There are times in the past that when I thought about the early church, I assumed God gave them a clear set of guidelines and rules for how the church should work and function. We want things to be that clean so we can look at the Bible and follow the model without any risk of messing up. The reality is the church evolves. As the church encounters new struggles and wrestles with new questions, they have to change and adapt to the new terrain where they find themselves. One of the places in scripture where this is most on display is in Acts 15.
The church functioned with a set of assumed rules and practices till assumptions were disrupted by a new culture and people. How does the church determine what practices are binding on all the church and which ones are cultural? Does the church have to look the same in one place as it does in another? At what point at the practices solidified as God ordained doctrine or does the church continue to adapt to new situations in an ever changing world?
When we look at Acts 15, we see a Jewish church that is wrestling with how to open its doors to the Gentile world. Peter had preached to Cornelius and baptized his household (Gentiles) when they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 10) and Barnabas and Paul took their ministry to the Gentiles in Acts 13. The church has to react to this change and decide if the assumed practices of their Judaism would then apply to those who were not born Jews. The struggle we see throughout a lot of the New Testament dialogue is whether or not the traditions and interpretations of practices would apply in the new time, place, and people. There were some who demanded that the traditions and practices were God given and therefore binding on anyone who wanted to join. Others saw this as an obstacle to Gentiles coming to know the Gospel and wanted to find an easier path for them.
How did the church make decisions about their future? They didn’t have a blueprint to look at or a rule book for how to navigate these decisions. One clue comes in Acts 15:28-29, in the letter to the Gentile believers, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”
What is interesting to me about this list is that it ends up not being a binding list forever in the church. How many of you, who I assume are Gentiles, like your steak with any kind of “pink” in it? At some point we became less concerned about this edict against blood. Why? I’ve also never checked about whether or not my food was a sacrifice to an idol or strangled. I don’t want to get too far from the point though. We even have an example of the church moving from some of these requirements from the Council to the Gentiles. In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul says that we know that there is only one God and therefore “food sacrificed to idols” is fine to eat because those gods don’t even exist. The teaching he then gives is about what is best for building up the church. If eating meat is going to cause someone else to stumble because they don’t have the “same knowledge as you” then don’t eat the meat because it’ll cause them to stumble. Wouldn’t it be easier for Paul to just say, “The council told Gentiles not to eat meat sacrificed to idols, so we’re not going to do that at all”?
The part of the letter to the Gentiles I want to focus on for this Sunday is when they say, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” As the church navigates this time of transition I want us to learn from this time of the early church where they had to seek God’s guidance through the Holy Spirit about what direction they should take. There seems to be two parts to this. They listened to the Spirit and they listened to one another. While it is important to be proactive in making plans, what does it look like to seek the Spirit’s guidance in the process?
What struggle do you have with the idea of listening to the Spirit for guidance?
How do you see that happening in community?
What does discernment look like in your mind (individually and communally)?
Scriptures to consider:
Romans 12:2
1 Corinthians 2
Philippians 1:9-11