Don’t miss another fascinating chapter in this summer’s “Disorganized Religion” tour of Acts. We meet on Thursdays at 7:30pm CDT, in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park. Or you can catch us online via FB Live.

Peter’s Epiphany

Shea: Every stop on our “Disorganized Religion” tour of Acts has been fascinating. After each discussion, I come away with a clearer sense of what we’re called to be. Based on what God expected of the Early Church, the standards for community life and personal commitment are much higher than many of us assume.

Tim: This “Way,” as first-century believers call their faith, is counterintuitive on every level. You give up all your possessions to ensure others are provided for. You remain in the tradition of your upbringing; but you follow a presumably dead rabbi who, based on eyewitness accounts, is anything but dead.

Shea: And you rely entirely on the Holy Spirit to guide your decisions. Yet every time she leads you to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do, mostly because your religion says such behaviors are sinful. It’s amazingly strange!

Tim: And it’s about to get even stranger when Peter has one of the oddest epiphanies in scripture.

Shea: Its ripple effects continue to be felt today. If Peter hadn’t been praying on a roof and fallen into a trance, Christianity might have remained a small, Jewish cult that dwindled into obscurity after one generation.

Tim: That’s an intriguing and credible proposition. According to Acts, it’s noon and lunch isn’t ready yet. Being an observant Jew, Peter honors his afternoon prayer obligation. Maybe it’s because he’s hungry. Maybe it’s because he’s engaged in a ritual act of piety. Maybe both. While he’s praying, he has a vision in which he’s told to eat all kinds of animals prohibited from Jewish diets.

Shea: Naturally, he refuses. He’s being tested. Yet Peter misunderstands the test. He thinks his religious integrity is on trial when, in fact, his ability to let go his religious pride is the issue.

Tim: Is it just because Peter may be hanging on to his own narrow-minded reflexes?

Shea: That’s part, but not all, of it. Peter’s vision is Part Two of this story. Before this, an Italian centurion also has a vision that brings the two of them together. So it’s not just Peter’s piety that gets realigned. He’s also being called to a radically inclusive ministry that opens The Way to people who might otherwise be dismissed as “outsiders.”

Tim: It goes back to Pentecost, where “I will pour out my Spirit on all people,” becomes the core message. This reasserts that idea in no uncertain terms.

Shea: The prophetic premise of Acts 2 morphs into a theological principle in chapter 10. “I will pour out my Spirit” becomes “God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another.”

Tim: That’s good news for all of us, despite Christianity’s habitual backsliding into a “Haves” and “Have-Nots” mentality. We’ve got a lot to unpack this week–the “Disorganized Religion” tour takes a big turn!

Join us this week as we continue our “Disorganized Religion” tour of Acts. We meet on Thursdays at 7:30pm CDT at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park, Illinois. If you’re unable to be with us in person, catch us online via FB Live.

The Unsung Heroes of Acts

Tim: This week we’re taking a break from our chapter-by-chapter tour of Acts to focus on  the portrayals and treatment of women in the Luke’s account of the church’s earliest days.

Shea: From the beginning the writer wants us to see women were essential to this story. The Early Church could not have survived without their leadership, prayer, and material support.

Tim: Yes! And this is foundational to Luke’s theology. The pivotal principle in his two-part work, the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, emerges when Peter quotes Joel’s prophecy: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters… Even upon my servants, men and women” (Acts 2:17-18).

Shea: Gender parity is one of the most subversive aspects of the Jesus movement. As we say so often at Gather, “all” means ALL, and that’s Luke’s message from start to finish. That’s why he begins the Jesus narrative with Mary, not Joseph. It’s why he frames the nuances of ministry and discipleship in the sisterhood of Martha and Mary. It’s why he foregrounds the female witnesses to the Resurrection, while the two male disciples on the Emmaus Road become confirming testimony.

Tim: Once we get into Acts, a number of women—who are not identified as wives or mothers—make deep impressions. They provide housing for the apostles. They also move and flow in the same power of the Holy Spirit that drives the Early Church’s male leaders.

Shea: They’re the unsung heroes of Acts. But what’s interesting is that we probably read these texts very differently than Luke’s intended readers. We tend to assess gender parity in scripture “by the pound.” How much is said about the women versus the men? Who gets a name and who doesn’t? Who gets to speak and who remains silent?

Tim: Based on those criteria, Luke doesn’t fare very well, because he definitely spends a lot more time on his male characters than he does on his female ones. Although he does give many of the women names, which is an important leap forward. If I’m hearing you correctly, though, you’re suggesting there may be another way to look at the women in Luke-Acts?

Shea: Yes. First, we need to use what the great feminist Bible scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza calls a “hermeneutic of suspicion.” We have to question why Luke is presenting women as he does. Second, we have to remember something that Luke’s first readers couldn’t forget. Women ran the house, managed the budgets, provided for guests, and bore responsibility for the household’s reputation. And where did the church come to life? In houses…

Tim: So you’re saying it’s a mistake for us to overlook where the church comes into being and who’s responsible for making that possible.

Shea: Exactly. The women of Acts are important to Luke because, without them, there would be no story. It’s just that simple.

Tim: We’ll continue this conversation in a special on-line study of the Women of Acts that will post this coming Thursday. Join us via FB and chime into the conversation!

This week Gather will meet on FACEBOOK ONLY for a discussion of women in Acts. While we won’t meet in person at Pilgrim Congregational Church, we look forward to a lively conversation unfolding online!

Tough Love? Not Here

Tim: It’s a big week!

Shea: Yes, it is. On Thursday, we’ll look at one of the most influential moments in the history of the church.

Tim: The conversion of Saul, Christianity’s greatest enemy, into Paul, Christianity’s greatest theologian…

Shea: Then, on Sunday, July 14, we’ll have our Sunday worship experience, “Fearless!”

Tim: I’ll be preaching from John’s first letter, which indicates the same arrogance and bigotry that drove Saul of Tarsus to persecute the Christians continued to threaten the church.

Shea: With one important difference: the bullying appears to happening from within the community, not from outsiders. There are people who claim to have spiritual knowledge and wisdom, but they’re using their own doctrines to instill fear in the hearts and minds of gullible believers.

Tim: And 1 John’s writer wants nothing to do with these fear mongers. In fact, he calls them “antichrists,” not in the apocalyptic sense; rather, the ease with which they weaponize faith exposes their lack of love for those they presume to lead.

Shea: The writer says if they can’t love, they bear no reflection of God. You can’t scare folks into following Jesus. That very premise is so flawed it exposes the bully behind it.

Tim: There’s no such thing as “tough love”?

Shea: Not here—not in the Jesus movement. Nowhere do we find any kind of credence given to scaring folks into faith.

Tim: What about “loving the sinner, hating the sin”?

Shea: Bully logic. Yes, love the sinner, if that means you love everyone. But we’ve all met spiritual bullies who claim to love people, all the while obsessing with certain sins in order to make themselves look more holy. Look, Saul of Tarsus claimed to love his tradition so much he had to murder and attack the Christian “sinners.” He had sin on the brain and it made him a bully and fear monger. But God quickly turned that around.

Tim: Before long we hear St. Paul say, “I can be the smartest guy in the room and have all kinds of spiritual gifts. But if I don’t have love, I’m nothing” (1 Cor. 13).

Shea: That’s the core message of 1 John, too. Don’t bring all that fear up in here. We’re loving on one another, because we love God, who is love.

Tim: Stop! You’re about to preach my Fearless! sermon. And I’m thriled you’ll be with us in the room to help minister. We’re going to come out of the worship experience newly emboldened, free, and full of love.

Shea: Amen!! See everyone online this Thursday and in person on Sunday!

Don’t miss Gather this week. On Thursday evening at 7:30 pm CDT, we’ll continue our tour of Acts, focusing on Saul’s conversion (Acts 9). Then on Sunday, July 14, we’ll come together for another inspiring worship experience called “Fearless!” at 5pm CDT. We meet in person in the chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, Oak Park, IL, and online via FB Live.

Perfect in Love

It is a perilous time in these United States. As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s independence from foreign military rule, the Commander in Chief is gearing up for a Fourth of July rally that features armed soldiers, tanks, and other weaponry on parade. This is not the typical American celebration with fireworks sealing a day of picnics and baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. Rather it’s a putrid show of might typically staged by dictators and tyrants. The point is to make people afraid and it stinks.

We who follow Jesus innately know that fear and freedom don’t go together, because fear (not hate) is the true opposite of love. That’s why this ridiculous macho display of military power, culminating on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial no less, would be laughable if it weren’t so hideous.

Not that we haven’t seen it before. There’s a long American tradition of making people afraid in the name of love, with most of it happening in Christian circles. The thinking seems to follow a highly suspect logic: because we love you and because you aren’t following our path, we will do everything we can to scare you into conforming to our beliefs. Why? Because God loves you and will do everything possible to scare the hell out of you. (Take that last phrase literally, because that’s what they mean.)

What kind of love is that? How can love that wields a sledgehammer be liberating? Such an idea is nonsense and everyone knows it.

But let’s not lean too heavily on what we know and understand, since scripture advises against it. Rather, let’s hear from St. John, who wrote these words to the Early Church: “We have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4:16-18).

Because God is love, God doesn’t need to resort to fearful threats to win our love and loyalty. That kind of nonsensical thinking is the stuff of thugs and bullies. In fact, God’s love works in the opposite way. It reassures us that we are spared punishment. “We may have boldness on the day of judgment” is how John puts it. We have no reason to fear! And freedom from fear sets us free to live whole and truthful lives.

This Independence Day, I encourage us all to turn our backs on the adolescent hijinks talking place on the Washington Mall. Such fear tactics hold no fascination for us. Instead, when we look into night sky and marvel at the fireworks displays, let’s rejoice in our freedom of fear made perfect in love. That’s something to celebrate!

Join us on, July 14, as we celebrate faith-based freedom with our monthly Sunday worship experience. This month’s theme is Fearless! and we will rejoice in the liberating power of God’s perfect love. Service begins at 5pm in the Chapel of Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake Street, in Oak Park, IL. It will also be available via FB Live.