yet received spiritual consolation. 

For others, Christ has risen….but hasn’t yet ascended. Instead, Christ is very present with them here on earth in holy consolation. They spend their whole day in devotion, they weep and sigh as they pray and meditate all day long. Every moment is filled with exquisite joy and their days pass by in one, long continual song of Alleluia. But they need a little less Christ present with them. It’s better for them if Christ recedes a bit because they need to learn to eat solid food on their own (Heb. 5:12)

When will they understand this? They complain that they are deserted by God and that grace has been taken from them. They need to wait a little. They need to stay put until they are clothed with a stronger power from on high. They need to be ready to receive the greater gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

When the apostles were moved to that higher place, and entered the more excellent way of love (1 Cor 12:31), they were no longer anxious about Christ ascending - they were ready to see what incredible things God would do next. 

I love how these words from almost a thousand years ago capture so accurately what it’s like to live a faithful life. As the hymn says, “We are travelers on a journey. We are pilgrims on a road…” To be followers of The Way is to be moving, changing, growing, regressing, transforming as humans and as people of faith. We go through periods where we pray fervently...and other periods where we don’t even remember that we’re forgetting to pray. We have moments of great certainty and conviction...and other moments when we’re not even sure God exists. At times we are captivated by our sacred stories, music, art….and at times we feel totally disconnected from these shared touchstones. At times God really does feel as close as our next breath...and then there are other periods when the Holy feels so far away we can’t connect at all. I’ve never yet met a person who felt like their faith journey was linear, simple, easy. 

And I love how St. Bernard honors all of this and the movement we all experience over the course of a faithful lifetime. He ties it to the turning of the church year. We walk together through Lent - when Jesus is still living and breathing and teaching among us. And then we turn the corner into Easter - when Christ has died, but the story goes on because death cannot stop Love. As the season of Easter comes to a close, we mark the holy day of Ascension - 40 days after Easter and 10 days before Pentecost. That means it came and went this past Thursday. You threw a big party, right? 

Probably not. We’re not too big on Ascension traditions in the UCC, but it’s definitely a story worth remembering and a day worth marking together. It’s the first story in the Book of Acts - a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. Though the Gospel of John comes between these two books in our Bibles, it would make a lot more sense if you could just turn the page from Luke to Acts because they truly were meant to be read as a two-book series. The Gospel of Luke closes with the resurrected Christ ascending to the heavens...and the Book of Acts opens with the same scene. 

The book of Acts is written to all of us. Did you know that? Says so right there in the first line. It’s addressed to Theophilus. Which might have been a real person, but also very well may have just been a way of saying it’s a book for anyone who is loved by God or loves God. That means us. 

And as we’ve already seen these past few weeks, the Book of Acts is about all those “travelers on a journey,” those “pilgrims on a road” in those early years of The Way. There’s a constant, unrelenting feeling of MOVEMENT in the Book of Acts. Our faith ancestors were moving, changing, growing, regressing, transforming as humans and as people of faith...and we get a front row seat to all of it. 

Even in this opening scene, it’s clear that everything is shifting and changing for these weary travelers who have already been through so much. They’ve devoted themselves to following this enigmatic teacher….and then he was arrested….and killed...but somehow didn’t really go away? And they’ve been living in this weird liminal space for 40 days....with Jesus here but not here with them. During this time, Jesus has told them to stay put in Jerusalem and to await the gift of the Holy Spirit. They’re doing their best to stay patient but, really, this is a lot to take in. And so they are filled with questions about how this is all supposed to work. And they ask, “Jesus, are we there yet? Is it time for you to give us our freedom? To save us from Rome?” 

Jesus’s answer is less-than-satisfactory. “It’s not for you to know when it’s all going to happen,” he says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And then….before they can even sneak in a follow-up question, we are told he begins to disappear. Specifically, to be lifted up into union with God. Ascended. Out of sight. Somewhere, somehow….beyond. 

Moving, shifting, changing, never holding still. Jesus is like sands slipping through their fingers. Or water seeping through all the cracks. The breeze that never holds still - not even for a moment. 

As we mark this movement from Lent to Easter to Ascension to Pentecost, I am also struck by other movements in the text. For starters, the author of Acts calls Jesus’s followers apostles here. Disciples and apostles are terms that are often used interchangeably, but they’re different. To be a disciple is to be a follower, a learner, a student. But to be an apostle is to be a person sent out to share a message, to teach. A disciple receives and an apostle shares what they’ve received with others. It’s no accident that this passage refers to Jesus’s followers as apostles, because Jesus is very clear that they are about to be sent forth. 

And that’s another bit of movement we see here: Jesus tells them that when the Holy Spirit is given to them, they will be sent to be his witnesses - to share what they’ve experienced - in far away places. For now, he’s told them to stay put in Jerusalem and wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. But once she arrives, they are going to be SENT - to Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 

Moving, shifting, changing, never holding still. Jesus is like sand slipping through their fingers. The disciples stare up at the sky with their mouths agape. Can we even imagine what they might have been feeling? They’ve lost their leader once before….and now….is he REALLY gone? 

No, not really. Christ is ever-present for those with eyes to see. We are Christ when we allow ourselves to be sent out in love as his apostles. We see Christ in one another and hear Christ’s loving voice in music, through art, and in the exquisite beauty of creation. When we speak those words of promise as we gather for Holy Communion - “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” - we are reminded that Jesus is much bigger than the enfleshed human of Nazareth who walked this earth. Jesus helped us catch a glimpse of that moving, shifting, changing, never holding still force of love-peace-justice-grace that we sometimes call Christ. 

And Christ will never leave us. Love incarnate continues to arrive with each passing breath, each heartbeat - as surely as the sun rises each day. The world continues to move and shift and change - God knows we’ve had enough change in the past year to last us a decade. The rate of change can sometimes feel absolutely astounding - overwhelming.

But God’s peace will not be overwhelmed. It arrives even now. And as we watch another Easter season slip away and see the apostles staring up at the sky, awaiting the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can rest assured that the world will never move too fast for God’s presence. God meets us in each and every moment. Now and now and now and now. 

We are held in the assurance of Christ’s love, which cannot be broken. And we are invited to step into the Spirit’s power and share that good news with a world that sometimes feels like it’s spinning out of control. 

Let’s pray together:

God of life, 

We do not know the face of the future,

any more than the disciples did. 

Like them, we have many questions:

how to live 

how to bear witness. 

Like them, we thirst for the spring waters of the Spirit 

to inspire us in our living 

to give us a heart language in our testimony.

Christ has been raised in glory

that we might rise with dignity 

Christ lives in power that we might live in peace 

Christ is present everywhere

that we might be fully present in our own lives 

This we believe 

This we step out on. 

Amen. [2]

NOTES:

[1] You can read the original sermon here: 

https://books.google.com/books?id=PEu1NNPtGZYC&lpg=PA175&dq=bernard%20of%20clairvaux%20%22for%20some%20christ%20has%20not%20yet%20suffered%22&pg=PA175#v=onepage&q=bernard%20of%20clairvaux%20%22for%20some%20christ%20has%20not%20yet%20suffered%22&f=false 

[2] Originally posted on the Monthly Prayers page (now Weekly Worship) of the Christian Aid website

“In the House of God’s Love”

Sermon on Galatians 1:13-17; 2:11-21

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS 

May 9, 2021

You’re at the meeting. You didn't necessarily want to go to the meeting but it DID seem like the issues being discussed were bigger than could be handled over e-mail, so you went, making sure to take a good snack because it also seemed like it could be a long one. 

It seems like days have passed but it’s probably only been a couple hours and everyone is packing up to go home. The group managed to work through some really difficult issues today. Questions about mission, values, how we define who we are as an organization, who can belong and what the requirements are for participating. 

As you look around the room, people look tired - but it’s that good, satisfied kind of tired you feel when you know you’ve done some important work together. 

A few days later you get the minutes from the meeting and glance at them. They seem to capture everything that was decided. You feel content, knowing the group made wise decisions together and go on about your work and life. 

All’s well that ends well, right? 

Well, not quite. Because it turns out, while everyone seemed to be on the same page at the meeting, NOW some people are just going off on their own and doing whatever they feel like. They aren’t sticking with what you all decided as a team during the meeting! 

Do you:

1. Shrug your shoulders and mutter “People are just so peoply sometimes”?

2. Immediately text all your friends who were also at the meeting: “Can you believe what so-and-so is doing?”

OR

3. Write a (and this is a direct quote from my study bible) “bitterly polemical” letter expressing your outrage at what has transpired?

Well, the Apostle Paul went with option C and WELCOME TO THE BOOK OF GALATIANS! Now, this is one of those passages that probably made about 0% sense to you when we heard it a few moments ago, so I want to spend some time explaining what in the world is going on BECAUSE there is some holy-moly-wowsers Good News to be found in this text and I am really hoping you can receive it as a gift to your spirit today. 

Galatians is one of Paul’s earliest letters. And Paul is HOT in this letter. So grumpy. It’s almost as if he had no idea this was going to be screenshotted and canonized as scripture and read by people all over the world for thousands of years. Whoops. 

If you keep reading past where we stopped you’ll see some fun quotes in chapter 3 like “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Did you experience all this for nothing?” 

So what’s he so mad about? Well, this is a continuation of the conflict we learned about last week when we studied the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15. Remember that Jesus was Jewish and the earliest followers of Jesus were also Jewish. Those Jews who followed Jesus were known as The Way. But as stories about Jesus spread far and wide, many people who were NOT Jewish were also attracted to The Way. And so there were conflicts about whether these Gentiles could follow The Way without following all the same customs and religious laws that the Jewish followers did. 

At the Council at Jerusalem (which definitely could NOT have been an e-mail and was most certainly longer than two hours), the leaders in Jerusalem determined that it was not necessary for Gentiles to be circumcised in order to belong. God’s spirit moving among them showed they already belonged, just as they were, and so they were exempt from this requirement. 

The meeting ended and everyone went their merry way. Which means Paul went back to his mission - working among the Gentiles and inviting them to follow The Way of Jesus. EXCEPT….some people in Jerusalem didn’t get the notes from the meeting (or chose to ignore them) and came to the churches in Galatia and said, “Oh, no, no. You DO have to be circumcised to belong. Absolutely.”

And THIS is why Paul sounds so defensive and angry in this letter. He starts off listing all his credentials so the people in Galatia will believe him (and not these interlopers who have come from Jerusalem preaching the wrong message). And then he gets into some really intricate theological claims that have deeply shaped Christianity ever since. 

The issue that Paul names is justification. How are we justified? 

If you’ve ever studied print or digital media design, you’ll know that justification is a thing in typesetting. On most computers you can choose to have your text flush left, flush right, centered, or justified. Justified text is the one where the words get spread out so they go from margin to margin and there’s a clean, straight line down both sides because the text is flush from edge to edge. I like this connection because it gives me a visual for what being justified is like. Set right with God, everything in its place, tidy, and expansive - those beautiful letters taking up every bit of space they were created to take up so they shine in all their gorgeous glory. 

Or another way to look at it: Biblical scholar Mary Hinkle Shore encourages us to use the word “belonging” when we see “justified” in this letter. “How do people know they belong? How do we know we belong to God? And if we do belong to God, how do others know?” [1] 

Those are the issue at stake here. It’s big. Paul is so angry that Jews are showing up and telling Gentiles they have to follow the law that he says some things that Christians have used over the years to not only disparage the Torah but also harm Jewish people who keep the laws found there. I think when Christians read our holy texts it’s always important to name when they’ve been used to hurt and do violence to our Jewish kindred...and to repent of that wrongdoing and strive to do better. 

When you really dig into what Paul is saying, he’s NOT saying there’s anything wrong about Jews following the laws they’ve always followed. And he’s NOT saying the Jewish people outside of The Way are somehow disconnected from God. Jews have already received the gift of God’s full grace and love long before Jesus came on the scene and Jesus doesn’t change that. Paul’s concern is only with the Gentile followers and he is 100% confident that those who follow Jesus experience justification - that sense of belonging - through that connection to Christ. Full stop. If Jewish members of The Way want to keep kosher, great. But Paul says justification - set right, everything in its place, fully expanded to the margins in love - that deep belonging that we find as Christians comes as a gift from God, through the faithfulness of Jesus. 

And there’s a key verse here in chapter 2, verse 16. In some translations it says we are justified - find our belonging in God - through faith IN Jesus Christ. And in other translations it says we are justified - find our belonging in God - through the faith OF Jesus Christ. 

Scholars say we really can’t know which one Paul meant, but a lot of his other writings make it clear that the real gift here is the faithfulness OF Jesus Christ. The way Jesus modeled God’s love while he walked on the earth, the way he stayed with that faithfulness even unto death, and the fact that even death could not take Christ’s love away from us....these are all signs of the faithfulness of Christ. And it is through Christ’s faithfulness, Paul says, that we are justified - set right, everything in its place, fully expanded to the margins in love, certain that we BELONG FULLY within God’s gracious love. 

There is absolutely nothing we can do, Paul says, to earn this or get rid of it. It simply is. God loves us so recklessly, so wildly that the Christ-force is always pursuing us, cannot be separated from us, courses through and in and over and beyond and around us at all times, drawing us further and deeper with every breath into Love. We cannot run from it. We cannot earn it. And as Paul writes so beautifully in Romans 8, there is absolutely “nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

The freedom that we find if we allow ourselves to truly receive this truth is beyond what we can put into words. When we know, really KNOW, our belovedness….we are free. We don’t have to strive to know our worth. It is as close as our breath and as certain as the sun rising tomorrow morning. 

But there’s even more….because when we know the source of our belonging is God and not anything we do, then we also realize that every single other person we encounter is justified in the same way. Every single person belongs within God’s love. We don’t have bragging rights just because we think we’re special, and we have no right to look down on anyone else. WE ALL BELONG. In a world where different groups of people are so often estranged and unable to see the image of God in one another, this is powerfully good news. No matter who we are, Paul says, our primary identity is as a beloved child of God. We are all justified - set right, set free, expanded to and beyond the margins in God’s gracious love. Forever. 

Henri Nouwen says this gift of justification means we are a part of the household of God and that we find ourselves most fully in the “house of God’s love.” What a beautiful image. He writes:

When we enter into the household of God, we come to realize that the fragmentation of humanity and its agony grow from the false supposition that all human beings have to fight for the right to be appreciated and loved. 

In the house of God’s love we come to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and thus recognize all people, whatever their ace, religion, sex, wealth, intelligence, and background, belong to that same house. God’s house has no dividing walls or closed doors. “I am the door,” Jesus says, “Anyone who enters through me will be safe” (John 10:9). 

The more fully we enter into the house of love, the more clearly we see that we are there together with all humanity and that in and through Christ, we are [siblings], members of one family. [2]

May it be so. Amen. 

NOTES: 

[1]https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/living-by-faith/commentary-on-galatians-113-17-211-21

[2] Henri Nouwen, from Lifesigns. Quoted in You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living

"Guided by the Light"

Sermon on Acts 15:1-17

Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS 

May 2, 2021

Our family of four has settled into a routine of having a special “family activity” every weekend. It might be something simple like going out for ice cream or something bigger like going to the Zoo. Each weekend, one person is designated as the activity chooser and the rest of us have to go along with their choice. That means you might end up watching a movie you really don’t like or going on a bike ride when you’d rather stay home. 

As simple as this concept sounds, you would laugh if you knew how long it took us to come around to this compromise. Before we had this system we would often spend ages at dinner on Friday trying to decide, “what we want to do tonight.” One person would suggest a trip to Sonic but someone else would already be in their PJs. Many decisions were made by flipping a coin or rock paper scissors. By the time we finished arguing our cases, it was too late for a movie, anyway. 

It’s amazing how passionate we humans can get about the board game WE want to play or the movie WE want to watch. It can be tough to make small decisions with the people we love. Expand that to making big decisions with a larger group….and….hoo boy, things can go off the rails pretty quickly. 

In the coming months, most of us are going to do this difficult work of making decisions with groups of people. Families and friends will shift into new grooves and pretty much every organization we’re a part of is finding new ways to exist. Some decisions will seem like slam dunks and others will cause us to lose sleep.

This morning’s reading from the Book of Acts is the perfect text for people who are already pretty tired of making decisions and know there are many more to be made in the near future. The people in this morning’s text were living through a period of massive change and I bet they were tired, too. A LOT has happened to our faith ancestors in the 7 chapters we skipped between last week and this week’s readings, so let me start by catching you up a bit. 

Last week we were in Acts 8 with the man from Ethiopia that Philip encountered and baptized on the road out of Jerusalem. This story marks a turning point in the expansion of the Jesus movement beyond Jerusalem. 

In chapter 9, Saul - a devout Jew who had been persecuting Christ-followers, has an encounter with the Risen Christ and becomes a Follower of the Way himself. In chapter 10, Peter and the wider Jewish community ponder whether Jews can eat with non-Jews (a.k.a Gentiles) because they have very different customs around food. Through the faith of a Gentile Roman soldier named Cornelius, the Followers of the Way begin to realize the Holy Spirit is at work among non-Jewish  folks, too. And in chapter 11, Peter runs back to Jerusalem to tell the leaders there about the ministry springing forth among Gentiles in far-away places like Antioch, near modern-day Turkey, where Paul and Barnabas spend a year with the community of Christ-followers. 

Fast forward to today’s reading and Paul and Barnabas are back in Jerusalem. An argument is brewing about what to do with all these Gentiles who are fired up to follow Jesus. As is so often the case in these kinds of conflicts, the energy is focused on a particular sticking point that represents something much larger - in this case, circumcision. 

For generations at this point, circumcision has been an important sign of Jewish identity. As a marginalized group, the people of Israel relied on these identity-markers to help them remember who they were and that they belonged to God. Circumcision is just one identity-marker among many, including boundaries around food and other daily activities. Having this sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves seems to be a basic human desire and these markers and signs helped Jewish people maintain that sense of belonging. [1] 

But now there are non-Jews who are also becoming a part of the group. Compelled by the life and ministry of Jesus, they are responding to the movement of the Spirit among them and joining the Way. And this is a LOT of change for the Jewish-Jesus-followers. Keep in mind that the Council in Jerusalem we’re hearing about today happened just 20 or so years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. Before Jesus’s death, Jews weren’t even evangelizing - and now the Way has missionaries all over the known world. As the stories about Jesus spread further and attract diverse followers...well, it’s a LOT to take in. 

And now - NOW! - there’s a question about something that has been seen as absolutely essential to the faith: circumcision. Do these new Gentiles have to get circumcised in order to be a part of the Way? Essentially, the question is, can non-Jews be a part of this Jesus movement? It’s a HUGE question. If the Council at Jerusalem had gone a different direction, absolutely EVERYTHING about the future of the Church would have been different. 

(Spoiler alert: they decide that Gentiles can be a part of the movement without being circumcised.) But what I’m more interested in today is HOW they make this big decision together. 

Anne Lamott quotes fellow-writer E.L. Doctorow who once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” [2] 

These early church leaders were traveling like that. They, like us, couldn’t see the whole road stretching out ahead of them. Instead, they relied on headlights to light the way. The Rev. Dr. Mary Hinkle Shore encourages us to ponder what those lights were that guided them through this journey with so many twists and turns. [3]

First, there were faithful leaders among them who had gone out and tried some wild things. Paul and Barnabas had traveled all the way to Antioch and spent a whole year as guests of the community there. They had shared meals and music and laughter with the people in that far-off land. They were willing to try new things, risk failure, and were open to learning and growing. If Paul and Barnabas and others had NOT done this, this story would have had a different ending. 

Second, the leaders in Jerusalem had a relationship of trust with the travelers who shared their experiences. Though the leaders in Jerusalem had not seen the movement of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles with their own eyes, they trusted the testimony of people like Paul who had. They listened with open hearts and believed the testimony of those who shared what they had experienced the Spirit doing. 

Third, they trusted in the movement of the Holy Spirit. When I was a teenager, my church bought a van and had the words “we are Spirit-driven” painted on the side of it. At the time, I thought it was a little goofy but, hey, can you imagine what our churches would be like if we actually COULD be Spirit-driven at all times? The deciding factor for the leaders in Jerusalem was that God had bestowed the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles. And if that’s the case, well, then it’s a done deal. “Who are we to deny what God is already doing in the world? We’d better just buckle-up and get a move on with the Spirit.”

Finally, they made these decisions prayerfully. After noting the movement of the Spirit, they checked with their holy texts to confirm that their interpretation of what was happening seemed plausible. And they did all of this interpretation in community - listening to one another, watching for the movement of the Spirit, and honoring God’s wild plans even when it would have been much easier to keep doing things the way they’d always been done. 

Friends, we can be guided by these lights, too. 

Listening to the adventurers who are willing to go out and experiment in creative ways, 

trusting their testimony when they return, 

tuning ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit and buckling up to follow wherever she leads, 

and always, always making decisions in community, with the guidance of scripture.

I still kind of wish there was a road map for this kind of work. It would make it so much easier. But it seems we build the path by walking it - and we give thanks for the light that guides each step we take together. 

May it be so. 

NOTES: 

[1]  With gratitude to Jewish educator Amy Robertson for explaining why circumcision mattered so deeply to this community in Episode 237 of the BibleWorm podcast. 

[2] From Bird by Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, quoted here.

[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/council-at-jerusalem-2/commentary-on-acts-151-18