The grass roots radicals

I've been hanging out with the tales of the early church as told by Dr Luke in his appropriately named book Acts. In fairness, by anyones standards the few months leading up to the beginning of Lukes writings were epic. The twelve disciples became eleven plus a traitor and watched as everything they had been told would take place happened, although to them it would have hardly made much sense at all. The king of the Jews, freedom fighting Rabbi, son of God, friend, companion and old testament legal advisor was now hanging naked on a tree. Out beyond the city wall, with the leapers, criminals and city rubbish dump hung everything that they had spent the last three years pinning their hopes on. It must have felt like the end, the twelve now eleven soon to be twelve again were in disarray, the great revolution had seemingly come to an abrupt end. The end it was, in one sense that is, it was the end of something old and the beginning of something very very different. It would take them three days to realise the gravity of what had just taken place. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Just like Lazarus there was an empty tomb, the stench of death replaced by the fresh scent of life.  Yet this was different, the resurrected man who appeared before them, holes in hands and wound in side had left His grave clothes behind.  No longer bound by the grip of death, before them stood the man who had ‘breathed His last’ but now he was breathing again and talking about breath.  After forty days he leaves but promises not to leave them alone because the breath is coming.  Go wait is the instruction, so a quick six mile, Sabbaths day journey finds them showing their faces back in the city where a few months earlier it all ended/began.  I doubt they really knew the gravity of what was about to happen.  The fire, the wind, the filling, the linguistic expertise,  this was the moment that would be the shaping of things to come.

Peter offers an on-the-spot sermon, one to match the best of the best.  Thousands hear the news, and thousands ‘hear’ and receive these incendiary words.  The one who YOU crucified has now been ‘raised up’ and WE have seen him.  This epic story penned deep into eternity past had reached its climax yet in many ways the story was just about to begin.  Not with a new revolution or violent reform, neither by political persuasion or royal influence.  This new story was to be told by ordinary changed people, coming together as part of a radical new phenomena, the church.  Not a huge power driven machine, but a grass roots collective of changed lives, telling new, attractive, similar, yet radically different stories. 

This is not a story about a collection of transformed individuals doing their own thing.  This is a story about the beginning of a transformed community, saved into an amazing new intimate Koinonia (fellowship) with their God and consequently saved into Koinonia with each other.  Not only that but the implication of this new Koinonia is not only vertical with their God, neither is it just horizontal with each other but extends beyond the boundaries of their new community into the temple courts, homes and neighborhoods.  This new, culturally subversive, three-way Koinonia was the new missional pattern for Gods people.  In community, together as one, on mission.  A trinitarian blueprint for the grass roots radicals.

The implications for the church today?  We follow the same blueprint, to be;

Radically normal

The new church didn’t segregate, hide, change their appearances or disappear.  They continued to meet in the Temple AND in their houses, an expert missional strategy that saw many added to their new community.
The church needs to be called back to a life of radical normality.  Not one where we are too comfortable sitting in the armchair of christian sub-culture which we have created. At what point in church history did it become more important to not be ‘of the world’ rather than ‘in the world’? 

Radically opportunistic

The new church were not just brought into a new community but were radically transforming what it actually meant to do community.  The implication of gluing themselves to Christ centered teaching was that their new community would become Christ centered.  Sharing, giving, receiving, selling, helping, the opportunities were taken.  Why is it so easy for me to become inoculated with the anesthetic of apathy and abdicate my responsibility to take responsibility.

Radically intimate

Yes they sold their possessions and belongings.  Yes they gave away the proceeds.  This isn’t a call to some kind of segregated pious-tic communal lifestyle.  The key here are the words ‘....as any had need’, the context is fellowship.  Unless we are prepared to be radically intimate with each other how will we ever know what ‘needs’ need to be met.  You have got to know what the need is before you can meet it and that takes intimacy.  And what better intimacy to aspire to than the intimate relationship we now have with the God through Jesus Christ.

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