What does Acts 2:42 look like today?
This post is from a special guest writer, Harborista Matt Stine. Matt reflects on their time at the first annual Harbor retreat. Stay tuned to our social media, or sign up for our weekly email list, for details about our second annual retreat next fall!
Roughly fifteen years ago, while still immersed in the evangelical church, I spent time in what I still called, by force of habit, a Sunday School Class composed of couples drawn together by a memorably charismatic teacher. Shortly after joining the class, that same teacher’s vocation promoted him to a new role requiring relocation, but most of that core group of couples stayed together for several years. Perhaps they still fellowship together to this day. For me, that group often provided glimpses of what some call “The Acts 2:42 Church.”
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42-47 NRSV
Acts 2:42-47 depicts the early Church fresh out of that historic first Pentecost. It’s an exciting passage, almost dreamlike in its Utopian contrast with reality. It pictures a community devoted to a deeper fellowship with God than they had ever known and possessing an equally deep devotion to one another. It is a community where “there will be no poor among you” (Deuteronomy 15:4)—not because the poor are excluded, but because this community meets every need of its own. These people love one another, and they love to be with one another. They eat together, laugh together, pray together, celebrate together, and cry together. And Luke the Physician tells us of the miracles they witness—“signs and wonders” of the Apostles—though not very much about what those miracles are, other than the community’s numerical growth. What was once a ragtag band of disciples in the shadow of Jesus’ crucifixion grows exponentially as more individuals encounter yet another miracle: the mystery of God’s salvation.
Shortly after that first “Sunday School” teacher moved on, our new teacher decided we would embark upon a study of Acts. Several men (Yay, Complementarianism! 😩) would be called to teach a passage. I was stoked about possibly getting my hands on Acts 2:42-47, as I had been studying it with one of my favorite podcast pastors. I believed I could point to several significant parallels between our class and the early Church as described in that passage. After what I recall being a little friendly negotiation, I got my wish.
I don’t remember what I taught (I have no idea where my notes are or if they still exist...). But I remember making a special request to conduct our private observance of “the Lord’s Supper” (as communion was called in our particular denomination). The Lord’s Supper was an event painstakingly choreographed once per quarter in our enormous worship center. One simply didn’t administer a sacrament as a layperson, but we had a pretty laid-back adult education minister who rubberstamped our oyster crackers and grape juice.
So ends the story from long ago; so begins the story still being told.
What it means to belong
I hadn’t recalled this particular episode of my life in many years. And yet there I sat in a room in Stony Point, New York, listening to Jon Mathieu explaining the Lord’s Supper.
The Eucharist.
Communion.
A feast with many names and traditions but bound by the one person of Jesus Christ.
Jon asked us to share our past experiences, reflections, and/or understandings of communion before calling us to break bread together as a group. I chose not to share at that moment, but I immediately recalled my experience teaching Acts 2:42-47.
Not only has my life changed so dramatically since then that I’m barely recognizable as the same person, but the contrasts between these two groups couldn’t be more significant. Even though we were sharing in precisely the same feast passed down through the centuries by the myriad incarnations of the Christian Church.
If I had to pick only one noteworthy feature of this early group of Christ followers, it would be their absolute faith in the familial love and trust that bound them together. It’s hard to accurately describe what that feels like until you experience it. In that way, it’s much like a person’s first experience with romantic love.
At times over the years I’ve felt great about my chosen faith communities. I thought some of them felt like family. And once I became familiar with Acts 2:42-47, I often considered the idea that I might finally be experiencing an authentic Christian community.
But at the end of the day, my formative faith community experiences were determined by geographic proximity and artificial cohorts based on age or heteronormative marital status. We were together because someone sorted us into the same bin together. Even when we had a buffet of choices, that buffet only served up variations on the same theme.
A different communion
Harbor is different.
And Harbor is hard to accurately describe until you experience it.
I also realized that I hadn’t understood the “absolute faith in the familial love and trust” that could bind a community until I sat at the Harbor retreat in a circle of people who, only hours before, had met in person for the first time.
In that circle, I experienced the most intimate, raw, and transparent sharing of one another through words, communion, song, laughter, and tears I have ever known.
This community was not bound by geography. Our numbers span the entire Western Hemisphere, and until that weekend in Stony Point, we had never gathered as a community beyond the virtual confines of Zoom.
This community was not bound by artificial cohorts based on age or heteronormative marital status. We span multiple decades. We are married, single, divorced, widowed, dating, straight, gay, trans, and every queer variety thriving in the spaces between.
Nobody sorted us into bins.
We searched for one another until we found one another.
And much like the concerned parent standing watch for their prodigal child to return, we ran and embraced one another. And perhaps without knowing it, we formed a cord of many strands that will never be broken. Strands made of love and faith and hope and trust and light.
That blessed weekend in Stony Point filled Harbor’s cup anew.
Experiencing salvation
Our hearts were not only full, they were overflowing.
And this was the Spirit that I felt enveloped in hour by hour as I grounded myself in that mystical glen. One didn’t need to do anything but pause... and listen... and be strangely warmed by the Spirit that unites this fellowship of misfit toys.
Day by day, the Spirit continues to add to our number. We do not seek growth in numbers. Ours is not a capitalistic endeavor.
Instead, we seek growth in communion. In that strength that is borne forth from intimacy. In a firm foundation, composed of a multitude of human bonds, creating an awesome latticework that cannot be broken by natural means.
John the Apostle reports Jesus as saying, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). In the evangelical tradition of my past, this statement by Jesus was often cited when discussing the results of salvation.
Eternal life, not just a “get out of hell free card,” but a present reality. Here and now.
What I find remarkable about Harbor, especially that precious weekend in Stony Point, is that it has allowed me to feel for the first time what Jesus was saying.
Sure, I have felt my fair share of “strange warmings” when lost amid a congregation belting out the latest Hillsong-inspired chorus.
That’s not what I’m talking about.
It’s that constant inner voice saying, “Harken. Behold. This is what I meant.” And while I dare not speak for any of my Harborista siblings, I reckon that most would describe a similar experience.
If salvation is eternal life, and if eternal life is being immersed in the love of Jesus as a daily, lived reality, then our God truly is daily adding to our number those being saved.