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Apostolic Activity Imitates Divine Engagement
Observing the lives of the apostles, one cannot help but think that Christian engagement is normal. Jesus said that his followers would do greater things than he did (Jn 14:12). He did some amazing things. Do you think he might have been mistaken? Misquoted? Either he was mistaken, or there was more than surface value to his words. I do not think he was mistaken or misquoted. I think he was dead on—that he knew exactly what he was saying.
Is it possible that Jesus was telling us that we engage people without having the ability to feed them on nothing, heal their diseases without medicine, or raise the dead? Yes, I realize that we can find many examples of regular Christians seeing miracles, but miracles are not the norm. None of us can think of miraculous outpourings of God’s power as the normal way things go, can we? For Jesus, the shock of the miraculous was normal, for us, it is not, and I wonder if that was his meaning when he said we would do greater things. We will engage people by the power of the Spirit without the shock factor. It is just a thought, and not meant to get you off track. When did you last observe Christ move powerfully in someone’s life without anything resembling a sign or wonder? Most of my experiences with changed lives (mine or others’) seem to occur under almost mundane circumstances. The Spirit moves quietly most of the time; do you agree?
In the lives of the apostles, we see far fewer miracles preceding engagement than we see in Christ’s life. Peter has the healing touch to be sure. Paul raises a dead guy—not something one sees very often unless there are paddles and massive amounts of electricity involved. The Bible tells readers that many signs and wonders accompanied the work of the apostles in the early church. The early church, however, saw nowhere near the number of miracles per capita as those portrayed in Jesus’ life.
What we see modeled by early Christians is not so much the miraculous as it is the simple, consistent, and frequent engagement of others. The early church did not win their neighbors as much by miracles as they did by doing good works. In this way, they imitated Jesus as he “went about doing good” (Ac 10:38). They enjoyed the favor of all the people, and their favor diminished only after religious oppressors came after them for teaching Jesus as the Way (Ac 2:47, 8:1-3).
Think about Pentecost again, but this time as an example of God shocking nonbelievers with something unusual followed by believers explaining what was happening. The amazing episode involved relatively simple engagement by people responding to God’s complex signs and wonders. The Holy Spirit caused people to speak in unknown languages (shocking complexity). Peter followed up with a rather simplistic sermon explaining what was happening (engagement). How was he so effective? He seems simply to answer their immediate need. They needed to know what the fire, wind, and languages were about. God caused their need, and Peter responded.
Is it possible that our engagement of people with the Gospel most easily follows their needs? Is it possible that God drives their needs along by using normal events that happen to everyone like loss of love, economic trials, or death of a friend to open them to the Gospel? Look at the text.
In Acts, chapter two, the church grows through kindness of members toward one another. The entire city notices that faith in Christ makes people treat their neighbors better.
In Acts three, Peter and John lead a man to health and to Jesus—the man’s poverty and disability opened him to their ministry. Granted, the story includes a miracle. The name of Jesus heals the man. God provides a miracle; the disciples explain it with the Gospel.
Chapter four finds the Jewish rulers threatening the disciples. The church prays for boldness. The Holy Spirit shakes the place and fills the believers (shock). As a result, the church shares everything to the point that they eradicate poverty (engaging and shocking?). They demonstrate kindness and the group grows.
Annanias and Sapphira begin chapter five by lying about a financial gift to the new church apparently trying to elevate their status. God shocks the believers by killing them. Evidently, the fear of the Lord is something the new church (and city) needs to remember. Later in the chapter, the religious authorities jail the apostles, the Spirit frees them (shock), and they respond by teaching Christ to people in the courtyard (engagement).
Acts six and seven begin with an account of how the early church administrates their affairs followed by the arrest of Stephen, his speech to the priests, and his stoning at their hands. Following Stephen’s shocking death, chapter eight recounts persecution of the church, Saul becomes the religious leaders’ chief hit man, and the church runs. No doubt, the new disciples felt a sense of shock at their predicament—one day they find favor with everyone and the next they are ripped from their homes, jailed, and scattered. One could hardly blame them for abandoning the faith, but they use their dispersion as a chance to engage people with the Gospel.
Christ shocks Saul into faith in chapter nine by knocking him to the ground and blinding him. Paul responds by becoming Christ’s Apostle to the Gentiles (engagement), and the other disciples respond by welcoming him (further engagement).
In chapter ten, Cornelius and Peter see visions from heaven (shock) and they respond by engaging one another and the Gentiles with the Gospel. This pattern repeats again and again throughout the New Testament.
Only in chapter seventeen do we find a passage that seems to break the pattern. Paul engages the philosophers at Athens, but no shocking miracles precede or follow his engagement. In fact, the most shocking thing we read is of Paul telling the philosophers that a resurrection from death occurred. The philosophers found it shocking that an intelligent man such as Paul believed such an illogical story. Evidently, however, Paul’s worldview does not offend all of the intellectual elite; the story closes with several people curious and a few converted to Christianity.
On Mars Hill, God does not shock anyone with anything more than Paul’s brilliant philosophical argument. The story reflects engagement more in tune with the kind we see in our North American context than the rest of Acts. Someone may wonder if Paul was unsuccessful in Athens or even if we should avoid the intellectual elite because so little seems to happen on the Mars Hill mission. The Bible, however, does not say anything to lead us away from intellectual engagement. Perhaps the story is included in the inspired text because while it was abnormal for First Century Greece (or Twenty-first Century Africa), it is quite normal for Twenty-first Century North America. The principle of engaging people on a level they understand holds in Mars Hill, Athens as well as College Park, USA.
At the end of the day, one can only conclude that consistent engagement of people in the name of Christ defined the early Christian community. Shocking signs and wonders, performed by the Holy Spirit through apostolic workers, intertwine most of their engagements. Some engagements, however, did not include miracles. Notable exceptions occur that make engagement today not at all unusual or even unpredictable. Philip’s engagement of the Treasurer of Ethiopia is not that different from the encounters that many of us experience (Ac 8). Paul’s intellectual conversation with Athenian philosophers happens daily in classrooms, boardrooms, and break rooms across North America.
What we still must deal with is the underlying principle—the thing that translates biblical incidents into contemporary, North American life. What do we do with these stories? We conclude that for the Christian, normality means engaging others to spread the Gospel, and abnormality means disengagement. One cannot conclude otherwise.
