Galatians 2:11-21
When we were first married, Andy and I really struggled with
communication. My favorite example of
our struggle happened one night when we had just arrived home from a trip to
Greenville. After the four hour drive,
we stopped at the grocery store so I could buy food for dinner. As we were unloading our bags and groceries
at home, our neighbor came over and invited us to eat at his daughter’s first
birthday. They were serving lasagna and
had enough food for us. I was tired from
the weekend and didn’t want to socialize with a lot of people I didn’t
know. I also didn’t like lasagna, so I
declined saying that I had just bought groceries and was about to cook
dinner. Our sweet neighbor suggested
that we at least come by and take a plate to eat later in the week.
Andy and I went inside our house and I started pulling out
pots and pans to cook dinner. Andy told
me that he thought he’d go over to the neighbors as invited. I assumed he was going over to get a plate to
go and to chat with some new people, so I nodded my head and he left. He came back about thirty minutes later and
told me about all the people he had met and also that he had eaten some
lasagna. My husband is a big eater, and
our dinner still had an hour in the oven, so I thought his lasagna was an appetizer
to the meal he knew I was cooking. You can imagine my surprise when I took our
dinner out of the oven, set the places, called him for supper, and had him
respond, “Remember I already had lasagna?”
We had a fight. From my
perspective, he had gone and eatem dinner after seeing that I was cooking – how
rude! From his perspective, he told me
he was going to go to the party and I nodded my head, so why was I mad he had
eaten there?[1] We were both angry and it
wasn’t really about the lasagna – it never really is about the food, is
it?
The passage in Galatians today is another one of those
instances where dinner posed a big problem – and it wasn’t exactly about the
food. Here is the basic story: Peter
(also called Cephas in this passage) shows up at the church at Antioch – a
church where Jewish and Gentile Christians fellowship well together – and he
freely eats and socializes with all the believers. Then “certain people come from James” and all
of a sudden Peter withdraws from the Gentiles because, as the text says, he was
afraid of the visitors. Most likely, he
is afraid of what these Jews will think about him eating and hanging out with
the Gentiles. You see, prior to Jesus,
Jews did not socialize with Gentiles.
Gentiles did not practice Jewish customs and laws and the lack of
attention to that system made a friendship between the two difficult. After Jesus came and instituted a new system
of faith, it became possible for the two groups to mingle and find unity, and
the church at Antioch was enjoying that new freedom.
Peter well understood the freedom offered in this new
relationship because God had spoken to him directly about his new ability to
eat with Gentile believers in Acts 10.
In this passage, Peter had a vision directly from the Lord concerning
food that is clean and unclean. According
to Jewish law, Peter told the Lord in his vision that he would not eat food
that was not clean. God responded, “Do
not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Again, it really wasn’t all about the food…in
fact, God used the vision to prepare Peter to visit a Gentile believer, eat at
his house, and share the gospel in such a way that the Holy Spirit was poured
out on the Gentiles – to the astonishment of Jewish Christians. The Lord wasn’t talking to Peter as much
about food as he was about the fact that in Christ all people are equal and
that the Lord does not show favoritism.
It is funny, then, that Peter is the one who is intimidated
by the Jewish visitors to Antioch because he is the one who had learned most
directly that how and with whom he eats is no longer important. The text isn’t completely clear about why he
changed his habits except to say that he was afraid of the visitors. Most likely, he wanted to be accepted by this
group from Jerusalem – he wanted to keep their respect, and they were conservative
to the point that they believed eating with Gentiles was still wrong. The big problem with Peter changing his
habits, though, is that he was a leader in the church. So when he stopped eating with the Gentiles,
the other Jews stopped eating with them, too, until there was division in a
church that had previously been united.
It sounds silly that this church started to fall apart over
food, just like it sounds silly that Andy and I fought over lasagna from a 1
year olds birthday party. But, the truth
is that we have all been in these situations that aren’t exactly about the
superficial issue. We have a baby and
stop going to church. We say it is
because we are trying to get a consistent nap schedule and services fall right
in that window – we have devotions at home instead and tell ourselves that is
enough. We are lying to ourselves and
avoiding verses like Hebrews 10:24-25 which tell us not to give up meeting
together and encouraging one another.
You see, it isn’t really about the baby and his nap schedule – it is
really about Satan pulling us away from a community of believers. And it isn’t only about ourselves. When weaker Christians see us avoiding fellowship,
they may think a baby’s schedule should outweigh what the Lord created the
church to be.
Take another example.
Our spouse becomes hard to love.
They are disrespectful and selfish.
We fight all the time. We definitely
have “irreconcilable differences,” and we don’t see how the marriage will
work. So we walk away. We tell ourselves that they love their job
more than us and are essentially having an affair with work, which would qualify
as grounds for divorce in the Bible. We
are ignoring verses about how God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), and we are
showing younger married Christians that marriage isn’t as sacred as God says it
is.
These are big examples, but consider smaller ones…we gossip,
we tell a “white lie,” we avoid someone in need, we cut another car off in
traffic. In all those situations, we are
not representing Christ well, and most likely someone is watching us. It may be a weaker believer or a seeker or
our own child in the backseat, but someone has eyes on us, and we are swaying
their faith – for good or bad. You see,
it isn’t about the action itself. It is
about setting an example. It is about
being who Christ told us to be so that when the world looks at us, they see
Jesus.
Paul understood the implications of Peter changing his
eating habits, and he had the wisdom to call his friend out about it. Thanks to Paul, the church at Antioch was put
back on track. We will all have times
where we struggle with our actions. We
will mess up and make mistakes for sure – we will do so regularly. So, as we work to remember that our actions
should always point to our Savior, we should also work to surround ourselves
with other believers who will put us back on track when we get lost.
[1]
As an interesting side note I later learned that our neighbor Todd, who had
been married a few years, made Andy a big “to go” plate for both of us when he
arrived. I guess Todd knew that if your
wife is at home cooking dinner, you shouldn’t eat at the neighbor’s house. Later Todd joked that he could not believe
Andy had eaten the entire plate before he could wrap it up for him to take
home.
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