Our scripture for this day comes from the 15^th chapter of the book of Acts, and I’ll be reading selected verses from the 15^th chapter:

Acts 15:1-2; 6 NRSV Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders.

The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter.

And then these words from the conclusion to their discussion:

Acts 15:12-19 NRSV The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “My brothers, listen to me. Simon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written, ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.’” Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God.

Let us pray. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove; descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through me that sacred story. Take my lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame; then send us forth to spread your name. Amen.

If you’ve been on the Acts 29 journey, you know that the book of Acts is the story of how the Spirit of God gave birth to the new and vibrant life-giving community of the Jesus-followers. But fundamental to understanding their story up to this point is to remember that this had been a Jewish community. These were Jews! They ate kosher food; they recited Jewish prayers; they studied and observed Torah; they went to the synagogue. They followed a Jewish Messiah and they lived a Jewish life in a Jewish nation. (Ortberg)

But then the persecution broke out. Many of these Jewish Christ-followers began to spread to safer places where they could continue to express their faith. And as they scattered, they shared the Good News of Jesus. All sorts of non-Jews started responding to their message, and as they saw the quality of life that existed in the community of the Christ-followers, they said, “I want to be a part of that, too!” But there was a problem. They were not Jews. They were known as the Gentiles. They were not circumcised; they didn’t eat kosher food; they didn’t observe the Jewish feasts, and they didn’t know anything about Torah.

So the question arose among the church, “What are we to do with these non-Jewish Jesus-followers? What are we to say to them?”

Some in the church said, “Well, we’ve got to make them into Jews first, so that they can be Christians second.” Others said, “Well, are we to say to them that they are saved by grace alone through trusting in Jesus, but that there are a couple of other details that they ought to know about, such as there is this one minor surgical procedure that involves a sensitive part of the male anatomy that happens without any anesthesia?”

Well, Jesus hadn’t told them how to deal with such a situation as this.

Have you ever faced an important challenge in your life, and you said, “God, what in the world do you want me to do about this,” but God didn’t seem to tell you? You opened the Bible, thumbed through it trying to look for answers, but you didn’t find an answer. And apparently it seems that sometimes God wants the people to gather…to gather together and wrestle together and pray and study the scripture, get wise counsel, and then decide what to do.

Well, this is precisely the situation we find in Acts 15, as the leaders of the church gather for what is actually the first church conference -- a time for people to come together and to talk and pray and listen and discern God’s will.

But the issue before them is complex and loaded with emotion. For one, you have this group of Jesus-followers who are Jewish and who are very happy being Jewish Jesus-followers. They see no reason that they should let go of being Jewish simply because they follow Jesus. Their position is clear: “If it was good enough for us, it’s good enough for them! So circumcise those Gentiles! Make them Jews, then Christ-followers.”

Now, it may sound strange to you and me, but it was a big deal in those days. And it was particularly a big deal because those who had come to Jerusalem to argue the case had come from Syria. And about 200 years earlier, Syria had ruled over the Jewish people, and one of the things that one of the leaders of Syria had tried to do was to completely demolish the Jewish identity. So he outlawed circumcision. Any family that circumcised their male child, the whole family would be killed. It was a time of tremendous tension where a lot of the Jews compromised and inter-married with Gentiles and abandoned their faith all together. So, this was a tough issue, all wrapped in bitter, painful memories and in what it means to be a Jew, keep Torah, and be part of the people of God.

So, they make their case before the gathering. Essentially they say this: it is okay for the Gentiles to come in and to be Christians, but we don’t need to change anything for them; they need to change for us. Let them become like us.

And then Peter and Barnabas and Paul stand up to speak. Peter tells about a Gentile by the name of Cornelius who has become a Christian. He is a man of a pure heart and a righteous life and he says, “Sometime ago, God made the choice among you that the Gentiles might hear the message of the Gospel and believe. Since God has accepted them by giving them the Holy Spirit and is making no distinction between them and us, who are we to do anything other than accept them.”

Then Paul and Barnabas stand and talk about all of the wonderful things that God has been doing among the Gentiles.

When they finish, James, the leader of the church, stands and speaks and says, “Simon has told you how God has looked with favor on the Gentiles. I have reached a decision. I have looked into the book of Amos and there I have found scriptural justification for what I am about to say to you: This is God’s doing and ‘I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God.’”

In other words, James is saying, “This is a God-thing! God is at work in the midst of this situation. God is the one who is bringing this new thing to pass. God is saying, ‘what will distinguish my people is not a mark, but it is following Jesus…trusting in his grace.’” So we will give up our traditions of the past -- not because they were bad, for they are wonderful traditions -- but we will give them up for the sake of God’s mission. For God’s desire is for all to be welcomed, so let the welcome begin!” (Ortberg)

Now, what can you and I take away from this story? I want to suggest to you two things this morning.

The first is this: The story points us to see a way from scripture that you and I can confront the controversies of our time and give us ways that we can talk about the hard questions in the society around us.

As you read the 15^th chapter of Acts, you begin to see that they set a pattern there for how to talk about difficult things. First they talk about their own personal experience. Peter talks about what he is seeing with his own eyes. Then they engage the scriptures as James draws from the prophet Amos and says, “The words of the prophets are in agreement with this….” Third, they turned to the judgment of respected leaders and asked their judgment. Then, fourth, they embrace this new revelation and saw that God was doing a new thing.

Now, that may sound strange to us, but centuries later, John Wesley -- the founder of the Methodist movement -- would look back at this time in history and he would look at his own time and say, “You know, we’re facing some difficult situations and there is no real clarity on how to deal with those situations, so let me suggest to you a way to face hard questions.” He offered what has come to be called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason. But simply it is this: you look to scripture, you look to the tradition of the leaders of the church, you look to your own spiritual experience, and then you reason together.

Now, for Wesley, these four were ways of confronting the hard questions and controversies of his time, and they are for us, as well. But Wesley added another thing. He said you don’t just do this by yourself…you don’t just sit in isolation and try to figure out what to do, but you gather together with other Christians and you do a thing called Christian Conferencing. And that’s what happened in Acts 15.

Now, what does that have to do with you and me?

The truth is, from time to time, every church faces conflict or controversy.

Like a few years ago, in our congregation, we had to struggle with: Do we stay where we are or do we re-locate to some other place? Do we build here on this site or do we not build?

Then there are questions across Christianity about worship style and about church organization and we’ve seen some great churches around us split over those kinds of questions. So, it really is important how we try to make decisions as the people of God.

Or consider the tough social questions of our time like the death penalty, or euthanasia, or the separation of church and state, or prayer in public schools, or what marriage is really about in our time.

Chances are, if we went around this room and talked to everyone here, we would all have strong opinions about one or more of these subjects. And probably those opinions come out of our personal experience or our politics. Sometimes, we hold certain opinions because people we respect hold those opinions. Or we may even hold a position because someone we don’t like holds the opposite point of view. But what John Wesley is saying is that it’s not just about your experience, it’s not just about your politics or your opinions, it is a matter of looking to scripture and tradition and experience and reasoning together as the family.

By focusing on scripture and tradition and experience and reason, we can find a greater unity. We may not always come to the same understandings…we may not always be able to settle differences…but we set boundaries for how we look at life, and we gather tools for how we do confront the controversies of our time without being destroyed by them. And if you don’t believe it’s possible, just pick up Adam Hamilton’s little book, Confronting the Controversies, and see how one church did that very thing.

But there’s a second, and maybe a more important message for you and me in Acts 15. I think of it in terms of a sign that was posted in the window of a hardware store that read like this: “Half-price sale on welcome mats.” The young church, that day, in about the year 49 or 50, came to understand that in Christ, there is no such thing as a half-price welcome mat, for Christ puts a premium on hospitality and on welcome! So, that day, the church decided to be a place of hospitality -- not just for some people -- but for all people.

The church came to understand that in doing that, it was doing a costly thing because it meant that some people had to give up some cherished traditions of the past in order to welcome and reach out and embrace those new people.

I think God’s question to the church was this: Will you help me build this new community? Will you let go of some of the things that in the past may have made you feel secure and comfortable? Will you let them go in order to reach people who don’t know me yet? Will you do that for me? Do you love me that much?

It was a pivotal point in the life of the young church.

I think about the old poem that goes like this:

He drew a circle that shut me out --

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,

But love and I had a wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in. (Edwin Markham)

Being the church is not about all of us being alike; it’s not about all of us thinking alike, or agreeing; it’s not about all of us having the same points of view. Jesus said it’s about this: “This is my commandment that you love one another.” He didn’t say, “love only if your politics agree,” “love only if you think and you look like me,” “love only if your relationships are problem-free.” He said, “love.”

And when you go back and you look at Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, you get this strange picture of the people that Jesus called to be his disciples. It was a strange array and Jesus was not at all concerned about calling people who were compatible with each other.

After all, in his original group of disciples, there was Simon the Zealot…a member of the extremist, nationalist political party. The zealots hated the Romans. And if they hated the Romans, they hated their own people even more who collaborated and profited from working with the Romans.

But Jesus, in forming that new community, called out to Simon the Zealot, and he said, “Come and follow me.” But almost in the next breath he goes to Matthew, a tax collector, a collaborator with Rome, and says, “Come and follow me.” And I think he must have looked at Simon and at Matthew and said, “Now you two are going to have to room together!”

Can you imagine what it was like in the company of the disciples having Matthew and Simon there? I think it must have been something like saying to Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore, “You guys have to live together and learn to love one another and even lay down your lives for each other.”

Jesus is about bringing people together…in a community of those who love God more than they love their politics or their opinions, a community of people who are willing to lavish love on anybody who says “yes” to the invitation: “Come and follow me.”

Some of you have heard me say it before, and some, I know, just thought I was trying to be cute. But it’s not about cute; it just may be one of the most profound theological statements about the church that I’ve even penned. It goes like this:

We are a church of thinkers and dreamers, of plotters and schemers,

We’re dancers and singers, poets and swingers,

We’re movers and shakers, honest folk and fakers,

We’re seekers and doubters, happy folk and pouters,

We’re quiet folk, rowdy folk, folk full of talk,

We’re limpers and skippers, those who totter when they walk,

Clowns and fools, geeks and cools, even those who’ve broken all the rules

And it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, rich or poor,

Upper class, middle class, or no class,

A 12-stepper or a social leper,

Late bloomers or baby boomers,

Well-used or soul-bruised,

It doesn’t matter whether we have Ph.D’s or no D’s,

Whether we’re young or old, male or female,

Democrat, republican, independent, politically correct or red-necked,

You are welcome here!

Why? It’s God’s desire!

Fred Craddock, that wonderful old preacher, was preaching a number of years ago in Winnipeg, Canada. He was to preach Friday night and Saturday morning and Saturday night and Sunday morning. When he got finished preaching that Friday evening, his host took him to his hotel and said, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and take you to breakfast.”

Well, Fred goes to bed that night and he has a wonderful night’s sleep, and the phone awakens him the next morning and it is his host. His host says, “Fred, have you looked out your window?”

Fred says “No.”

He says, “Fred, go and look; there are twelve inches of snow on the ground; it snowed a blizzard last night.”

Fred goes and looks, and his host says, “Fred, I’m so sorry but we are going to have to cancel this morning’s session. This is totally unexpected. Nobody knew this was coming. I’m blocked in my driveway. I can’t even come and take you to breakfast this morning. But there’s a bus station a couple of blocks down the road and it has a little café and it is open 24 hours a day.”

So, Fred got dressed and walked down to the bus station. Sure enough, the café was open. The place was packed with people. Somebody had to scoot over to give Fred a place to sit.

The guy who runs the place is this burly old man wearing half of the kitchen on his apron! He walks over and snarls, “Whatcha’ want, mister?”

Fred asks, “Well, can I see a menu?”

The guy says, “You don’t need no menu. Didn’t get no deliveries this morning. All we got is soup.”

Fred said, “Soup for breakfast? Why, that sounds wonderful! I’ll have soup!”

So the guy brings him his cup of breakfast soup and it looked awful! It was this shade of gray…the color of a mouse! He doesn’t want to eat that soup! He just holds onto it and warms his hands.

About that time, the door opens again and the wind howls. Somebody shouts, “Shut the door!” A lady enters, wearing a thin coat. She has no hat. Ice crystals are in her hair. She was about 40 and painfully skinny. Somebody moved over to let her sit down at one of the booths.

The guy with the greasy apron shouts, “Whatcha’ want?”

She says, “Oh, I’d just like to have a glass of water, please.”

He said, “Lady, we’re crowded in here. If you ain’t going to get anything to eat, then you just have to leave.”

So she gets up and starts to button her coat, and when she gets up, all of the people at the table with her get up and button their coats and they start to leave. And all the people at the next table and the next table do the same, and pretty soon, everybody in the room is getting up to leave.

“All right, all right, all right!” says the guy behind the counter. “Here’s your water, lady.”

In a few moments, he brings her a cup of soup as well. And Fred turns to his tablemate and says, “Who is that woman? She must really be somebody important.”

The guy says, “I’ve never seen that woman in my life, but it comes down to this, if she ain’t welcome here, then none of us are!”

The café grew quiet that morning, and Fred said all you could hear was the sound of spoons clinking in the midst of those cups of soup. He said, “I ate my soup, too; and it didn’t taste half bad.” He said, “The strangest thing…all day long I could taste that soup in my mouth. I couldn’t make out where I had tasted it before. All day long I tried to figure it out, but then late in the day, I remembered: that soup tasted like bread and wine.” It tasted like the grace of Jesus Christ!

Somewhere around the year 49 or 50, at the first church conference in Jerusalem, the church decided to be a community of hospitality…not just for some, but for all; not just when they felt like it, but forever.

Let us pray. O God, we give you our thanks this day that in your grace, you included us as members of the family. Thank you for that incredible gift, for your gracious love poured out for all the world. Amen.

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Endnotes: This sermon is based, in part, upon material from the following sources:

Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories

Adam Hamilton’s little book, Confronting the Controversies

John Ortberg, “Great Church Fights: The Power of Spirit-Led Change”

William Willimon, Interpretation: Acts