Sunday: Gathering up the Lessons
WEEK 52
SUNDAY
GATHERING UP THE LESSONS
Luke 12:27-32
We come now to our last week together, and we shall spend it in gathering up the lessons we have learned and pointing them to our individual and collective lives.
As I have gone along with you, the conviction has deepened that the main thesis of this book is sound, namely, that in the society of the Acts of the Apostles we have the fulfillment of the prediction of Jesus that “some standing here won’t die before they see God’s kingdom arrive in power” (Mark 9:1). In the structure of the individual and collective life that emerged after the coming of the Holy Spirit, we see the very nature of that kingdom. Take a cross section of that society and you will see the essential nature of the kind of order that constitutes the kingdom. The kingdom did come with power—not fully or perfectly—that will come when Jesus Christ returns to set up his kingdom. But this is preview. The kingdom Jesus will set up will be, not different from, but more than the kingdom as seen in the Acts.
Just as Jesus was the incarnation of God, so this group in the Acts became the incarnation of the kingdom of God. They were the Word of the kingdom become flesh in a group. Two new words had to be coined to express the nature of that New Order and the Spirit that animated it: koinonia—the fellowship—and agape—amplified, human-divine love. This was a brand new thing and had to have a brand new vocabulary to describe it.
When Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid, little flock, because your Father delights in giving you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32), that literally became true. For the ideas and outlook and spirit of this little group became the ruling ideas, outlook, and spirit of advancing civilization to the degree that it did advance and was civilization. The real rulers of humanity have been this “little flock”; they have ruled the development, basically ruled it, for they were the kingdom in miniature.
O Jesus, Master, heaven and earth may pass away, but your word shall never pass away. If we build upon your word, we build; if not, we blast. We are yours forever. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to the “little flock,” and therefore the kingdom belongs to me; its powers are behind me.