Our Acts lesson today is a slightly abbreviated version of Acts Chapter 15. 

This chapter of Acts, about the leaders of the church in Jerusalem deciding to endorse the mission to the Gentiles, is not in the Sunday lectionary. And I think that’s a shame, because it’s an important story! Most of us are here because the early church, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, made this decision. 

Father John Rasmus and I talked about this story a couple of weeks ago, as we often talk about upcoming readings. With his extensive knowledge of Scripture, he helped me notice some things about this story. Luke, the author of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, is telling this story a certain way. Peter and James, core leaders in the Jerusalem church, are the main characters. Peter is shown as a strong supporter of sharing the Gospel with Gentiles. And Luke makes it sound like the church came to a clear and settled consensus at this meeting. 

But we have a lot of Paul’s letters included in the Bible as Epistles, and Paul tells this story a different way. He describes this meeting in Jerusalem, in Galatians chapter 2. In Luke, Peter says, “Early on, God chose me from among you as the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and come to believe.” Whereas Paul says, “…They saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised [Gentiles], just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised – for the One who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles.”

Peter met a Roman once and said, “Huh, I guess you could actually become a Christian too!” Paul poured out his life preaching Christ crucified and risen to Gentiles, making disciples and founding churches. 

But: Peter was understood to be Jesus’ chosen leader for the early church. So Luke – writing this history later than Paul’s letters – tells the story in a way that puts Peter more solidly on the right side of history than he probably was at the time. 

In fact, Paul tells an additional story. Sometime after this big meeting, Peter comes to visit the church in Antioch, and at first he shares meals with the Gentile Christians there. But then he gets a rebuke or warning from people who are still saying that there’s something unclean about Gentile Christians who don’t follow Jewish law – and that Peter, as a faithful Jewish Christian, shouldn’t be sitting at table with them. And Peter stops sharing meals with the church. 

Paul calls him out for hypocrisy, and for betraying the Gospel! He says to Peter in front of everybody, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, because though the Gospel you no longer follow the rules of our Jewish faith, then how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews?!?!” (Galatians 2:14). 

Now, Paul is telling the story in a way that puts HIM on the right side of history, certainly. But it complicates Luke’s narrative. Father John wonders whether they had to send some extra people to carry that letter because Paul disagreed with the letter and refused to be their messenger. In that letter, the Jerusalem leaders say that Gentiles need to avoid meat from animals sacrificed to idols – killed as part of the rituals of other religions. Paul writes about that issue a couple of places in his letters, and he thinks that’s nonsense – that those idols are false and empty, those rituals are meaningless, and that meat is meat. 

There’s nothing strange about all this; indeed it might feel all too familiar. People with strong opinions wrestling their way through big change. A complex, conflicted process being described after the fact as if it had been simple and clear. People in institutional leadership being retconned, or retconning themselves, into having always held the position that is now the correct position to hold. 

Change is messy. Consider the last 60 years in the Episcopal Church. Prayer book revision; the ordination of women; the movement towards the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people; working to decenter whiteness in a church with deep cultural roots in the white middle class. I could point to so many examples of big struggles and debates. Of movements for change and movements of resistance. Of leaders who feel uncomfortable with a particular change, but can see that it’s where the Spirit is leading the church. … And leaders who can’t. 

People on the vanguard are always frustrated with the people who are dragging their heels – like Paul’s frustration with Peter. But some of those dragging their heels aren’t just doing it for its own sake; whatever change is in the air just feels big and new and strange to them. 

In this gathering in Jerusalem we see an honest effort to hash out an issue that folks have very deep-seated feelings about, and to try to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading – even though it feels to some folks that the church is letting go of some really important, holy stuff. 

But people tell stories. And maybe even more importantly: People listen. And through listening and sharing, as much as though stating and debating, openness begins to emerge. 

The church begins to be able to make room for the new thing God is doing. It’s not easy; it’s not clear; it’s not settled. That takes much longer. But something breaks open, begins to unfold. 

This story makes me feel grounded and grateful – aware of the ways the Church today is a lot like the church two thousand years ago, and that somehow, in spite of ourselves, God keeps working with and through us. May it always be so. Amen.