Canter Bridge

Irrepressible mercy is both many-splendored and complicating.

The famous colloquy of Acts 15 is made necessary by the unanticipated vigor with which non-Jews respond to the proclamation that Israel’s messiah has died and come alive again. To James of Jerusalem is given the moment for summation. He responds by framing events in the context of prophetic anticipation:

This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written, ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.’

It turns out that David’s fallen tent will house more than just Jewish tenants. All peoples are now understood to come into its shade. Hints given by the prophets of an incalculable mercy begin to take shape.

The early Jesus movement, it seems, did not prepare for such an eventuality. Yet it was well resourced for making the required adjustments when God’s Spirit began to take gentile lives under its inebriating, invigorating, wisening sway with recognizably the same effects as it had on Jewish followers of Jesus.

The Acts 15 account is paradigmatic in several ways. Not least, it shines a light on the complications that are nearly always incumbent upon disproportionate mercy, which is the measure of God’s mercy at the least in moments like this one. Such a wideness is inconvenient and theologically unsettling.

Always. Still.