If a policeman finds me letting myself into church by the front door, he will probably realise that I am the vicar. If he finds me climbing in through a side window, he will look at me with suspicion. Jesus carries on his fierce debate with the Pharisees from the previous chapter: they claimed to be able to see while refusing to accept Jesus as coming from God. He had come to his own, but they had not received him. Therefore, Jesus says, they are blind to spiritual realities. He continues that they are false shepherds, only out to plunder the very sheep they should be protecting. The test is whether the sheep know the voice of the shepherd. Jesus is the one whom we hear and follow. He is the one who brings us abundant life.
But how is that life to be lived. How are we to encounter the Shepherd?
In this Easter season we remind ourselves that Jesus is risen; he is alive and with us. We can know him. We can learn lessons from the Christians in the earliest days of the church. On the day of Pentecost 3,000 people received the word and were baptised, and were added to the Christian community. How did the apostles handle this situation? How did they act as shepherds to this burgeoning new flock?
The starting point is the people. We are told that they “devoted themselves”, they continued steadfastly in four activities that helped them to live with the risen Christ. These were the Apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, breaking of bread and the prayers. As we saw last week, our hearts burn within us when we encounter Jesus through his word, and we this is reinforced when we break bread in obedience to his command.
Now we take it a step further as we observe how the earliest church operated. They met in the temple and also in their own homes. They met every day. They were open to experience the presence of God in their daily lives, and this filled them with fear or awe – they were not just going through the motions.
They met to hear the Apostles’ teaching. Of course they did, for they had been born again by receiving the word and responding in faith; the obvious way to grow was to continue to be taught the word. How did they do this? There may have been occasions where several hundred or even thousand folk gathered together, but it is much likely that they gathered in smaller groups. Households were larger in their culture than is typical today, with several generations sharing a compound. It is quite likely that the Apostles went around visiting households, but it is also likely that heads of households were gathered together for instruction, and they then went home to share the good news with the members of their extended family. We live this out to some extent when we gather in small groups during the week. We share the word on the Lord’s day and gather in smaller groups to reflect on it together. When we discuss the word we are often amazed at how much we already know; we have been receiving the Apostles’ teaching through private reading of scripture and through hearing it expounded publically. Please pray for those who have a teaching ministry within the church; it is their duty and privilege and charge to so explain and teach the word, that we are each enabled to take part in sharing the Apostles’ teaching when we gather in small groups.
They devoted themselves to the koinonia, the fellowship/ sharing/ communion. They made a real effort to get under each others’ skin, to walk in each others’ moccasin (so to speak). In other words, to live a life in relationship with God requires us to seek to live in community with our brothers and sisters in the fellowship. It is lovely gathering on a Sunday, but hopefully the numbers are such that we have the experience of visiting a small town or village - we sort of know folk, sometimes by name, more by sight, but we do not really ‘know’ them, nor they us. And this is the point. Jesus came that we might have life to the full, and this means to be immersed, baptised, into the Triune God. We are also immersed, baptised, into the lives of all the others whom he has called into the family. This is not always easy or automatic. It was not so in New Testament times; we have the writings of the Apostles to attest to that, and it is not easy now. We live pressured, over-busy lives, and the Lord seems to delight in calling people to follow him who are far from perfect, and whom we often find it difficult to like. When the pressure is on, the temptation is to loyally keep coming on Sundays, but to regard the small group as a bolt-on extra that we can let go. Some groups cannot get together physically each week but stay in touch by text, email, Facebook or Twitter. The writer to the Hebrews warned us not to neglect meeting each other. Or I could tell the joke about the tray. We need to devote ourselves to the fellowship.
They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. They consciously obeyed the command of Jesus to remember him in broken bread and shared wine. In our day we speak of this as holy Communion, or Fellowship, thus emphasising that the shared bread is on one level a parable of our broken, shared lives, and the koinonia that we have just been speaking of. We do this sometimes with the formality of an army mess dinner, and sometimes like a picnic in the park with the children running around. But we do it as they did.
They devoted themselves to the prayers. I am sure they prayed as individuals at home, but they also gathered together for prayer, every day. Jesus said that wherever two or three gathered in his name he would be present.
As they met in their small groups and experienced the presence of the Shepherd among them, and as they shepherded each other, so the presence of Christ leaked out, as it were. He brought about situations where people kept asking what was going on, and the Apostles and others found themselves merely explaining what God was up to, and the church continued to grow.
Discussion Starters
1. The believers felt four things were essential – teaching, fellowship, braking of bread and prayers. Which of these do you find most helpful, and which least?
2. What is the best thing recently that you have read in a book or heard in a talk that you can share, and therefore fining yourself passing on the Apostles’ teaching to others? (NB Not every book or sermon does this! How can we tell?)
3. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. What three things can we do at St Michael’s to help others to encounter God and experience life to the full through him.
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