Unknown Gods and Usual Tasks
I re-read the Acts of the Apostles bit by bit recently, lectio divina style. I wanted to watch for how God was active in the primitive church as presented there. I wanted to see what I hadn’t paid attention to before. How did God inspire the disciples with living energies for their patterns of life, movements and institutions to give form and operative capacity to the emerging body of Christ?
As I read, I noticed how they move and travel, (and newly appreciate the maps in my study bible!) I noticed the succession of people the disciples met, such as Simon Magus, Lydia, and Prisca and Aquila. They seem to have been people who offered hospitality, anchors within the local culture and families, economic means for work and collection, and maybe a little magical authority. The bits about the trades of such people and of Paul, as well as the picture of early christian unity and communalism cause me to wonder more about the kinds of work and forms of economic activity and community the various disciples and christian communities undertook and practiced.
I’ve noticed how what seems evil yields good outcomes. As the christians in Judea are persecuted, most of them flee to outlying regions, where the believers, with such people as Philip among them, are able to preach, teach, practice signs and sacramental acts. The persecution of believers involved a relentless house by house search carried our by Saul. After his conversion, he must have applied this tactic to organizing local church communities, and apprenticed his companions in the work of going house by house, insistently and lovingly, in order meet, visit, teach, and gather new and potential followers. The apostles and other disciples speak in order to sway, divide, unify. They narrate a story of their people, of God’s action in the world, and bring people to a point of decision: seeing what God has done, this is what we testify God has done in Jesus Christ. How does that work continue now, and how do you stand and move, with it or against it? In their speaking, they are attentive to whom they speak, drawing close to such decision points, and how they can draw those who listen closer to Christ.
Their quality of attention seems pretty important. They notice the local lifeways, values, belief and investments. When the early church considered how, to what extent and why the law of Moses was to be kept, they were in part struggling over how to interact with the very different lifeways, senses of value and customs of right and faithful living which they encountered now with the new intention of following Christ and making him known in the places where they are scattered. Paul goes to Athens, and was there waiting for his fellow travellers, maybe for a while. He may have been tentmaking, involved with people and business, going to the synagogue, and also watching the ways of people. Paul gives a well known speech that indentifies the God of Jesus Christ with the ‘unknown God’. Paul was learned in the words and traditions to bringthose together. But this speech and the ability to invite new believers in that place had less to do with Pauls’ book study, and more with his ‘studying’ of the local place. Study is less an academic exercise, and more a good old word that means to give some humble thought and attention to things you don’t or can’t understand. Paul studied on the place, the customs and habits, the assets and liabilities, humbly, respectfully. His intention was to see how the Spirit was at work, and help others to begin seeing and living that way as well.
The work of the disciples in the primitive church is also ours today. We can begin with studying what people do, and by ‘study,’ I mean choose to pay attention to these others with careful and intentional curiousity. Where do they work? What is that work like? What makes it hard, difficult, or worse? What about it brings a source of strength and satisfaction? Notice and ask the people in the church you attend or lead who do work unlike yours, or with which you are unfamiliar, and become curious about it. Maybe someone who drives an ‘uber’, or works in a warehouse or grocery store, as a nurse or police officer. Or is unemployed, and has been for a long time. You can ‘study’ what people do for fun. Basketball, football, playing music, video games, hunting, sewing, martial arts? You can ‘study’ their spiritual hopes, needs and perceptions, and how they have tried to follow God, and assembled the tools and devotions to do so. These might not be familiar to you, especially if you’ve been trained in ‘the right way,’ but again, what can you learn, as well as offer in that holy conversation, should you be generously invited? Study the stories they tell, and how you can tell big stories in greater working solidarity them.
Like in the days of the primitive church, we are asked to pay attention, with the love of friendship energizing our hearts, to the lives of the people near us. The spirit leads us into the place we stay with one person for a conversation, stay in a house for food and shelter, or stay for a season of life with the various people who dwell in that place. There it is asked of us that we ‘study’ to see how God is working. We can choose how to move in response to that inspiration and energy.
peace and unity be in our life together