What does Acts tell us about what the church should look like today? Anything?
First Reading: Acts 2:42-47
For Sunday, May 15 , 2011: Year A - Easter 4
Sometimes the Hardest Question is the obvious question.
Acts 2 is infamous in its impotence. It is full of miraculous promise, with power of the Holy Spirit birthing the church; a radical community that upends the social structure in favor of one built on study, fellowship, worship and an equality flowing from love. And it lasts for exactly 5 verses.
Then It Gets Ugly
From the first description of this Spirit-led Utopia in 2:43-47, to the expanded picture of the renunciation of private ownership, unity of heart and soul, and the great grace as its markers in 4:32-37. Then it gets ugly. God kills the first dissenter.
What are we supposed to do with this? Is this brief glimpse at the Utopian church really the way it is supposed to be?
Googling It
Sixty seven million hits on a Google search for "Acts 2 Church" can’t be wrong—that’s over a million entries for every verse. There are Baptist, United Methodist, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Pietiest, Mennonite and no end of independent and evangelical congregations that go by the name Acts 2 Church. There are the “Acts 2 Network,” “How to Be an Acts 2 Church,” “Building an Acts 2 Church,” the “Acts 2 Process”—plus, like a million other attempts at incarnating, reviving or re-establishing the original.
The Utopian Church?
The curious thing is, the author of the Acts of the Apostles never mentions it again. The Utopian Church does not seem to serve as a model as the faith is expanded. Acts famously begins in Jerusalem and ends in Rome, where according to Eusebius it builds structures and hierarchies until it becomes something that fits in nicely with the Roman Empire.
Is this a failure, or is there something about the way the Christian church accommodates a societal structure that is desirable? Whatever the answer, it is amazing how our Holy Book tells the story and gives us the questions.
The Hardest Question
What does Acts tell us about what the church should look like today? Anything?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
