Day 5

Readings and Thoughts for Thursday, February 7, 2008

Acts 2:37-42 The First Converts

This passage represents every preacher’s dream. You stand up, say a few words, and people are “cut to the heart” and immediately commit their lives to Christ. One sermon – 3,000 converts! For some reason, I haven’t found my own preaching to be quite so effective as that. Of course, the real preacher here isn’t Peter, it’s the Holy Spirit. God is working and speaking through Peter. The Holy Spirit informs his mind and mouth.

The challenge of preaching is the strange combination of discipline (preparation, study of scripture, prayerful reflection, consultation with others) and inspiration (trusting the Holy Spirit to inform what you say). Peter has both spiritual preparation and inspiration. Most preachers tend to veer off toward one extreme or the other – trusting the validity of their own scholarship and preparation or trusting God to save the day when they are unprepared. Most of you, I realize, aren’t regularly preaching, but this balance exists in other contexts as well. To be effective in the world as a servant of Jesus, a Christian disciple must be both prepared (through prayer and study) and inspired (empowered by God beyond your own abilities). It’s true that you can accomplish very little when you only rely on your own abilities, but if you do not train and utilize the natural abilities God has provided to you, you are not nearly so good a vessel for God’s inspiration.

When have you felt inspired or empowered by God? When did someone else’s words inspire or encourage you?

Acts 2:43-47 Life Among the Believers

This passage summarizes the remarkable community life of the believers immediately after they receive the Holy Spirit. Notice that it is not one person or another who is being described, but everyone together; the church is one body in Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the heroic actor of the story more than any human agent is (even Peter).

The believers are enthusiastic in the true sense of the word. En (in) + theos (God) – the believers are living in God. In our time, enthusiasm is often a short-lived thing, a high of the moment, but Luke is anxious to let us know that what happens in the early church is not a mere burst of happy feelings. There is real action that follows the arrival of the Holy Spirit. People make faith commitments and then they begin to live new lives according to that commitment.

The early church is marked by four behaviors – behaviors that continue to be our best model for the church and the best measuring stick for evaluating our own spiritual life together.

1) They are dedicated to the apostles’ teaching. Peter gives one kind of message to those who are outsiders or not-yet believers in the faith, as we see in his Pentecost sermon, but there is another level of depth for those who have already made a faith commitment. The faithful need to be educated, to be challenged, and to learn the full story of Christ.

2) They are in fellowship. Keep in mind that this is an international community, a community of two genders, a community that spans in influence from slaves to the powerful. Not only is there a social fellowship between these disparate people, but a deep sustaining fellowship. They share their food; they sell their possessions and provide for one another. The depth of community that they experience together is a miracle in itself, showing “the ability of resurrection faith to overturn all material and social arrangements.”

3) They break bread together. Remember how often, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is at table with others. He was criticized for eating with those who were unsuitable, “This man receives sinners and eats with them (Luke 15:2)” Likewise, the table of the early church combines an unexpected range of people and demonstrates their deep unity, solidarity, and friendship. Luke is not entirely clear whether this “breaking of the bread” is meant to describe regular meals or the Lord’s Supper – most likely it was both. In Jewish tradition, blessings and rituals are usually offered in the home as part of a full meal experience. As far as we know, there was no separation between the sacrament of Communion and the potluck dinner in Acts.

4. They pray together. In Jewish tradition, like in the Christian monastic tradition, there were particular hours that were designated for prayer. The new church community does not deviate from this pattern, but continues to keep up with the religious traditions they have already known as Jews and to attend temple with the rest of the Jewish community. Only later will Christians, both by choice and by force, be excluded from the temple and synagogues. This life of prayer was the source of their good mood, their “glad and generous hearts.”

In your own experience of the church today, how is it most like the first Christian community? How is it different from those first Christians?