The Vehicle for the Vision

The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great light,
And to those who were sitting in the land and the shadow of death
Upon them a light dawned.

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:16-17).

At the outset of his ministry, just following his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus here proclaims the coming of the kingdom and calls men and women to a complete change of heart and mind. He boldly proclaims, as Clarence Jordan has paraphrased it, "Change your whole way of thinking, for a new order of the Spirit is impinging upon you." Jesus' first sermon calls us not to straight doctrine, nor to personal salvation, nor to social action, nor to charismatic experience, nor to contemplation, nor to class struggle, nor to liturgical renewal; he calls us to the kingdom of God. He says that entering the kingdom comes through repentance -- metanoia in the Greek, meaning to have the whole form, character, and orientation of our lives undergo a radical transformation so that we might be equipped and prepared to participate in the new order that has come to change the world and us with it.

Matthew then reports that Jesus called a band of disciples to follow him and "they immediately left their nets, and followed him." From the calling of the disciples to the inauguration of the church at Pentecost, the life of the kingdom drives the believers to community and is meant to take place in the context of a common shared life. The life of the early Christian fellowships, as seen in the book of Acts and elsewhere in scripture, presents the Christian life as a common life, the life of a people more than the life of individuals. The beginning of Acts gives us a picture of the ones who had known Jesus, had walked with him, talked with him, listened to him, and lived with him for three years. They had seen him live and die and rise again from the dead. They were eyewitnesses to the gospel. They had both followed him and forsaken him. Their lives had been decisively and irrevocably changed by him. He had set their feet upon a new path, and they would never be the same again. In response to his command, they gathered together in an upper room to wait for the promised coming of the Spirit.

At the day of Pentecost, they were all gathered in one place, waiting, when suddenly there came a sound like "a strong driving wind" and "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit ..." The consequence of the outpouring of the Spirit was a bold and mighty proclamation of the gospel, repentance on the part of many who saw and heard, and the establishment of a common life among the believers.

They met constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, to break bread, and to pray. A sense of awe was everywhere, and many marvels and signs were brought about through the apostles. All whose faith had drawn them together held everything in common: they would sell their property and possessions, make a general distribution as the need of each required. With one mind, they kept up their meals with unaffected joy, as they praised God and enjoyed the favor of the whole people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those whom he was saving (Acts 2:42-27).

Again, in Acts 4, the coming of the Spirit resulted in a common life springing up among the early believers.

The whole body of believers was united in heart and soul. Not a man of them claimed any of his own possessions as his own, but everything was held in common, while the apostles bore witness with great power to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. They were all held in high esteem; for they had never a needy person among them, because all who had property in land or houses sold it, brought the proceeds of the sale, and laid the money at the feet of the apostles; it was then distributed to any who stood in need (Acts 4:32-35).

The common life was not merely a futile experiment nor did this practice end at Jerusalem. Rather, the common life and sharing is shown throughout the New Testament and became the distinguishing mark of the early church.

Most often we pass over the meaning of Pentecost and the Spirit's creation of a common life among the believers. In the New Testament there exists the most fundamental connection between the vision of the kingdom as a new order and the common life of the body of Christ as the vehicle of that new order. As the New Testament affirms a basic tension between the values and character of the kingdom of God and the assumptions and structure of the systems of the world, so the church is visioned as a new social reality that bears witness to the new order of the kingdom in the midst of the old. Always flowing from the call to repentance and to the kingdom is the invitation to join the new community, the voluntary society, the new peoplehood of those who have begun to experience the salvation of Christ and, together, bear witness to the new life and freedom which he brings.

Clearly, we are not left to determine the shape of our discipleship alone. God has given [God's] people the gift of community.

A community of faith and struggle becomes imperative as a center of resistance to the old order and celebration of the new, an environment in which we find the healing of our own brokenness and a sign to the world of the new possibilities of life in Jesus Christ. This is the kind of faith community the New Testament calls the church. It can take different forms in different times and places but to be the church there must be community present among the believers. The gospel calls us not only to a new style of life but also to a new environment created by the Spirit to bring about our healing and the healing of the nations.

Thus the church's greatest failures in confronting sin and death in the world are not in merely failing to denounce the world's ills and problems, nor even in failing to effectively make social change, but rather stem from its failure to be what the church has been called to be, from failing to structure its life and action as that new community created by the work of Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be a new social reality, a living testimony to the presence of the kingdom of God in the world. Then, the renewal of the church will come not through a recovery of personal experience or sound doctrine, nor through innovative projects of evangelism or social action, nor in creative worship, nor in the gift of tongues, nor in new budgets, new buildings, and new members. The renewal of the church in our times will come about through the work of the Spirit in restoring and reconstituting the church as a local community whose common life bears the marks of radical obedience to the kingdom of God.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.