One Body, Different Members

Text: Acts 15:1-21, Matt. 16:13-19

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            The two men couldn’t be more different. One of them was a physical laborer, the other trained to make a living using his words and mind. One had never left the region where he was born, the other was well-traveled long before the world journeys that he ended up becoming famous for. One spoke his native language, with just enough of the common speech of the day to get by; the other was trained in several languages and could give eloquent public addresses in multiple tongues. One was bold and blunt, the other had capacity for nuance and diplomacy. One was a Hebrew living under the boot of Rome, the other was himself a Jewish Roman citizen with all the privileges that entailed. Although they share a feast day today, Peter and Paul were two very different men, even though they were both called Apostles of Jesus Christ.

            When two very different men like this encounter each other, we would expect conflict. And indeed, they did have their tense moments. When Peter slipped and started shunning Gentile converts to Christianity, refusing to eat with them because they didn’t eat and drink like Jews under the dietary laws of Moses, Paul had to confront Peter about this. And when people were confused by Paul’s long and nuanced letters that explained the teachings of Jesus, Peter had to say that yes, Paul’s letters could be hard to understand, but Peter also reassured them that yes, Paul too was speaking wisdom from God and that only the ignorant and unstable twist his words to their own destruction, as they do with other Scriptures.

            But in the miracle that is the Church on earth, we’re given to see St. Peter and St. Paul working together in the Lord’s vineyard. When the Church met at the Jerusalem Council, which we heard about in our reading from Acts today, both Paul and Peter speak in unison about the signs and wonders God was doing among the Gentiles, meaning that both Jews and Gentiles had received grace from Jesus and were to be counted as believers in the Lord, saved by His sacrifice. So they extended the right hand of fellowship and each were sent to the different groups they had the strengths and talents to serve—Peter to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles.

            It’s no secret that we live in a time of deep division. We’re deeply suspicious of anyone and everyone who doesn’t look like us, or speak like us, or live or earn or think or vote the same that we do. And with such pressures from this wicked generation to seize upon those differences and go on the attack, it can be very easy for us to get caught up in it. It’s all too seductive to try to castigate people on social media, or believe the worst about them, or lock them out of our ears and hearts. We try to justify why it’s OK to ignore or look down upon someone for the ways in which their lives don’t look or sound like yours. It’s getting easier to cut someone out your circles and life because they don’t think or speak the same way you do. Even for those in the Church, who know that Christ has died to redeem every last person among humanity, it’s all too easy to give in to the old divisive, sinful behaviors. And be assured, rage and spite and malice and a faction party spirit is sinful.

            It’s a perennial problem for us sinners living in this fallen world, even those of us in the Church. In fact, it’s why the Church had to hold the Jerusalem Council in our Acts reading. Some men came from Judea and were teaching that unless every Christian followed the laws of Moses, they cannot be saved. This was troubling for the Gentile believers, who had never lived by the dietary laws, let alone were circumcised from eight days old, as the Law required. The Gentile Christians who looked and lived differently were being told that they weren’t real Christians, not until they started looking and living like Jewish Christians. Until then, they were not saved.

But when we know our Lord, when the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see what Jesus, the Son of the Living God, has accomplished in His crucifixion and resurrection, when we realize that it’s not only my sins that are forgiven, but the sins of others too—which, if you’re honest with yourself, are no greater than your own sins—then you begin to see that others are redeemed and precious to God too. Jesus died to save them as well. And that changes the way you think about them. It changes the way you treat them. So when the Church had to gather at the Jerusalem Council, they decreed that no one was saved by their keeping of the Law. As they stated clearly, “We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they [the Gentiles] will.” If the Church in Jerusalem can rejoice that the Gentiles, former pagans who previously lived lives radically different and even abhorrent to a lifelong, faithful Jew—if they can rejoice that the Gentiles are one with them in faith and had been shown the same grace they themselves had been shown, then surely we are freed from our own sinful natures to do so as well.

That’s not to say that we then become cookie cutter identical images of each other. St. Peter and St. Paul still had differences—different gifts, skills, personalities, dispositions, and so on. It would be wrong to try to iron that out and make them the same in every single way. But that’s the beauty of belonging to the body of Christ. It’s the same body, it’s one Church, with different members. And the different members of the body do different things. So St. Paul is sent to the Gentiles, to speak their language and preach to them in ways they can grasp and understand; while St. Peter is sent to the Hebrews to speak and write and preach to them in the ways that they understand as children of Israel. We in the body of Christ will also see differences—different personal histories, skills, socioeconomic levels, languages, races, viewpoints, likes, and dislikes. But those are not reasons to reject or shun. It just means that we’re different members, with perhaps different tasks within this body of Christ.

There is a mystery to the Church that has confounded anthropologists and sociologists. The Church is not a collection of similars, like other organizations. We’re not bound together because we all like bowling or sewing, or because we all like German food or classical music. From its start, the Church has consisted of rich and poor, Jews and Greeks, slave and free, all languages, tribes, nations, and peoples. And that’s baffling when every other organization is founded on what people have in common. But we know that this is only possible when it’s someone bigger than us that drawing the Church together, someone bigger than our divisions and differences, someone whose love is greater than our indifference. It’s Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. He’s pouring out the Holy Spirit on His Church to unite us to Himself in faith, in body and blood, in water and Word, in the hope of everlasting life. He’s making us all children of the Father. He’s blessing us with Peter and Paul, with all the various saints and their various gifts, so that His Church is built on the rock, where the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. In the name of Jesus, the Lord of the Church. Amen.