To help you celebrate, please note that there is a built in navigation system for this text now, which appears at the bottom of each post. From the end of any given post, you can travel either to the prior post or the subsequent post. I'm aware that this is redundant with the navigation clumsily provided by the digital platform, but I sometimes find the navigation provided by the platform to be counterintuitive or easy to miss. So there it is: my thanksgiving gift to you.
Now, let's take a look at some learnin'.
Before we get to the Gospel this week, I'd like to jump past the Gospels just slightly. (Not too far.) Today, on thanksgiving, we're going to take a look at Acts, Chapter 2. In Acts 2, we witness what some call "The Birth of the Church," and learn a little about what the very first Christians were living like.
Part of my broad philosophical thesis is that, if we decide to call ourselves Christian, we should ensure that our ideals align well with the ideals that the actual living-Christ espoused. This means that we want to go back to the oldest possible sources of data regarding Christ and his teachings. If we are looking for a model of Christian life, and we have more than one to choose from, we ought to always choose the oldest known reliably documented model.
Why would we be after the oldest model? Obviously, the oldest model is the one most informed by the actual living-Christ. In that sense, the oldest model is the most purely Christian. We see the very oldest model of Christianity described in the Book of Acts, the fifth book in the New Testament.
Acts 2 shows Peter, Jesus' Apostle, giving his "Pentecost Sermon." This is the first time that one of the Apostles is recorded as speaking to the public in Jerusalem, or anywhere else, subsequent to the grisly execution of Christ.
The context: Peter's friend and leader has just been executed publicly, and everyone in town is talking about it. Peter and the boys get together there in Jerusalem and are overcome by the "holy Spirit," the result of which is that they all start speaking in tongues. A big crowd gathers. Jerusalem being an international city, the crowd that gathers are not just Jews from the area, but Jews and Gentiles alike from all over the world. As the Apostles speak about the acts of God, the Egyptians in the crowd hear the words in their native tongue. The Medes in the crowd hear the words in their native tongue. The Cretans and Arabs and the travelers from Rome all hear the words the Apostles speak in their respective native tongues. The crowd marvels at this, and some of them say "these Galileans are just drunk!"
Peter stands up before the huge crowd of thousands that has gathered and says, approximately, "nah, nah, we ain't just drunk! And I have some choice words for y'all" Remember: this is the first time an Apostle addresses the masses after Christ's death. They've just killed his friend and leader. Don't be surprised by the fact that he just lets them have it. He says that he believes that God has made Jesus Lord and Messiah of the Jews, and he seems furious at his fellow Jews who went along with the execution of said Messiah.
Peter's speech goes so well that three-thousand people are converted to the cause of Christ that day from the crowd. (Please note that this crowd of what we can call the first "Christians" was extremely diverse, as we just mentioned. It would have contained Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs and others, in addition to Jews.)
Immediately subsequent to this Pentecost Sermon and the "Birth of the Church," which coincides with the moment when the three-thousand convert, the Book of Acts tells us how these very first Christians lived. It shows them living in accordance with what they are taught by their leaders, the Apostles, who had received their teaching directly from Jesus Christ.
From Acts, Chapter 2:
42 They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.
43 Awe came upon everyone, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.
44 All who believed were together and had all things in common;
45 they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.
46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart,
47 praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.Interesting. These words are the first in the Bible to describe the earliest Christians.
Recall that, somewhere near the recent inception of this writing, I said that part of my goal here is to compare and contrast the ideals of Christ with the ideals of the modern Americans who call themselves "Christians."
I'd like the American reader to think about the self-proclaimed Christians they know.
Then, I'd like the reader to think about the very first Christians, and their description in Acts Chapter 2.
"They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life."Is there a difference?
"All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need."Is there a difference?
The constant refrain from the Christian-Conservative movement in America, as I've ascertained it over thirty-four years, is that unchecked capitalism is the ideal for human societies.
How is it, then, that we find the very first Christians, who were closest to Jesus himself and thus most capable of following his exact teachings, living in a way that seems to completely contradict this modern ideal?
If we admit that there is a difference between the living model of the first Christians and the living model of modern American Christians, then when did this difference begin to take shape? At what point did Jesus' message, as it is interpreted by his followers, change? Why would Jesus' teachings evolve over time?
These questions burn in my heart. We will be following them all, all the way down. For today, I want to just leave you with those questions, as we open up to Matthew again.
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Matthew 2:7 through Matthew 2:9
7 Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance.
8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.”
9 After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
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Recall that Herod has just become suspicious that Jesus is going to become the King of the Jews and displace him in power as the current King of the Jews. He asked his priests and scribes where the coming King was to be born, and they said "Bethlehem." He now gets the time frame of Christ's birth from some magi. (The magi were Persian sorcerers of a sort.) Herod then sends the magi out to find Jesus. As they depart on their trip, they see the same star they'd seen on their way into Jerusalem. The star leads them to Jesus.
This story may be old news to many of you. As we've discussed a little before, for our purposes, the miraculous or outlandish aspects of the narrative of Christ will prove to work as story structure for us, but we will not accept them as historical. We will work to de-couple Christ's moral philosophy from the mythologies that surround his life, a task that proves easier than it sounds at first.
Whether or not we believe we are reading something that is historical or not, all the stories about Jesus in the Gospels serve as critical context for his real-world philosophy, which I assure you, does shine through.
We will leave our study here today. I hope you have a wonderful thanksgiving. I hope you've taken some questions away from this writing. I hope you share this and I hope you come back soon.
Love.
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