Values From the Ancient Church: Why They Still Matter

One question I get asked often is:  What exactly was the ancient church about?  It's natural for us to wonder, isn't it?  How did our fathers and mothers, those who payed the foundation of our faith, worship and conduct themselves?  What was important to them?  And what did this Resurrection thing mean to them?   You know another question I get?  How does any of it apply to us who are trying to be Christians some 2000 years later?  Does it really even matter?

We are lucky that throughout the season of Easter we hear readings that offer us a glimpse at the communities that made up the ancient church, letting us know what was going on with them.  During Eastertide we hear from the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of John, which tell us how those folks who experienced the Resurrection first hand lived their lives. We also get perspectives from different Gospel writers, each of which tells a different story about what meaning these communities assigned to the Jesus’ Resurrection; for example, on Easter Sunday we heard from Mark, on the following Sunday we heard from John, and this past Sunday we heard from Luke.  When we examine each of these readings from this past Sunday we learn what was truly meaningful to the early followers of Jesus, and we find that values, not rules and organization, were at the heart of their faith; what's more, we might just be able to take those values and apply them to our own faith here and now.

'Peter addressed the people, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses."'

--Acts 3: 12-15

An artist's depiction of Peter healing the man outside the temple.

Let's start with our reading from Acts, where we hear Peter speaking to a group of folks outside the temple just after he has healed a man by simply telling him: “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”  That part was left out of our reading, unfortunately, but what we got is Peter’s explanation to the crowd for how such a thing occurred.  We see in Peter a principle  that was essential to the early followers of Jesus—humility.  Peter explains that neither he nor John, who was with him, made this man walk, but rather the name of Jesus did so.  Faith through Jesus, not faith in any human being or human institution brought healing to this man.  It wasn’t Peter who did it, but rather Jesus working through him. The early Christians understood something that the 20th century theologian William Barclay would later say:  that as long as Christians think only of what THEY can do and be, there can be nothing but failure and frustration, but when they think of what Christ can do and be through them, then there can be nothing but peace and power at work."  Humility was a core piece of what it meant to be an early Christian.

'See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.'

--I John 3: 1-3

A Renaissance-era depiction of John writing his Gospel and letters (aided by cherubs).

Next we hear from the First Letter of John, which is dated sometime around the end of the first century, so about the year 100.  A lot of time had passed since the days of Acts, and many of the followers of Jesus had fled underground.  The temple is Jerusalem was destroyed, and people were losing all hope.  John though, writing in exile on the isle of Patmos, was offering not only hope but triumph in his message.  We are children of God, he says, and while we do not know what is going to happen when Jesus is revealed fully to us, we do know that when he is revealed—that is, when he comes again—we will be like him and will see him in all his glory.  Amazingly, at a time when religious institutions were crumbling, old ways were dying out, and people seemed so lost and confused, John’s letters—including Revelation, which remember was a letter—offer a sense of hope and triumph for those who placed their faith in Jesus, in the one who defeated death and made a mockery of the political and religious entities of the world.  Hope and triumph were essential.

'Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."'

--Luke 24: 36b-48

An artist's depiction of the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples and eating fish.

And then we get this great Resurrection story from the Gospel of Luke.  It takes place right after Jesus has appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaeus, and it is the last teaching he gives them in this gospel before his ascension into heaven.  He shows up in the middle of the room as the disciples are are engaged in a conversation about all that has just happened.  They all think he’s a ghost, and for good reason, but Jesus shows him his wounds and then, best of all, he asks for something to eat.  Because, obviously, ghosts don’t eat.  Duh!  Then he reminds them that all of this was meant to happen and that they will be his witnesses throughout the world.  But what goes unspoken in this story, but what would’ve been clear to the folks who first heard it, is the message that Jesus is alive and that the Resurrection was real.  He wasn't some ghost or a figment of the women's imaginations.  His resurrected body was as real as yours or mine, which meant for those early followers that the material world, which many felt was evil, was actually good, and that the promise that they would also achieve a real, physical resurrection was, in fact, true.  To believe in a real resurrection for the whole material world, which God had redeemed in Jesus, was a central part of their faith.

So from our readings today we see what the so-called ancient church thought and the ways that the Resurrection affected their daily lives.  Acts shows us the humility and personal surrender of those early followers; John's first letter shows how hopeful they were of both the triumph Jesus had accomplish and the triumph that was to come; and Luke shows that they understood Jesus' resurrection to be a physical one, and that they would share in it with him.

Did you notice that none of these readings focused on doctrine or disciple?  Instead, what we can gleam from these readings is that the early followers of Jesus were about values, not rules or guidelines.  Over the centuries Christians of all sorts have attempted to give the faith rigid structures, but that's not at all what we see from those early followers.  We see folks concerned with humility, hope, and the certainty of a real resurrection.  We see folks concerned with relationship much more so than religion.  In short, we see values that reflect who the church is at her very best, which makes me wonder:  what would happen if we took those values and applied them to our daily lives?  What if humility, hope, and the real resurrection were at our core, rather than frustrating issues around doctrine or discipline?  What might Christianity look like today if we stopped acting so much like a rigid religion and started acting more like a values-based relationship?

These are just some of the lessons that the early followers of Jesus still have to teach us and why so often the answer to how we are to live our lives moving forward can be found in the values of our forebears.  The seeds of the future lie buried in the past, someone once said.  I  pray that today—and throughout the rest of Eastertide—you are able, as you take in these Scriptures and study them on your own, to get a glimpse of what truly was important to those early followers of Jesus.  And maybe the values that they cultivated will renew your own as you seek to grow deeper and deeper in your relationship with the risen Christ and each other.  That's what the ancient church was all about, and that's why it still matters to us today.