It is becoming apparent to me that I have a
skewed sense of time. I regularly begin
sentences with, “recently,” or, “the other day,” and then I stop to think about
how much time has passed. Often, it is
months or even years. So, I was going to
start this post by claiming, “In recent years there has been a resurgence of
interest in early Church practices,” but then it occurred to me that I might be
writing about something that is actually more than a decade old. That’s OK, but it probably needs to be put
into perspective. With that in mind…
Many, many years ago (ten or more), a lot
of people were talking about the importance of returning to the roots of the early
church. I loved those discussions. I entered into those discussions. And, because I think talk is cheap if not
followed by actions; I worked hard to actually apply some of the
principles. This passage from Acts is a
good jumping off point:
Acts
2:42-47, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at
the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had
everything in common. They
sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in
the temple courts. 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 (NIV).
However, there is something that deeply
disturbs me. It’s the idea that living
in community of this magnification sounds excellent on paper, but not too many
people want to commit to it in real life.
In fact, when a group of people does engage in such communal living,
they are most likely found to be a dangerous cult of some sort! So, what do we do with this?
Radical hospitality is inconvenient. There.
I said it. It’s not all that
difficult to commit to teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer
for one hour every week, although even this is, admittedly, an inconvenience to
the regularly scheduled lives of so many.
And therein lies the problem… This was never about our regularly scheduled
lives…
When I think about commonality, I can’t help but consider
the tension of our current political climate and the pushing and shoving and
grasping for more and more that can lead to statements about what other human
beings do (or more frequently, do not) deserve—to statements about caring for
ourselves and “our own,” even though all of humanity is our own. It is incredibly easy to get upset over
people who seem selfish. But who of us
has actually sold everything in order
to meet the needs of everyone? Confession: I have not. And yet, I think this might be the easier
predicament found in these verses, because the next part is more relational
than most anyone is comfortable with…
The early church met together daily… (Oh, wow… even if I’m willing to give you all
my possessions; I might think twice about giving you all my time).
They broke bread together in their homes … (Oh, wow… even if I’m willing to give you all my
possessions and a lot of my time; I might think twice about allowing you to
invade my personal space).
And they liked it!
And more and more people came!
Now, I actually have
lived into the whole “my door is always open, come eat in my kitchen… and
living room… and I’ll even leave a couple of bags of groceries for you on my
porch, just in case I’m legitimately not available” mode of doing life, and I
want to be exceptionally real: It’s not easy!
Also (still being real here), it may not be sustainable, long-term,
without some help. But there is
something spiritual that happens over bread broken together on a very regular
basis. And the people do come… sometimes
in droves…
Maybe we’re doing it wrong…
L.
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