One

This Sunday the church will celebrate Pentecost — an old festival celebrated in Judaism but repurposed by wind, fire, and, at the end of the day, water. It is powerfully and dramatically described by Luke. Disciples who a few chapters earlier (counting Luke’s gospel) were fleeing, and even at the beginning of Acts 2 were still cowering, move (are moved) from fear to focus, from feeble to forthright.

One trap that we fall into when reading any portion of Acts, but especially the Pentecost account, is to switch into the “wouldn’t it be great” mode of preaching. Wouldn’t it be great if we had the “fire” of the apostles once again in our church. Wouldn’t it be great if three thousand were baptized in one day. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching again (especially the teaching as I read it). Wouldn’t it be great if we had all things in common — well, we don’t go that far, we Americans don’t go in for that semi-communist selling-my-stuff-and-giving-it-to-others idea. Still, there is a good deal more in there that would be great if it were to happen again. And so we preach a “wouldn’t it be great” sermon, even as we, and our people, know that that day will never be repeated again. And next Sunday we go on to more important things than announcing the Good News in city squares — things like the intricacies of the doctrine of the Trinity. As if that had nothing to do with the Good News.

But what if Acts 2 was not really about stuff we should try to copy? What if this Word was not given as a mere model for us to try — and fail — to emulate? What if Luke is writing down Pentecost to show us who we are (have been made) in Christ?

The central theme of Acts 2 is the Spirit gathering his people, his church, into the one body. Say that again: One Body. His Body. The theme that crops up again and again in Acts and in particular Acts 2 is the unity of this one body. As the prophets had longed dreamed, all nations would be gathered to Jerusalem to worship at the one holy mountain (Is 66;20; Jer 3:17). Even old Simeon expects the Gentiles to see the light (Luke 2:31-32). And lo and behold, at Pentecost the nations show up! From Parthians to Arabs(!) and every unpronounceable name in between, the nations hear one message, respond with one voice in confessing One Lord, are baptized with one baptism into One Name, and the result is one church.

And what did this One Church “continue in”? Unity. Luke 2:42-47 is not a new section, as if there is a huge gap between 2:41 and 2:42. The list of activities is a direct and theologically necessary consequence of being baptized into one Body.

One apostolic teaching

One κοινωνία (we need some work on this word)

One meal

One prayer

But it doesn’t stop there. They were “all at the same place” (tight squeeze, apparently) and had all things commonly (κοινᾴ, sort of like κοινωνία).They sold their stuff and gave to those who needed it (because in this one body, when one part suffers, every part suffers). They were devoting themselves (same word as 2:32, incidentally) to the Temple “with one accord,” and then having dinner (parties? Sure sounds like it) at each others homes “with gladness and singleness of heart” (again, don’t trust your NIV or ESV in 2:46; there is nothing “sincere” about them). They praised (worshipped) the one God who had united them. And let’s try 2:47 again: “The Lord added those who were being saved, each day, at that place.” They weren’t independent believers floating around. They were united in every way possible.

One. Holy. Catholic. Apostolic. It is all there, in Acts 2. Actually, the sequence in Acts goes like this: Apostolic. Catholic. Holy. One. The apostolic message of the Good News goes to all the world, the Spirit through that word making all holy and gathering them into One People. One. Church.

I’ve been reading Bo Giertz’ 1939 (but 2010 translation) Christ’s Church. A lot of good stuff from this Swedish Bishop. I’ll try to get some thoughts up from this book at some point. But Giertz has a great chapter on on Una Sancta that puts to shame the weak and watered-down way we tend to talk about–and act like–Church. For now, a couple of quotes:

The split within contemporary Christendom seems therefore all the more severe. It is nothing less than a sin, and a sin of the most fateful kind, a breach of the very own body of Christ. If the apostles were among us today, they would be shocked to see this split manifested in a typical Swedish town. They would accuse us of having torn the body of Christ asunder. [pp. 39-40]

And again:

Once the biblical vision has taken hold of us, the full reunification of the Christianity must stand forth for us as a demand from God and as a Christian duty. As long as we are divided, the body of Christ is bleeding, and we do not know when it will bleed to death. We must ask God to forgive our egoism on [the] part of our own “church.” We must pray that at least we should not be guilty of causing more division, so that the body of Christ would not be more broken than it already is. We must also pray God to overcome our weak faith and make us obedient toward any possibility for promoting the unity of the church. [p. 40]

If these words do not cut you to the heart, then you have made up for yourselves a different church than the one gathered by the Spirit through the preached Good News. In this day, when weekly (“daily,” even ) my in-boxes gets stuffed with notices about how this guy or group needs to be purged, how have we reached a point where we so flippantly dismiss one another, and seek to divide even as the Spirit is trying to gather together?