The Fourth Wall - Day 8

Acts 15-Jerusalem council

15 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers: “Unless you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 Paul and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently. Finally, the church decided to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, accompanied by some local believers, to talk to the apostles and elders about this question. 3 The church sent the delegates to Jerusalem, and they stopped along the way in Phoenicia and Samaria to visit the believers. They told them—much to everyone’s joy—that the Gentiles, too, were being converted.

Who can forget the opening scene of Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye rolls his wheelbarrow onto the stage and addresses the audience in the now-famous song, “Tradition.” He explains life set against Czarist Russia in the little town of Anatevka, populated largely by hard-working Jewish families. The year is 1905. The Russian Revolution is about to begin. In the village of Anatevka, a pious Jew, who raises his five daughters with the aid of quotations from the Bible (many of which he invents himself), explains that their village has chosen guidelines unrelated to the Czar or the Revolution. The peasant dairyman and his friends acknowledge that age-old laws of tradition govern their lives. Their traditions give order to their lives and stability to their community. Without their traditions the good citizens of Anatevka would be as shaky as a “fiddler on the roof.”

I played one of the sons in this play in high school. I certainly did not understand the significance of the play or of the song " Tradition” when I was a junior in high school, but it is not lost on me now. Tradition anchors us to the past, our culture, our faith, and our predecessors.

Paul and Barnabas were experiencing a difficult moment in the development of the early church. They had to deal with the traditionalists who thought they had to follow in the footsteps of their Jewish parents and make new converts have to cling to those old traditions, one of which, circumcision, was not insignificant.

Now, we will not speak of the rightness or wrongness of traditions in this pericope, but we will look at how they handled disagreements in the early church. Like today, not everyone agrees with how things should be in church settings. Crosswalk has not always had the blessing of a strong leadership team that has bought into the vision of “loving well,” our mission and calling in the world. There were times when people left the church because of significant differences in the direction the church should go. These issues were undoubtedly theological, but many were process-oriented, culture-oriented, and opinion-oriented.

The early church had to deal with disagreements, and we will, too. Unfortunately, our disagreements are more related to how the world expresses itself in politics and policies. The church needs to exist to explore a third way of looking at the world, developing relationships, and creating hope for the future and even for today.

Looking at the text, we see that the disagreements were such that Paul and Barnabas were called home to Jerusalem to discuss the arguments. They went with some local elders and were blessed to see that many Gentiles converted to faith in Christ in Phoenicia and Samaria. This would have bolstered their argument.

In the upcoming texts, we will see how the church dealt with disagreements among believers, and perhaps we can find a third way to disagree and stay together.

1. Have you ever disagreed with someone in church? What was the reason for the disagreement? 
2. How can churches, full of people with differing opinions, get along? 
3. What do you do with traditions that stand in the way of people converting to faith in Jesus?