forest hill 
May 18, 2025
Fifth Sunday of Easter
New Rules
What do you do when the Bible addresses a problem we simply don’t care about? Does that mean we should just find some other passage to ponder?
Maybe.
But maybe there’s more at stake than first appears.
This week’s reading from Acts wrestles with the question of how Jewish you have to be in order to be a Christian. That’s not a question I’ve ever lost a second of sleep about! How crazy to suggest, in our era, that people should have to eat like Jews in order to be acceptable in the church!
Of course as the gospel began to spread beyond the bounds of Jesus’ initial Jewish audience in Galilee, you can see why it might have been an issue ‘way back when. After all, just about everyone Jesus preached to was Jewish. Like him, they lived near the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Like him, they were rural, and living on the margins. Historically, you can see why folks like that would have been surprised to find non-Jews interested in what Jesus had to say. Historically, you can see why they might have expected those non-Jews to start eating kosher and worshipping at the Jerusalem Temple, just like he did. Just like they did. Historically, it’s a rather odd thing that anybody other than rural Galilean Jews would have been even interested in Jesus’ message.
But history is one thing; theology is another. Historically, it’s clear that non-Jews were interested, and eventually included. We don’t need a passage like the story from Acts to convince us that this was going to be a good thing. History proves that this was indeed how the church would morph and develop after the resurrection. Nobody in our Forest Hill congregation (right now, anyway) is Jewish by birth or practice, and yet we all feel like we belong.
But why, theologically? Why would God think this was a good thing? Why might it matter that we keep reading a story like this, centuries after the historical debate is settled?
Push past the 1st century question of whether Christians have to be Jewish in order to belong, and you move into debates about what it means to belong. Who gets to be a part of our Christian community? Are there entry requirements? Are there tribal or racial requirements? Do you have to take vows? Wear special clothes? Eat certain foods (or avoid some)? What makes a person eligible to join? What might exclude people from joining? What would justify us in wanting to kick someone out?
Put like that, I realize that throughout the centuries we’ve instituted all sorts of requirements. We’ve required people to wear the right clothes, attend church on the right schedule, be baptised, take vows, seek confession when they’ve done something wrong. We’ve required people to behave in certain ways, and we’ve excluded them when they offend our sensibilities. We’ve proclaimed that God doesn’t love the people we exclude. We Christians have created lots of (conflicting! ) requirements, and to be honest, most of those have had very little Biblical justification.
This week’s story from Acts makes me think about all the fences we have put up over the centuries. It makes me ponder what it means to be welcoming, and what it means to imagine that God might love people who don’t follow our rules. What is the United Church of Canada saying when we proclaim there’s a place at the table for everyone? Do we have any limits? Should we? Does God?
Join us on Sunday as we wrestle with what it means to be eligible to belong, and whether our practice of raising fences is really what God expects.