This article was first posted in 2009

The summer sun is shining hot, we have one solitary strawberry growing on our veg patch and Wimbledon fever has taken over our house. And for once Britain has a genuine contender. God bless Tiger Tim with his pressed whites and embarrassingly limp fist pump, but Andy Murray looks like the real deal. I watched rapt for almost four hours yesterday as he fought Stan Stan the Swiss man to a standstill.

What I love about tennis, and especially grass court tennis, is that whole matches hinge on only a few points. A break of serve here, a double-fault there changes the course of whole matches. Therein lies the drama and the excitement.

I think of Acts 8-15.35 as a break point to win 10-8 in the fifth set of a final at Wimbledon. It is impossible to overstate how important these chapters are within the grand story of the bible. There are some decisions in life which have irreversible consequences, some do-or die moments which will affect everything which is to come. These chapters represent such a pivotal hinge, whose consequences have shaped the rest of Christian history, and, as such, world history.

What, beyond the anatomical integrity of every subsequent Christian male, is at stake in these chapters? Simply put, either nascent Christianity stays a Jewish sect and given the growing persecution of the Jewish authorities, a sect whose chances of survival are slim, or Christianity bursts out of boundaries (ethnic, geographical, theological – you name it) of orthodox Judaism and becomes a potential world religion. Put theologically, the choice is to fulfil the vocation of God’s people to be a blessing to every nation or to scupper the whole project by maintaining parochial nationalism.

Let’s pick up the story at chapter 8. Under Saul’s persecution, followers of Jesus are scattered. From this point on three journeys begin. The first is geographical. Echoing Acts 1.8, believers have to move out from Jerusalem, into Judea and Samaria and, through the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, to the ends of the earth. As we have mentioned before, it is always worth paying close attention to geography in Acts, as Luke has set up his second sequel with a strong geographical plot. From Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to Rome is the grand sweep. This is not only a neat way of organising his material. Luke is making a theological point. Just as we saw him drawing on Isaiah strongly in his gospel (remember Luke 4?), so Isaiah lurks in the background to Acts. Isaiah 40-55 consistently raises the expectation that Israel will be a light among the nations. People from the coastlands, the farthest reaches of the world will come and honour Israel. Here Luke is playing on this expectation but giving it s twist – the new Israel will go out to the nations. Israel will be honoured but not in Jerusalem. As we have seen in the first few chapters, Luke is deconstructing again the symbols of Jerusalem and temple, and relocating them in the church.

The second journey that gets underway is a gradual change of personality. Luke sole focus up till chapter 8 has been the apostles, especially Peter. These chapters mark the transition between Peter and Paul. Having met Saul in chapter 8, Luke flits back and forth between Peter, the original apostle to the Gentiles, to Paul who would become the new apostle to the Gentiles. Luke gradually phases Peter out and focuses on Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles. Quite shocking, not only given Paul’s past life as a persecutor, but also given that Paul had not been ‘with Jesus’. The shift in power documented in these chapters has had a huge impact on Christianity. Paul and his theology comes to dominate (especially in the history of Protestantism) the development of the church and theology, not least the New Testament. How different would the New Testament and how subsequent theology look if it was Peter not Paul who maintained pre-eminence?

The third and final journey is the expansion of the new faith beyond Judaism. Luke organises these chapters very definitely and consciously to chart the movement of Christianity from its Jewish heartlands to an ever more Gentile audience, where believers become progressively less kosher.

This process starts with the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, by all accounts already a Jewish convert. Then comes the conversion of Saul. Where? In Damascus, in Samaria, land of the Samaritans. Then comes the conversion of Cornelius, a Roman god fearer (God fearers were not full converts to Judaism but were sympathetic). Then finally we get Paul and Barnabas preaching and converting full Gentiles, and even being mistaken for Greek gods!

To understand the significance of this journey, it helps to understand a little of the history of the Jews. For instance, when we read the story of Peter being asked to eat cloven-footed animals, having read through Leviticus and Deuteronomy, we might grasp that this food was forbidden. But what really would have animated this episode in the eyes of Jewish readers, would have been the story found in 4 Maccabbees 4-5 of brave Eleazar who despite horrific torture refused to eat defiled meat.

The Jews had suffered horrific persecution at the hands of the Greeks forcing them to adopt Hellenist culture. Some Jews had gradually accepted the influence of Hellenism, others had fiercely rejected any dilution of their Jewish heritage (these tensions continued into the Christian community, see Luke’s description of the ‘Hellenists’ in these chapters).

So this journey from Jews to Gentiles touched very raw nerves and went to the very heart of what it was to be a Jew. Think of an IRA man wearing orange, or a Glaswegian Protestant wearing the green and white hoops of Celtic, or a Taliban militiaman wearing a silver cross and we are getting at least somewhere near a modern day parallel. No wonder that there was ‘no small dissension and debate with them’.

This journey from Jew to Greek threatened to splinter the early church, as shown by the violent reaction to Paul’s gentile converts. This fracturing was prevented by the Jerusalem Council, with which our passage ends. The sides were set and huge debate followed. We read later in Galatians that Paul took Titus, an uncircumcised Gentile, as a test case. Finally, the council following the wisdom of James, resisted the hard-line Judaizers. They settle on what is essentially a fudge – they would not demand circumcision of the new Gentile believers but they asked them to restrain from things polluted by idols.

This decision - tentative at best, without much decent theology behind it and in which politics no doubt played a substantial role – proved hugely significant. It provided a platform for Paul to continue his ministry and to develop his highly detailed and complex theology. It marked, despite the squabbles, in the midst of personality clashes and politicking, God’s people finally fulfilling their vocation ‘to be a light to the Gentiles, that salvation may be brought to ends of the earth’ (13.47). Much of rest of the New Testament, especially Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, is an exercise in grappling with the dimensions of this decision; how were the Christians to live together as one new people, how were they think about God in the light of this, what could they eat, who could they marry etc.

I am hugely encouraged by these chapters. To me they are full of the realities of human relationships; people who fight, disagree, persecute, don’t understand. But in the midst of this, God’s spirit works. Divine pronouncement and edicts are not handed out on heavenly tablets. Tentative, experience-led, context-bound compromises are settled on which open up new ways of living together, new understandings of the fullness of God’s plan, new creativity and even new ways of being. I am thankful that even from the earliest times Christianity is not an exact science, and that only together facing the realities of life – of both persecution and miraculous escape – that we discern God’s moving among us.

Reflection:

What are the boundaries we have set up, consciously or otherwise, in our communities which mark inclusion or exclusion?

What might being ‘a light to the Gentiles to that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’ look like in contemporary British society?

How can we respond faithfully but also creatively to the questions our culture is asking?