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Update 42 page 11.

In Update 42:
New name
Why infants?
Baptism in CW
Baptism & Fathers
Does history compel?
Is history so clear?
Baptists' integrity
Table fellowship
If God gave
Reborn again

Admission to table fellowship

John Hartley, after an ecumenical ministers' bible study

‘So Peter ordered that they be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ ... When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised him and said “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”’

To me, the most striking aspect of this verse (Acts 11:3) was that Peter was not criticised for speaking about Jesus to Gentiles, nor for baptizing of Gentiles, but of entering into table fellowship with them.

The background, of course, is the Jewish practice of ritual purity and the care which their tradition says is to be taken so that God’s Holy People are not defiled by those who are unclean. The criticism shows that the ‘circumcised believers’ are still thinking like their Jewish compatriots on this issue. In that sense, Christianity was still a subfaith of Judaism in their perception.

But the verse also shows what is really important to these religious people. Their religion found its expression in meals: Passover, the Sabbath, and other Jewish events still focus around mealtimes. Even the word ‘feast’ used of a religious festival gives this emphasis. The fellowship of who you ate with around the table was the highest expression of who your community was. In criticising Peter’s eating with the Gentiles, they are going for the heart of the issue.

Other writers (e.g. Paul Bradshaw, Update No. 37 page 4) have pointed out that, for Jesus, table fellowship was the real initiation rite. But our denominations argue about who can be baptised and whether we can take communion together. Isn’t the real fellowship the sharing of meals in homes together, rather than the sacraments in church buildings. Isn’t this the real meaning of ‘breaking bread’ in Acts 2:42, as amplified in v44 & 46?

As our congregations watch baptisms in our churches, let us ask two real questions. Will we welcome the new believers into our homes and hearts? And do they want to be in this new community? Isn’t that what the baptism is really supposed to mean?

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This web page was last updated on 14th January 2003.