Acts 11:1-18
May 2, 2010
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ‘I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’ When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’
I have a quiz for you to take. The quiz is on the next page. So take time for the quiz, and we’ll chat afterwards:
A Christian Quiz
1. Before Peter saw his vision of a sheet filled with many animals, what wasn’t he allowed to eat?
a. Shellfish
b. Pigs
c. Blood-pudding
d. All of the above
2. Why did Christians choose December 25th as the day to celebrate Jesus’ birth?
a. Because that’s the day on which Jesus was born—what a silly question.
b. Because no one knew the exact date, but they knew it was winter, and December 25th seemed close enough.
c. Because they adopted the same date as the Roman feast of Saturn, allowing new Christians to keep their feast celebrations.
3. Why do we call Easter “Easter?”
a. Because it celebrates the star rising in the east at Jesus’ birth.
b. Because according to tradition the empty tomb faced the east.
c. Because the date coincided the Saxon spring celebration of the goddess Oestre.
4. Why do we use Easter eggs to celebrate Easter?
a. Because the eggs are obvious symbols of the empty tomb.
b. Because eggs were easier to color than butterflies.
c. Because they adopted the practice of the ancient Zoroastrians, who painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration, which falls on the first day of Spring.
5. The tradition of Christmas trees came from:
a. The traditional practice of non-Christian Romans and northern European tribes to bring an evergreen into the home during winter, and sometimes to hang apples from the branches.
b. St. Boniface in 722 A.D., who cut down the Tree of Thor to show the falseness of Norse gods, and then set the tree up as a symbol of Christ.
c. Martin Luther, who wanted the tree to symbolize the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden.
d. Probably all of the above.
6. What did St. Patrick use to teach pagan Celts about God?
a. Snakes
b. Three-leaf clovers
c. Beer
7. The circle on the Celtic cross was instituted because:
a. The circle stood for the fact that God’s love has no end.
b. The Celts used the circle as a symbol of the sun and moon, which they revered.
c. St. Patrick placed a laurel wreath, symbolizing victory, around a cross to show that Christ was victorious over death.
d. Maybe all of the above, but for sure it was integrating Celtic symbols with Christian ones.
So, what answers did you get? Let’s go over them. The answer to #1 is “d. all of the above.” Before Peter had his vision, he was under the Jewish dietary laws, which meant that he could only eat animals with cloven hooves and that chewed cud (cows, goats, and sheep, but not pigs), and fish that have scales and fins, but not just one or the other (meaning that he could not eat shellfish such as lobsters, shrimp, scallops, or clams).
The answer to #2 is “c. Because they adopted the same date as the Roman feast of Saturn, allowing new Christians to keep their feast celebrations.” The answer to #3 is “c. Because the date coincided the Saxon spring celebration of the goddess Oestre.” #4 is “c. Because they adopted the practice of the ancient Zoroastrians, who painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration, which falls on the first day of Spring.” The answer to # 5 is “d. Probably all of the above.” The answer to #6 is “b. Three-leaf clovers.” The answer to #7 is “d. Maybe all of the above, but for sure it was integrating Celtic symbols with Christian ones.”
Did the answers surprise you? I’m guessing that many of them didn’t, but one or two probably did. This wasn’t a quiz to test your Christian knowledge. It was a quiz to reveal something about the nature of Christianity, something that the apostle Peter demonstrated in our passage. What did it reveal? It revealed just how adaptable Christianity is, and how uncomfortable that adaptability can be for us Christians. In other words, it tells us that Christianity has always been a religion of change as it adapts to its culture, despite the fact that we often think of it as a religion that rarely changes. And these changes make us uncomfortable. The adaptability of Christianity certainly was uncomfortable for Peter.
Our passage has to do with Peter dealing with an adaptation that made many early Christians really angry. He was Jewish, as were most of the original Christians. And these original Christians didn’t see their faith as a new religion. They saw it as a reform of Judaism, but one that allowed Judaism to be expanded to Gentiles (non-Jews). So when Peter started eating with Gentiles, eating Gentile food that didn’t adhere to Jewish dietary laws, they complained. Then Peter told them about his vision of seeing a sheet full of all animals, and God telling him that it was okay to eat anything, they were furious. They wanted the Gentile Christians to adhere to Jewish custom. In their minds to become Christian was to follow Jewish laws. And here Peter was telling them that this was no longer the case. He was telling them that Christianity would adapt to the Gentile world.
This incident wouldn’t be the last time Peter was embroiled in a similar controversy. Years later the apostle Paul would convince Peter that Gentiles should not be circumcised upon becoming Christian. Again, this infuriated the Jewish Christians. But both Peter and Paul were saying that Christianity had to adapt to the Gentile world. What Peter showed is something that has both vexed Christians for 2000 years, and allowed it to become the largest religion on the planet. Simply put, Christianity is an adaptable faith. Christianity has always lived in an uncomfortable tension between maintaining traditions and adapting to the surrounding culture. There have been certain periods in which not much change has taken place, but these are the exceptions. Throughout Christian history Christian practice has adapted to its surrounding culture by taking aspects of that culture and making them Christian.
Today we live in times that have demanded that Christianity change. I’ve been a pastor for 22 years, and they have been 22 years of constant change. I had a conversation five years ago with Dr. Steve Polley, our pastor of visitation. We were talking about all the changes we’ve had to make in our church over the years, and I asked him if he had to think about this kind of stuff when he was a pastor at Northmont Presbyterian Church in the North Hills during his 26 years as pastor there. He said to me, “No. We just sang the same hymns we always had, played the same anthems, preached the same kinds of sermons, and did the same kinds of things. And people came.” His church grew from about 500 to 1500 during his time there. The culture then was different. The culture didn’t change much, so the church didn’t have to change much.
We live in very different times now. The culture changes so quickly today that it’s hard to keep up. In my 22 years everything has changed. For instance, music has changed. When I started as a pastor the big thing in the Presbyterian Church (USA) was that we created a new hymnal, the blue one we use. It was hailed as a major achievement because the music in it would be better and come from a wider variety of sources. The problem was that the music in it still remained largely classically based, even if it integrated hymns from third-world cultures. The reality is that the culture has been tuning out classically based music for two generations. The hymnal completely missed the contemporary movement that has grown exponentially over the past 20 years. At Calvin Church, we recognized this shortcoming, and we created our own songbook just to catch up to where the culture was going. Of course, this creates tension. For instance, after I preached this sermon in our first service, a member told me that she had talked to a visitor who said that she wouldn’t be coming back to Calvin Church precisely because we didn’t only use our blue hymnal. For her, any contemporary music in worship was simply wrong.
In addition to music, preaching has changed. When I was coming out of seminary, the basic preaching style taught was to write out sermons in a manuscript, then to stand behind the pulpit and basically read the sermon with inflection. That’s changed. Not only in preaching, but in any kind of public presentation, the style taught is to interact with the audience, to use props such as PowerPoint slides, and to find ways of engaging people (for example by using things like,… quizzes). Also, sanctuaries have changed. Contemporary churches have moved away from creating sacred spaces like ours with stained-glass, wood, crosses, and such. New churches are built more like auditoriums or concert halls. And they specifically get rid of all religious symbolism, such as crosses. Why? I suppose that if you are trying to reach people who are uncomfortable with religion, it’s best to make your religion look non-religious. Church names have changed. You’re not supposed to name churches anymore with names out of the Bible, or using Christian language, or after great Christians of the past (such as Calvin Presbyterian Church), and you definitely aren’t supposed to put your denomination’s name in the title. Instead, the trend is to call yourself a “community” or “family” church, or better yet, to use a term that has nothing to do with anything religious. For instance, I was talking with someone this weekend who said that his son is involved in a church in Indiana called Level 13 Church. The title suggests that because buildings are never built with a 13th floor, this is a church that is willing to do what other places won’t—or something like that. Church buildings—or the lack of them—have also changed. The trend for a long time has been to not have a building at all, but to meet in schools or community buildings. In fact, there is a huge industry around kits that can be purchased by churches for easy church set-ups in temporary areas. The kit has everything you need: banners, electrical strips, temporary walls, pulpits, music stands, and more. And many churches take pride in the fact that they are so different because, unlike traditional churches, they don’t have a building.
There are also some trends that are growing right now. For example, video preaching has become popular in which satellite churches are set up in a region or around the country, and a sermon from a well-known figure is shown on Sunday instead of having a local pastor preach. There’s a church in Cranberry that does this. They meet on Sunday, but the sermon is always one that Andy Stanley, a pastor in Atlanta, preached the night before. And Stanley has satellite churches all around the country. Another trend is to have non-preaching sermons in which the sermons are nothing but large Bible-studies. The times, they are a-changing, and the question is whether or not to adapt.
I need to tell you that part of my role as pastor is to pay attention to change and to lead us to adapt, whether we or I like it or not. It’s not that I love the changes. It’s that I know that if this church is going to be here in fifty years, we have to move with the culture and do what Christianity has done for 2000 years, which is to adapt. But in the process of adapting we also have to maintain our grounding in our tradition, which is what makes this so hard. Otherwise we lose our souls. The tension between tradition and trends is very tough to live with. I’ll also tell you that our worship staff and our worship committee works hard at trying to live in the tension between holding onto where we’ve come from, while moving us to where we need to go. Something we do once a year is to visit other churches in the area that are doing unique things. Afterwards, we go out to lunch, and the basic rule I have is that we can spend the first twenty minutes criticizing the service (well, that’s reality—everyone criticizes what’s different from what they normally like), but then we get down to the serious question of asking what in the service touched us and might make a difference in our own worship services. We look for ideas to adapt our church to where the culture is.
The fact is that for years church never changed, and now it’s never the same. Why does Christianity always have to change? Why can’t people adapt to us? Some people only want tradition. They want the church to always stay the same. What they fail to realize is that what they cherish as a tradition once caused tension. For instance, do you love organ? Did you know that in the nineteenth century the introduction of the organ in worship caused many churches to split because the traditionalists saw the organ as an abomination? Why do we have to change and adapt? We have to do so because every generation changes, and God wants us to reach everyone. This is what we are told in scripture both by Jesus and by the apostle Paul.
After his resurrection, Jesus gathered the apostles and said to them, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” By the way, that word “nations” is also the translation for the word Gentiles. So Jesus was saying, “Go and baptize all Gentiles…” Jesus is telling us that we are called to reach out to people who are different, and just as he adapted, we’re called to adapt.
Paul gives us an example of that adaptation when he says, “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” Paul is telling us that to reach people, he adapted himself to them. That’s the basic strategy. And that tells us why we have to be a church that adapts, even if we are completely uncomfortable doing so.
So, as a church, what are we supposed to do to adapt? Again, Peter gives us the key. Peter basically asked an essential question above all: What is God calling us to do to reach Jews and Gentiles? We are called to do the same. We are called to ask one essential question, which is, What is God calling us to do to reach not only those in our midst, but also those who aren’t? The struggle for us is in finding the right mix in our answer.
Amen
