The Church Gathered: Reflections on Acts 2:42-47

Eastertide Series at College Community Church, Spring 2008

Loosely based on the MWC Publication, What We Believe Together
“We Worship and Celebrate Together”
May 4, 2008

In class this past week, after the presentation of a paper that sought to explore biblical

ideas about community through the passage of scripture we have just read, a student posed a

question to the group gathered around the tables: is this account of the church descriptive or

prescriptive?, he asked. In other words, do these words simply describe the experience of a

group of first-century Jesus-followers still flush with the heady excitement of Pentecost, or do

they provide some sort of mandate for the church to follow, a template, if you will, for the

construction of a vital community of faith?

My students were silent - I’m not sure if they were intrigued by the question or simply

observing a respectful pause before taking the conversation in another direction - but my mind

skittered off to other conversations in other places. Over the years, as I have been involved in

conversations about our denomination’s confession of faith, that same question, or one like it,

has frequently come up. Are we bound to these statements, or do they simply provide an ideal?

Are we telling the truth about ourselves, because it sounds like we should be more humble. If I

don’t believe or practice every detail am I failing to live with integrity? If my community of

faith differs at any point in practice or belief, can it continue to be in fellowship with others who

claim the same confessional statement? What authority do these statements have for my life and

for the congregation I am a part of? Surely we can’t be expected to live like this!

As these kinds of questions suggest, whenever we write confessional statements, or

accept even so brief a statement as our Mennonite World Conference shared convictions that we

are using as the basis for our sermon series this Easter season, we quickly realize that there are

both personal and corporate implications for the things we say about the beliefs and practices of

the Christian faith.

 Still, I suspect that if we had all the writers of the MWC statement in the room with us

(though we do have at least one!), and we posed a “descriptive or prescriptive” question to them,

they would answer “yes.” Yes, we believe our shared statement is descriptive of the practices

of our global Anabaptist community; and yes, these seven brief statements are prescriptive in the

sense that they reflect our common reading and interpretation of scripture and thus set out what

we believe it means to be disciples of Jesus, the Christ. In the words of the statement itself:

these convictions are “central to our belief and practice.”

With that sort of framework to “descriptive/prescriptive” questions lodged firmly in the

back of my mind, I found myself wanting to offer that same answer to the student who had asked

the question about these verses from Acts 2. The answer is “yes,” I wanted to say; it’s not either

one or the other.

But of course, my impulse to answer ‘yes’ doesn’t make it so, and before I could test my

“yes” response, the conversation had moved in another direction. Fortunately, I had a sermon to

develop this week and as I read and tried to organize my thoughts I found myself returning to the

question and to the biblical text that had prompted it. So, perhaps what I am preaching this

morning is really the answer to Wednesday’s class discussion.

This short, very familiar passage from Acts 2 is part of a larger narrative about the early

days of the church. The book of Acts, itself, is really part two of a two-volume work. Written

by the same author as the gospel of Luke, it continues the story of the movement that rose up

around the Jewish carpenter known as Jesus of Nazareth. Like any good story-writer, the good

Dr. Luke knew how to finish a book in a way that would leave his audience eager for the next

installment. In the gospel of Luke, he tells the story of Jesus’ life and teachings, and recounts

the beginnings of a community of disciples that recognize Jesus first as a teacher, and than as the

Christ. He ends that book with an account of the resurrection, Jesus’s subsequent appearances

to his followers, and then the ascension into heaven. (By the way, today is Ascension Sunday

and if this was a different sermon series, we would probably be focusing on that event today!).

The Ascension ends part one of the history Luke is recounting, and as readers, we leave the
disciples just as they have experienced these life-changing events. Luke writes that are

spending all their time in the temple praising God, but as readers engaged in the story, we know

there has to be more. What happens to them? Surely they don’t live out their lives holed up in

the temple!

The Acts of the Apostles is part two of the story. It opens with that same event, a recap,

if you will, of the end of the last volume. We meet the disciples again, choosing a replacement

for Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, and then, in chapter 2, we have an account of Pentecost in which

Jesus’s promise that he would not leave them without a comforter is made true. Like a mighty

rushing wind the Holy Spirit comes and fills the room where the disciples are gathered and they

go out from that place empowered to preach the good news of Jesus who, through the power of

God, broke the agony of death. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus

Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,”

preached Peter. “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off–for all

whom the Lord our God will call,” he said boldly (Acts 2:38-39). It is the beginning of an

evangelism campaign that changed the world, and we are told that 3000 people accepted Peter’s

message as truth that day, were baptized and added to the community of those who claimed Jesus

as Lord and savior.

The passage we read earlier describes what happened next: the believers devoted

themselves to the apostle’s teaching, met together daily, broke bread together and prayed. In

doing these things they experienced miraculous signs, practiced forms of mutual aid, and

continued to praise God together. The Bible tells us that their witness was so powerful that day

after day more people were saved and added to the church.

So, that answers the question, doesn’t it? The passage is clearly descriptive. Luke is a

historian, intent on recording the first flush of excitement among these early converts caught up

by the power of Peter’s preaching and promise of a new way of life. Well, yes, but I think. there

is clearly something more because these practices keep coming up in the various accounts of the

early church throughout the N.T. as we read of Christians gathering together and beginning to
share a common life. Something about these accounts has power to shape our practices even

today. We, too, are gathering today for teaching, for fellowship, for the breaking of bread and

for a common meal. We will share at least some of our possessions as we contribute to common

causes-- keeping the lights on, purchasing new audio equipment, supporting the staff,

participating in various mission projects, and so forth. We will pray together, and, if we are

brave, we might even speak of signs and wonders occurring in the midst of our everyday lives.

So what is this account in Acts? NT scholar Luke Timothy Johnson calls it a kind of

“foundation story” 1

1
Sacra Pagina, D.J. Harrington, S.J., Editor. The Acts of the Apostles. P 62.
 rooted in the work of the Holy Spirit who was present and active in the community of believers.
Luke (the biblical writer; I’m not on a first name basis with Luke Timothy Johnson!), Luke is
eager to tell his readers how, in Johnson’s words, the “gift of the Spirit brought about a
community which realized the highest aspirations of human longing: unity, peace, joy, and the
praise of God.” Though it sounds idealized, we need to read this as more than some sort of
generalized utopian vision; Luke is giving us a picture of what it means when the kingdom of
God breaks in and begins to be realized among those who believe in Jesus the messiah.

All of us, I think, are familiar with foundation stories. This congregation has a

foundation narrative that we recall every January when we celebrate the formation of this

Christian community. It is a story, occasionally a little idealized, that helps form our identity

and sense of mission, and we retell it every time someone expresses interest in joining our

congregation. Thirty years ago, when the congregation celebrated it’s tenth anniversary, Peter

Klassen described it like this: “From the earliest days, the new fellowship stressed the

necessity of developing forms of expression and fostering relationships that would meet real

needs, even if they did not fit conventional patterns. Participants expressed their conviction that

the group must dare to be boldly innovative if the church was to ‘be the church.’ Convinced

that the biblical concept of the church was that of a people called out by God to listen to Him, to

share with each other and to act upon what God has said, the group sought ways to clothe

biblical precept in human reality.” 2

I hope that in Peter’s telling of College Community’s foundation story, you heard a

description of practices that link this congregation to the community in Acts - a vision of the

church based on an understanding that Christians are called out by God to form a community that

not only shares life together, but orients that shared life around the person of Jesus. As a

foundation story, it does more than describe, it lays out the goal toward which we are working

and serves as a guiding principle in our life together.

That notion of orienting our lives around Jesus through participation in the church is

important, because it is through the shared practices of the church, especially baptism and the

Lord’s supper, that we identify ourselves as followers of Jesus. Frank Senn, who has written

2
A Tenth-Anniversary Review January, 1973.
what he calls a social history of the liturgy titled The People’s Work, refers to these rites as “a

bath and a meal;” they are the “constitutive acts of the church,” signifying incorporation into the

community and the intimacy of our fellowship with God and with fellow believers. I like this

simple way of describing these central rites of the church. It reminds us that baptism and the

Lord’s supper are rooted in ancient practices that were adopted and given new meaning by the

early church.

As is noted in Acts, baptism was the response of those who accepted the message of

salvation through Jesus. It was an initiation rite, modeled after the practices of the day but given

new meaning in the church. In Christian communities baptism happened only once in the same

way that Jesus’s death and resurrection was a once-for-all-time event. Baptism meant people

were serious about this new way of living and wanted to be identified with this new community

of believers who were studying the stories of Jesus and living in close fellowship with each

other.

Like baptism, the fellowship meal had roots in common practices, but first Jesus and then

the church gave it new meaning. Jesus told his disciples to break bread and drink wine together

in remembrance of his own body and blood which was soon to be broken on their behalf. The

early church was obedient and followed the practice but also gave it another layer of meaning.

Not only did they identify themselves with Christ, but in sharing food around a common table

they identified themselves with each other. These were ordinary people creating a new kind of

community as they struggled to break down the barriers of class and ethnicity that so easily

separate people, then and now! The communion meal and the practice of table fellowship were

central to the formation of this alternative community and symbolized the reality of Christ’s

presence among them. Our fellowship practices are intended to do the same thing. They are

meant to remind us that the community of faith is our primary family. Working together,

praying together, grieving together as we have done this past week, are ways that reinforce these

ties. Reading scripture together and trying to understand what it means to foster peace, to share

the gospel, and to resist the constant temptation to give our allegiance to something other than
the God who has created and sustained us, are practices that center our life together.

Travel the world over and anywhere you go a bath and a meal will also be symbols of

hospitality. In forming an alternative community that sought to live out in daily life the things

Jesus had taught about the kingdom of God, Christians gave witness to the power of God to

transform lives. In seeking to live as friends of God they also lived as friends to each other. It

was such a powerful witness that it became an identifying mark of the church. “Those

Christians, they love each other,” was the word on the street, and it drew people to the church

and, as we are reminded in these verses from Acts 2, the church grew. Like a dining room table

with endless leaves, the table was extended again and again as people were added and the

fellowship enlarged.

In a few minutes we are going to gather around this table to participate in a ritual that

binds us to Christians around the world. We are going to share bread and grape juice in

remembrance of our Lord. It is a practice that Christians have shared for nearly 2000 years.

Our table, like our gathering space, is round. We circle it, linking our lives to Jesus and to each

other. We hope that our love for each other gives witness to God’s love for us. Our space,

however, is crowded, and some of us struggle to know how to enlarge the table. It is one thing

to say that a round table always has room for one more; a little harder to know how to stretch a

round room to accommodate others who might want to follow Jesus with us and share in our

common life. But if we are going to be genuinely Christian, we are going to have to figure out a

way. To speak of a new community called into being by God is not to imagine a closed

community but one which must always be open to those who are seeking to follow Jesus as Lord

for in welcoming people into our common life we echo the hospitality of Jesus who invites us to

his table! The circle we form cannot be a circle that keeps people out, but a circle that draws

people in. How else are we to live out the words of our gospel reading this morning? No one

tends a vine in the hope that it will produce only minimal fruit. As branches on the vine that is

Jesus, we are called to produce an abundant harvest.

Fortunately, that work does not rest solely on us. The church is God’s church, founded
on Jesus and sustained by the gift of the Holy Spirit who makes us one. But may we continue to

live out our foundation story; fostering relationships that meet real needs, clothing biblical

precept in human reality, and being boldly innovative as we seek to ‘be the church’ called out by

God to listen to God, to share with each other and to act upon what God has said.