It’s unfortunate that the Acts pericopes for this week (Acts 2:36-41) and
next (Acts 2:42-47) disconnect the repentance and baptism of 3000 on Pentecost and what follows
– the entry of this new community into a pattern of breaking bread (v. 41) and sharing
all things in common (v. 44). These two things – repentance, turning around and the
breaking of bread with a forgiving Savior – are core elements of Luke-Acts, and
with this Sunday’s Gospel.
We tend to bracket the incredible number of converts at the
end of Peter’s sermon into the category of "Biblical statements that can't possibly translate into today's context". But which is more incredible in today’s context– that
3000 were added in one day, or that they shared all things in common? Or that more
were added to their number daily (47), even though people knew that this was a
community in which people sold their possessions in order to share them with
the poor?
Sara Miles (who I’m very happy to announce will be preaching and speaking at
ECLC next February) has written powerfully in her memoir Eat This Bread: A Radical Conversion about this connection between
conversion and communion, and between Jesus’ feeding us with himself and our
call to feed others. At her church, St. Gregory of Nyssa, the communion table is
cleared at the end of the Eucharist and quite literally becomes the table of
fellowship with coffee and treats. And the gifts of the community to others are
gathered there as well.
The experience of being fed at Jesus’ table converted Miles
to Christianity, and in that feeding she also found her own call within St.
Gregory’s – starting a food pantry where, weekly, anyone who came to the church
doors was offered a bag of groceries, no questions asked.
Miles has said in a PBS interview that after years of
thinking that Christianity was about rules and strict creeds and unlikely
beliefs in creationism, she discovered that “faith is about hunger -- a hunger
I had always had -- and a willingness to
be fed by something you don’t understand.”
In this week’s Gospel, and in the Emmaus text, Jesus comes
as an unfamiliar figure to the disciples. They still don’t know what his
presence means, but as they eat with him their eyes are opened. As they are
willing to be fed by this stranger among them, they find their Lord.
Sara Miles (who I’m very happy to announce will be preaching and speaking at
ECLC next February) has written powerfully in her memoir Eat This Bread: A Radical Conversion about this connection between
conversion and communion, and between Jesus’ feeding us with himself and our
call to feed others. At her church, St. Gregory of Nyssa, the communion table is
cleared at the end of the Eucharist and quite literally becomes the table of
fellowship with coffee and treats. And the gifts of the community to others are
gathered there as well.
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