In the last chapter, we learned, "Gentiles join the Christian Church." It did not take long for the Church in Jerusalem to learn that Cornelius and his household had become Christians. One might have expected a victory rally, but instead there was a meeting of protest. The protest was that Peter had violated the ceremonial law by eating a meal with a Gentile. Peter had tampered with tradition and was now being brought to task. It did not matter that Peter had acted in accordance with a vision from an Angel from God.

We now learn that Christianity was not entirely of one mind even at this early stage. There was a protest from the "circumcision party" which was a small ultraconservative group within the Church at Jerusalem. They believed that Christianity was a movement within Judaism. That required complete subordination to Judaism, including circumcision, before baptism. Paul was highly educated and cosmopolitan and we might expect him to avoid such a party affiliation. Peter, on the other hand, was a Palestinian Jew, a fisherman by trade, and had virtually no worldly experience. It is to his credit that his close association with Jesus made up for the other deficiencies. He had caught the spirit of his Master and that led him to make decisions that others may not have made.

We have a tendency to think that parties within a group are all disruptive. It is true we cannot avoid parties within a large group. Even when we agree that Jesus is Lord, there is room for more than one interpretation and many shades of opinion. As long as people do not think alike there will be parties in politics, education & religion and these parties serve a vital purpose by providing balance. The theological weight of the Low Church is thrown to the side of individualism in religion and freedom in faith. The theological weight of the High Church restores the balance by throwing its weight to the side of the church, its ministry, and its sacraments. The theological weight of the Broad Church emphasizes ongoing human revelation. Anglicans have typically balanced their faith on the three legged stool of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, representing each of these groups. Good balance helps us avoid the pride of inerrancy.

On the other hand, parties at their worst divide the church and dissipate its energies. That occurs when party loyalty becomes the ultimate loyalty. When a person is more concerned about Protestantism or Catholicism than Christianity, party loyalty amounts to treason against the Christian faith. There are parties in the church today; liturgical parties, theological parties, ecclesiastical parties. It is not the party itself that is evil; it is the person who puts party above the church. We must all keep party loyalties subordinate to the higher loyalty to Christ.

The circumcision party made the mistake of failing to distinguish between the spirit and the system. The founding of our nation involved a spirit that the rights and responsibilities of government can and should be shared by all the people. It is an attitude of good will toward men just because they are men. Men have a spirit but it requires a body to express itself in our world. In like manner, the spirit of our Republic requires a structure or system in which to be expressed. We have courts, constitutions, executives and elections. Without such a mechanism the spirit would evaporate. It is essential to remember that the spirit and the system are not identical. If we allow the system to overrun the spirit, we have lost it altogether. It is somewhat like confusing the instrument with the music. Without the instrument, there is no music. Without the music, the instrument is simply noise.

The first Christian community of any size outside of Jerusalem was the one at Antioch. Antioch was a large metropolitan center where people of all cultures freely mingled. The church in Antioch owes its existence to the persecutions in Jerusalem. Christianity was not destroyed in Jerusalem; it was dispersed. It is good to remember today that no good thing can ever be destroyed. It can only be dispersed. The Church at Antioch was started when a few daring men preached the gospel to the Greeks. It overcame the ever present temptation to limit its field to the Jews and the past. The appropriateness of the Christian actions was confirmed by the immediate growth of the Christian community there.

In spite of their limited vision, the leaders of the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabus to lead the new church in Antioch. He was generous-hearted, liberal-minded, good natured, sympathetic, confident, and full of faith. We found Barnabus in the fourth chapter selling his land and bringing the proceeds to the church. In the ninth chapter, we saw him pave the way for Paul to meet with the disciples and become a respected part of the new church. Barnabus remembered Paul when he got to Antioch and brought him from Tarsus to help establish the church. It was in Antioch that the people were first called Christians. We hear little of Barnabus after this point. Whereas Paul contributes in a dramatic way to the progress of the world, Barnabas and those like him make it an enjoyable place to live. Both are pioneers of our world-embracing Christianity.

The people in the southern part of Palestine were suffering from a shortage of food. The Church in Jerusalem was in desperate need. Barnabus and Paul took on the mission of mercy and became the bearers of the first Christian relief fund. It seems Christians have always been interested in relieving the needs of others. If it were purely a practical matter, it could be because hungry people are not good neighbors. Discontented people are not always peaceful. We could relieve them simply to reinforce our own security. That was not the motive of Barnabus and Paul. It is a natural instinct of all human beings to help others in distress. If you saw a small child shivering in the cold, obviously lost, hungry, thinly clad, and afraid, your natural instinct would be to help him. You would not care whether he was Roman Catholic, Protestant, Gentile or a Jew. His nationality and heritage would be totally irrelevant. It is this caring that allowed mankind to focus group efforts and overcome the physical elements in our world.

It is a natural instinct to relieve distress in others because at the lowest level we huddle together to fight our common foes. When we reach the lowest level of humanity, our needs become most basic. Our foes are the primal elements of weather, disease, and death. At this level, we realize we are truly united with all mankind, in the sense that, their trouble is our trouble, their pain and anxiety are our pain and anxiety, and their burden is our burden. At that level, we share the burden of humanity, the burden of the whole race.

These reasons sound plausible and rational, but they are not the real answer. The real reason is that Jesus took this natural instinct, refined it into love, and made it the cornerstone of human character. Jesus taught that, "Love is not just one of the important things in a man’s life; it is the only important thing." If love does not reign over fame, success, wealth, and achievements, the recipient of those things is a failure. During World War II, the Japanese soldiers were astonished to find American doctors treating their wounds. They ignored national and racial differences and treated them because they breathed the same air, felt the same pain and was loved by the same God.

Jesus has been cultivating in us a capacity to care for other people, regardless of their affiliations. We not only have the capacity to love others in distress; we have the command to love. We don’t often think of love as a commandment. We know love must be freely given and unsolicited if it is to be real. But we are commanded to give love freely. We are not told to love if it is convenient, or if the person is congenial, or if you can benefit from it, or if you agree with their politics. We are told to love friend, foe, enemy, known and unknown, whether you suffer or gain, whether you benefit or lose. For love is of God, and without love there is no life worth talking about.

We have a natural instinct, but we also have our Lord’s command to go into all the world to feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked and relieve the needs of those in distress. It is the Christ like thing to do. It demonstrates there is a spirit of loving kindness and compassion dwelling in Christian men and women in spite of the brutal violence of the hardening world around us.