Loving God, we are always surprised by the people you welcome into the community of believers.  Teach us to act with grace toward others, just as you have acted with grace toward us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    Imagine that you have recently come to believe in Jesus and have been baptized and welcomed into the community of believers.  You have experienced the joy and the freedom that come with forgiveness and have been truly grateful to God, not only for the gift of salvation, but for the gift of a new community.  You have also been amazed at the openness displayed by some of your Jewish brothers and sisters, for you had always thought that they wanted nothing to do with Gentiles like you.  And so, you have been spending time in prayer and in worship whenever you can, giving thanks to God for the grace that you have experienced in Jesus.

    Then one day some different people come to town, who also say that they believe in Jesus.  However, they have a new message that you haven’t heard before.  Their message goes something like this: “Do you think that God will save you just because you have put your faith in Jesus Christ?  Don’t kid yourselves.  It’s never that easy!  Unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved.  Unless you keep the law of Moses - all 613 commandments - you cannot be saved.”

    Wow.  What a good way to take away the joy and the freedom of the gospel.  What a good way to replace thankfulness with doubt and anxiety.  Have I done enough to be saved?  Am I good enough to be saved?  How do I make sure that I am acceptable to God?  And then Barnabas and Paul come along and say, “No!  You don’t have to do all of that!”  Who do you believe?

    It is the same question that has come up throughout the history of the church.  Are we saved by grace through faith, or are we saved because we have done and said all the right things?  In fact, this was also what the debate was all about at the time of the Reformation.

    In a comic book version that I have of Martin Luther’s story, it includes what is sometimes referred to as his “tower experience.”  As Luther is studying Romans one day, he comes to a realization: “Faith in God and sincere and true repentance for our sins.  The only thing that matters is faith in God.  That’s all!”  He comes racing out past another monk who has just taken a vow of silence and starts sharing his insight with the other monks.  Luther tells them, “God grants us forgiveness.  We don’t have to do anything.  Indeed, we can’t do anything.”

    However, perhaps you can see why this makes the other monks angry.  One of them says to Luther, “By saying that you call into question everything that we do, every aspect of monastic life.”  For by becoming monks, all of them hoped to do enough to merit God’s mercy and to gain their salvation.  These monks had worked hard, and had deprived themselves of comfort and warmth, and had given up having a wife and family.  They did not want to hear that God did not require them to do all of these things.

    In the same way, the Jewish believers who came to visit the Gentile converts felt that they had worked hard to keep the law for many years.  They did not like the idea that these new believers got a free ride (so to speak) and didn’t have to keep all the same regulations that they did.  It reminds me of conversations I’ve heard where the older generations say to the young ones, “We never got away with things like that when we went to church!”  You have to act in a certain way, and there are certain rules you have to follow, and you need to work hard and to volunteer, and you need to do all of the same things that we had to do!  There is a suspicion that people are somehow getting away with something if they don’t have to follow all of the same regulations.

    However, just as we learn in the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt. 20:1-16), and just as the believers learn in the book of Acts, God doesn’t make any such distinctions.  It is Peter who stands up and tells the story of what happened when he was sent to share the good news about Jesus with the Gentiles.  While Peter was still talking to them, and before they had even been baptized, God poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit on them - the same gift that had been poured out on the disciples at the beginning.  Peter recognizes that God cleansed their hearts by faith and did not distinguish between Jews and Gentiles (Acts 15:9).  He also makes a statement of faith: “We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15:11).

    Doesn’t it change your attitude toward other people when you realize that you are saved by grace and so are they?  God has saved you as a gift, and God has saved those other people as a gift, and not one of you has done anything that has earned your salvation.  In fact, the intent of this whole revelation of God’s grace is that we are set free to love and serve God and our neighbours.  We do not have to spend our energy worrying about our own salvation, but can live in love, as God intended.  Our lives become a reflection of the salvation that God has already given us, rather than a ladder we are climbing in the hopes that we will be accepted in the end.

    Yet, for whatever reasons, this seems to be very difficult for people to grasp.  Some figure that you get baptized and then do nothing, because it’s all taken care of.  Some get annoyed that God would ever accept people who haven’t done and said all the right things like they have.  Some just don’t like to accept anything that they didn’t earn, even if it comes from God.

    However, the truth of God’s grace continues to speak to us from the Scriptures:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God– not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what [God] has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (Eph. 2:8-10).

Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Easter 5 (NL 3)                                Acts 15:1-18
May 14, 2017
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

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