Day 14: Change with the New

Track One Reading: Acts 11.1-30; Track Two Reading: Acts 11.1-18

Peter makes his way back home from his visit with Cornelius and he is hit at the front door with questions. ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ The last couple of days, the posts have reflected this tension that appears in us that makes us a little sceptical about allowing ‘others’ (whoever they may be) to come in. Is it so hard to believe that the first believers in Jesus would be that different than us? Probably not. We have already noted that even Peter was a little sceptical about going to Cornelius’s house. He didn’t even understand why he was there, even after God gave him that vision. Yet now Peter sees this as being part of God’s plan all along, and even Peter – the great leader and friend of Jesus – was not above criticism from the church when he was following God’s plan!

This episode here sets the scene for what will come later. The subject of circumcision and the inclusion of the Gentiles will dominate as the major issue confronting the young church, as we will see in Acts and in many of Paul’s letters. When we allow new people into our churches, change is inevitable. Anyone who has got married or taken in with a roommate after living alone for a while can tell you how even close friends living together can cause chaos at the beginning. Commentator Robert Wall writes about these ‘circumcised believers’ who question Peter,

The real danger is to trivialize their anxiety and criticize these Jewish believers as ‘legalists’ or worse. Their concern for purity is in reality a concern for the community’s solidarity. This is after all a community of friends that has distinguished itself in Jerusalem’s public life by living together with ‘one heart and soul’ (Robert Wall, The New Interpreters Bible, Vol X, “Acts”, p. 168).

Now that the God has seen fit to pour out the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, the circumcised Jews know their privileged place in God’s salvation story is at an end: all are welcome, and all will share fellowship around the table – and, more importantly, the Holy Spirit (Wall, ibid.). New ideas may come in. Assumptions about what they know and what they don’t know can’t be made. And how will the traditions long kept by those who are already ‘in’ be handled? This, and more precisely circumcision, will be the flashpoint around which the Gentile controversy will centre later.

Peter and his fellow Jewish believers force us to think about what does it mean to be an inclusive community that Caroline wrote about yesterday. What changes will it bring if we truly want to be a church that opens our doors to all people? Is our attitude, ‘They will learn to “do church” exactly as we have done because we have been here longer’? Will we demand that they learn our language (as Paul Critchley mused on the second day)? Or will there be a sharing of table fellowship between us, a means by where they encounter the God who loves us all?

When April and I moved to Wilpshire in September 2006, we set aside one room for a particular purpose because of someone we were expecting – our daughter. Had we not been expecting a child, then obtaining a crib and other baby paraphernalia would have been a strange exercise. We prepared our room for whom we hoped to welcome into our home. How are we arranging our church life based on who we hope to invite to be a part of the community that God is building?