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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, meetings and minutes, faculty meetings, board meetings,

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voters meetings, councils, church conventions, I have been to many of those, hundreds maybe,

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meetings where we keep minutes and waste hours.

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That's a quote from Bruce Metzger reflecting on his 80 years of life.

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Who likes minutes?

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It's not my favorite type of literature, but if we can complain about the hours that are

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wasted we should not complain about the minutes because minutes are so important, especially

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if it's an important meeting like the one we have here in the book of Acts.

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We say it's the Apostolic or the Apostles' Council, but you had elders in the meeting,

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so here in the ESV it says the Jerusalem Council.

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Well it's not actually called a meeting, it just says that they were gathered together,

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and there is a reference to the multitude or to the assembly.

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Was it the first ecumenical council?

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You may read Luther on this on the councils and the church of 1539 and all his discussion

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about if this is still binding or not, if you can eat Blutwurst, blood sausage, and

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then Luther says if this is still binding then we Germans are all doomed because we

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like this Blutwurst and so on.

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So there was one point, one item on the agenda.

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This thing coming from the believers who belong to the party of the Pharisees, they said it's

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necessary to circumcise the believers coming from the Gentiles or from among the Gentiles

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and to order them to keep the law of Moses.

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Luke gives us an abbreviated transcript of the minutes and it's so good to have the minutes.

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When I was reading this text here in Acts 15, I could not but think of an old friend,

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my old friend Leonard.

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This is not his actual name, I'm trying to preserve his true identity.

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Sitting at the far end of the table, he was usually calm and quiet.

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Only occasionally would he be the first one to raise his hand.

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He was usually the last one to speak.

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I didn't realize this until one day a friend said, did you see, have you seen what our

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friend Leonard likes to do?

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He sits there, he doesn't say a word and when we are about to reach a decision or to make

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a decision, oh, he raises his hand and he comes up with a perfect solution, his solution,

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his solution.

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Yeah, so it seemed.

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Something similar happened in Jerusalem that day.

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According to Secretary Luke, after there had been much debate, Peter, oh yeah, Peter, he's

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always the first.

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He stood up and he spoke.

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He talked about how God had chosen him to be a missionary to the Gentiles and how God

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had put his seal of approval on this by giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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And then there must have been some discussion about this because the text says that all

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the assembly or when the assembly had calmed down.

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So somebody else began to speak.

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It was Barnabas and Saul.

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And if I imagine the scene, I can see brother James sitting there quiet and calm, but what

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followed, he was not listening to what Barnabas and Paul had to say.

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They had a beautiful report about the signs and wonders which God had done through them

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among the Gentiles.

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Because when he begins to speak as the last one in the meeting, he reaches back to Simeon.

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He says, Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people

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to his name.

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And when Barnabas and Paul had finished speaking, now it's James' turn.

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As Dr. Scaer puts it in his commentary on James, the apostle of faith, James was possessed

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with such personal self-confidence about his position as the leader of the church that

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he simply ends the council's deliberations by making his own decision normative for the

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church.

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He summed up what he assumed to be the consensus of the group.

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James is pictured by Luke as one in control.

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Now my old friend Leonard, when he started to speak, normally he would begin with a quote

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from the Bible.

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One of his favorites was, all things should be done decently and in order.

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First Corinthians 14.

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And to this he would add a passage from First Corinthians 12 that all things should be done,

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as he would quote from the Portuguese, para un fin provetozo, for a beneficial purpose,

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or as our translation has it, for a common good.

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Now this is exactly what James did back then in Jerusalem.

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He started by quoting the Bible.

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And he says the following.

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Peter has said that God has chosen a people for his name.

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He visited the Gentiles and with this the words of the prophets agree.

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If you grant me a moment of homiletical liberty, I would say that James made preparations for

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this so-called council.

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He read the prophets.

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He was probably impressed by Amos.

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And Amos has a lot to say about Gentiles.

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For three transgressions of Damascus and for four, I will not revoke the punishment.

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For three transgressions of Gaza and for four, I will not revoke the punishment.

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But fortunately he read Amos all the way through to the end.

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And then he found the gospel.

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He found this oracle.

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After this I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David.

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I will restore it.

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The remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,

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all the Gentiles.

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So thanks be to God that through the prophets, the apostles, and brother James, we are not

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troubled by the law of Moses.

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No yoke is on our neck.

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We are saved through the grace of Jesus.

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But besides quoting the Bible, brother James, just like my friend Leonard, he was known

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as pastor, not so much as professor.

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He, like James, had a pastoral heart.

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So James comes up with pastoral wisdom.

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He was anticipating trouble, weak brothers and sisters being offended by the Gentile

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way of life.

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And so he said, well, my judgment is we should write to them to abstain from this, from that,

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and from that.

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A word from scripture and a piece of pastoral wisdom.

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Today, as we remember James of Jerusalem, brother of Jesus and martyr, we are reminded

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that we, according to the Augsburg Confession, we look up to these saints, also to see them

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as models, not just of faith, but also of life, each one according to his or her vocation.

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Now the vocation of most of us in this chapel is the vocation of a theologian, even if you

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are a lay theologian.

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So for us theologians, James is a good model, a word from scripture, pastoral wisdom.

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And so we can turn to God and say, praise the Almighty, my soul, adore him.

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Bless all my soul, his holy name.

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Alleluia, alleluia.

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Amen.