Reading the Bible is Simple . . . (20)
Reading the Bible is Simple . . . (20)
The Gospel of Luke-Acts
Luke: The Missionary Gospel
A Gospel and Its Sequel
Luke and Acts are written by the same person. The first is a gospel, a portrait of Jesus earthly ministry, and the latter, its sequel, a portrait of the resurrected Jesus life in the church in the 1st century. At 27.5% of the New Testament Luke-Acts is the largest contribution to the New Testament. They are tied together by repeated ascension stories at the end of the gospel and beginning of the Acts, both of which serve Luke’s larger end of grounding the missionary outreach of the church in the action of God in Jesus and in the church for purposes of reassurance and motivation.
“Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I, too, decided, as one having a grasp of everything from the start, to write a well-ordered account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may have a firm grasp (or be reassured) of the words in which you have been instructed.” (Lk.1:1-4)
Theophilus (Lover of God) is a Gentile Christian and perhaps also a placeholder for a community of Gentile Christians for whom Luke wishes to certify the Jesus’ story as the true story of their lives and the one who calls them to their true vocation.
Acts, then, Luke writes to Theophilus, as assurance that this same Jesus, risen and ascended as Lord, continues his work in the world and catches his followers up in that work. “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach (1:1). And if Jesus “began” these things, he will continue and finish them in and through us as the story of Acts will tell. Hans Frei says it beautifully.
“The Christian community (the church militant) has been put here on earth not for self-nurture or nourishment but to exercise the painful, glorious work of reconciliation across the terrifying barriers erected all across our communal existences in this world. To be the community bonded by the liberating Spirit is first of all to embody and exhibit the Spirit in its own joint life and not only in its ecclesiastical order; but secondly and fully as significantly, it is to be a community which lives in and works with the faith that God is the God of but also beyond all nations, creeds, races, classes and interest groups. It is to live in the hope that Christians are freed to be active in the often apparently (but not truly) hopeless task of reconciliation across these barriers. This is the office of the members of this community even though it may well go against their ingrained disposition because they – like all people – are themselves members of particular groups with particular interests. But to be lifted beyond such partiality to a far, far wider compassion for all (including one’s enemies) and especially those who have never met with justice, is the liberating work of that Spirit who mysteriously, invisibly, hastens us all toward the glory of His salvation – despite the appearances on all sides.”[1]
The Four S’s of Luke-Acts: The Matrix of Mission
Luke shapes his twofold portrait of the earthly and risen Jesus in terms of four S’s:
-Spirit (with a capital S): the major S enfolding both stories under its wings.
-sociality: the drawing together of Christ-followers into profound community with one another.
-solidarity: the drawing together of Christ-followers into a sharing of life with others, especially those others pushed down, unknown, unheard, in need, rejected, devalued, and damned.
-sacraments: though in the fluid times of the early church it is hard to nail down a precise pattern or “right” way to do things like baptism and communion, both practices are essential to the quality and character of the church’s life.
These four S’s make up the missionary character of Luke two-fold story. The chief dynamic is “reaching out” and the hoped-for result is an “at-oneing” of disparate, divided, broken reality. The Spirit energizes and brings to completion such acts and hopes.
We will observe this matrix at work all over Luke-Acts.
Luke
The sheer size of Luke-Acts prevents working through each book serially. Instead, I will work through some major passages in each illustrative of our three main themes in their Lucan expressions. For Luke these will be the Preface (1:1-4), the Birth Story (1:5-2:52), Jesus’ Inaugural Sermon at Nazareth (4:16-30), the Travel Narrative (9:51-19:27), and the Emmaus story (24:13-35).
Preface (1:1-4)
David Garland writes,
“Luke is the only gospel to include a preface in which the author addresses the one to whom the work is dedicated. He composes these opening verses in elegant Greek with a carefully balanced structure and employs current literary conventions used in opening dedications. This care and skill would reassure an educated Greek reader. It signals that the author was aware of the customs used in the non-Christian world and that he self-consciously intended for his work to be read widely and by those familiar with these literary conventions.”[2]
Luke uses this Hellenistic preface in the style of a good Hellenistic historian to promote his aim of reassuring his readers that the story he will tell, written self-consciously in the fashion of a biblical Old Testament narrative is reliable and may be “taken to the bank” (as it were).
Jesus’ Birth Story (1:5-2:52)
Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth (from Mary’s perspective) to connect him with the Old Testament story. Characters like John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth, Simeon, and the prophetess Anna, in character as well as message breathe that atmosphere.
Further, this story also puts Luke’s work within the ambit of our three central themes.
-kingship (1:32,46-55,69-71; 2:11,29-32)
-covenant (1:54-55,72-73,2:10-11,29-32,38)
-presence (1:19-20,73-79,2:49)
Here is the largest horizon of Luke’s thought. Our matrix of mission occurs within God’s movement to fulfil his eternal purpose of having a world full of people with whom to dwell in fellowship and love as indicated by these themes.
The matrix of mission is an implicate of these three themes.
-Spirit pervades the birth stories. Reference to the Spirit occurs in 1:15,35,41,67; 2:25- 27.
-Sociality is a keynote of God’s faithfulness to his people (1:54-55,67-78; 2:32,38) and his world (1:78-79; 2:10,31-32).
-Solidarity with the poor and needy is found in Mary’s Magnificat (1:52-53,78-79; 2:31-32).
-Sacraments are implied by the repeated emphasis on worship (1:8ff.; 2:22-38,49)
Jesus’ Inaugural Sermon in Nazareth (4:16-30)
After Jesus’ baptism and temptation (3:21-4:13), Luke replaces Mark and Matthew’s account of Jesus opening his ministry with his announcement of the kingdom with a later event (Mk.6:1-6) spelling out the meaning of the kingdom as his first preaching in his gospel.
This makes this story enormously important as a prism through which to view the rest of Luke’s portrait of Jesus. And that prism is Jubilee!
"The Biblical Standard of social and economic justice is grounded in the call to keep the Sabbath” (Ched Myers). Starting with the creational institution of Sabbath in Gen.2:1-3, its establishment in the covenant where God's rest is extended to humanity and creation (Dt.5:12-15), an economy of enough for all is presented as the will of God for his world. A world of rampant poverty and extreme inequality between the rich and the poor are verboten according to God. Remember the manna in the wilderness (Ex.16)! The Lord's Prayer and its petition for daily bread echoes this story and the provision for the present.
The Sabbatical Year (Ex.23:10-11; Dt.15:1-18) take the Sabbath to another degree. Every seventh year fields were to lie fallow and debts forgiven. The redistribution of property and resources rebalances society and its inevitable inequities.
This Sabbath logic is pushed to the nth degree in the Jubilee laws (Lev.25). (Jubilee is named after the jovel, a ram's horn that is blown to announce the forgiveness of debt.) During a Jubilee year (every fiftieth year, seven sabbatical years) debt is forgiven, land lost or forfeited is returned to its original owners, and slaves are freed. As Meyers puts it, the Jubilee served to "remind people that land belongs to God, that they are an Exodus people."
Jesus’ sermon here in Nazareth (4:16-21) is a proclamation that the great, longed hoped for final Jubilee has begun. We have seen that Matthew does this as well in a different way. When he says,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”
That “year of the Lord’s favor” is the expected Jubilee!
Jesus’ enacts this Jubilee, bringing this “good news (literally, “evangelizing”) to the poor.” These poor are “not only the economically impoverished but all those who are marginal or excluded from human fellowship, the outcast.”[3] They can look to God alone for help.
This “evangelizing” of the poor Jesus summarizes with three declarations:
-“release to the captives” - This release ranges from
-exorcisms (13:16) bringing freedom from the devil,
-sin (1:77; 3:3). The word “release” is usually used in regard to forgiveness of sins in Luke-Acts (1:77; 3:3; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18).
-later rabbis believed that failure to practice a sabbath year (Jer.34:8,15,17) leading to exile was a common in Jesus’ time. From such exile only God could release Israel.[4]
-“recovery of sight to the blind” – this may mean
-actual, physical blindness (7:21–22; 18:35– 43) which excluded one from the temple (Lev 21:17–23; 2 Sam 5:8).
-metaphorically, a condition brought about by sin (see 6:39 where Jesus speaks of one blind person guiding another and leading both to fall into a pit.
-to be freed from darkness and have one’s eyes opened is salvation (1:79; 3:6). On the Emmaus road Jesus opens the eyes of those two disciples to see God at work in Jesus (24:31).
-“to set free those who are oppressed” – One scholar sees “oppressed” to reflect a warfare setting where the oppressed, the losers, are at the mercy of the victors. He translates this word here as the “shattered.”[5]
“To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” is Jesus’ closing line of his sermon. Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “This is God’s year to act!” The Jubilee time is to be filled with all sorts of liberating, division crossing, taboo-crashing, opportunity-creating, harm-healing, full-bodied, life-affirming, equality-based, God-centered action. We see this all in Jesus and he works to assure his followers display it as well in a world still hostile to God’s offer and action to save it from Satan and itself. N. T. Wright says,
“. . . although Jesus did not envisage that he would persuade Israel as a whole to keep the Jubilee year he expected his followers to live out the Jubilee principle among themselves. He expected, and taught, that they should forgive one another not only “sins” but also debts. This may help to explain the remarkable practice within the early church whereby resources were pooled, in a fashion not unlike the Essene community of goods. Luke’s description of this in Acts 4:34 echoes the description of the sabbatical year in Deuteronomy 15:4.31.”[6]
With Jesus’ punch line, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v.21), it all hits the fan. At first. It sounds great to his listeners. They know Jesus is a local boy and they, not unreasonably, hope or expect him to do for them the acts of power he has done in Capernaum and prove himself to them.
Jesus knows this about them, however, and calls them on their desire to have him for themselves and their own benefit with a proverb, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” And he follows this up with two stories one about Elijah and another about Elisha. These stories reflect how God reached out through these two to Gentiles instead of Jews to bless them in their need. Furthermore, their actions foreshadow Jesus’ own healing of a centurion’s slave (7:1-10) and his raising of the widow of Nain’s son from the dead (7:11-17) and the Gentile ministry as a whole. Jesus’ townspeople reflect the apostate ethnocentric Israel which resisted Jesus the way they did.
Their praise turned to rage, the townspeople decide to rid themselves of this erstwhile “golden boy” by forcing him off a cliff. God, however, somehow preserves him (shades of God’s preserving him from the grave!) and his Jubilee ministry goes on!
Spirit, sociality, solidarity, and even sacraments (foreshadowed in the stories about Elijah eating with the widow of Zarephath and her son and the cleansing of Naaman the Syrian in the river) are evidently present here. This makes Luke’s importation of this episode from its chronological spot in Jesus’ ministry to the forefront as the most appropriate story to serve as the best prism for his Jubilee ministry is amply justified!
The Missionary Middle (9:51-19:27)
Luke’s account of Jesus journeying to Jerusalem is much longer than in either Mark or Matthew. He makes sure readers cannot miss the importance of this section by referring to the journey and its destination Jerusalem ten times (9:51,53,13:22,33;17:11;18:31;19:11(2x),28,41). He also signals the theological importance of this section by not following geography accurately. It’s the message that matters for him not the itinerary.
That Jesus goes and must go to Jerusalem is foreshadowed in the transfiguration story where the figures of Moses and Elijah are seen conversing with Jesus about “his departure (exodos) which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (9:31). When he later “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51) we understand the import of what is at stake in this journey and of the teaching he gives to his disciples along the way – to effect the New Exodus and to nurture his New Exodus people.
That Luke has grouped together material by theme rather than geography is clear when we realize that his order follows that of the book Deuteronomy.[7] I can’t work through all this material here.[8] But I will select passages which highlight our matrix of mission.
Deuteronomy is the Old Testament’s fullest expression of a Torah-centered way of life. Luke presents Jesus as fullest revelation and deepest interpretation of that way of life. The way of life which is missionary at its source and as its goal. Even though we can’t explore all these Deuteronomic connections here, know that they exist and set the tone and temper for the Missionary Middle of his gospel.
This missionary middle of Luke builds on and extends Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth in 4:16-21.
Spirit
The presence and the power of the Spirit underwrites and energizes this journey to Jerusalem, to destiny, for Jesus, and for his disciples. The Spirit, of course, foreshadows Pentecost in Acts.
10:21: At that very hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
11:13: If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
12:10: And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
12:12: for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.”
Sociality
Early on in the journey Jesus emphasizes the cost of the sociality of the kingdom, the total commitment to him which overrides all others, even otherwise good and proper things to do (9:57-62): “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (v.62).
He sends the disciples out together in mission to endure the hardships of the situation Israel was in viz-a-viz Rome and the internal struggles within Judaism over its identity (10-1-12) as well as the joy of seeing the fruit of their labor (10:17-20).
Jesus gives his disciples a model prayer to guide them in 11:1-4 followed by a parable about a friend persistently seeking bread from his neighbors and a teaching about asking, seeking, and knocking (11:5-13).
Parables about the kingdom as mustard seed or yeast carry the emphasis on the kingdom as a social and communal affair are found in 13:18-21. Party etiquette kingdom-style Jesus gives in 14:7-14 followed by a parable about a great dinner feast (14:15-24).
The parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32) celebrates the reconciliation and reunion of a son to his father and family (though his older brother is not happy to see him back. The puzzling and troubling parable of the Dishonest Steward is clearly about sociality even if the details are difficult to work out (16:1-9).
Jesus holds up little children as models for his followers (17:15-17). And children are all about family, belonging, and sociality.
Wee Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus shows how the kingdom breaks in on a rich man, a despised tax collector in fact, and moves him to return his ill-gotten gains and share his wealth with the poor (19:1-10).
Jesus himself weeps over Jerusalem for the disaster coming upon it and even more for its stubborn refusal to be the Abrahamic people God meant them to be (19:41-44).
Solidarity
With solidarity we “see the teeth” (as it were) of the missionary matrix and, in truth, the gospel itself. Jesus, the baptized Son, Servant, and Sacrifice blazes the path for us to follow together. Jesus walks this way before us: “Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem” (13:32). And he tells his disciples, “Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (10:3).
This “way,” which became a name for the followers of Jesus (8 times in Acts), became by the Spirit the presence of Jesus in the world. The Missionary Middle of Luke’s gospel displays the cost, character, and culmination of this Way for its followers
-cost: total, exclusive, commitment (9:57-62); no hypocrisy (12:1-3); renounce greed and hoarding (12:13-21); count the cost of bearing the cross (14:25-33); leaving everything for Jesus (18:28-30); renounces wealth (18:1-27).
-character: total dependence on God (10: 1-12; 12:22-32); childlike dependence on Jesus (10:21-24; 18:15-17); pray-ers (11:1-3; 18:1-14); hear and keep God’s word (11:28); dependence on Holy Spirit (12:11-12); prepared and ready for action (12:35-40,41-48); aware of the “times” they live in (12:54-56) and how to respond (13:6-9); understand and align with God’s action (13:18-21); passionate and heart-broken over the faithlessness of the people of God (13:31-35); salty (14:34-35); a seeker of the lost and delighter in reconciliation (15:1-32); aware of and willing to deal graciously with the failings of others (17:1-4); maintains a proper view of self (17:7-10); faithfully works with what they have been given (19:11-27).
-culmination: victory over demonic forces (1O:20; 11:14-23,24-26); being a “Good Samaritan” (10:25-37); crossing gender role boundaries (10:38-42); confront the powers that be and encounter their rejection (11:35-54); clear and fearless confession of the gospel (12:4-12); experiences rejection and division on account of Jesus (12:49-53; 13:1-5; 13:22-30); settle disputes against you apart from legal action (12:57-59); healing the outsider the essence of Sabbath (13:10-17); radical humility and hospitality (14: 7-24).
We can see from this profile of a missionary in this section of Luke how interconnected the cost of the mission, the character and the acts of a missionary are. We will see in our discussion of the Emmaus Road event that the sacraments are essential as well.
This quote from Howard Thurman sums it up pretty well. “The religion of Jesus says to the disinherited, ‘Love your enemy. Take the initiative on seeking ways by which you may have the experience of a common sharing of mutual worth and value. It may be hazardous, but we have to do it.”[9]
The Emmaus Road Experience (Luke 24:13-35)
This rich, rich story has much for us to chew on. More than we can take on here. But I urge you to ponder the whole of it on your own. For our purposes, I want us to notice, first, the way this story highlights the centrality and utter importance of Jesus’ resurrection. There is no way to gainsay this. John Updike’s famous “Seven Stanzas at Easter” makes this clear.
“Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.”[10]
Each gospel insists on the “thatness” of Jesus’ resurrection, its reality. Jesus is alive, more alive than we can know, as C. S. Lewis might say. But at least as much as we are alive. He has purposes and acts toward achieving those purposes. That “fact,” however, cannot be known by ordinary human perception. No missionary is made out of the “thatness” of Jesus’ resurrection. Cleopas and his friend walking to Emmaus that day are speaking together about the “thatness” of all that has happened around this Jesus.
That level of dealing with Jesus always fails to open us to the true meaning of scripture. Jesus says as much in vv.25-26: “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” He then leads them on a Bible study, I’d love to have heard (v.27)!
This Bible study has a place, indeed, an important place, in our experience. Even though it does not by itself result in the missionary-making Jesus intends, it does when engaged in openness to the living Christ in the power of his Spirit drive our seeking that relation to the Living One essential to missionary making.
That desire moves the two disciples to insist on Jesus staying with them that evening. He was prepared to go on without them but accedes to their urging because of their desire for him.
At dinner that evening, however, something extraordinary happens. First, the guest, Jesus, becomes the host (v.30). He blessed bread, broke it and gave it to them. “And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” They met the Jesus, the risen and living Jesus, they had discussed and even talked with, but failed to really know.
But now at this supper they knew him. In his reality, yes. But that he vanishes from their sight is Luke’s way of indicating they now knew him in this “more than alive as we know it reality of his new existence. And in this experience, this sacramental experience, these disciples become missionaries and must return immediately to Jerusalem and evangelize the disciples there with this good news!
And their later experience of this Jesus, they receive their missionary commission (“witnesses” Jesus calls them (v.48) and become the missionaries Luke’s story thus far has prepared them to become!
Conclusion
Luke’s gospel prepares us to hear the message of his second work Acts. The two are connected by different accounts of Jesus’ ascension. The former sums up the gospel while the latter uses this story to direct our reading of his story of the work of the risen Jesus in his post-historical ministry. The missionary Jesus meets his missionary church!
Acts: Jesus the King, Covenant People, and Presence of God Takes on the World
“In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach” – with these words Luke continues the story of (the post-resurrection) Jesus as he moves out into the Mediterranean world. The difference with the gospel of Luke is that in Acts Jesus moves out in and as a people known as the Way (9:2;18:25,26;19:9,23;22:4;24:14,22).
As Jesus had embodied those three central realities of the biblical story himself in his earthly ministry, Luke extends that ministry beyond the resurrection as the ascended Jesus pours out his Spirit on and in his people such that they become his body spreading his presence where ever they go as King, Covenant, and Temple.
Acts Trinitarian[11] Beginning (1:1-8)
Theophilus, the individual and/or a placeholder for a Gentile contingent, remains Luke’s intended audience. He signals what he is up to, or better, what grounds the story he is going to tell. And it is a trinitarian story.
-Jesus, the Son, is the one who “began” a work in the gospel but will continue to do in this story (1:1).
-this continuation of the story of Jesus depends on the church’s imminent “baptism with the Holy Spirit” (1:5).
-the guarantor of this story is the Father who has set the times or periods of history “by his own authority” (1:7).
And this trinitarian foundation remains Luke’s through Acts.
The Three Central Themes of Acts
Kavin Rowe in his splendid book World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age identifies these themes as “core ecclesial practices” which correlate with our three central themes:
-the confession of Jesus as Lord (Kyrios)/a way of stating God’s intention of being present with us on this earth forever.
-the active mission “to the end of the earth”/God’s kingship, rule, and authority over all his creation.
-the assembly of the “Christians”[12]/theme of covenant, God’s people with, in, and through whom he would live.
These form an interdependent umbrella under which Luke’s story unfolds in its manifold variety.
The World of Acts
Willie James Jennings offers this brilliant overview of the world the people of Jesus go out into.
“In Acts we find faith caught between diaspora and empire. Faith is always caught between diaspora and empire. It is always caught between those on the one side focused on survival and fixated on securing a future for their people and on the other side those intoxicated with the power and possibilities of empire and of building a world ordered by its financial, social, and political logics that claim to be the best possible way to bring stability and lasting peace. The book of Acts is read poorly when we forget this double bind or forget the pain of Israel in its pages. There is palpable fear flowing through the narrative and not just the fear of the Israel who resists Messiah Jesus and his followers but also the fear of the Israel who embraces King Jesus but is unclear about the Spirit’s leading. The Spirit always confronts our fear in order to free faith to live in its true home in God. But this is not easy. Indeed the context of Acts is struggle. The content of Acts is also struggle. It is struggle in two senses. It is the struggle against the powers and principalities that exploit the emotional currents of diaspora and empire, seeking to drive people to kill, steal, or destroy for the sake of securing diaspora or empire’s futures. The second sense of struggle is the struggle to yield to the Spirit, following God into the new that God imagines and is bringing about for the world.”[13]
This people is after Pentecost God’s transnational multiethnic nation. It has no borders or boundaries to protect or seek to extend, no interests to support or go to war to acquire, no enemies to repulse or destroy, no policies to pursue save mercy and justice. It lives by the promise that its Lord, Jesus Christ, reigns and will reign over God’s world, though it has no mandate or desire to impose this rule on other peoples or nations. Indeed, the way God exercises this rule is a sacrificial, suffering, and even dying servanthood, often called martyrdom.
I would put it this way. God’s people, from Gen.12 on and more fully realized after Jesus’ death and resurrection, was to be a “subversive, counter-revolutionary movement.”
“The church is to be subversive. It is to nonviolently undermine from the bottom up the attitudes, actions, patterns, and systems put in place due to the revolution of humanity against God in the garden.
The church is to be counter-revolutionary demonstrating and declaring in its own life the designs God always intended for human life and setting itself and suffering for its resistance to the passions and projects of rebellious humanity. We live for the way the world will be not for the way it is or was.”[14]
The Way as a Movement
What would life be like in such a movement? To answer that is to begin to read Luke’s gospel follow-up rightly. Stephen Addison says that a genuine movement has five marks:
-White-Hot Faith
-Commitment to the Cause
-Contagious Relationships
-Rapid Mobilization
-Adaptive Methods
I propose to explore the church in Acts by unfolding these five marks of a movement, a subversive Count er-Revolutionary Movement (SCRM).
Five Marks of the Church in Acts as a Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement
White-Hot Faith: Faith that Waits
The church in Acts begins not with the Pentecost out-pouring of the Spirit in Acts 2, as is commonly believed, but rather with this, “While staying with them, (Jesus) ordered (his disciples) not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father” (1:4). A call to wait! Together!
Jesus gives his disciples extensive instruction during his post-resurrection-pre-ascension 40-Day Seminar appearing to them and teaching them about the kingdom of God. Then he gives them the above cited command to wait, be together, ponder all that has happened, process it, marinate in it, become acclimated to it in anticipation of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” soon to come.
Waiting. The dread reality of life in our ever-accelerating world.[15] Waiting. Useless nonproductivity. Unendurable save for our cellphones. Waiting. What good can ever come of that?
Well, according to Luke, at least the birth of the church. Christ’s command to wait is the womb of the nascent church. To wait for the promised Holy Spirit.
To wait for this Spirit means at least two crucial truths we are always in danger forgetting:
-We cannot do God’s work in our own power.
-Acts should properly be titled [16]“The Acts of the Triune God” rather than the Acts of the Apostles.”
Waiting together is the space where the church discovered God moving among them anew, preparing them for Jesus’ ascension and the Spirit’s arrival, for Jesus’ physical absence and Spiritual presence with them, for the birth (and rebirth) of that white hot passion that keeps the church from declining into a mere institution.[17] Andrew Root and Blair Bertrand write, ”. . . it’s only out of this being together, this waiting, that we encounter the living God. In encountering this living God we are called out into the world to follow this God who loves the world (John 3:16).”[18]
Those early followers did wait together for a while. But after a time they started to get that twitch to do something. So they elected Matthias to replace Judas as the 12th apostle. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, even necessary to do at some point, the fact that we never hear of this Matthias again suggests it was unnecessary activity at that point. “This (selection of Matthias) is the acts of the apostles, not the act of God. They do not get in trouble with God, but their action doesn’t lead anywhere. It was kind of useless, a distraction, unnecessary to the larger goal of the church.[19]
Faithful waiting, prayer, fellowship, became the occasion for the birth of a gospel movement when it prepared them for the gift of the Spirit.
Commitment to the Cause: Faith that Grows
When Pentecost arrives and onlookers suspect the disciples of day-drinking Peter breaks out in sermon which invites his hearers to consider what they are seeing as the fulfilment of God’s promise to his people and the dawn of a new phase of Israel’s story with him. Peter’s call for his hearers to “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38) summons them to embrace this moment and in faith become part of this “cause” (the new people of God) as well.
The continuation of his call makes this even clearer: “’For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.’” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation’” (2:39-40).
It is worth noting that upon coming to faith, new believers were initiated into that community of waiting which nurtures White-Hot faith: “So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:41-42).
Contagious Relationships: Faith that Glows
“Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:43-47)
Too often we miss the point of this story by getting embroiled in debates over whether this passage is “communism” or not and whether today’s church ought to follow this as a pattern to live by. But the point here for readers today is not a debate over economic systems or a literalistic pattern to base present-day church life on. It’s much more important than that.
The quality of this new community in Jesus Christ was such that in its own world (which knew nothing of either communism or capitalism, of course) it drew people into a new life by its luminosity as the kind of life God intends his human creatures to enjoy – their goods, time, homes, hearts, and praise of God overflowing into a common life many found hard to resist and through which God their hearts.
Rapid Mobilization
A church movement remains sensitive to the will of its Lord and open to reorienting itself and plans when that will requires a new direction and focus.
-Acts 6:1-7: as the church grew a crisis emerged when the Hellenists felt their widows were being neglected in the daily food distribution. The apostles had up to this time had that responsibility of the distribution but the church’s growth now required a rethink. For the apostles to do their primary duty to teach, preach, and study the scriptures, they called for the people to select a new group of Spirit-filled, reputable men to take charge of the distribution. Need caused by growth called for change which was addressed.
-Acts 8:26-40: an angel directs Philip to take a wilderness road where he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch pondering the scripture and in need of instruction in its meaning. Philip so instructs him and when they came upon some water the eunuch requests baptism. Philip, having baptized the man is “snatched away” by the Spirit to another field of ministry.
-Acts 10 &15 (see below)
-Acts 16:6-15: here Luke displays the sensitivity to the Lord’s direction. Twice the Spirit blocks the direction Paul and his people wanted to go. And then Paul had a dream in the night where a “man of Macedonia” appeared to him begging the apostle to come and work there. Paul did so being “convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news” there. Divine dream direction redirected Paul’s mission work here.
Adaptive Methods
Adaptive methods are the innovative responses that have to be made when one realizes the old “tried and true” ways of doing things or addressing problems or crises no longer work. Acts is a story written in a liminal time when the people of God are no longer what they were and not yet what they will be. Thus this is a period requiring a series of adaptive responses to new situations. I think it’s better to read the whole book this way than trying to pick out various instances here and there.
Critical Passages
As the Way made its way from “Jerusalem . . . all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8) some moments stand out as critical to the course of the story.
Acts 2
If the early church gestates passes its period of gestation in waiting, Pentecost delivers it into the Mediterranean world of the 1st century a.d. Much can and has been said about this event. Here I focus on the pattern tying the rise of the prototypical fallen human drive to empire, Babel (Gen.11:1-9) to that of God’s empire, seen in the church, in Acts 2.
Babel (Gen.11)
-Empire established on fallen human drives of finding their own significance and security (v.4)
-establishes a religious center for its imperial drives (vv.3-4)
-unified will and language (v.1)
-God “comes down” to frustrate human dreams of empire and confuses their languages and understanding (vv.5-7)
-God scatters the people abroad, and their city is abandoned unfinished
New People of God (Acts 2)
-this new people nonimperial, based on God’s love of diversity and his designs for humanity
-establishes a new people as God’s new Temple and center
-God unifies across ethnicities and languages
-The Spirit “comes down” to give each different group the capacity to understand each other and God’s work
-God the Spirit “comes down” to a Jerusalem filled with Jews from all over the region (v.5)
Pentecost does not reverse or nullify Babel, returning humanity to a ”one people, one language” world. Rather it dismantles the theological infrastructure of human empire displacing it with God’s own imperial movement.
Acts 10
Cornelius, a God-fearing centurion, a gentile, has a dream to seek out Peter in Joppa and ask him to come for a visit at his home. The next day at lunchtime, Peter in Joppa falls into a trance in which he beholds a large sheet coming down from heaven filled with all kinds of animals. “It contained animals, clean and unclean, appropriate and inappropriate, appealing and repulsive, desired and despised.”[20] Peter is commanded to kill and eat these creatures by a voice identified as the Lord. Aghast, Peter refuses saying he has never eaten anything unclean. The voice replies, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This is repeated three times so as to get through to the good Jew Peter.
As Peter ponders this vision, Cornelius’ men arrive to request him to come with them to the centurion’s home. The Spirit alerts him to their arrival and instructs him to go with them. And Peter does.
They arrive at Cornelius’ home and find a crowd gathered waiting for him. They attempt to worship him but Peter rebuffs this and addresses the people: “You yourselves know that it is improper for a Jew to associate with or to visit an outsider, but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. Now may I ask why you sent for me?”
Cornelius reiterates his experience for Peter and declares they are present and ready to heat what God has given him to say to them. “Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him.:” And he proceeds to tell the crowd what God has done through Jesus for them.
The irony that the apostle to the Jews should be the one who becomes convinced and to proclaim that the Gentiles too can now become part of God’s people should not escape us. Nor should the astonishing revelation that the fulfilment of the promise that God would bless the world through Abraham’s family in Gen.12:3 is happening right before their eyes!
This is, if course, the moment that changes everything. As hard as it proves to be for many to get their minds and hearts around this stunning development, nothing will ever be the same again for the people of the Way.
Our next crucial moment in Acts flows directly from this moment as we see the people struggling with the Gentile inclusion seeking an adaptive solution for this momentous revelation and its consequences.
Acts 15
Tensions over the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God reached a crisis point over the issue of whether circumcision ought to be required for membership. “Certain individuals” of the “sect of the Pharisees” (15:5) argued salvation and inclusion among the faithful required it, others not. Finally, a meeting of “apostles and elders” (15:6) was convened in Jerusalem to adjudicate the matter.
Peter delivers a stirring address recounter his experience in learning from God that Gentiles were accepted by God based on faith apart from any other requirements, only God’s grace. Next Barnabas and Paul reported on their experiences of God’s work among the Gentiles. James takes the stage next and leads a reflection on the prophetic passage from Amos 9:11-12 indicating God’s restoration of Israel would include the Gentiles as sufficient justification for accepting them into God’s people without other restrictions or requirements only that they “abstain only from things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from whatever has been strangled and from blood” (15:20).
James’ proposal is an adaptive resolution to this crisis. He weaves together scripture and the experience of key leaders working with new Gentile believers to resolve a situation unbridgeable on traditional terms. He interprets scripture beyond Jewish experience but within a context where God was evidentially fulfilling that scripture in their midst. Jennings notes,
“James is groping to conceive the new possibilities of relationship with Gentiles. His decision, while aimed by Gentiles, is in fact for Jews. His recommendations would make table-fellowship with Gentiles possible for Jews. Indeed such table-fellowship does open the door to the possibilities of life together precisely in the most intimate reality of communal existence, the sharing of food.”[21]
This council concluded by dispatching a group along with Barnabas and Paul to deliver a letter to Antioch reporting on their deliberations and conclusions. The group and their letter was received well in Antioch and they, minus Paul and Barnabas who stayed there in Antioch, were sent on to deliver the council’s letter to other places.
Acts 17
A critical moment in the ministry of Paul and Silas in Thessalonica. Their work there bore fruit among both Jews and Gentiles, including “not a few of the leading women” (v.4). This success provoked some Jews to jealousy and they stirred up trouble for the missionaries. The city was in an uproar and a mob searched for Paul and Barnabas, including in the home of Jason. Not finding their prey there, the mob brought Jason before the town council, charging that, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests. They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus” (v.7).
This charge of “turning the world upside down,” while no doubt exaggerated, nevertheless reflected the social and economic upset which occurred in various of the places they worked (see for example 16:16-40). Willimon writes, “The trumped-up charges which jealous Jews in Thessalonica bring against Paul and Silas have more than a grain of truth in them. Even though the disciples are not the political threat the people and the authorities fear, the Empire is not secure with these Christians on the loose, Christians who teach “that there is another King, Jesus” (17:7).[22]
To proclaim and live as if Jesus is King means inevitable conflict on various levels with the way of life and the authorities promoting that way anywhere Christians go. The subversive and counter-revolutionary work and lives King Jesus’ people lead will have an effect on their surroundings. That effect is short of political revolution and seizing control of the machinery of the government, Christian witness can corrode unjust and oppressive relations among people, renew relationships through forgiveness and reconciliation, stand and suffer with and for victims and the hurting, help pass laws and keep giving a voice to the voiceless and a face to the faceless, innovate creative organizational and business practices addressing hidden or ignored issues, and . . . even, perhaps, die for bearing witness to Jesus.
Conclusion
In Acts the church begin small and unnoticed in Jerusalem, heirs only of a promise, a promise which led to it Master ascending into the clouds leaving his disciples speechless, agape, looking up uncomprehendingly at the sky. Two mysterious men in white robes appear and give them this direction: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Jesus is coming back! To this earth, terra firma. To remain sky-gazing, however, is not the proper response his followers should exercise. Though they cannot and ought not seek to know when this will happen, Jesus promises his people will be too busy to notice, maybe even too busy sometimes, to realize what he calls us to do in his absence is part of the process God uses in moving toward his return. Because . . . wait for it, they’ll be filled with his life instead (remember Jer.3:31ff.)!
And that presence will drive them from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth bearing witness to the good news of what God has done through him.
And where do we find Paul at the end of Acts? In Rome, living and preaching Jesus freely to all comers for two years. Rome’s empire ruled the world. So to reach its capital city and there bear witness to Jesus as King, well, the gospel with Paul as its witness has reached the ends of the earth! Just as Jesus said in giving them his Spirit. The same Spirit he has given us too!
[1] Hans Frei, ‘On the Thirty-Nine Articles’ in Unpublished Pieces: Transcripts from the Yale Divinity School archive, edited by Mike Higton.
[2] Garland, David E.; Clinton E. Arnold. Luke (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on The New Testament series Book 3) (p. 77). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.
[3] Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Gospel of Luke. Sacra Pagina. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1991, 79..
[4] Garland, David E.; Clinton E. Arnold. Luke (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on The New Testament series Book 3) (p. 327). Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.
[5] Roth, S. John. The Blind, the Lame, and the Poor: Character Types in Luke-Acts. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 144. Sheffield: JSOT, 1997, 101.
[6] Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 295.
[7] C. F. Evans, “The Central Section of Luke’s Gospel,” Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot ed. D.E. Nineham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), 37-53 has noted the following parallels: Deut. 1:1–46// Luke 10:1–3, 17–20; Deut. 3:23–4:40//Luke 10:21–24; Deut. 5:1–6:25 //Luke 10:25–27; Deut. 7:1–26// Luke 10:29–37; Deut. 8:1–3 //Luke 10:38–42; Deut. 8:4–20// Luke 11:1–13; Deut. 9:1–10:11//Luke 11:14–26; Deut. 10:12–11:32//Luke 11:27–36; Deut. 12:1–16//Luke 11:37–12:12; Deut. 12:17–32//Luke 12:13–34; Deut. 13:1//Luke 12:35–53; Deut. 13:12–18//Luke 12:54–13:5; Deut. 14:28//Luke 13:6–9; Deut. 15:1–18//Luke 13:10–21; Deut. 16:1–17:7// Luke 13:22–35; Deut. 17:8–18:22//Luke 14:1–14; Deut. 20:1–20//Luke 14:15–35; Deut. 21:15–22:4//Luke 15:1–32; Deut. 23:15–24:4// Luke 16:1–18; Deut. 24:6–25:3//Luke 16:19–18:8; Deut. 26:1–19//Luke 18:9–14.
[8] Craig A. Evans commentary on Luke follows this pattern out in a clear and accessible way.
[9] Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited (p. 90). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.
[10] Seven Stanzas at Easter - in All things.
[11] “Trinitarian” here is not the developed trinitarianism of the Nicene Creed but rather the New Testament view which sees the three “persons” related together in a divine work but not developed beyond that.
[12] Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition), 6.
[13]Jennings, Willie James. Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: a Theological Commentary on the Bible) (pp. 6-7). Presbyterian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[14] It is worth noting that the terms “subversive” and “counter-revolutionary” usually connote different ends of our political spectrum. I use them to indicate that this politics of the people of God is of a wholly different type from any we are used to, crossing lines we keep separate, practicing a different kind of politics than the world has known.
[15] See the German sociologist Harmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity (New Directions in Critical Theory (Columbia University Press; Reprint edition, 2015).
[16] New Testament books were titled by the church not their original authors.
[17] A movement always takes on institutional features over time. It is inevitable. But the church must never become an institution. Waiting is the renewal which keeps that from happening.
[18] Root, Andrew; Bertrand, Blair D.. When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation (p. 67). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[19] Root, When Church Stops Working, 68.
[20] Jennings, Acts, 106.
[21] Jennings, Acts, 143.
[22] Willimon, William H.. Acts: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Kindle Locations 2686-2689). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.