‘Is it time for us to stop thinking in terms of them and us?’ by Owen Lynch - 4 May 2025

Are people ultimately divided into groups, say by nationality, family or faith? Owen Lynch looks at what happened in the early church when there were arguments about newcomers and what they might have to do to fit in. People were quick to see reasons to divide and either exclude people or force them to conform. Having some agreed, shared boundaries seemed to be helpful. But what if God’s Spirit kept being more inclusive than people expected?

Did you see anything of the funeral of Pope Francis last weekend? The journalist - Will Lloyd was there writing for the Times; His heading read:

“The sheer mass, the heaving breadth of humanity on display at Pope Francis’s funeral was dizzying. Nothing on earth compares”.

“All week the Vatican City was crammed with people from every end of the world to pay tribute to him. Carmelites from Papa New Guinea. Benedictines from Hong Kong. Shuffling friars from Uruguay. Midwestern Franciscans, heavy beef eating men from Kansas, in their brown robes. What felt like most of the Philippines, snaking around the Vatican in seemingly endless lines. Catholic clergy, charities and congregants from every country in Africa.”

“The streets around the Vatican rang with stories of Francis’ humility. I heard people talking about his simple black leather shoes (rather than the expensive red ones that Popes are meant to wear). His restricted diet. His spartan living quarters. On one of his first nights as pope, he discovered that a Swiss Guard had stood watch outside his door all night. Papa Francisco insisted on fetching the bewildered soldier a chair and making him a sandwich.”

“Another story recalled the night an astonished Italian policeman whose two children were killed in a freak accident were shocked to be invited to the Vatican. There was Francis, the Vicar of Christ, waiting for them, apparently with all the time in the world. The wife told Francis she couldn’t sleep or pray anymore. He gave her a simple rosary. He didn’t say read Thomas Aquinas. He told her to hold the rosary, “hold this and that is you praying, that’s enough” he said.”

“Those parables, are small windows into the soul of this pope. They will be remembered long after the pomp, circumstance and security arrangements of his funeral are forgotten.”

The apostle Paul would surely have approved of Pope Francis and would have no doubt been thrilled to see people from every tribe and tongue united by the love of Christ.

Paul’s deep, deep conviction was that Christ was the hope of the whole world, not just the hope of the Jews. Read his letters and you will see him having repeated arguments with other Jews who insisted that Gentiles should convert to Judaism in order to know Jesus. Is there an echo of that in Christianity?

Instead Paul insisted that there was no requirement of the gospel for Gentiles to be circumcised or follow any of the law of Moses, in other words there was no requirement for Gentiles to be assimilated into Jewish culture and religion.

On the contrary, Paul insisted that the Spirit of Jesus joined different ethnic and cultural groups together in such a way as to celebrate and accentuate the cultural differences.

Paul did not imagine a world where everyone converted to Messianic Judaism, a world where everyone wore the same clothes, spoke the same language, ate the same food, followed the same customs and calendar, lived in the same architecture.

I think that Paul knew that this Messianic revolution wouldn’t last a generation if he did not challenge and defeat the insistence of his Jewish brothers and sisters that Gentiles conform to the customs and laws of the Jews.

Paul had such a strong conviction about this, that he routinely risked his life to win this argument. He was beaten and almost killed by mobs in Damascus, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Philippi.

In Acts 20:22-25, Luke records Paul anticipating his final journey to Jerusalem and Rome:

22 “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. 23 I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. 24 However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.

25 “Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again.

It’s a a familiar motif or pattern that Luke used to describe Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem that ended in his legal execution by the Roman authorities. Luke writing retrospectively indicates that Paul would also be legally executed, not in Jerusalem, but in Rome.

So we must remember that we are reading this through the eyes of the author Luke, and try to appreciate that he had his own agenda for writing these accounts of Jesus and Paul. So let’s read Acts 21:1-16

1 After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Kos. The next day we went to Rhodes and from there to Patara. 2 We found a ship crossing over to Phoenicia, went on board and set sail. 3 After sighting Cyprus and passing to the south of it, we sailed on to Syria. We landed at Tyre, where our ship was to unload its cargo. 4 We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. 5 When it was time to leave, we left and continued on our way. All of them, including wives and children, accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray. 6 After saying goodbye to each other, we went aboard the ship, and they returned home.

7 We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. 8 Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. 9 He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.

10 After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’”

12 When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” 14 When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

15 After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. 16 Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us and brought us to the home of Mnason, where we were to stay. He was a man from Cyprus and one of the early disciples.

I don’t have to do much work here describing the context, because it speaks for itself! None of the people Paul stays with on his journey to Jerusalem want him to go there! They all think he is going to be killed by the Jewish authorities who want to destroy this Jesus revolution.

The Spirit of Jesus does not so much speak as shout at Paul on this journey. Philip - one of the seven leaders chosen to care for the poor described in Acts 6 has four daughters who Luke suggests prophesy to Paul about his impending death, another Prophet Agabus literally takes a belt and ties Paul’s hands and says he will be handed by the Jewish leaders to the Romans under charges of sedition and revolution, just like they did to Jesus.

Even Luke includes himself amongst those who try to persuade Paul not to travel to Jerusalem, but to no avail. Let’s pick up the story again, notice Luke is writing in first person - he was there:

17 When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters received us warmly. 18 The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. 19 Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

20 When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. 21 They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. 22 What shall we do?

Can you feel the tension in this story? Paul is Jesus’ advocate, giving specific evidence that Jesus is fully at home amongst the Gentiles without requiring them to convert to Judaism, to it’s laws and customs.

On the other hand, James, who is Jesus’ half brother and head of the Jerusalem group, is trying to be diplomatic.

“Paul - it’s so good that Jesus is fully at home amongst the Gentiles without requiring them to obey the law of Moses! And you should know that we have thousands of Jews here in Judea who are persuaded that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah as well - isn’t that cool??!!”

“The thing is, they are all really passionate about the law of Moses and they have heard that you teach Jews whom live amongst the Gentiles to turn away from the law of Moses, to not circumcise their sons or live according to our customs.”

“This is a little awkward!! In fact, it’s a lot more serious than awkward. Even though these zealots accept Jesus as the Messiah, they are still fanatical about protecting, sustaining and honouring the law of Moses (Torah).

James would not have seen any inconsistency between fanaticism for the law of Moses and accepting Jesus as Messiah. Jesus himself was fanatical about the law of Moses - 1 Peter 2:22 says that Jesus kept the law of Moses perfectly.

Paul, himself a Jew, was also fanatical about keeping the law of Moses, he was a Pharisee, a group known for their fanatical observation of the law of Moses in their own lives.

However following the resurrection, Paul no longer believed that the Jews and Gentiles were bound by the law of Moses, because of the perfect faithfulness of Jesus to that law, Galatians 3:23-25,

23 Before the coming of this faithfulness of Jesus, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faithfulness that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified [through the faithfulness of Christ]. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

Whether James agreed with Paul in this situation we don’t know. But it is clear that James is concerned for Paul’s safety in Jerusalem, so he has a cunning plan to keep the peace between the Jews and Gentiles.

22 What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, 23 so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. 24 Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. 25 As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”

James is clearly concerned that Paul’s life is in danger from fanatical Jews who will kill him if they think he is teaching Jews to disregard the law of Moses. So they ask Paul to complete his Nazarite vow along with four other men to publicly demonstrate his commitment to the Mosaic law.

This is the appearance of conformity for Paul whose Jewish identity and commitment to the Mosaic law was never in question. It is a response rooted in fear and anxiety.

James and the elders have not followed the Holy Spirit into the Gentile space, they have remained in the bubble of Jerusalem. They have avoided the tension by creating parallel worlds of Jew and Gentile. They have written to the Gentile believers and told them to obey some of the more public and demonstrable aspects of the Mosaic law so as to give the appearance of conformity.

It is a fudge and although Paul goes along with it, it fails spectacularly when Paul is recognised in the temple and set upon by a mob whose intent is to kill him.

From their Jerusalem religious bubble, James - Jesus’ half brother cannot imagine a world where Jew and Gentile can live as equals in the eyes of God, without Gentiles having to convert to Judaism. They are torn in two by Paul’s testimony that Christ Jesus is fully at home amongst the Gentiles. So they see parallel, segregated worlds, Jew and Gentile, but that is not the world being recreated by the Holy Spirit.

How can James and the elders follow the Spirit and yet follow segregationist thinking? This was their dilemma and it seems it is the dilemma of the church today.

This is our ongoing struggle to follow when the Holy Spirit crosses our red lines. We long for the world to be like us, so that we don’t have to change to be like them. We long for them to conform to our gospel, to our customs, to our laws so as to preserve our identity and values.

Wille Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School puts it like this:

We often long for conformity that helps us cope with a diversity that we cannot anticipate or control. That longing leads to a futile performance of authenticity masquerading as commitment to God, but in actuality only plays to a watching crowd. Church after church has not grown forward from pentecost and like James and the elders creates plans of conformity destined to fail. The fundamental difference between the Jerusalem church and our churches is that they struggled to imagine an expansion of Torah-filled life into the Gentile space that would alter Jewish space without loss of identity. We who live on the other side of Christian colonialism have watched the emergence of soul-killing, people destroying expansionism that forced people into a Christian sameness, an orthodoxy of body and dress, comportment and character that has numbed the minds of many and presented faith as exquisite subjugation.

Like James and the elders we must see the Spirit who enters lives without destroying lives and joins with us, becoming one with us, while remaining the Spirit of God.

What does that look like?

Have we avoided the tension of the gospel by creating parallel worlds for us and them to live in? Secular and sacred. Christian and Non-Christian. The Church and the World.

Which of our red lines has the Holy Spirit crossed that we are unwilling to cross?

What laws and customs do we expect new Christians to conform to?

When I look at Acts 21, I see the same tension between the James and Paul, that I see amongst Christians who feel the need to convert the world to Christianity. I’m not sure Paul would have agreed with this idea. He saw the Spirit present in the Gentile community as much as the Jewish community.

The only conformation that Paul ever talked about was being conformed to the likeness of Christ who did not seek to control people but serve them with sacrificial, unconditional, unending love.

The only conformation that Paul talked about was conformation to the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Perhaps there is only one world, one humanity and one Spirit. Is it time for us to stop thinking in terms of them and us?

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