"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