At its core, our text for this morning is about identity and how that identity shapes our practices of faith. We need to remember that the early Church was not Christian; Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion. So many people within the early Church were Jewish. They were simply known as Christ followers but it wasn’t a new religion. They still practiced the Jewish religious traditions and saw themselves as Jewish. They simply accepted Jesus as the Messiah which was promised.
June 1, 2025
Fifty Days of Easter
“Council at Jerusalem”
Acts 15: 1-18
Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl
Acts 15: 1-18
Some people came down from Judea to Antioch teaching the family of believers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom we’ve received from Moses, you can’t be saved.” Paul and Barnabas took sides against these Judeans and argued strongly against their position. The church at Antioch appointed Paul, Barnabas, and several others from Antioch to go up to Jerusalem to set this question before the apostles and the elders. The church sent this delegation on their way. They traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, telling stories about the conversion of the Gentiles to everyone. Their reports thrilled the brothers and sisters. When they arrived in Jerusalem, the church, the apostles, and the elders all welcomed them. They gave a full report of what God had accomplished through their activity.
Some believers from among the Pharisees stood up and claimed, “The Gentiles must be circumcised. They must be required to keep the Law from Moses.” The apostles and the elders gathered to consider this matter. After much debate, Peter stood and addressed them, “Fellow believers, you know that, 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. God, who knows people’s deepest thoughts and desires, confirmed this by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us.
He made no distinction between us and them, but purified their deepest thoughts and desires through faith. Why then are you now challenging God by placing a burden on the shoulders of these disciples that neither we nor our ancestors could bear? On the contrary, we believe that we and they are saved in the same way, by the grace of the Lord Jesus.” The entire assembly fell quiet as they listened to Barnabas and Paul describe all the signs and wonders God did among the Gentiles through their activity. When Barnabas and Paul also fell silent, James responded, “Fellow believers, listen to me. Simon reported how, in his kindness, God came to the Gentiles in the first place, to raise up from them a people of God. The prophets’ words agree with this; as it is written, After this I will return, and I will rebuild David’s fallen tent; I will rebuild what has been torn down. I will restore it so that the rest of humanity will seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who belong to me. The Lord says this, the one who does these things known from earliest times.
Council at Jerusalem Acts 15: 1-18
I should have titled the sermon for this week, “The Church’s First Split”. And yes, I recognize the irony that I’m preaching from the minutes of a Church Board Meeting, something we usually don’t want to attend unless we are required to do so and yet, here I am, bringing it forward as our text for today. I am doing so because this text lifts up a turning point, a crossroads for the Early Church as they tried to figure out how to be the Body of Christ, as they tried to discern their mission and ministry now that Jesus had ascended and the Holy Spirit was now their guide.
I am bringing this text forward for conversation and deeper understanding because, like us, their new reality some two thousand years ago, was filled with constant change. It was a time when the institutions which were the foundation of their society no longer worked. I am bringing this text forward for conversation and deeper understanding because like us, in their new reality some two thousand years ago, the Early Church had to figure out what it meant to be disciples of Christ in a world where holding on to the way things used to be often stifled the movement of the Spirit.
Because just look at what they are discussing in these Church Board minutes. They recognize that change is happening for the Early Church. They name that Paul and Barnabas have branched out their ministry beyond Jerusalem. The Board recognizes that these two have gone out into their wider community, that they have shared the Gospel Message, except they are sharing the Gospel message with Gentiles, the very people who would not have been fully embraced by the religious institution at that time. And now these supposed outsiders are being baptized and becoming members. Where will it end?!
I say all this with a touch of sarcasm, okay more than a touch because the sad fact is the Church and the people who lead the church have been having conversations like the one in our text for generations and we still haven’t figured it out.
At its core, our text is about identity. It is about what identity first and foremost shapes our practices of faith. What I mean by this is we need to remember that the early Church was not Christian. Jesus did not come to start a new religion. He came to show people a way of being which was and still is counter cultural to the larger narrative of the world. He came to share the transforming power of God’s grace and love, not with a select few but with all of God’s people.
That being said, we need to remember when we are talking about the Early Church, we need to recognize that many of the people within the early Church were Jewish. They were simply known as Christ followers but it was not designed or meant to be a new religion. It was simply a sect of the Jewish faith. They still practiced the Jewish religious traditions. They still saw themselves as Jewish. They simply accepted Jesus as the Messiah who was promised by God for the people long ago. It was only later in time when as the Gospel spread, as the institution of the Church formalized, that Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism became an entity of its own.
For the sake of our text today, we are naming the fact that at this point in the formation of the Early Church, it was still shaped by the Jewish tradition. It still saw itself as part of the Jewish faith. It still held its Jewish identity as the first and foremost identity which shaped its practices and beliefs. Which is why the Early Church is having this Board meeting found in our text for today. Things are starting to get complicated now that Gentiles are becoming members of the church. Questions are starting to be raised about what the Gentiles need to do to become members. Do they need to embrace the Jewish religious traditions, or can the Church accept them without those traditions?
To us, these may seem like petty questions. After all we have two thousand years of church history in which church council after church council answered these questions and so many others for us, questions like which creed to say, questions like how and when to pray, questions like how and when to worship. These church councils answered questions which defined the divinity of Christ. They even answered questions like who was allowed to offer the sacraments like communion and confession. And yes, again, I recognize the irony that I am standing before everyone as a Disciples pastor, talking about creeds and the hierarchy of the priesthoods when our denomination’s history rejected all of that. Like I said, the sermon title should have been the Church’s First split. I didn’t say it was its last split.
I share all of this because for us some two thousand years later, it is easy for us to offer our sarcasm when we read this text about the Church’s first split and the board meeting minutes which recorded it. It is easy for us to sit back and say why was the early Church worried about such a minor detail? It is easy for us to deride them, to mock them, and say we would never do something like that.
But if we, as people of faith, as disciples of Christ, are being authentic in our faith, we need to admit that we are still struggling with identity questions as the wider Church some two thousand years later. We are still questioning who is in and who is out. We are still arguing over who is allowed, and I use that word intentionally, arguing over who is allowed to be members of our church based on practice, on belief, on race, on sexual orientation, on gender, and on ethnicity. As the wider Church, we are still arguing and debating which identity is first and foremost in shaping our practices and beliefs.
I am not naive enough to believe that I can or will bring a close to this argument through just one sermon. So, I will simply say this…I give thanks for the courage, the honesty, and the authenticity of this text. The editors of the Bible could have easily left it out. They left out a lot of other stuff that they didn’t like. Yet they chose to include these minutes from their contentious Board meeting. And in doing so, they reminded us that “this story highlights the inclusive nature of the gospel. What brings a person salvation is trusting in Christ, no matter what else shapes [their] identity. This first council meeting emphatically makes the point that all kinds of people are invited into the community that bases its identity on faith in Christ. [It is this identity which shapes how we view the world. It is this identity which shapes our understanding of who we are and whose we are as people of faith. [It is this identity, our faith in Christ, which encourages us, which strengthens us, which challenges us to come together] “as a community and as individuals…in our diversity as a demonstration of what God wants for the world. It is this identity, our faith in Christ, our faith through Christ, which calls us to welcome all, to see all as created in the image of God, to reflect God’s love and grace to all, not just a select few. It is this identity, our faith in Christ, our faith through Christ which first and foremost shapes who we are as the Body of Christ here and now for all of God’s people. May it be so. Amen.
See also: Theology Tuesday for Sunday, June 1, 2025 – Council at Jerusalem Acts 15: 1-18.
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