The Secret Ingredient
Pre:
Last week, Ed took us back to the very beginnings of our
faith, to God’s call to Abraham. God’s
call to Abraham was both a promise and a challenge. The promise was that God would bless Abraham through
descendents who would become a great nation.
The challenge was that the blessing was not just for him, but through
him, all nations would be blessed. From
that time on, people of faith have shared that same call: to believe the promise of God, and to share the
promise with others. God’s love
is never given to be hoarded. It is
always given in order to be given again.
As we continue our journey today toward understanding how
our faith impacts our life in our present day, we will take a look at what the
Christian Church was like when it was just a baby, in the first century.
The first Bible reading is from Jesus’ final instructions to the disciples before he ascended to heaven, just about a week before the church was born on Pentecost. (I’ll read the second one later.)
Read Acts passage
The Secret Ingredient
Acts 1:8, 2 Corinthians 4
There was a guy walking in the desert who desperately needed a drink. As he followed the dunes, he came upon another man, riding a camel. He asked the man if he had something to drink. The man on the camel said “No, but if you like, I have a nice selection of ties. Would you like to buy one?”
“NO!” the thirsty man replied, “Are you crazy? I need something to drink, not a tie!” So the man on the camel rode on, and the walking man continued his slow and thirsty trek. Finally he came upon a cantina. He gratefully approached the doorman at the cantina and said, “Thank God I made it!” Can I get in and get some water?”
The doorman frowned at him. “Not without a tie.” (aol)
Have you ever had days like that? When everything seems to work against you? When your agenda doesn’t seem to mesh with what’s going on in the world? Then you have at least a glimmer of an idea of what it was like to be a Christian in the first century. Their faith put them at odds with their culture.
If you lived on Indonesia’s island of Ambon, you would have an even better idea of what it was like, because in that little corner of the world, Christians have become targets. Over the last 20 months about 4,000 Christians have been killed in Ambon and the surrounding Muluku islands. In June of this year the president of Indonesia declared a civil emergency in the region, but that has not helped much, because military and police units that have been sent in to stop the fighting have become a part of it.
When the Christian Church emerged in the first century, it was something the likes of which the world had never seen. The Christian church of the first century had both a message and a lifestyle that challenged the world around it.
In a world where pluralism was the name of the religious game, their message was an uncompromising one: Jesus Christ is Lord, and there is no other. They staked their lives on getting this message out.
The first century world was sharply divided into classes and races; it was a world where each person had a place that was clearly defined and marked out. You were either Jew or Gentile. Slave or free. Male or female. And whichever one you were defined your place in society. But in the church, slaves and masters, women and men, Jews and Gentiles all banded together as brothers and sisters, equal partners, in an enterprise that was as puzzling to the world as it was powerful in its influence.
Integrity and risk and accountability were marks of the Christian life. These were not people who were Christians in name only, but in heart and feet and hands and life. When God called them to go to dangerous places, they went. When someone strayed, they were called to account for their behavior.
Their worship was dynamic and filled with the presence of God.
Prayer was an integral part of their life as a community, and as individual believers.
Through their prayer and worship, there was a clear sense that individuals and the church were being guided by the Holy Spirit. Miracles and healing were commonplace.
Everybody was involved in ministry.
The early Christians did not set out to create a counter culture, but in
essence, that’s what they did. Their
faith in Christ changed them. It
created a new lifestyle that was not like the lifestyle being lived around them.
And that got them in trouble every time.
Because they emerged out of Judaism, that’s where they got in trouble first. The way we understand the Christian faith, we see it as a natural extension growing out of Judaism. But to Jewish leaders of the first century who did not accept that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christian church was blasphemous. They saw Jesus as a failure, not a Messiah. That of course is because they had expectations that the Messiah would rescue them from Rome, which he did not. And they also knew that in the Old Testament it said that anyone who hung on a tree was under a curse.
Besides their disdain for Jesus, the bulk of the Jewish leadership was highly offended by the fact that the Christians did not support the Jewish nationalistic causes. To add insult to injury, they befriended Gentiles, which was anathema to the most orthodox Jews. And besides, who were these people anyway? They hadn’t been to rabbinical school; the leaders were unschooled fishermen. Nobodies.
So, Christians became easy targets, almost as soon as the church was established. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was executed by the Jewish leadership on a trumped-up charge of blasphemy. And he was not the last.
In the earliest days of the church, the Christians were shielded from Roman persecution by a Jewish umbrella. In the Roman Empire, the Jews had been given a large measure of freedom and privilege, despite the fact that they just wouldn’t fit in with the Roman way of life. As long as Christians were seen as just another Jewish sect, they had some protection. But once it grew beyond that, and Gentiles were also a part of the church, it became open season on the Christians. To the Romans, the Christians were seen as atheists (they wouldn’t worship the emperor), immoral, because of their emphasis on loving their brother and sister, cannibals, because of that strange meal where they ate someone’s body and blood.
By a.d. 64 they were such a handy target, that Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire that destroyed much of Rome. From then on it was essentially a crime to be a Christian. But they were not deterred. When imprisoned, they sang hymns; when they faced their own death, they did not flinch. They saw it as a privilege to die for their faith.
Those Christians were something else, weren’t they? Committed, faithful, impressive. But you will notice one word I didn’t use to describe them. They were not perfect. Those Christians of the first century were no different from you and me. They had families, they had issues, conflicts, they got sick, they had responsibilities. And they didn’t always succeed. They had human foibles and quirks and weaknesses just like we do.
But in spite of the opposition and in spite of their own human weaknesses, the church not only survived, it thrived. It continued to spread like wildfire. What was their secret ingredient that made life possible, and that made the church continue to grow?
Strangely enough, the secret ingredient that enabled them to survive, was the same ingredient that got them in trouble in the first place. It was their relationship with Jesus Christ. A relationship that was genuine, that was number one in their life, and that was life changing.
With Christ, they were able to do what would have been literally impossible otherwise.
The good news for us is that Christ is just as real today as he was then. His power for living and for ministry has not been watered down. Nor has it been weakened by the passage of time. It is still as potent now as it was then.
When I was surfing the internet yesterday, I read about a bacteria that scientists discovered in a crystal of salt. This living organism was believed to be 250 million years old. Now, that’s some powerful bacteria. That’s older than the dinosaurs.
The life of Jesus is stronger than any old bacteria. He is still alive, after 2,000 years. So, in the face of our own weakness, our own struggle, we can have this same power, if we will only open our hearts to it and accept what God is only too willing to give.
Here’s where the good news also becomes a challenge. The challenge to us is to put our own lives on the line. To be uncompromising in our commitment, fervent in our prayers, and persistent in our ministry. Are you there yet? Are you a 21st Century Christian with a 1st century faith? To be more specific, if you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
As I read the second Bible lesson in closing, I want to invite you to
think about your own life. Think
about the struggles and difficulties you face.
Think of the ministry that God has called you to.
Think about the genuineness of your own commitment to Christ.
Then think about what God can do, in and through you.
Read 2 Corinthians