The Reality of the Church
Scripture Text: Acts 15:1-21, 36-41
Application Questions:
1. In Acts 15 the church struggled to figure out issues of theology and relationship. How does this inform your own view of the church?
2. How does the gospel shape both expectations and reality in the church?
3. How might God be calling you to consider your own commitment to the church?
Quotes for Reflection
N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone
“Acts 15 is about the reassertion and the working through of the principle already established in chapter 11, which concerns not a general or abstract point about tradition and innovation, but a very specific and concrete point which is central to the whole of early Christianity: precisely because God has fulfilled his covenant with Israel in sending Jesus as Messiah, the covenant family is now thrown open to all, without distinction.It isn’t a matter, it can’t be a matter, of belonging to one particular ethnic group, no matter how sacred, how chosen, how blessed with God’s presence and entrusted with carrying his promise to the world.It is time for that promise to be delivered, not kept as a private possession. This was what the ‘tradition’, at its best, was actually about all along.”
St. John of the Cross, Ascent to Mt. Carmel
“Taking Scripture as our guide we do not err, since the Holy Spirit speaks to us through it. Should I misunderstand or be mistaken on some point, whether I deduce it from Scripture or not,I will not be intending to deviate from the true meaning of Sacred Scripture or from the doctrine of our Holy Mother the Catholic Church. Should there be some mistake, I submit entirely to the Church, or even to anyone who judges more competently about the matter than I.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
“Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.”