Join us this Thursday at 7:30pm CDT, as we continue our “Disorganized Religion” summer tour of Acts. We meet in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. And if you’re unable to attend in person, you can find us on FB Live. See you this week!!

From Waiter to Martyr

Tim: I’m so excited to have you with us in person this week!

Shea: It’s always great to come home and be with all the Gather family in the room. And I’m especially excited about bringing this week’s lesson about Stephen.

Tim: He’s a fascinating character. It’s too bad that he’s mostly remembered as the first named martyr in Acts. There’s so much more to his story!

Shea: Yes there is. He begins as a waiter, making sure that the Gentile widows in the Christian community are provided for. That’s an interesting job from a number of angles.

Tim: I’m intrigued that creating a wait-staff as a ministry is the first administrative task the apostles undertake. It’s not what most of us would put at the top of the list. We’d be looking for worship space or hiring musicians or printing bulletins. But they pull together a group of young ministers whose primary job is making sure folks get fed.

Shea: And their focus isn’t on feeding the ministers. They’re concerned about the Greek widows—the outsiders—getting care. Once again, the message comes through loud and clear: There are no cultural or gender divisions in this community!

Tim: There’s also this really powerful attention to the physical body—another hallmark for first-century Christianity.

Shea: Which is why Stephen’s martyrdom as a stoning victim is so poignant. Here is a man who’s calling has centered on attending to physical needs and he suffers one of the most brutal types of execution.

Tim: I never considered that before! His witness is fully embodied, in service and in death.

Shea: So much so that we need to pay very close attention to him. When Christianity lives too much in our heads or our hearts, when it’s overly intellectualized or emotionalized, it loses its balance. The body is the site where all of that comes together.

Tim: That’s also why the table becomes the fixture of worship. It replaces the altar, where bodies are sacrificed, to transform the Christian community into a place where bodies are nurtured.

Shea: So much good stuff this week! I’m thrilled to be able to be with everyone in person and online to explore it all.

Tim: It’s going to be a terrific study!

Join us this Thursday at 7:30pm CDT, as we continue our “Disorganized Religion” summer tour of Acts. We meet in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, OakPark. And if you’re unable to attend in person, you can find us on FB Live. See you this week!!

Talking the Walk, Walking the Talk

Shea: Between last Thursday’s Bible study and Sunday’s Pentecost service, we’re off to a strong start with our tour of Acts.

Tim: The opening pieces are all in place: Jesus’s commandment to be witnesses, the ascension, Pentecost, and the beginning work that builds on these events.

Shea: It happens so quickly! And it’s so thick. Every detail carries very weighty significance. The first readers caught a lot of nuance we can’t access directly from the page. That’s why this study-tour is so helpful. For instance, it really helps to see the importance the writer places on the disciples’ being Galilean Jews.

Tim: In today’s context, they’d belong to the Make Galilee Great Again set. Knowing that enables us to appreciate the extraordinary transformation they undergo. They begin as fearful, suspicious, and even resentful folks. And who wouldn’t be, given what’s happening in their land and what they’ve just gone through? Yet they end up fiery heralds of radical inclusion, embracing many of the people they once viewed as adversaries and sinners.

Shea: Heralds—I like that! It interests me that the same writer who gave us Luke’s Gospel also wrote Acts since both books begin in a comparable way. A divine disruption occurs in a humble setting among humble people and changes everything. An angel announces the coming of Christ, Jesus announces the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Tim: And both narratives come with a lot of speeches to explain what’s behind these events. In Luke, the angel, Mary, Elizabeth, and Zechariah give speeches. In Acts, Jesus, the two men in white, and Peter do the same thing.

Shea: It’s an ingenious technique. The writer talks the walk before the action starts. Mary explains that the child inside her is part of God’s plan to restore equity. The poor will be exalted while the rich will be brought low. Peter tells mystified onlookers at Pentecost that God is throwing open the doors of grace for everyone, not just a select group of folks claiming divine favor due to ethnic and religious heritage.

Tim: “All” means ALL, y’all!

Shea: Amen and ashé!

Tim: When I talk to folks about Acts—not to suggest I talk about it all the time (although I sort of do)—these early scenes are what they remember most. But things get real interesting after the writer flips the switch from “talking the walk” to “walking the talk.” That’s when the real drama starts!

Shea: And that’s where we are this week. The post-Pentecost big starts define the way things will go and have gone to this day. It’s like dominoes. Everything starts falling into place very quickly. This is going to be exciting.

Tim: Just you wait!

Come be part of our “Disorganized Religion” summer tour as we walk through the Book of Acts step by step. We meet each Thursday night at 7:30p CDT, in the chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park. If you can’t be there in person, you can join us online via FB Live. See you soon!

Out Loud

Tim: Pentecost Sunday this weekend—my favorite Christian holiday!

Shea: Gee, I wonder why… Maybe we should be 100% transparent and disclose we both come the Pentecostal Church.

Tim: A tradition we both cherish. I don’t think it would be any exaggeration to say we’re both shaped by a Pentecostal ethos and passion.

Shea: Of course, we wouldn’t say it that way in a Pentecostal context. We’d say, “We’ve got the Holy Ghost and fire!”

Tim: Amen! When Pentecostal fire is instilled in you, no matter where you go, you’re never far from Acts 2 and the fire poured out at Pentecost.

Shea: Nor should we ever stray from it—and I’m not speaking as a Pentecostal. I’m coming from the most universal, catholic perspective imaginable. If we read scripture correctly, to be truly Christian is to be fervently Pentecostal.

Tim: I hear you you saying “Pentecostal” is bigger than how it may have come to be defined in American Pentecostalism. It’s deeper than the ecstatic worship style and supernatural demonstrations that became associated with the Pentecostal “brand.”

Shea: Precisely. And we should be clear: we’re not diminishing or doubting the validity of any of the hallmarks of 20^th-century Pentecostalism. Having grown up in the tradition, we both know how real and powerful it is.

Tim: Am I hearing a “but” or “yet” coming?

Shea: While we could never dismiss phenomena associated with the modern American Pentecostal movement, sometimes we miss bigger lessons in the story, mostly because it generated a lot of clichés we accept without question. So meaning has got lost.

Tim: How about an example or two?

Shea: We like to say Pentecost is the Church’s “birthday.” But the Church was already alive before this event. It’s more like the Church is outed at Pentecost. They can’t contain the power and witness given to them. They can’t keep quiet. Pentecost is when the Church comes out loud.

Tim: And why is that?

Shea: Well, we like to say that everyone there is “filled with Spirit”—even Luke, the writer of Acts, says that. But we know from the Gospels the disciples are already Spirit filled. Pentecost is when they realize what’s happened to them. It’s not for nothing that the Spirit manifests in a heady kind of way: something that sounds like a powerful wind blows past their ears, something that looks like fire dances on their heads, languages they’ve never learned come out of their mouths. If they couldn’t get it in their heads before, they know for sure. They’re full of the Spirit!

Tim: And we’re launching Gather’s first Sunday worship experience on Pentecost.

Shea: That’s right. We’re celebrating the fact that we are Spirit-filled and we know it. We’re not hiding behind anything or anyone any longer.

Tim: We’re coming out loud!

Shea: Amen and ashé!

Don’t miss Gather’s VERY FIRST Sunday worship experience on Sunday, June 9, at 5pm CDT. We’ll be joining our voices and spirits in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street in Oak Park. If you can’t get there, find us online at FB Live!