A Reflection on the Epistle Reading for the Day

 

An Icon of the First Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

The reading is from Acts of the Apostles 15:5-12: 

IN THOSE DAYS, some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up, and said, "it is necessary to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses." The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter rose and said to them, "Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will." And all the assembly kept silence; and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

LESSON

Every generation has those who would limit God and exclude others from grace. They do this because they are jealous and fearful. Jealous, because they do not want others to receive love and the expense of themselves, because they inaccurately think of God’s grace as a “zero-sum game” where more for others means less for themselves. Fearful, because they do not feel grace or contentment within themselves, and they identify this with God’s rejection rather than their own state of unidentified pride and sin. Pride and disobedience cuts us off from God, not because God hates us or rejects us, but because they blacken the nous, the spiritual consciousness, of our soul and make it impossible to see and reflect His light, even though it shines all around us. It doesn’t have to be our own pride. It can be pride of belonging to a group, pride in the spirituality of our priests and elders, and pride in our national culture and heritage. It is easy for us to put pride in these things in order to absolve ourselves of sin, and then base our personal identities upon the group identity. In this way, many an Orthodox Christian readily admits that they are personally sinful and unworthy, but proudly asserts the sinlessness of their local tradition, and then seeks to speak for and represent this tradition. 

When we find ourselves in darkness because of an unwillingness to confess and forsake our sins and our false identities, those aspects we assume about ourselves that originate in venerable institutions and ancient cultures, we desire others to experience the same pain, alienation and despair that we feel as a result of these false faces. We do this so that, for one, we are not alone, and for two, so that we can revel in the thought that we are better than others or that we have power over others. This kind of thinking, which hopes for evil on others and refuses to receive love and kindness from them, is a state of internal schism that cuts us off from God’s grace, even as we insist that others are graceless and uncanonical. 

As the Judaisers in this passage show, they were unwilling to accept the status of gentiles as Christians because they had not submitted to them to enter the Church. God’s grace poured out upon them in a context that these Judaisers did not recognize or feel comfortable with, and so they tried to exclude them and force them to submit to political and cultural servitude as “outsiders” and “second-class citizens” in order for them to be admitted to the club. While baptism has replaced circumcision in Christ, we see this same kind of attitude very predominantly displayed by those who would deny grace or real faith to those who are outside of certain canonical definitions. This is exactly the same scenario and is based on the same underlying motivations as the Judaisers in the first century of Christianity’s spread. 

The problem with the Judaisers was that God already admitted their gentile enemies into His grace, even though some of the Apostles were hesitant to admit them into the communion of the Church. St. Peter saw this and advocated for a canonical recognition of what God already accomplished in the outpouring of His Holy Spirit. They already had the Spirit, evident in the good works and right doctrine that they were already believing and proclaiming. Sts. Paul and Barnabas went on to prove this by detailing the works that God had accomplished in their lives in signs and wonders. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” as our Lord taught us in Matthew 7:16-20. 

This is why, if we see Orthodox in other jurisdictions, or even our brothers in the Oriental, Roman, Anglican or Lutheran Churches, we do not pass judgment on their “state of grace” as if those who proclaim Christ as Lord do not do so by the power of the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:3). Instead, we pray for them, ask God’s mercy upon them, and seek to repent of past offenses that keep us from understanding and reconciling with them. They may be at fault and may have wrong doctrine, and we cannot accept this even though we practice love and humility. Instead, we ask God to have mercy on us, to illuminate our sins and offenses, and humbly maintain the truth of the Orthodox Faith that has been passed down to us, generation upon generation, by faithful bishops and shepherds. Canonical recognition comes and goes, just as it did for the gentiles in the Church’s first synod in Jerusalem amongst the Apostles here in Acts 15, but God’s work of salvation which draws us to repentance, and His work of grace amongst all those who truly seek after Him, always remains the same and is evident at every level of Church hierarchy, intercommunion and aspect of canonical history throughout time. 

As my canon law professor said to me once, as he was explaining the confusing history of autocephaly in the Church, which never seems to happen the same way twice - “The Holy Spirit works and the canonical system eventually recognizes, not the other way around…” And this is seen in the incredibly messy reality of the Church’s life as God works and we scramble to catch up with what He is doing in the world to bring us all to salvation. Such is the case with Macedonia last week, and such was the case today with the former Moscow Patriarchate’s Church in Ukraine.