the need is not met merely by saying, “Yes, family is a good metaphor for church,” and leaving it at that. Rather, we need to look into that metaphor and bring out its implications just as Paul did with the body metaphor. We might even be surprised at some of the things which come out. ◆
Joseph H. Hellerman
Jesus’ early followers were convinced that the group comes first – that I as an individual will become all God wants me to be only when I begin to view my goals, desires, and relational needs as secondary to what God is doing through his people, the local church. The group, not the individual, took priority in a believer’s life in the early church. And this perspective (social scientists refer to it as “strong group”) was hardly unique to Christianity. Strong-group values defined the broader social landscape of the ancient world and characterized the lives of Jews, Christians, and pagans alike. . . .
Early Christian communities, moreover, represented a specific kind of strong-group entity. Historians have struggled for generations to situate early Christianity in its social world. Were churches like Jewish synagogues or Greco-Roman voluntary associations or what? As it turns out, the social model that best accounts for the relational expectations reflected in our New Testament epistles is the Mediterranean family. Most of us are familiar with the surrogate kinship language (brother, sister, Father, child, inheritance) that permeates the New Testament. Family remained the dominant metaphor for Christian social organization in the writings of the church fathers, as well. . . .
Stories of the ancient church living out its family values appear throughout early Christian literature. For example, sometime around AD 250, a marvelous thing happened in a small church in the rural town of Thena, just outside the Roman metropolis of Carthage in North Africa: An actor converted to Christ. We do not know his name, but let’s refer to him as Marcus. Marcus’s conversion created a stir in the church in Thena.
Theater performances in antiquity were typically dedicated to a pagan god or goddess, and the plays often ran as part of larger public religious festivals. Scenes portraying blatant immorality were commonplace. All this proved rather troubling to the early church. Christian leaders, such as Tertullian, spoke out in opposition to the idea of believers going to the theater:
Why is it right to look on what it is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things which defile a man in going out of his mouth, are not regarded as doing so when they go in at his eyes and ears – when eyes and ears are the immediate attendants of the spirit? You have the theater forbidden, then, in the forbidding of immodesty.
Thus, when an actor converted to Christ in third-century Carthage, the church demanded that he quit his profession.
Marcus did just that. Our new convert now faced an economic dilemma, however, since he was no longer gainfully employed. So, instead of acting, Marcus opened an acting school. This apparently created quite a stir among Marcus’s fellow Christians, and the surviving letters exchanged by his pastor and the church’s bishop paint a portrait of the church truly living out its strong-group family values.
Marcus’s pastor, Eucratius, naturally wondered how it could be acceptable for Marcus to teach others what he himself was forbidden to do. Yet Marcus had already made a tremendous sacrifice to follow Jesus. So Eucratius wrote to his spiritual mentor, Cyprian of Carthage, to ask “whether such a man ought to remain in communion with us.”
Cyprian’s reaction to Marcus was unequivocal: “It is not in keeping with the reverence due to the majesty of God and with the observance of the gospel teachings for the honor and respect of the church to be polluted by contamination at once so degraded and so scandalous.”
No compromise. No drama teaching. Marcus must either leave the church or quit his job – again.
Marcus’s story has the “strong-group” aspect of the strong-group, surrogate family written all over it. It is Cyprian’s conviction that “the honor and respect of the church” must take priority over Marcus and his acting academy. Marcus, on his part, finds himself answering to the church for his whole vocational and financial future.
Cyprian’s handling of Marcus’s dilemma grates harshly against modern social sensibilities, since we tend to prioritize the needs and goals of the individual over the viability of any group to which he or she belongs. But for all his hard-nosed strong-group convictions, Cyprian is not unaware of the suffering Marcus will face. As Cyprian’s comments clearly demonstrate, the intense emphasis on personal holiness that characterized the North African church had a beautiful complement: a genuine concern for those whose livelihoods might be adversely affected by assenting to the church’s demanding moral standards. In short, Cyprian tells Pastor Eucratius that the church should provide for Marcus’s material needs:
His needs can be alleviated along with those of others who are supported by the provisions of the church. . . . Accordingly, you should do your utmost to call him away from this depraved and shameful profession to the way of innocence and to the hope of his true life; let him be satisfied with the nourishment provided by the church, more sparing to be sure but salutary.
And if this is not enough, Cyprian concludes by telling Eucratius that Cyprian’s church will foot the bill if the rural church in Thena lacks the resources to meet Marcus’s basic needs:
But if your church is unable to meet the cost of maintaining those in need, he can transfer himself to us and receive here what is necessary for him in the way of food and clothing.
Cyprian made sure that the church would serve as the economic safety net for any brother or sister whose finances were adversely affected by their willingness to follow Jesus. Why? Because the church was family, and this is what families in the ancient world did.
The conviction that church members should meet one another’s material needs is, of course, central to the New Testament understanding of church family life: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:17).
Can we recapture in our churches the biblical vision for authentic Christian community as reflected in the strong-group, surrogate family model that characterized the early church? ◆
6
Pentecost
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C. Norman Kraus
Pentecost as it is reported in Acts is the climax of the three-act drama of incarnation. Act one presents various scenes in the ministry of Jesus. Act two is the Passion of the Christ. Act three is the triumphant advance of the victorious Lord. At Pentecost “the promise of the Father” was fulfilled (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4). The ministry, death, and resurrection were not the completion of the promise. That is why Jesus told his followers to wait in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the point of departure for the triumphant mission – “beginning at Jerusalem” – and they were to “sit tight” until the promise had become full reality (Luke 24:47–49). It was not simply a matter of their receiving an individual spiritual capability for service and witness to what Christ had finished. No, they were not to begin their mission because the Father had not yet completed the formation of the new body through which the Christ would continue and expand his presence and ministry.
The drama of incarnation does not conclude with a final act that neatly wraps up the loose ends of the story and draws the curtain. Rather it ends with an open future for those involved. Pentecost is a commencement in the same sense that we use the word to describe a graduation. It is simultaneously climax and beginning. It concludes with the assurance that this is not the end but the beginning. Christ is not dead or absent in some far-off spiritual realm. The kingdom he announced is not set aside to some future millennium but enters a new era of fulfillment. His ministry is not concluded but universalized through his new body. Surely this is part of the good news! . . .
Luke makes clear what he understood to be of central importance in the account. He does this both by the language he uses and by the way he constructs the account. His summaries in 2:42–47 and 4:32–37 highlight preceding developments and act as a bridge to the next sections of the story. These summaries indicate clearly what