Bobbi Salkeld: These first Jesus followers scramble around to find out what they're meant to do and who they're meant to be in an empire that murdered their teacher. And instead of shrink with fear or arm themselves to fight or fixate on what wasn't right, they practice a very loving faith by practically taking care of each other. To steady us for the year ahead, we are starting the twelfth season at Commons with a series called Grounded. Today is the fifth installment. So far, we talked about the values that always have and I imagine always will guide commons.
Intellectually honest, spiritually passionate, Jesus at the center. And another way to think of those values is with questions, particularly in times of discernment. Did we think it through? Did we feel it through? Can we imagine Jesus at the center of it?
And last week Jeremy walked us through peacemaking and you don't have to listen for long around here before you realize that being a Christ follower brings you into alignment with this incredible tradition of peacemaking. And there's a difference between keeping peace and actively making it. Keeping peace often involves avoiding conflict. And making it means wading into places of difference and disagreement and wondering together and in the deepest part of our own souls what love really asks of us. So go back and listen if you missed it last week.
Jeremy cited the work of Walter Wink to walk us through what turning the other cheek really means. Hint, it is not about getting hit twice. It is about insisting on your dignity and the dignity of the one disfiguring themselves with violence. Today, we'll talk about participation. That is what it means to shape a community that is good for you and good for the world.
But first, let us pray. Loving God, there are so many things that we hold today. The troubles of the world, the teachers strike, the darker fall days moving in. And as we settle in, we do our best to focus on a new word, a next step, a growing sense of peace. We take a moment to simply practice a bit of presence, to feel our feet on the floor here, our bodies supported in this space.
The caffeine may be flowing through our bloodstream. We try not to be anywhere else but right here. Coming back to our breath, we inhale gratitude for this community, for the love in our lives, for the life of Jesus that defines us, and we exhale a little bit of our worry, maybe our grumpiness, our suspicion, even in the inhale and the exhale, we trust, Spirit, you are near. Amen. In our series, Grounded, we are considering what it means to participate in faith together at Commons.
Looking at Acts two today, we'll talk about, are we them? Praxis, participation, and new things in an old place. Now, when I think about church, I think about falling in love. Don't worry, won't get too weird. And like the best love stories, after years and years together, it's hard to trace the beginning because you wonder, like, haven't I always had this love?
You see, I have always done this work, pastoring. I started really young basically back in bible college taking on all of the ministry opportunities that I could from the age of 19 till now and I'm 47. Back in bible college, I was so locked in on what I was there to do that near graduation some parachurch organizations tried to recruit me. And somehow, I knew they weren't for me. The church was.
I wanted to work in the church. And that's actually pretty funny because I grew up Catholic and then made my way to evangelical spaces. I mean, where did that 19 year old get off thinking that there was a spot for her in church ministry on either side? But still, here I am. So l o l o l o l.
While some of us make our careers in the church, that is not most people's church story. In Acts two, the writer of both Luke and Acts gives us a snapshot of most people's early church experience in the wake of Jesus' ascension and the community's cohesion. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. Now let's take a bit of a step back.
At the start of Acts, Luke spends a bunch of time on Peter's speeches. It is Peter who explains to the crowds in Jerusalem what happened at Pentecost. He raises his voice and declares that what they heard when the spirit rushed the disciples and prompted them to speak in other languages was exactly what the prophet Joel had promised. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men see vision.
Old men dream dreams. And Peter says, if death couldn't stop Jesus of Nazareth, nothing can stop this new movement that's underway. Then after the description of the early church in Acts two, Peter gives another speech after he and John heal a man begging at the temple gate. And in that speech Peter says, why are you surprised at this? This is what faith looks like.
The name of Jesus makes what is broken whole. Now both of Peter's speeches are at least three times as long as the description of the early church in Acts two. And scholars call the description a summary text layered into Acts to give you a bit of a brain break. But I wonder if there's another way to read it. After Peter's speeches fill these pages, a quieter pocket of text has something different to say.
Peter may be the professional apostle here, but it is the people who put his sermons into action. They gather around these four principles. They devote themselves to the apostles' teaching. In other words, they repeat what they'd heard about encountering Jesus. The apostles' stories became their stories, and on and on and on it goes.
They devote themselves to breaking bread. This is a primitive way to say that they assemble their bodies to do what Jesus's body did, to eat a meal like it's a ritual because it is. A meal connects you to the earth and to one another. And they devote themselves to prayers ancient and new. And the Greek etymology for prayer here is desire directed to God.
Imagine that. Naming desires is so sacred that your longing makes its way to God's own ear. And finally, they devote themselves to fellowship. And I saved this one for last because I don't prefer the translation fellowship standing in for the Greek word koinonia. And it's hard to get a handle on the word koinonia but the scholar Elizabeth Johnson does a masterful job.
She locates koinonia in the very life of the triune God saying divine life circulates without any anteriority or a posteriority. In other words, any position of the front or the back. Divine life circulates without any superiority or inferiority of one to the other. Remember, she's talking about creator, son, and spirit. Instead, there is a clasping of hands, a pervading exchange of life, a genuine circling around together that constitutes the permanent, active, divine koinonia.
And Johnson is talking about God. But in this summary of the early church, we find that we are meant to look like divine koinonia too. Imagine it. The church constituted by a clasping of hands partnership. So it doesn't matter how different you are, where you come from, the money you make, how much you know, the kind of TV you love, the election sign on your front lawn, across all of it, a Jesus community is at its best when it is devoted to one another.
Now I don't know exactly if we are meant to take this list of four practices and tie ourselves to them, but I can't help but think that there is a supportive structure here. Listen to what inspires you. Practice sacred rituals. Speak your needs to God. Enfold yourself in koinonia, a communal form of life.
And rather than disconnect you from the world, this way of life very practically ties you to it. Now the traditional Greek term for acts is praxis apostolon. And now the original writer didn't give the book that title, but by the second century, it was locked in. And it means the acts or the deeds of the apostles makes sense. Though, side note, some people say it would be better to call it the acts of the holy spirit because the spirit is the true protagonist in the book.
This force behind all of the action. And I love that. But the same, in Acts, the rubber very much meets the road here. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Ding ding ding.
Common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Now, there is a bit of a shame over the description here. In fact, it is known as Lucan hyperbole. He writes all the believers and we wonder, really?
Like all of them? He writes, they had all things in common. We wonder, really? Leak all things? Like jewelry and underwear and sentimental walking sticks?
I don't know. Truthfully, it's not all that likely that it was this compulsory practice because holding all things in common pretty quickly disappears. Luke does give it one more very shiny mention in Acts four though. Now after that, supporting each other is more of a struggle. And still, this kind of community life is notable even if it is hard to sustain.
It kind of makes you wonder though, doesn't it? What made life so unaffordable in the first place? Now, the work of the Roman Empire was cidification. To make the world in its image, Rome hailed cities and squashed rural life. And people were displaced by the expansion of large agricultural estates that served the markets of the city.
Small farmers could either come under Roman aristocracy or join the displaced masses in the cities, therein entering an ecosystem of slavery. This is wild to me as I was thinking about it this week, how some systems never die. I happen to be the generation that left my family farm for the city. The farm my parents worked, and my grandparents worked, and my great grandparents worked. But none of my siblings or my cousins could afford to.
It's interesting to think about the historical company that we keep. But back to Acts. Here's the thing about the early church. It wasn't just an idea. These first Jesus followers scramble around to find out what they're meant to do and who they're meant to be in an empire that murdered their teacher.
And instead of shrink with fear or arm themselves to fight or fixate on what wasn't right, they practiced a very loving faith by practically taking care of each other. Like, if the city was big, koinonia, their communal form of life together might just be bigger. You have to wonder where their conviction came from. When some scholars read the summary text in Acts two, they say Luke must be talking about philosophical Greek ideals. Like, look how utopian these Jesus followers are forming a perfect little society so cute.
Look at how they live from their virtue of friendship. See them serving a common good. And I think absolutely, Luke is writing in Greek. You can't deny that he's a part of that world. But what if that's not all he's doing?
These first followers figuring out faith don't just wander the streets and reach for a Greek ideal. They're Jewish. At the start, they're still meeting in their holy place. Every day, they continue to meet together in the temple courts. This is the start of their church, of our church.
And late in his ministry, Jesus's followers are down to maybe just 12 Jewish disciples plus some companions. Then a day or two after Jesus's ascension, there's a 120 Jewish followers listening to Peter in acts one fifteen, then 3,000 more after Pentecost. Remember, these are Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem for Shavuot, also known as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. And during that Jewish festival, they celebrate how God gave them the Torah at Sinai and they give God the first fruits of their harvest. God gives and we give back.
So I like to think that in this moment of revelation where the word of God isn't on stones but in spirit and where the harvest isn't the stocks of the fields but the gathering of people for something new. I like to think that it's right here in the temple that they remember who they were meant to be all along. God's people are meant to take care of others. Deuteronomy fifteen four says, there'll be no one in need among you. Deuteronomy fifteen seven says, do not be hard hearted or tight fisted toward your needy neighbor.
Deuteronomy fifteen ten says, give liberally and be ungrudging when you meet a need. Come on. What a way to live. Why should our churches, our holy places exist in cities? Why should they take up space in gentrifying neighborhoods?
Why should they be a place you spend at least seventy five minutes a week piling into before you drive home and get ready for your Monday. We'd all agree that you can be a Christian, you can follow Jesus and not go to church. People do it all the time. But here's the thing, I really don't think it works all that well. Maybe you learned from your family, from where you grew up, from your academic pursuits, how to live the best life.
But you know what? I didn't. Sure. I got some pretty good stuff along the way, but it's this place, the church, where I learned how expansive family can be. It is this place, the church, where I felt the kind of reverence that is given a name.
It is this place, the church, where I saw that pooling our resources could go so much further than what I think I can do on my own. We are invited to participate in something mysterious and also full of form, in something ancient and still being made new, in something collaborative in nature and also reaching into the singularity of a human soul. And you know what? Why stop there? We are meant to participate in the renewal of all creation.
We are meant to form, like actually put into the world the body of Christ. And the funny thing is that when we think we're doing that, putting Jesus into the world, it turns out that Christ is in all of the places we thought we needed to take him. Make no mistake. These structures of faith, temples and churches are at their best when we go into them. And there, we're reminded who we're meant to be when we leave.
Eventually, you have to go home. Even I don't live here. You have to live out the breaking of bread, the Jesus teaching, the prayer life, the Koinonia community outside the gates of the temple. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Do you notice that who they are in the temple is who they are in their homes? All of it, the public and the private created hospitable spaces for the spirit to do something new. In just a few chapters, Gentiles will get in on it too and then, well, there is no stopping it. More and more people making so much more of faith. This week, I sat down with some historical documents from Marteloop.
And I read all of this faithful language of people loving Jesus and loving one another and trying to serve their community. Sometimes though, even our best efforts need to end so that we can make way for something new. And in the documents from Marteloop, I found a little treat. I read about how back in the late sixties, early seventies, the church that we are fixing up right now across the river, whose members are now members at Commons, they named the very first woman elder in their denomination in all of Canada. What?
How cool is that? So this seed that went into the ground and for all intents and purposes seemed to be covered up with dirt as they closed their doors. Well, it never died. And for the first time in its history, a great pastor who happens to be a woman will lead in that building. And that's not everything, but that is something.
So whether you stay in Kensington or are a part of Marteloop, we are not done doing new work. Let's face it, in a very old tradition. You are needed here and some of you are needed there. And I hope for you, what has always been so true for me and my church love story, that you will get back so much more than what you give, like unimaginably more. Because that is the way of Jesus.
Only ever asking of you what God will also do. So let us pray. Loving God, where in our own lives are you urging us toward something new? We pause to search for a bit of gratitude. Where have we felt a great liberty?
Where do we store our sweetest memories? Where did new understanding shift things in life giving ways? Where did we trust ourselves and there find the spirit's wisdom? All of it is gift. All of it holds something of you.
And from this place of gratitude, we return our love. We wanna be of service. We want our work to matter wherever it is. We want you to take us to the places where we can make a difference inside and far outside the church. Jesus, your love and grace go with us as we leave.
Amen.
Jeremy Duncan: Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.