ACTS 11:1-4,15-18; 19-30
“WHEN...BUT THEN...!”
“There are a lot of moving parts here!” Have you ever said that, or heard someone say that? It's a well traveled phrase in pop culture these days. It appears a lot on TV shows and movies, as in the shows, Breaking Bad and The Office, and The Lego Movie or the last Night at the Museum movie.
It could be said of Acts 11 here as well. There are a lot of moving parts here! As I sat down to prepare this message I found it a bit overwhelming. Struggling with the flu all week every time I sat down to write it felt liked I'd been licking an ice cream cone too fast. Brain freeze! Strange thing, our son ate the last of the ice cream. It couldn't be that! I had licked my fingers after putting cream cheese on my bagel. Maybe I had bagel freeze! Is that even a thing? Apparently! It is now!
I read it over again! There are a lot of moving parts here! Check it out! There's the critical review Peter receives upon his return to the the mother church in Jerusalem. “When Peter arrived back in Jerusalem, the Jewish believers there criticized him.” (Acts 11:2) They're not at all happy about his entering the home of and eating with Gentiles. They abruptly change their minds when they hear how these Gentiles, Romans no less, were filled with the Holy Spirit just as they had been on Pentocost.
“Meanwhile, the believers who'd been scattered due to intense persecution traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch.” Some, like Peter, also share the Good News of Jesus with non-Jews. This prompts the mother church to send out a mover & shaker by the name of Barnabas to look in on a new mission church in Antioch of Syria, who then heads up to Tarsus, to retrieve Saul, who joins him back in Antioch, where some guy named, Arabus, is prophesying about a coming famine, inspiring those in Antioch to send a large offering back to the mother church, with Barnabas and Saul.
(Acts 11:19)
There's a lot of coming and going! There are a lot of moving parts here! Bagel freeze! What should I, should we, focus on here? That's when I remembered something my preaching professor said when I was in seminary. He told us that some texts have an undercurrent, that can be found by looking for words or phrases that are repeated. It's like those paintings with a hidden painting in them that were popular for a while. I was told that if you squint or change the distance or perspective by which you are viewing the picture the hidden picture comes into view. So I squinted a lot this week...
It's a good way to get a headache, actually, but as I did so I noticed that there are some repeating words or phrases in our text. They're easy to miss because they're not theological words like the word agape love in John's letter to the early church, or Paul's use of the conjunctive adverb, 'therefore', found throughout his letters that signal a summary statement or shift to a new thought or insight.
The words repeated here by Luke in Acts 11 are words used to signify a change of direction or action, words like: when, then, but, but then, however, meanwhile, during this time. In the Greek, they're phrases like ote' de, or 'Hsav de', or 'ev tau'tais de. These words indicating a shift in thought or action. These shifty words appear no less than fifteen times in chapter eleven.
Luke is using them to subtely highlight something that's at foot here in the early church. It's something that classicly pushes people's buttons, past and present. It also reveals something of a paradox in God's self revelation. If you squint you might just make it out! It reveals on multiple fronts, and in a variety of ways, how our unchanging God is doing something new. It's quite the paradox!
-2-
The idea that God is constant is never changing is a well cherished thought in Christian circles today. We love that verse that says that “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.” (Heb 13:8)
That gives us solid ground to stand on. God's unchanging nature is a firm foundation. We can trust in him to be unwavering. True enough. But what then of the witness that God is always doing new things, that God is a God of change? As the prophet Daniel put it: “Blessed be the name of God for He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings...” (Daniel 2:21)
Jesus spoke of the need for new wine skins for the new wine his gospel embodied, implying that in him God was doing something new as is implicit in his offering himself as the new covenant. At the Bible's close we're even told that God's plan is to “make everything new”! (Rev 21:5) Acts 11 draws our attention to this latter characteristic of God – His inclination to constantly be doing something new.
Biblical scholars note that Luke has divided his book, The Acts of the Apostles, into three distinct parts – three acts, if you will. The first act, preceded by a preamble in which Jesus passes the torch of his ministry on to his disciples, tells of how his disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began fulfilling Jesus' words by reaching out to their fellow Jews in Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria.
The second act begins with the gospel being shared with Gentiles for the first time and how that launched something entirely new, a church not only of Jewish Christians, but mingled with Gentile Christians, as happens here in Antioch. But as we heard earlier, such change does not come easily.
Case in point is six-year-old Calvin. Like many of us Calvin's self-awarness is a bit lacking...
Calvin: You know what I've learned about myself? I absolutlely thrive on change.
Hobbes: You?! Are you kidding me? As I recall, it was you who threw a fit this morning simply
because your mom put less jelly on your toast than yesterday!
Calvin: I meant that I thrive on making other people change!
Hobbes: Why doesn't that surprise me. (Calvin climbs into wheelbarrow, Hobbes stands behind)
Calvin: Actually, I find that change is invigorating! If you don't accept new challenges, you
become complacent and lazy. Your life atrophies. New experiences lead to new discov- eries. Change forces us to trust in the divine. That's how we learn and grow.
Hobbes: Where'd that rock come from...? (both go into slow-mo fall) This-is-a-new-challenge...!
Calvin: (on floor) The problem with new experiences is that they're rarely the ones you choose.
Hobbes: I feel smarter already.
Change and new challenges don't come easy. We see this in the reaction back in the mother church in Jerusalem. “But when Peter arrived back in Jerusalem,” notice how that sentence starts. It's one of seven times Luke starts a sentence in this chapter with either the word 'but' or 'when' – in this case with both. “But when Peter arrived back in Jerusalem the Jewish believers criticized him: 'You entered the home of Gentiles and even ate with them?'” What were you thinking? (Acts 11:2-3)
It reminds me of the year a girl from my class got elected on to the youth leadership team. At her second meeting she protested a decision that was being made by saying, “We've never done it that way before”! Even though she was brand new, she already new the anti-change litany.
Such was the resistance to Peter's outreach back at home... But as Calvin noted, Peter made it clear, this new experience was not the one he choose. It was clearly God's doing.
-3-
When they heard the proof of that, of how this Roman household had been filled with the Holy Spirit just like they had at the first Pentecost they relented. They realized that God was doing some thing new, but, as we'll hear in a couple of weeks, they would soon be complaining and criticizing again soon, as Paul and Barnabas will have to make a return trip to convince them all over again.
There are other new developments being reported here by Luke as well. Due to the persecution the church is enduring, believers are escaping to other cities with churches being planted “as far aways as Phoenicia, Antioch, (Cyrene) and the island of Cypress”, home of Barnabas himself. Luke notes that “some of the believers who went to Antioch began preaching to the Gentiles about Jesus there.”
(Acts 11:19-20)
So now the Way, the name believers had chosen for itself, was spreading among outsiders. What's more, “it's here at Antioch, Luke tells us, that the believers were first called Christians.”
(Acts 11:26)
That's brand new as well. Apparently the name, meaning those who belong to or follow Christ, was used as a deragory term, but soon the believers began using it to refer to themselves and it stuck. If that's not enough change in the air, this new church plant in Antioch soon becomes the hub of most of the church planting activity. It becomes the new mother church as it is from here that Paul and Barnabas will soon be sent out. That must've rattled a few chains back in Jerusalem as well!
To emphasize all these new things the Holy Spirit is prompting, Luke throws in a new name, that of Agabus, a gifted prophet, who inspires the church in Antioch in a classic role reversal to help out the mother church in Jerusalem - and to highlight all these new things happening as the second act of the Book of Acts unfolds, Luke uses one adverb after another to under score that the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today and forever is doing something new thru the Holy Spirit all over the map...!
The Puritans had a saying: “God loveth adverbs”, implying that God delights in disrupting the flow of our lives with new experiences & challenges so we might learn and grow, as Calvin observed.
It recently occurred to me that no one visiting in our home ever feels inclined to alert us to someone knocking at the front door by saying, “there's someone at the door”. The reason we know that someone will be at the door is because of our furry little four-legged friend named Tootsie. Tootsie is a little black Havenese canine and she's always on high alert even when it appears that she's napping. As soon as a visitor closes their car door, she leaps to her feet and starts barking her own version of “There's someone new at the door! Something different is in the air! Get ready to open the door!”
It seems to me that if we're listening, the Holy Spirit gives us a similar heads up. Jesus taught us to ask for it, in a sense, in a petition in his famous prayer. “May your kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:10) In other words, interupt our worldly ways with your holy heavenly ways, Lord. Help me be ready to leap to my feet when you're doing some thing new. God help make up there come down here, and help me to help make that happen!
It could happen! Every time you're in conflict with someone, want to hurt back or gossip or avoid them but instead go to them to seek forgiveness, even reconcilation, Jesus kingdom enters in!
Every time you see a need, like those Christians in Antioch, and respond with generosity, Jesus' kingdom enters in. Any time someone succumbs to their addiction and couragously acknowledges the truth and seeks help from a sibling in Christ, Jesus' kingdom enters in. Every time you reach out to someone who's lonely, or encourage someone who feels defeated, Jesus' kingdom enters in!
-4-
Luke records that as Jesus departed he left a small beachhead in this world. He formed a small community of followers, trained them and then sent them out from their mother church in Jerusalem, and then in Antioch, to respond to this new way of prioritizing and living a radical kingdom reality.
Luke drops names like Saul, and Agabus, and Barnabas to show how that Jesus' movement got a toehold in one heart and life after another and how, as with Barnabas, they began to respond to the new thing the Holy Spirit was doing in and around them, by going here and there, “filled with great joy, encouraged fellow believers...and helped many people come to the Lord.” (Acts 11:23-24)
One day a little beachhead got formed in your life. It doesn't matter whether your life gets a bit messy at times or whether you fully understand how the kingdom works. Someone has shown up at your door and he's eager to enrich your life by not only entering in, but helping you to fully enter in!
When? But then....! Meanwhile.... During this time..... It could happen!