Tuesday, 24 May 2016 - "Jewish Christians at first found it hard to accept Gentiles"
Daily Scripture: Galatians 2:11 Furthermore, when Kefa came to Antioch, I opposed him publicly, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12 For prior to the arrival of certain people from [the community headed by] Ya‘akov, he had been eating with the Gentile believers; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he was afraid of the faction who favored circumcising Gentile believers. 13 And the other Jewish believers became hypocrites along with him, so that even Bar-Nabba was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 But when I saw that they were not walking a straight path, keeping in line with the truth of the Good News, I said to Kefa, right in front of everyone, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Goy and not like a Jew, why are you forcing the Goyim to live like Jews? 15 We are Jews by birth, not so-called ‘Goyishe sinners’; 16 even so, we have come to realize that a person is not declared righteous by God on the ground of his legalistic observance of Torah commands, but through the Messiah Yeshua’s trusting faithfulness. Therefore, we too have put our trust in Messiah Yeshua and become faithful to him, in order that we might be declared righteous on the ground of the Messiah’s trusting faithfulness and not on the ground of our legalistic observance of Torah commands. For on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah commands, no one will be declared righteous.[Galatians 2:16 Psalm 143:2]Reflection Questions:
More and more Gentiles followed Jesus, first in Antioch and then in the churches Paul planted. Understandably, some Jewish Christians asked: why didn’t Gentiles need to adopt all the Jewish religious rites they still followed? In Antioch, Paul said, even Peter and Barnabas were so scared when “certain people” came from Jerusalem that they stopped eating with Gentile Christians. Paul objected, strongly. Faith in Jesus, he said, not identical opinions or rituals, was what united all Christians.
- Paul wrote that Peter “began to back out and separate himself, because he was afraid of the people who promoted circumcision.” Peter, it seems, was willing to hurt Gentile believers in order to avoid censure from some of the fault-finding Jerusalem believers. Have you ever faced disapproval from some Christians because of your desire to include other, different Christians in your circle of friendship and support? Did you have more courage than Peter, or not? Would you today?
- For Paul, this issue struck at the life mission he believed Jesus had given him. If “first class” Jewish Christians should avoid “second-class” Gentile Christians, then Gentiles weren’t really welcome at all in God’s family. That couldn’t be right, Paul said, because “no one will be made righteous by the works of the Law,” by externals. Which “works of the Law” are you or other Christians you know tempted to trust in? What helps you avoid rank ordering other Christians from “excellent” to “not so good”?
Lord Jesus, “righteous” people criticized you a lot. You loved them, but you never let their criticism stop you from also loving the people they thought unworthy. Grow that kind of compassionate, warm-hearted determination in me. Amen.Insights from Brandon Gregory
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at the Vibe, West, and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.I lived most of my adolescent life in a small town where we didn’t have the privilege of being exposed to a lot of diversity. I had some amazing friends who were very sincere in their faith, mostly through my church. We tried our hardest to love other people in our lives.
But, as was the case for many people in those same circumstances, we also had a little bit of fear of things we didn’t fully understand, things we didn’t have a lot of exposure to. For the most part, this didn’t stop us from loving unfamiliar people. It mostly came out when we were together behind closed doors, together in our sameness, free to laugh at the others who weren’t like us. We loved them, but we weren’t afraid to have a few laughs at their expense. We joked about people with vastly different moral triggers than we had. We joked about people of other religions, or even other denominations within Christianity. But there was one group I laughed at then that I now regret more than any other: gay people.
To be fair, this was the 90s, and we were coming out of an era when gay people weren’t exactly taken seriously in popular media. Sure, shows like Will and Grace gave some insight into gay lives, but there was still a good chance that whenever a gay person showed up in a movie or television show, it was either as shock value or the butt of a joke. Due to their new found prominence, gay stereotypes and jokes were rampant in popular media, and, despite the success of some shows like Will and Grace, it was rare for a gay character to be any more than one of these stereotypes.
This habit followed me when I went away to college. College was a much more diverse environment than I was used to, and I found myself face to face with many of the people I used to laugh at. I quickly adapted, and there were many people very different from myself that called me a friend. But I also had friends very similar to myself–and, just like I did back at home, I found myself laughing at the same different groups when behind closed doors with my familiar friends. Some joked along with me, some gave mildly disapproving looks, but what did I care? Different people were funny, and I continued to joke to my heart’s content.
A few months into my senior year of college, I realized that I hadn’t seen my roommate from the year before for almost the entire semester. We were quite close–in addition to roommates, we were both liberal arts majors, and both leaders in our campus ministry. When I asked around, I was puzzled to find out that most of our mutual friends had seen him. I chalked it up to bad luck until I found out why. My former roommate was gay.
He had hidden it for his entire life and tried to live a “normal” life in denial of that part of himself. But over the summer, he realized that he was never going to get rid of those feelings, and he was never going to be happy in denial. And, as my roommate and one of my familiar friends, he was there for just about every joke I cracked about gay people. He was there every time I laughed at the part of himself he so desperately wanted to get rid of, but couldn’t–every time I laughed at the deepest, darkest secret he held onto. So he realized he could never be happy in denial–but, thanks to my not-so-harmless jabs, he realized he could also never be happy among people like me. He didn’t come back to our campus ministry. He didn’t come back to church. He didn’t fall out of love with God–he was pushed away by people like me who put out a message that his kind didn’t belong in church.
Paul’s condemnation of Peter and his treatment of the Gentiles in Galatians 2 may seem harsh. But, to this day, I wish someone had been that harsh with me. I wish someone would have shown me the destructive power of my words, and how people different from me deserved love, respect, and the opportunity to get to know God–before I alienated my friend and former roommate.
I’m not sharing this story to make any sort of moral statement, aside from this: the views and prejudices you hold behind closed doors matter. Sooner or later, you’ll discover those closed doors were not as closed as you thought, and the destructive power of those seemingly harmless views will come into fruition in the real world. I had to learn this the hard way. I’m sharing this in the hopes that you won’t.
Download the GPS App
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue
Leawood, Kansas 66224, United States
913.897.0120
---------------------
---------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment