There was no escape. On the Sunday morning following the adjournment of the 217th General Assembly, the Word of the Lord brought some comforting and challenging words into our life together. Thanks be to God.
In the lectionary readings for that Twelfth Sunday of not-so-Ordinary Time the psalmist sang, “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” even as some Presbyterians in the pew were experiencing an unpleasant disconnection and all Presbyterians were newly aware of how very hard it is to live together in unity.
The Gospel reading from the evangelist Mark told the story about Jesus and the disciples in the boat on a stormy sea, winds blowing, waves beating and swamping the boat. We heard Jesus calming the waters and chastising the disciples for their lack of faith.
And if you didn’t want to get on that biblical boat, and took an alternate route to the daily lectionary, you landed on Acts 15, negotiating the waters of the First General Assembly in Jerusalem.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Mark 4:35-41: In the Same Boat
As I prepared for this General Assembly I was anchored by this text. As we anticipated the possible outcomes — Would the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) be weather-beaten but still afloat? Sinking? On “the other side”? The Gospel seemed to anticipate our coming to it.
In this story the disciples are “crossing over” from the familiar territory of the west bank of Galilee to a new and different place–perhaps Mark’s description of the tumultuous journey of the early church from its Jewish roots to its Gentile mission, his urging calm and trust in the midst of stress and transition. “The other side” was not where they wanted to go. Other people. Other experiences. Other opinions. God knows that can rock the boat and rock your world! In that case, the disciples may have been more afraid of getting off that boat than going down with it.
The Gospel reads us as disciples of much fear and little trust. When the wind changes and things get threatening, we think we’re lost at sea and forget, perhaps, that the saving, guiding Presence is on board with us. Some among us think we’re dead in the water and can’t go any place but sinking down. Others among us want to return to our old places, some more ideal than real. They long to turn the ship around, especially to make of the church a fishing boat again and haul in the catch of members to correct the course of our decline.
In these waters the church is called to be another kind of boat: a ferry going back and forth across the dividing lines of church and world, carrying disciples to other sides. Back and forth. Taking people from one place to another. Back and forth. To visit, to get acquainted, to work. Back again with new insights and experiences. Going across again, listening to a different dialect, seeing the same horizon from a different angle, seeing the same Christ in a different face. Back and forth, back and forth, until those distances aren’t so far and the other side isn’t so “other.”
Until, instead of a ferry, we’re close enough for a bridge.
We trust that God is leading us to horizons of peace and faithfulness in our life together and our life for the world. We can trust that we will stay afloat in all of this; we pray that we will stay in the same boat and commit to the difficult work of going across to the other sides, and with God’s help, building those bridges.
Acts 15:1-12: At the Same Meeting?
As I participated in this General Assembly I was encouraged by this text. As we “met together to consider” the matters over which we disagree, and “after there had been much debate” made decisions — wasn’t there, to quote the great theologian Casey Stengel, a sense of “déjà vu all over again”?
From the beginning, councils and assemblies struggled to discern what was faithful and essential in the confusing and creative mix of Scripture, tradition, culture. The Acts of the Apostles is a witness to the Holy Spirit at work in the life of the early church, its Pentecost birth in diversity and its growth pangs as it encountered a new world. The acts of the apostles and elders and others relate the acting of God in and among us, then and now, welcoming all, saving all, and through the Holy Spirit, crossing the deep divides of “them” and “us” and working unity.
The acts of the assembly, we must believe, might also be a story of the Spirit at work in the church. Some of us speak as if we are ready to jump ship in protest of the decision to approve the report and recommendations from the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church. The passage of Recommendation Five is to some the much-feared, much- opposed “loophole to gay ordination” and to others the hard-sought, long-discerned Presbyterian way to the unity of a theologically diverse church. The authoritative interpretation holds sessions and presbyteries responsible — as they always have been — for applying standards of the whole church and determining adherence to the essentials of the Reformed faith and polity. Who gets to get in the boat?
How remarkable, that first General Assembly in Jerusalem! There they debated and divided, some Jewish Christians insisting that Gentile converts become Jews in order to be Christians. Who belonged? What were the essential requirements? In those earliest days of the church, Paul and his co-worker Barnabas, former Jews and clearly future Presbyterians, met with Peter and the elders “to consider this matter” of who could be admitted to the community of believers.
Paul and Peter took up the prophetic argument that God’s promises and purposes are not confined to a particular race and nation. Paul “got” this early on, emphatic that it was baptism and not circumcision that marked us as people of God. A summary of that great controversy echoes in the early baptismal formula, There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28). No categorical exclusions of race, class, or gender. Peter finally got it after God revealed to him in a vision that “even” the Gentiles were receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit: I truly understand that God shows no partiality, Peter preached, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God (Acts 10:34). He warmed up that sermon for the Jerusalem Assembly: God has made no distinction between them and us … we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will (15:11).
“Them and us” … “we” and “they.” All one, no distinction. Paul and Peter were working a theological principle that was essentially counter to the belief and practice of those whose position was, It is necessary for them to become like us. What are the essentials of Christian faith? How does that get decided? Who answers the question? The essential question of the first century church is an essential question of the twenty-first century church, which suggests that what we’re dealing with here is not a checklist of eternal answers but an eternal answering, and for better and for worse, an ongoing process of engagement and discernment. No small dissention and debate, as it is described with some reserve.
“Agree with me and we don’t have a problem.” “Be and believe like me and you, too, will belong.” “Disagree with me and I’m catching the next boat to a new or another denomination.” Acts 15 illumines another way: The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. A very Presbyterian approach. There was much debate, it is written, and then a decision. It all sounds very orderly. It may not have been. But what emerged was a possibility for life together in the spirit of the Christ professed by the insiders and the outsiders alike. A model in which the traditional beliefs and practices were regarded with respect and the new phenomenon of Gentiles “turning to God” was embraced as evidence that the faith of the ages was — is! — alive.
Peter resolved that these new believers should not be burdened with requirements that the Jews themselves had not been able to bear (15:10). The question arises from the early church controversy: Are we placing undue burden on some of those among us, who are not “them” but “us”? Can we come to some agreement in working together, essentials we can mutually embrace and limits to which we can be mutually accountable? Might we be gifted with the grace of compromise, which is not concession to the lowest common denominator and caving to weakened principles, but, in the true sense of the word, a “co-promise” with one another and with God? A mutual agreement that makes life together not only tolerable but just and faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ? A promising together to love and serve the Lord together?
What is essential in belief and practice? Imagine the negotiations, the balances, the discernment, the co-promising! The Gentile Christians were asked to observe four practices: 1) Eat nothing that had been sacrificed to idols, which honored the faithfulness of Jews and Jewish Christians in rejecting the idolatry of the majority culture. 2) Abstain from what the RSV calls “unchastity,” which appears as “fornication” in the newer translations. The reference is to licensed cultic prostitution and incestuous marriages, common sexual practices in the ancient world. Vote no on that! Essential to the early Christians was that sexual behavior not be promiscuous or exploitive. The concern then and now is bigger than marriage and beyond sexual orientation. Essential to being Christian is a covenantal faithfulness and purity of heart in all relationships of life. Note that sexuality was one of four essentials and not the whole defining issue. And then, two restrictions that respected Jewish dietary laws.
All of that may sound odd yet oddly familiar to the modern ear. It was careful and fair. Change was required of the Us Party, to include converted Gentiles in the community of believers as equals in God’s design, and even as evidence of God’s amazing grace. Change was required of the Them Party, to acknowledge the sensibilities of the tradition.
A delegation was chosen to take the recommendation to the Gentile congregations in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia in the form of a letter. Face-to-face interpretation can be as difficult as face-to-face confrontation, because, then and always, policies are personal. They impact persons, and one small step toward wholeness is to literally and simply get together. Opposing parties met together in Jerusalem and reached a decision. Ambassadors of reconciliation went together to Antioch, gathered together the congregation there to confirm by their own words and presence this compromise on the essentials of being Christian. Are we ready to go together?
The real “essentials” we are given in this story of the Jerusalem Council debate are not so much the what of belief and practice, but the how of life in Christ: The essential desire to collapse the distances of us and them; the essential spirit of open and honest dissent and debate; the essential process of discerning what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ; the essential commitment to its peace, unity, and purity; the essential courage of being led by God into a new day; the essential faith that it is God’s church and God’s day.
Deborah A. Block is the pastor of Immanuel Church in Milwaukee, Wis. She served as a commissioner to the 217th General Assembly and stood as a candidate for moderator.
