42 The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. 43 A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. 44 All the believers were united and shared everything. 45 They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. 46 Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. 47 They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved. Acts 2:42-27, CEB
Future Past
If Christ is the cornerstone and foundation of the church, these five verses long remain the inspirational keystone for Christians aspiring to live in beloved community. John Wesley’s Holy Club used this passage as a guideline or holy living. Still today, we elevate these golden times in scripture, or in reformation, or in the good old days when church seemed to matter. We look to the past, hoping to recreate what was because it seemed so much better than what is now.
While we are surely connected in communion with the saints of old, even the disciples of scripture, the church does not exist today to fit into a cookie-cutter mold of what once was. Acts 2 is clearly not a how-to-manual because it begins and ends with acts of God, followed by the response of a human community. It is God who performs the wonders, and God who added daily to the community. It is the awestruck community that responds to God’s power with works of piety and works of mercy. Even as we connect to the past we are moved into the future when Christ’s reign is fully realized. And that future/past movement wakens us to new possibilities here and now.
The kingdom of God is here, within you and among you.
It’s a foretaste of glory, a glimpse of God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. Christian community is not about elevating heroes of the past or recreating Acts 2. It’s about responding together to God’s radically personal love. Reformation and renewal is God’s pattern, and the church is on a long journey of transformation from glory into glory.
We celebrated John Wesley’s 316th birthday on June 28. It was no national holiday, and most Wesleyans were unaware of its passing. This week is also the 300th Wesley Bros comic, by my counting. I am a full-time youth pastor and full-time father of two little kids. Many people assume Wesley Bros Comics are created by a team of people, or that it is connected to or owned by The UMC, but it’s always only been an independent endeavor created by one guy. Even as I’ve partnered with some denominational groups (like UM Communications who have created a team to animate the bros), it’s been important for me to keep full ownership of this comic so I feel free to process and critique the church with you.
John Wesley may be my main character, he may have a theology and practice that shapes much of my Christian understanding, but I do not believe our responsibility is to ask, “What would John Wesley do if he were running the church today?” Nor do I believe our responsibility is to ask what Peter or Paul would do in today’s church. Their context was not ours.
We can learn from their response to God’s movement, but we should not hold so tightly to how they did things that we fail to see God’s call on us today.
God’s love is not transforming us backwards. If the church is being transformed from glory into glory, then the glory of the past is just a taste of the glory today, which is just a taste of the glory to come. When you and I believe with our hearts that God calls us beautiful and beloved children, when we trust that we truly are forgiven and reconciled by God’s powerful work in Christ Jesus, we will respond with action towards the world. We will love and welcome and seek the peace of those who have been told by their world that they are unloveable. We will prove with our love that the Gospel is for those who have been told otherwise. We will be the founders of a new Reformation, where the walls of dying churches become the launchpads for smuggling beloved community into an us-or-them world.
Happy 300th Wesley Bros comic, friends!
Grace and peace, Charlie Baber