It's been so long since we looked at the book of Acts - November in fact. I thought we better do what they do at the beginning of instalment 25 of a T.V. series: "the story do far..."
So we have a few verses from the very beginning of Acts... which help us to understand what the book is all about, and a few verses from chapter 25, where we left the story away back in November. And from that earliest chapter several things emerge.
1. It's about Jesus (v1) I have called Acts the story of Jesus, part 2, because really that's what Luke calls it. I know the traditional title is Acts of the Apostles and it has often been called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit”, but Luke says his first book (Luke's Gospel) was about “all Jesus began to do and teach...” implying that Acts is about how that ministry continued. Whatever else the Acts of the Apostles is, it is about Jesus about the continuing work of the risen, living Lord Jesus Christ, through his people, by his Spirit... The themes of Christian experience, discipleship, mission, Church, are all about Jesus.
2. It's about the Church. Jesus commissioned people to continue what he had started (v2.) The twelve whom he had worked with, taught, built up and encouraged for three years, were the core members of a community that was to spread across the world. We call it the Church. And the fact that Luke uses the word “Apostles” tells me two things about the Church.
(a) The Apostles were the foundation of the Church, so the Church isn’t an afterthought or simply a pragmatic thing set up to get a job done. Rather the Church is the “people of God” a sacred thing. God has always had his people. The Church is a “mystical” community.
(b) “Apostles” means “those who are sent out”. The DNA of the church is always meant to be Apostolic. It is a missional community.
The real Church is a community of people who are connected with each other because they are connected with Jesus.
3. It's about the Kingdom. (v.3) That was the dominant theme in Jesus' life, service and teaching, and it is meant to be for the Church as well. God's reign, what it means, who it works, how it can be entered into, what difference it is meant to make in our lives. Apostles or not, leaders or not, the twelve got things wrong. They continued to chew over the question, “”is now the time to kick out the Romans, and for Israel to rule the world under King Jesus?” Jesus had a different answer.
4. It's about the Spirit. (v. 5) In order to live the life of the Kingdom, to be Jesus' witnesses and declare the Good news of Jesus effectively, God's people need the power of the Holy Spirit, to come upon them, like he upon Mary, and like the cloud came upon the tabernacle in the days of Moses.
And so Luke tells of how the Spirit came, at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and how “Jesus message” touched thousands of lives and the first disciples in Jerusalem became an amazing, loving community that shared their lives together and lived out the radical values of God's kingdom. This is real church, not just an organisation but a family and not just an institution but a spiritual thing, a growing body, a living miracle.
It took persecution to shake the Jerusalem Church into going to other places, but when they went they told everyone the “Jesus message” – and then new churches came into being in Samaria, in Damascus, in Antioch, in Joppa. Someone came to know Jesus then went home with what he had discoverer, to plant a Church. in Africa. But still the Jerusalem Church was a struggle to accept that people who were not Jewish could accept the Jesus message. Even Peter got in trouble for preaching in the home of a Roman officer.
And around that time, there was a hard-line Jew called Saul of Tarsus, who hated the Jesus message and tried to crush it. Saul suddenly met Jesus personally. He trusted Jesus and committed himself to living with Jesus as his King. Strangely when this guy Saul came to the Jerusalem Church, as a new Christian, they were they hadn't the faith to believe that his conversion story was for real. I guess that the pain of persecution had blunted their faith and made them suspicious of any possible threat.
Saul eventually joined the Church at Antioch, where they weren't too bothered about the gap between Jews and non-Jews. They sent him out to preach the message. As a result, of the lives of Saul (now called Paul) and others, in cities like Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Athens, and even Rome Though Paul didn't go to Rome at this point) people believed in Jesus, embraced this radical kingdom, experienced the life changing power of he Holy Spirit, and became new, real churches, loving communities that shared their lives together.
And then, when twenty years later, this same Paul, came back to Jerusalem, with a cash gift for the hard pressed church, from the non-Jewish churches of Asia and Greece, they were still suspicious. Not, this time, worrying about him being a Jewish extremist, but about him being “not Jewish enough”. Peter and the rest of the elders in Jerusalem persuaded Paul into going to the temple to take part in a purificatin ritual (Acts 21. 22-24) . The idea was to prove to the Jewish Christians that Paul was still keeping the law. And in the temple, doing what the Elders of the Jerusalem church had suggested he do, he was arrested, and charged (wrongly) with bringing a non-Jew into the temple.
Because the Jews wouldn't hear Paul out without starting a riot, the Romans got involved, and Felix, who was then Governor, kept Paul locked up for two years hoping Paul would offer his a bribe. He was the sacked and Festus took over. Paul's case was re-opened. By rights Festus should have set Paul free at the start, but he was feeling his way with the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, and as a result, Paul was uncertain about getting justice from Festus so had appealed to the Emperor himself. That's the lead-in to this conversation between the Roman Governor Festus and King Agrippa. It seems that Festus can't see that Paul has broken any Roman law (Acts 25. 25) : there's no clear reason why he should be sent to Rome.
So apart from Paul, nobody comes out that well in the story. Felix trued to use the situation for personal gain. Festus bottled out of doing what he should until it was too late. Even the elders in the Jerusalem Church, who should have silenced criticism of Paul within the Church at the start, instead compromised with his critics, then simply melted away into the background: they are not mentioned again.
And I want to ask, “what went wrong with the Jerusalem Church?” What happened to their radical living? What happened to the power of the Spirit? They seemed more interested in law than the Spirit. What happened to the courage of the day of Pentecost? They seemed so afraid of upsetting people in their dealing with Paul. What happened to a love that would sell their property to provide for the poor? They presumably took the money he brought and then left Paul high and dry! And what happened to the great Commission and the teaching of Jesus about the Church being for every nation? It seems that they only cared about sustaining growth, keeping the people they had got, or being respected in their world. It seems they had domesticated the Kingdom and the Spirit to serve Jewish nationalist ends instead of the global vision of Jesus.
That is something that can happen to churches, or groups of Churches (like the Baptist Union, a local council of churches). We can lose our way. The vision and enthusiasm that launched a movement can become lost. We all want our own ideas heard and our own interests protected; if our ideas differ, we fight each other. If our ideas are the same, we fight everyone else. It has been shown that churches, like other groups of people, go through a cycle from start-up, through a period of growth, to a levelling off, then often to decline and death. What needs to happen to prevent that is, to rediscover the original sense of purpose... and it is Festus who, quite accidentally gives us the key we need. Because nobody can remember what Paul was accused of in the first place. Festus says to Agrippa “some dispute about their own law and about a dead man called Jesus whom Paul says is alive.” So Luke brings the story back, before Paul's final trial in Caesarea and his journey to Rome, to where we began. It's all about Jesus. Paul, the Church, you , me. It's all about Jesus.
If we can bring Jesus back to the centre, the real Jesus, we will recover the apostolic DNA of the real church; we will live for the real Kingdom, in the real power of the real Holy Spirit. So may we have an encounter with Jesus, that brings us back to reality. As the hymn says “From unreality O set us free, and let our words be echoed in our ways.”
© Gilmour Lilly January 2015
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