Week 28—Sunday Acts 13:1-4
Acts 13:1-4
STEPHEN, PHILIP, PAUL LEAD THIS LAY MOVEMENT
We saw yesterday that the spiritual initiative shifted from the Twelve to the Seven. The Seven kept life together—the spiritual and the material were two sides of one reality. They were not disembodied spirits floating above the material lest they be entangled and contaminated by contact with it. Their spiritual lives functioned in and through the material. So God tipped God’s power in the direction of the Seven. When Philip was going to turn all Samaria to Christ, the Twelve sent down John and Peter to regularize what they couldn’t produce. They laid hands on the Samaritans that they might receive the Holy Spirit.
Philip also first preached to an Ethiopian and led him to Christ, thus founding the Ethiopian church which persists to this day. He also established the ministry of women, since he had four unmarried daughters who prophesied, and prophesy here was not foretelling human events, it was forth-telling the Good News. And he also was the only person in the New Testament who was called an evangelist—“Philip the evangelist,” and yet he was set aside to serve tables and the Twelve were to be the evangelists, a reversal.
Again, those who were scattered under the persecution of Stephen—this lay group—went to Antioch and preached the gospel not only to Jews but to Greeks as well, and “the hand of the Lord was with them.” They founded the Antiochian Church. And it was out of Antioch that Paul and Barnabas were sent on their great missionary journeys to Asia and Europe. Antioch, founded by a lay group and constituted as a lay group, sent forth Barnabas and Paul, also laymen. From then on laymen headed by Paul became the center of spiritual contagion. The Christian movement was emphasizing what God had emphasized in the Incarnation—the Word had become flesh. In the Twelve the Word had largely become word.
O God, our Father, we thank you for this emphasis. We thank you that people, just ordinary people, touched by your extraordinary grace and power did extraordinary things. We thank you that this is open to ordinary people today. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am a follower of Christ, as such everything is open to me which is open to a follower of Christ.