Dear Faith Family,
As I have read the Book of Acts and listened to Chaz and Dylan over the last several weeks, I've been struck by just how modern our gathered origin story is. Sure, the setting is ancient, so the features of how life functioned then differ drastically from our present particulars. Still, the human experience of the first faith families jumps out as undeniably familiar.
Like us, the forebears of our faith family struggled to orient their lives to Jesus, being pulled from the center by misguided religious traditions on one side and divergent cultural norms on the other. Like us, they felt the pressure of the economics of mind and body, both being bartered over and pandered to by "those" desiring to shape our way of life for "their" purposed good. Like us, the earliest faith families had to be attentive to external pressures and internal inconsistencies of thought, practice, and character. And, like us--though perhaps for different reasons--the moniker "Christian" was an unflattering label.
While we have come a long way in appearance and reality, by God's grace, since the last half of the first century, there is a reason we continue to go back to the founding stories of our faith family. The stories, at first reading, can feel distant and dramatic, yet what we've observed throughout Luke's chronicle is a witness to God's intimate providence in and through the witness of those who've found/submitted their lives within His Life and leading. In these stories, the Book of Acts has given us the end of church as we know it, our purpose as the gathered to Jesus today, to be witnesses to and of His intimate providence in our lives together lived with Him.
As we conclude our time in these paradoxically modern ancient stories, I want to encourage you one more time to consider "the call" of the Book of Acts,
"The Book of Acts…[is]…a call to Christians to be open to the action of the Spirit,
not only leading them to confront values and practices in society that may need to be subverted,
but perhaps even leading them to subvert or question practices and values within the Church itself."
(Justo Gonzalez)
Being "open to the action of the Spirit" requires more than consideration; it requires a posture: an openhandedness to God. This week, take the posture literally. In your reading of the final stories of Acts and in your praying, turn your hands palms up. Keep your hands open as you read, meditate, and converse with the One whose love you've witnessed.
In doing so, you might just discover that your bodily posture becomes the posture of your heart, which better allows you to be a witness to and of life with God.
Love you, faith family! God bless.