Strangers No More

 May 2 2021

Acts 15:1-21

         As many of you know I am a big sci-fi fan. I like Star-Wars, Marvel Comics and currently I am watching all of the episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation which originally aired in the late eighties. These episodes are just as great as they were the first time. What I have discovered about these sci-fi shows is that even though the technology is portrayed as being advanced and pretty cool what drives the story is actually something very old, that being, the basic ways people are to treat each other. You know, treating one another as you would want to be treated, justice for everyone even the weak and undeserving, working together for the common good; these very ancient values are still what makes the story understandable even one thousand years in the future. It doesn’t matter if on these shows you see humans interacting together or if they are dealing with some strange alien beings, the same basic rules seems to apply which is also rather interesting isn’t it? Its as if even far in the future people know that whether one is dealing with somebody who is like them or if they are dealing with somebody drastically different, the rules of basic conduct still are what we turn to. Now, you might be wondering just what does all this talk of how aliens being treated on some sci-fi show has to do with Jesus and the life we live together as his followers and the answer is that it is more relevant than you think. You see, we may not have to ever deal with aliens from outer space but I’m pretty sure we will have to deal with people who are alien to the way we live, people who have different ways of living, people who look different, people who have strange ways of looking at the world, at least to us, and the question is, just what do we do with that? Will we insist that they become like us before we will no longer judge them as being somewhat less human than we are or will we be able to live with the tension that exists between our differences? This, as it turns out is one of the central questions of this new future world life that the Holy Spirit was forming in the book of Acts and is still at work forming out of us today, this question of how to handle the dangers of strangers. By this, I mean, how do we deal with people who Jesus has saved but do things different than we do, do we judge them and therefore insist that that our response of faith is the only right way to believe or do we just love them and let God sort it all out in the end? This is the fundamental question of our scripture for today.

Our scripture from the fifteenth chapter of Acts is about the first council held by the early church. What brought about the need for the early church to hold its first council meeting in Jerusalem was the great problem of the conversion of the people of the nations, the people known as the Gentiles. On the surface, the problem appeared that there was no clear answer as to what to do about those who were not of the Jewish faith who had come to place their faith in God’s suffering servant, Jesus. It was the suffering and death of Jesus that we are told in the fifty third chapter of Isaiah that was necessary so that God might have an offering for our guilt for the sins we have committed. This is what the Ethiopian had learned from Philip in last weeks scripture lesson. The actions of the suffering servant were to bring forth a new era, one where people once excluded from intimacy with God, those such as eunuchs and foreigners, would now be brought near, to serve God and to experience his joy in the house of prayer for all people. Yet in spite of prophecies such as this from the fifty sixth chapter of Isaiah, there were some of the people of Israel in the time after the ascension of Jesus who felt that foreigners had to become Jews in order to be in right standing with God. Paul and Barnabas, two of the early missionaries of the church, came against this idea because they had seen first hand how God had saved  the people of the nations who had no knowledge of Judaism. So, its pretty easy to see that these two ways of considering the salvation of the Gentiles were pretty far apart and this is why the early church gathered together to consider the matter. It was Peter who got right to the heart of the matter which was this: are people saved by faith through believing in the gospel or does salvation happen because of any additional action on the part of the believer? As Peter reminded his Jewish brothers, their salvation was by faith alone just as it was that way for the Gentiles.

         As you read Peter’s account what begins to be clear is that there is more to the issue than whether or not one is saved by faith. As Peter told his Jewish audience, they, the very people of God, had been saved by faith, of this no one could argue. So, if the Jews had been saved through faith one has to wonder just what was the underlying issue that really needed to be addressed? Well, one clue as to what the real problem is found in the nineteenth and twentieth verses of this fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts. There we hear James the chief elder of the church of Jerusalem, put forth the answer as to what is necessary for the Gentiles to do saying that they should abstain from the things polluted by idols, abstain from sexual immorality, and to abstain from what has been strangled and to abstain from blood.This answer of James might surprise some people who wrongly believe that since we are not Jewish there is nothing more for us to do then to believe in Jesus and do as we please, or at the very least love each other. No, James is telling us that there are a few rules that have to be abided by, rules that have been taken from the book of Leviticus. It is as if the Holy Spirit is telling the early church that the answer to the future lies far back in the past in a book of Holy Scripture that was over a thousand years old.When one examines these rules set forth by James what is found is that the members of the church council searched in the book of Leviticus under the power of the Holy Spirit, searching for the places where God had spoken about the strangers living in the midst of the people of Israel. There in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapter of Leviticus is where God set forth rules of conduct for those strangers who joined themselves with the people of Israel. This is very similar language of Paul who in the eleventh chapter of the book of Romans where he compares the Gentile believers as being wild olive branches that have been grafted upon the nourishing root of the domesticated olive tree, the people of Israel. As people of the nations we have to understand that our salvation is from the Jews just as Jesus teaches us in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John.

         So, when faced with foreigners coming to salvation through Jesus, the early church understood that this situation was much like the situation was for the people of Israel in the days of Moses. This understanding is very important for us as we try and get to the real issue that prompted the necessity of the first church council. If you do a quick study of strangers in the life of the people of Israel within the book of Leviticus what you find is that there is no mention of strangers before the sixteenth chapter. Then in the next eleven chapters of Leviticus the mention of strangers is found quite frequently which is rather interesting. It quite naturally makes you wonder what happened in the sixteenth chapter to cause this change? The answer as to what has happened in the sixteenth chapter which opened the way for strangers to mingle in the life of the people of Israel was the Day of Atonement. This was one day God commanded his people to set apart each year for the atoning of the sins that the people of Israel had committed over the past year. It was one of the most solemn times marked off by fasting and repentance. In the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus we read how God, speaking through Moses tells the people that on this day that there were two actions that would happen, the first is that they would have their sins atoned for and the second action was that they would be cleansed of impurity. This helps explain the unusual requirement that God set forth that there were to be two goats to be offered up, one was for the forgiveness of the peoples sins and the second was to cleanse the people of their impurity. Now, as we find in the seventeenth chapter of Leviticus, the life of the flesh is in the blood and God gave the blood of the first goat upon the altar to atone for the souls of his people, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the life of the people. So, what this tells us is that God has made a way through this sacrifice that his judgment against the sins of the people would be poured out upon this animal, its life given in place of the life of the people in order that God might show mercy to his people. In this way, justice remains because the guilt of the sin is dealt with while at the same time allowing God to extend mercy to his sinful people. It is important that we understand that God has made a way for mercy to triumph over judgment in order for us to understand the purpose of the other goat that God required. This other goat was not sacrificed but instead upon his head were laid the hands of the high priest who placed upon the goat the sins of the people. Then this goat was sent out into the wilderness, carrying with him the sins of the people.This goat was to fulfill the necessity of the cleansing of the people of their defilement.Yet just what was this defilement that had been ceremoniously sent out into the wild places? Well, as we read through Leviticus what we find is that this idea of impurity or uncleanness has to do with those who were tearing apart the fabric of their community. It was the gossips and those who spoke wrongly about others, these were the ones God declared unclean and marked with a dreaded skin condition so that they had to be put outside the community so that they would do no further harm. So, at its root, what is meant by impurity is those things that tear apart the community and the cause of this disruption to a community is judgment. The reason for this is easy to understand because when a person judges another they present themselves as being superior in some way to the one they are judging. No longer is one able to love another person as themselves because the other person is now not on equal footing because they are judged to be in some way, less than the one judging them. So, what happens on the Day of Atonement is that as God has allowed mercy to triumph over judgment with the sacrifice of the first goat, with the second goat the people are to send away their sins against each other, the sins whose root is an attitude of somehow being superior than others which prevents one from seeing others as their equals. Nowhere was this more true than when the people of Israel interacted with the strangers, the foreigners, the aliens in their midst. How easy it was for them to look down their nose at these pitiful creatures who God had not chosen. This attitude is what Isaiah was addressing in the fifty eighth chapter where he writes specifically about the Day of Atonement. We know this to be true because he writes about the fasting which was almost exclusively done on that day. The people of Israel wondered why God did not seem pleased with them even though they had fasted just as he required. God told his people, “Is this not the fast that I chose: to lose the bonds of wickedness , to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the bruised go free, and to break every yoke?” We need to pause here to grasp the importance of what is being said because what God is pointing out is that this situation referred to is one of slavery, the ultimate situation of inequality where one is treated as a second class person. God then tells his people the fast that he desires telling us, “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh?” You see the fast God requires is to see everyone as your equal especially those who others might judge as being beneath you, those who are poor and in need. This is why after God tells the people about the necessity of the Day of Atonement he further tells them in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus that when a stranger would journey with the people of Israel they were to do them no wrong. They were to treat the stranger as one of their own and they were to love the stranger as they would love themselves. And why were they to have this attitude? They were to treat the stranger as one who was on equal terms with themselves because they themselves had been a stranger down in Egypt. You see, what God is saying here is that instead of focusing on the differences that they found between themselves and the strangers among them they were to instead focus on what they had in common, the experience of being a stranger. They were to remember how it felt to be treated as something less than human, to remember the unease they had as they were looked upon with judgmental glances and to hold fast to those memories as a way to temper how they treated strangers who now looked for mercy and not judgment from them.

Now, it seems like we have gotten far off track from our story in the book of Acts but in all actuality we are right where we need to be because the issue at hand is the same issue addressed in the book of Leviticus and the book of Isaiah. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and this means that now he is the once for all offering for our atonement. As the Suffering Servant he bore our judgment suffering and dying to be the offering that we present to God to be the atonement for our sins. In Jesus once again we see how mercy has triumphed over judgment. Jesus has made a way for all of the people on the planet to be made right with God, to be declared righteous on account of what Jesus has done for them. This is what has set the stage for what we read in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts. What has caused the issue is that some of the Jewish followers of Jesus have forgotten the full picture of God’s atonement of their sin as is portrayed in the account of the Day of Atonement that was in their scriptures. They had forgotten that as God allowed Jesus to bear away the judgment so that we might experience God’s mercy so too in that moment our judgmental attitude was to have been bore away because Jesus made us all equals by making our response to his actions be nothing but faith. And if we are all equals at the foot of the cross then what becomes of judgment, this idea that one is in some way better than another so much so that they are in a position to lord over another? This idea is abolished. The Jewish followers of Jesus thought that the answer to what this new society of believers is to look like is uniformity, that everyone should look like them and act like them. Yet to do so would have witnessed to the false idea that not everything  has changed because of Jesus. Jesus has, through what he has done on the cross, transformed the world; he has made all things new. This means that now, all who place their faith in Jesus live their lives before the face of God and their faith response to God is theirs to live out as their faith leads them. As Paul writes in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, “Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.” In other words, we are to leave the judging up to God so that God can leave the loving up to us.

         This helps us to understand those strange stipulations that James put upon the Gentile believers, those that had been read in the synagogues for generations. I believe the key to understanding these rules is found in the  statement against drinking blood which was that one should not do so because the life of the flesh is in the blood. It is this life within the blood that is given for the atonement of sins.  What has to be destroyed to have a oneness with God is the life of the flesh, the life ordered and lived on the strength of our own selves.This life of the flesh is what one must not rely upon. We cannot live by the desires and cravings of the flesh which find their greatest strength in our sexual impulses. We cannot live by our desires because it is the life of the flesh that destroys the oneness of our community. Only through God’s Spirit are we able to find fellowship together. The oneness that we have through our faith in what Jesus has done for us must not be ruined through our giving into the desires of our flesh that oppose the good work that God is doing. So, instead of judging one another which causes others to doubt their faith, I believe God instead calls us instead to encourage one another, to strengthen each other’s faith so that no one becomes hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. This is what we should do when we know that we together share in Christ who is our life. Amen.