Thursday, 11th Week of Ordinary Time

Acts 15:1-21

Yes, Peter had experienced the Holy Spirit at work among the uncircumcised Gentile Cornelius and his household. But it was one thing to welcome the odd Gentile. It was quite another to welcome whole churches like the ones which Paul and Barnabas had founded, teaming with uncircumcised Gentiles. Was Cornelius just the exception that proved the rule? Understand that as far as the children of Israel were concerned, there was no difference between the command of circumcision and the command not to murder. All 630 commandments of the Law found in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy had been given by God to Moses. It was not for human beings to pick and choose the ones that were no irrelevant.

Arguing against imposition of the Jewish Law on Gentiles, Peter points to the Holy Spirit as his authority. He has to; he can’t cite Jesus. Jesus may have commended the faith of another Roman soldier. But he himself said that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel. And while he may have also called his disciples to spread his message to the ends of the earth, he never specified the relation of the Law to the new covenant sealed by his blood. This would not be the last time that the Church found itself pushed into new directions by those who insisted that the Holy Spirit was doing a new thing in a new situation that hadn’t existed in Jesus’s time.

But won’t that make the Church subject to every random wind of fads and falsities? If you let go of circumcision, what’s to stop the Church from eventually giving the thumbs-up to prostitution? James, the brother of Jesus, a devout Jew observant of the Law, settles on the compromise. No circumcision, but avoidance of idol worship, observance of the Jewish food laws, and avoidance of sexual immorality.

Today, we don’t think of certain foods as clean or unclean. But remember one of the “Four Marks of the Church” – Fellowship, or Communion. I have stressed the importance of community as part of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And communities come together most often over food. How could the Gentiles consider themselves part of the Body of Christ if they couldn’t share table fellowship with their new Jewish brothers and sisters?

To the pure, such compromises invite scorn and charges of inconsistency. In truth, this is how the Church discerns the Holy Spirit at work. Does it nurture Christian community, or destroy it? Sometimes, the Holy Spirit does do a new thing, but not at the expense of community that first defined itself in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago.