Acts has told us that many of those who heard Peter’s sermons met his demands and were baptized (about three thousand people!). Now the author turns to describe how they lived. The memories he reports are highly selective, so that we have as much a theology of the early church as a history. First, he summarizes under four headings the relations of Christians1 with one another (2:42-47) and then, in a continuous narrative highlighting Peter and John, their relations to others (3:1–5:42). Historically the setting would be the first years in Jerusalem, from Jesus’ death and resurrection (a.d. 30 or 33) until about 36—a period that, surely with idealization, he describes as the time when the believers were of one mind (1:14; 2:46; 4:24; 5:12). Liturgically, six readings from this section of Acts are found in the different cycles of the Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays of Easter, and nine consecutive readings constitute pericopes on weekdays of the First and Second Week of Easter.
FOUR CHARACTERISTICS SUMMARIZING RELATIONS AMONG BELIEVERS (ACTS 2:42-47)
One of the notable marks of Acts, especially in the first part, is to give brief summaries of the early Christian situation, generalizing what is happening. The present section constitutes an admirable summary of how ideally the first believers in Jesus related to one another. Singled out are four features2 that I shall treat in this order: koinōnia, prayers, breaking of the bread, and apostles’ teaching.
Koinōnia (Fellowship, Communion). In chapter 28 above, I pointed out that, although in his public ministry Jesus showed little interest in a formally distinct society, his followers by introducing baptism showed a remarkable drive toward having believers “join up.” Those who believed belonged to a group. The wide distribution in the NT of the term koinōnia (related to koinos, “common” as in Koinē Greek), shows that those who were baptized felt strongly that they had much in common. Sometimes it is translated as “fellowship,” although that is a rather weak term. More literally it is “communion,” i.e., the spirit that binds people together, or “community,” i.e., the grouping produced by that spirit. Indeed, koinōnia may reflect in Greek an early Semitic name for the Jewish group of believers in Jesus, comparable to the self-designation of the Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls group as the Yahad, “the oneness, unity.”3
An important aspect of the koinōnia described in Acts 2:44-47; 5:1-11 is voluntary sharing of goods among the members of the community. While the idealism of Acts probably exaggerates in referring to “all goods,” the fact that there were common goods among the Dead Sea Scrolls group shows that a picture of sharing is plausible for a Jewish group convinced that the last times had begun and that this world’s wealth has lost its meaning.4 Sharing goods and livelihood bind people together closely—a person really makes a commitment when he or she puts funds into a common bank account with someone else. Part of the goal of the Jerusalem community’s sharing was that there might be no members who were totally impoverished. The actual result, however, may have been that most of the community were relatively poor. Paul refers several times to the poor (Christians) in Jerusalem for whom he was collecting money (Rom 15:26; Gal 2:10; 1 Cor 16:1-3). The willingness of Gentiles in distant churches to share some of their wealth with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem was for Paul a tangible proof of the koinōnia that bound Christians together.
Of course, koinōnia was a wider concept than the sharing of goods; it involved common faith and common salvation. How intrinsic it was to Christianity is exemplified in Galatians 2:9 where Paul deems the outcome of the discussion in Jerusalem ca. A.D. 49 about the fate of the Gentile churches to have been a great success because at the end the leaders of the Jerusalem church gave to him and Barnabas the right hand of koinōnia. For Paul it would have been against the very notion of the one Lord and the one Spirit if the koinōnia between the Jewish and the Gentile churches had been broken. Only toward the end of the NT period do we get clear evidence that the Christian koinōnia has been broken. The author of 1 John sees the necessity of having koinōnia “with us” in order to have koinōnia with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and he considers “those who went out from us” to be the antichrists (1:3; 2:18-19).
As with other aspects of Acts’ portrayal of the early church, the notion of koinōnia needs emphasis in our time. There is, first of all, the great scandal of Christians living in churches that have broken koinōnia with each other; and the whole purpose of ecumenism is to see if we can regain that communion. And a more immediate scandal is our sudden tendency within Roman Catholicism to break the koinōnia. For centuries after the sixteenth-century Reformation we took pride (somewhat gloatingly) in the fact that Catholics were united while the Protestant churches seemed to splinter over and over again. Yet now after the twentieth-century self-reformation at Vatican II, we are splintering. On the ultraconservative extreme there is the movement of Archbishop Lefebvre which is convinced that it is remaining faithful to the church by breaking from the Bishop of Rome. On the liberal extreme there are small conventicles attempting to celebrate the eucharist without ordained clergy, thinking they are reduplicating the life of the early communities. Often this is justified by the claim “We are the church” (probably with the supposition that the clergy or hierarchy are claiming to be the church). Should not all Catholic Christians recognize that they can claim no more than that they are part of the church—part of a much larger koinōnia that includes the presiding presence of the bishop5 (and for the whole church, the presiding presence of the Bishop of Rome)? Breaking from that koinōnia is scarcely reduplicating the values of the early church.
Prayers. Praying for each other was another aspect of koinōnia, and the Pauline letters bear eloquent testimony to his constant prayer for the communities he founded. Here, since we are considering the description of the first Christians in Acts, it might be fruitful to reflect on what kind of prayer forms were used by those Jews who came to believe in Jesus. Of course, since they did not cease to be Jewish in their worship, they continued to say prayers that they had known previously. When Mark wrote, the primacy of the basic Jewish confession, the Shema (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one”), was still being inculcated even for Gentiles (12:29). I share the view of many scholars that the hymns of the Lucan infancy narrative, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria, and the Nunc Dimittis, were early Christian compositions that Luke took over and adapted in placing them on the lips of the first characters of his Gospel. Like the Jewish hymns of this time (as exemplified in the Books of the Maccabees and the Dead Sea Scrolls) they are a pastiche of OT echoes. They celebrate what God has done in Jesus; yet they are not christological in the sense of giving details from the life of Jesus. (Contrast the hymns of Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20; John 1:1-18.) The Benedictus is a marvelous example: Something tremendous has happened; but it is described in terms of Abraham, David, the biblical ancestors, and the prophets.6
In addition to these common Jewish prayer patterns the early Christians adopted Jesus’ own prayer style, still visible in the Lord’s Prayer which is preserved in different forms in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4; but, of course, some petitions of the Lord’s Prayer echo petitions of synagogue prayers. It is important to notice the eschatological tone of that prayer which asks the heavenly Father to cause the divine name to be praised (hallowed), to bring about the kingdom, and to make the divine will all-effective on earth—in other words, which asks God to bring in the endtime. Then the prayer turns to the share of the Christians in the endtime: to be forgiven in the judgment, not to be led into the fearsome trial, and to escape the power of the Evil One.7 This eschatological tone of Christian prayer is intimately linked to a fervent expectation that Christ would come again soon. A very ancient Christian prayer transcribed from Aramaic, Maranatha, “Our Lord, come,” has the same tone and is more specifically christological. And indeed inevitably Christian prayer did center on recalling and praising what Jesus had done, a development one is tempted to associate with the increasing Christian awareness of distinctiveness from other Jews.
Breaking Bread. Acts portrays early Christians like Peter and John going frequently, or even daily, to the Temple to pray at the regular hours (2:46; 3:1; 5:12, 21, 42). This implies that the first Jews who believed in Jesus saw no rupture in their ordinary worship pattern. The “breaking of bread” (presumably the eucharist) would, then, have been in addition to and not in place of the sacrifices and worship of Israel. Notice the sequence in 2:46: “Day by day attending the Temple together and breaking bread in their homes.” How did the first Christians interpret the eucharist? Paul, writing in the mid-50s (1 Cor 11:23-26), mentions a eucharistic pattern that was handed on to him (presumably, therefore, from the 30s) and says, “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The recalling of the Lord’s death may echo the Jewish pattern of Passover re-presentation (Hebrew: zikkārôn; Greek: anamnēsis), making present again the great salvific act, now shifted from the exodus to the crucifixion/resurrection. The “until he comes” reflects the eschatological outlook we saw above in the Lord’s Prayer and Maranatha. Attached, however, to a sacred meal it may have a special Jewish background. In the Dead Sea Scrolls community there was left vacant at the sacred repast a place for the Messiah in case God should raise him up during the meal. The thought that Jesus would come back at the celebration of the eucharist may be related to the tradition that the risen Jesus showed himself present at meals (Luke 24:30, 41; John 21:9-13; Mark 16:14), so that his disciples recognized him in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35). As we reflect on these different details, we can find the background of much of the later theology of the eucharist, e.g., the celebration of the eucharist as a sacrifice can be related to recalling the death of the Lord, and the concept of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist can be related to believing that the risen Lord appeared at meals and would return again at the sacred meal.
A Jewish pattern may also have affected the Christian choice of a time for eating the eucharistic meal. Undoubtedly, the discovery of the empty tomb early Sunday morning helped to fix Christian attention on what by the end of the first century would be known as “the Lord’s Day.” Yet the choice of Sunday may have also been facilitated by the pattern of the Jewish Sabbath which ended at sundown on Saturday. Before sundown Jews who believed in Jesus did not have extensive freedom of movement; but when the Sabbath was over (Saturday evening), they would have been free to come from a distance to assemble in the house of another believer to break the bread. This may explain why the ancient Christian memory is of a celebration on the night between Saturday and Sunday. Such a eucharistic assembly would be a major manifestation of koinōnia and eventually help to make Christians feel distinct from other Jews.
Teaching of the Apostles. Authoritative for all Jews were the Scriptures, in particular the Law and the Prophets; this would have been true for the first followers of Jesus as well. Thus, early Christian teaching would for the most part have been Jewish teaching.8 Points where Jesus modified or differed from the Law or from the Pharisee interpretation of the Law were remembered and became the nucleus of a special teaching. As they passed this on, the Christian preachers would have made their own application to situations that Jesus had not encountered; and the content stemming from Jesus in the teaching would have been expanded by apostolic teaching. (See the example of two instructions on marriage and divorce, one from the Lord and one from Paul, in 1 Cor 7:10, 12.) This teaching of Jesus and of the apostles, while secondary to the teaching of the Jewish Scriptures, was more authoritative in regard to the specific points it touched. When such teaching was committed to writing, these writings had within themselves the possibility of becoming a second set of Scriptures (the NT).9 An understanding of the dynamics of distinctive Christian thought is very useful today as we seek to emphasize that the OT (i.e., the Law and the Prophets) is not simply an interesting prelude to the really important NT, but the basic presupposition of the NT with which we must be familiar to be fully Christian. In reflecting on the four characteristics of relations among Christians that Acts mentions, I have emphasized two aspects of the picture: continuity with Judaism, and the distinctive features that marked off the community of Jews who believed in Jesus from the rest of Jews. These aspects were in tension, pulling in opposite directions: The first held the Christians close to their fellow Jews who met in the synagogues; the second gave to the Christian koinōnia identity and the potentiality of self-sufficiency. External factors of rejection and reaction, however, would have to take place before Christians would constitute a distinguishably separate religious group, and that development will be the subject of later chapters of Acts. Before that we should consider three chapters in which Acts describes the earliest interactions of those who now believed in Jesus with their fellow Jews.
NARRATIVES HIGHLIGHTING THE RELATIONS OF EARLY CHRISTIANS TO OTHERS (ACTS 3:1–5:42)
In these chapters Acts will use the actions of Peter and John to focus narratives that involve the first Jewish believers in Jesus with their Jerusalem neighbors who do not share that belief, a relationship that will produce more conversions and much opposition.
Acts 3:1-26: A Healing and the Preaching that Follows. In 2:43 Acts mentions in passing that many wonders and signs were done through the apostles; in 2:46 it was said that day by day they attended the Temple together. Those summary statements were meant to prepare the way for the account in 3:1-10 of the healing that takes place when Peter and John go up to the Temple. The story is told with a real sense of drama. The lapidary statement of Peter catches the spirit of the Christian self-understanding that what we have to offer is different from what the world, even at its best, can give: “Silver and gold I have none, but what I have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” Luke’s Gospel showed Jesus beginning his ministry by manifesting the healing power of God’s rule (kingdom) to the amazement of all (4:31-37); Acts has the clear intention of showing that Peter and the apostles carried on the same work with the same power. The healing is “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,” i.e., worked through the power of the heavenly Christ, not through any self-sufficiency of the apostles. And yet there is more in this reference to “the name” than we may first notice. We have heard that believers had to be baptized “in the name of Jesus.” To know a person’s name is to know his identity; to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord, the Son of God is to know his christological identity. There is power in the knowledge of that name (christological identity), and faith in it opens access to that power: “By faith in his name, his name has made this [lame] man strong” (Acts 3:16). Respect for the personal name of God (YHWH or Yahweh) and the awesome power it possessed caused Jews not to mention it publicly. (In Jewish legend when the Pharaoh kept questioning Moses as to who was this God who demanded that the people be let go, the exasperated Moses finally used the name of God; and the Pharaoh was struck to the ground.10) Christians developed a similar awe for the name given to Jesus, as we see in Philippians 2:9-11: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and graciously bestowed on him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name possessed by Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
The Lucan account of Jesus’ ministry combined his healings and his words; here in a similar pattern Peter’s healing is followed by a sermon (Acts 3:11-26). The author idealizes the situation by speaking of those who see and hear as “all the people” (3:9) or “the people” (3:12). This sermon is presented as an embodiment of how preachers presented Jesus to Jews. As with Peter’s sermon on Pentecost, it amalgamates OT echoes and what God has done in Jesus. If the Pentecost sermon began its challenge with the prophecy of Joel that was seen to be fulfilled in what was happening, this sermon will terminate (3:22-26) with a challenge based on the promise of Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15-19 that God would raise up a prophet like him who must be listened to. In 3:19 the demand to “repent” or “change one’s mind” (metanoein) appears once more, but now there is greater specification. The Jews of Jerusalem delivered up and denied Jesus the servant of God in the presence of Pilate who had decided to release him (3:13); they denied the Holy and Just One and asked for a murderer (3:14: Barabbas). Yet they acted in ignorance as did their rulers,11 and accordingly they are being offered this chance to change. Ours is a time when because of past tragedies we are trying to learn not to generalize responsibility for evil actions, and so it is painful to see in the NT the generalizing of Jewish responsibility for the execution of Jesus (here literally: “men [andres] of Israel”; Matt 27:25: “all the people”; 1 Thess 2:14-15: “the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets”). Luke-Acts, at least, shows some sensibilities on the subject by showing that not all the people were against Jesus (Luke 23:27, 48) and that those who were did not consciously choose to do something evil (also Acts 13:27).12 In face of the apostolic preaching, however, ignorance is no longer an excuse, and change of mind/heart is necessary if they are to receive Jesus as the Messiah when he is sent back from heaven (Acts 3:19-21). The story that follows will maintain that many of the people did change, but most of the Jewish leaders did not. In the late 50s Paul confidently foresaw that the salvation that had come to the Gentiles would make those who went by the name Israel jealous and ultimately lead to their full inclusion (Rom 11:11-12). By the time Acts was written (80s or 90s of the first century?), the situation had hardened. Acts will end its story in Rome with the very harsh judgment that, as Isaiah foretold, this people will never hear or understand, and therefore the salvation wrought by God in Christ has been sent to the Gentiles who will listen (28:25-29). Of course, the author of Acts did not mean that from this moment on Christians would no longer receive into the church Jews who came to believe in Christ, but he no longer expected the mission to the Jews to bear much fruit.
Acts 4:1-31: The Antagonism of the Sanhedrin and the Apostolic Refusal to Yield. The apostolic preaching and its success (4:4: five thousand) is portrayed as stirring up the wrath of the priests and the Sadducees who arrest Peter and John. Jesus’ own attitude toward resurrection had aroused the opposition of the Sadducees “who say there is no resurrection” (Luke 20:27-38), and so Acts is once more creating a parallelism between Jesus and the apostles in having the Sadducees disturbed that Peter and John have been proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead (Acts 4:2). A meeting of the Sanhedrin consisting of rulers, elders, scribes, and chief priests is convened against them (4:5-6), just as a Sanhedrin of the elders of the people, and chief priests and scribes was convened against Jesus (Luke 22:66). (In neither case are the Pharisees mentioned as having been directly involved, and that may be historical.) They focus on the miracle, demanding, “By what name did you do this?”—a question that prepares for the response of Peter emphasizing anew what we have already heard: “by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead…. There is no other name under heaven given to the human race by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10, 12).
Luke did not report in his Gospel the annoyed wonderment of the people of Nazareth that Jesus, who was only a carpenter, could teach wisely (Mark 6:1-3). That omission may have been prompted by Luke’s attested reluctance to report what was derogatory of Jesus. By way of compensation Acts 4:13 reports the annoyed wonderment of the authorities at the boldness of the religious proclamation of the apostles who were not formally educated in religious matters or the Law of Moses.13 Trapped by the clear factuality of the healing that had been performed, the Sanhedrin authorities blusteringly cut short any debate by arbitrarily ordering Peter and John not to speak in the name of Jesus (4:18). This prepares for an unforgettably defiant response of Peter (4:19-20). Less than two months before, Peter in the high priest’s house had denied Jesus three times; now before a battery of chief priests he cannot be silent about Christ. Among the Gospels Luke alone (22:31-32) had Jesus pray that, although Satan desired to sift Peter and the others like wheat, his faith would not fail and he would turn and strengthen his brethren. Here we see the prayer fulfilled as Peter and John emerge unyielding from the Sanhedrin to report to their fellow believers what has happened—a report that consists of a triumphal prayer of praise to God (Acts 4:24-30) comparing the forces that had been aligned in Jerusalem against Jesus (Herod and Pilate, the Gentiles and the “peoples” of Israel) to the forces now uttering threats against his followers. In a literary flourish this prayer is described as shaking the place where they are. They are all filled with the Holy Spirit and, thus strengthened, proceed to speak the word of God with boldness (4:31). Matthew (27:51; 28:2) had the earth quake as a manifestation of supportive divine power when Jesus died and rose; Acts has it quake as the Holy Spirit manifests God’s supporting presence in the community of believers. Peter’s catalyzing role in this fulfills Jesus’ promise to him in Luke 22:32.
Acts 4:32–5:11: Another Description of the Relations among Believers. After Peter’s initial sermon on Pentecost to the Jerusalem populace, Acts (2:41-47) stopped to summarize how those who listened and believed related to one another as a community. Now again (4:32-35), as a demonstration that they were of one heart and soul, we are given a summary description emphasizing some of the same features, especially that they held things in common (koinos). This time, however, the summary is followed by two examples. The first involves Joseph, surnamed by the apostles Barnabas, who sold a field and brought the money to the apostles to contribute to the common fund. Besides exemplifying positively the spirit of koinōnia, this reference prepares for future narrative. Barnabas is a Levite, and Acts 6:7 will tell us that many priests came to believe; thus the faith would make its way even among those most opposed to Jesus. Moreover, Barnabas is from Cyprus; and when later at Antioch he becomes a missionary with Paul, they will first go to Cyprus (13:1-4).
The other example, involving Ananias and Sapphira (5:1-11), is negative and illustrates divine punishment of those who violated the purity of the early community. It does not constitute a reading in the Easter season, perhaps a tacit recognition that God’s striking people dead is too chilling for modern religious sensibilities. Yet no story illustrates better the Israelite mentality of the early believers. The Twelve were meant to sit on thrones judging the tribes of Israel (Luke 22:30); here judgment is exercised on the renewed Israel through Peter. In the OT (Josh 7) Israel’s attempt to enter victoriously beyond Jericho into the heart of the Promised Land was frustrated because Achan had secretly hidden for himself goods that were to be dedicated to God. His deception caused God to judge that Israel had sinned and needed purification, for the people had to be perfect. Only when Achan was put to death and his goods burned could Israel proceed as the people of God. So also the renewed Israel has been profaned by the deceptive holding back of goods which were claimed to have been contributed to the common fund. Satan entered into Judas, one of the Twelve, to give Jesus over (Luke 22:3-4); and now he has entered into the heart of Ananias, a believer in Jesus, to be deceptive in relation to the Holy Spirit that has brought this community of believers into being (Acts 5:3). Such impurity must be eradicated, and that can be accomplished only by the judgment of Peter which brings about the fatal action of God. (We are very close here to an early understanding of the power to bind and to loose!) It is in describing the fear produced by this intervention that Acts uses the term “church” for the first time (5:11). Obviously the author does not think that such an act of judgment is alien to the nature of the church. We might wonder how he would react to the church’s omission of the reading in an Eastertime lectionary that contains all the surrounding passages.
Acts 5:12-42: The Second Confrontation with the Sanhedrin. The author of Luke-Acts likes to pair passages symmetrically in order to convey the intensification of an issue, and that is true in this second confrontation of the apostles with the Sanhedrin. No longer one healing, but many signs and wonders are involved. People even from the surrounding villages begin to bring their sick to be cured by the apostles, especially by Peter. Once again the high priests and the Sadducees have the apostles arrested but are frustrated when an angel of the Lord releases them so that they return to the Temple—a release all the more ironical because the Sadducees do not believe in angels. Thus the Sanhedrin session called to discuss the apostles has to have them arrested again. As with the arrest of Jesus (Luke 22:6) care has to be taken not to arouse the people (Acts 5:26). When the high priest indignantly recalls that the apostles had been charged not to teach in Jesus’ name, again Peter expresses his defiance with a memorable line: “We must obey God rather than human beings” and then gives a christological sermon as though he hoped to convert the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:30-32). The infuriation reaches the point of wanting to kill the apostles (5:33), when the Pharisee Gamaliel I intervenes. Scholars have debated endlessly whether this part of the scene is historical.14 At least it does not lack chronological verisimilitude, for the great Gamaliel lived in Jerusalem at this time. Far more important, however, is the place of the scene in the Lucan storyline. Acts has not mentioned Pharisees as opposed to the followers of Jesus; and now it has Gamaliel the Pharisee advocating tolerance for them. Later (23:6-9) Acts will have the Pharisees supporting tolerance for Paul over against the Sadducees. Reference to Gamaliel is harmonious in another way, for Acts (22:3) will present Paul as having studied with this great teacher of the Law who here is depicted as a fair-minded man. Offering examples of other movements that failed, Gamaliel summarizes the situation, “If this work be from human beings, it will fail; if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow it.”15 (It may not be true that every religious movement that is of human origin fails; nevertheless, the church would have been wiser many times in its history if it had used Gamaliel’s principle to judge new developments in Christianity rather than reacting in a hostile manner too quickly.) Gamaliel’s advice carries the day. Although the apostles are beaten, they are let go; and tacitly the Sanhedrin adopts the policy of leaving them alone as they continue every day to preach Christ publicly and privately (5:42).
As explained in chapter 27 above, I do not plan to comment on the passages from John in themselves, but only as they are related to the Acts readings in the Easter season. Acts describes the external or visible history of early Christian life. Working through Jesus’ words, John gives a theological insight into the internal relations of Christians to Jesus. In the liturgical weeks when the Acts readings discussed in chapters 28 and 29 are being read on weekdays, the Gospel selections are from John 3 and John 6.16 In Acts we heard Peter’s challenge to those who would be the first Christians, a challenge to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. In the description of their lives as a community we heard of the breaking of the bread as part of the koinōnia that held them together. It is no accident that the accompanying readings from John 3 deal with being born again of water and Spirit, and those from John 6 deal with eating the bread of life. Acts plays out its story against the background of opposition from the chief priests and the members of the Sanhedrin. John 3 consists largely of a dialogue with Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin who does not understand Jesus; John 6, set in a synagogue, involves a debate over Scripture with Jews who think Jesus’ claims are impossible.
John 3. This first great dialogue/discourse in John deals with the most basic gift that the Son of Man has brought from heaven to earth, eternal life.17 The opening verses are the only reference in John to “the kingdom of God,” which is a central theme of Jesus throughout the Synoptic Gospels. John immediately translates that motif into the language of eternal life which is a central theme in the Fourth Gospel. This simple and yet profound image is based on the all-important fact that Jesus is God’s only, unique Son, a dignity never possessed by anyone before or after. In particular Jesus is compared to Moses who, after going up the mountain to speak with God, came down to reveal God’s will. Jesus as God’s Son was already with God and had only to come down to reveal. A human parent possesses earthly life (a life that ends in death); God has eternal life. Human beings receive earthly life from their parents; Jesus, as God’s Son, has eternal life from the heavenly Father. As the Word-become-flesh, he and he alone can give this eternal life to those whose human life he shares. Those who believe in him receive it.
To Nicodemus who approaches him as a teacher from God18 Jesus explains how this takes place. For eternal life even as for earthly life begetting or birth is necessary, yet from God above, not from earthly parents. This is a radical challenge to the Judaism of which Nicodemus is a leading representative, a Judaism for which membership in the chosen people of God comes from birth from a Jewish mother. To that Jesus responds that flesh begets only flesh, so that the identity or status of one’s earthly parents makes no difference whatsoever so far as relationship to God is concerned—it takes the Spirit to beget spirit. And so begetting/birth from God above is a begetting/birth of water and Spirit.
In discussing baptism in Acts, I commented that there are many different NT theologies of baptism. John sees it as a birth through which the Spirit gives God’s very life; consequently those believers begotten/born of water and Spirit are God’s own children. In the Synoptic Gospels we hear that one has to become like a little child to inherit the kingdom; John has radicalized that idea to an insistence on being born from God as a child.
Nicodemus, of course, does not understand how this can be (3:9) because he thinks on an earthly level and does not recognize that it is one from heaven who speaks to him. In the dialogue that follows (which now becomes a monologue) Jesus explains in various ways the great sweep of descent from heaven and return to heaven (through being lifted up on the cross) involved in the incarnation. Others may emphasize judgment at the end of time; but for John, since God manifested love by giving the only Son to come among us, that coming constitutes judgment. People must decide either for the light that has come into the world or for darkness.
The sudden switch to a setting involving JBap (3:22ff.) helps to specify that what Jesus has been speaking about does involve baptism, hitherto not mentioned by name. Indeed we are told that Jesus himself baptized. As mentioned in chapter 28 above, in the Synoptic Gospels we are never told that Jesus baptized anyone; and his command to others to baptize (Matt 28:19) comes only after the resurrection. Consequently one could get the impression that baptism, which is an extremely important part of church life, was quite foreign to Jesus’ own life and practice. The Fourth Gospel brings baptism as a begetting/birth of water and Spirit very much into the context of Jesus’ life since it is one of the first issues he introduces when he discusses the purpose of his coming. Thus no longer can there be a dichotomy between what Jesus said and did and what the church says and does; one continues the other.
John 6. The same may be said about the eucharist. The three Synoptic Gospels localize the eucharistic action of Jesus at the Last Supper before he dies and have a specific reference to the shedding of his blood which will take place the next day. Paul sees the eucharist as recalling the death of the Lord until he comes. That magnificent conception leaves difficulties. Is the eucharist so attached to Jesus’ death that it is unrelated to what he did earlier during his public ministry, and once again do we have a dichotomy between what he normally did and what is central in church life? How often should one recall or make present the death of the Lord? Once a year the Jewish Passover recalled the great delivering action of the God of Israel; should Christians follow that pattern?19 In a sense John answers those questions. The eucharistic teaching comes as a commentary on the multiplication of the loaves and thus is intimately related to what Jesus did in his ministry. The eucharist is not explicitly related to Jesus’ death but is treated as food, the bread of life, and thus should be received frequently.
Chapter 6 begins with the multiplication of the loaves and the walking on the water, a combined scene in which John is substantially close to the Synoptic account(s). There is an echo of the miracles of Moses during the exodus (manna, walking dryshod through the sea), but John’s young lad with barley loaves heightens the secondary similarity to the Elijah/Elisha miracle pattern (2 Kgs 4:42-44). The peculiarly Johannine contribution comes the next day when implicitly the evangelist answers the intriguing question that haunts readers of the Synoptics: What happened to those people for whom Jesus worked miracles? Did the miracle change their lives? Did they become believers?
John indicates that those for whom the bread was multiplied really saw no profound significance beyond that it was a good way to get bread. While John certainly thought that there was a multiplication of physical loaves, he now has to make clear that the Son of Man who has come down from above did not do so to satisfy physical hunger. People who have loaves multiplied for them will become physically hungry again; he has come to give a heavenly bread that people will eat and never again become hungry. In 4:14 Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman of his ability to give water that people would drink and never thirst again, and here the Johannine Jesus is completing the picture of eternal food and drink. In discussing John 3, I explained that the Gospel employs the imagery of a birth from above that gives eternal life even as birth from parents gives earthly life. Once born, those with earthly life have to take physical food and drink to remain alive; once born, those with eternal life have to take eternal food and drink to remain alive.
Jesus’ remarks on the bread of life, we are finally told (6:59), were given in a synagogue; and indeed we can understand the sermon better if we know how homilies were composed at this period. The basic pattern was a detailed exposition of a passage from the Pentateuch of Moses illustrated by a supporting passage from the Prophets. In debating with him about what he had done in multiplying loaves and what importance he had, the crowd supplies the biblical text, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat” (John 6:31; see Exod 16:4, 15) which they interpret as: Moses gave our ancestors the manna to eat. (Once again, as in chapter 3, the dignity of Jesus will be made clear by comparison with Moses.) Jesus denies their interpretation: The “He” is the heavenly Father not Moses; the tense of the verb is “gives,” not “gave”;20 and the bread from heaven is not the manna because those who ate that bread died. The true bread is Jesus who comes down from heaven so that people may eat and never die.
Already in the OT God’s revelation (specifically the Law) was compared to a well of water and to food, and people were warned that it is not by physical bread alone that they live but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. In that vein Jesus first presents himself as the bread of life come down from heaven in the sense of embodying divine revelation that people must believe (6:35, 40; notice that in 6:35-50 there is little emphasis on eating the bread of life).21 The prophetic quotation that supports Jesus’ exegesis is “They shall all be taught by God” (6:45; from Isa 54:13), which is literally true since Jesus who is doing this teaching is the Word-become-flesh, and “the Word was God.” The “Jews” murmur at him (even as their ancestors murmured at Moses in the desert): Jesus cannot have come down from heaven because they know his parents. As with Nicodemus this reflects a misunderstanding on the part of those who think on an earthly level; the parent of whom Jesus is speaking is the heavenly Father.
In 6:51-58 the bread of life takes on another dimension as the language shifts to eating and drinking, to flesh and blood. “The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world” is quite close to the Lucan Last Supper declaration, “This is my body which is given for you,”22 and may well have been the Johannine eucharistic formula. To this there is another Jewish objection, parallel to the one in the first part of the discourse, as if Jesus was offering his tangible flesh in a cannibalistic way. But Jesus insists that his flesh is truly food and his blood truly drink (not on a crassly carnal level, of course: 6:63).
Acts has told us of the eucharistic breaking of the bread as an element in Christian koinōnia; John in a poetic way has laid out for us the basic elements that can make the Christian eucharistic celebration nourishing. If the service of the word feeds us with divine revelation as the bread of life, and the service of the sacrament feeds us with the flesh and blood of Christ, the life with which we are endowed at baptism will remain.
1 I am aware that throughout these early chapters of Acts, which treat of immediately post-resurrectional Jerusalem, to speak of Christians or Christianity is an anachronism; no designation had as yet been found for those who believed in Jesus. If the author of Acts is historically correct, it was at Antioch (seemingly in the late 30s) that the believers were first called Christians. Yet having noted that, for the sake of simplicity I shall anticipate the terminology.
2 The selection is made from the later vantage point of the author: features that have been the most important and enduring. There is an idealization, not in the crude sense of creating a fictional picture, but in holding up the primitive community as embodying what a Christian community should be. In the first five chapters of Acts equal time is not given to the problems and faults of the Jerusalem community.
3 Another early name may have been “the Way,” e.g., Acts 24:14: “According to the Way … I worship the God of our Fathers” (also Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:22). This was also a Dead Sea Scrolls self-designation: “When these people join the community (Yahad), they … go into the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord.” This reflects the idealism of the return of Israel from exile (Isa 40:3), when Israel came along the way prepared by God to the Promised Land. The designation that became the most popular, i.e., ekklēsia, “church,” plausibly reflects the first exodus in which Israel came into being, for in Deuteronomy 23:2 the Greek OT rendered qāhāl, “assembly,” by ekklēsia to describe Israel in the desert as “the church of the Lord.”
4 More than other Gospels Luke is insistent that wealth is an obstacle to the acceptance of Jesus’ standards and that the rich are endangered (1:53; 6:24; 12:20-21; 16:22-23). Sometimes it is contended that Luke has deeschatologized Christianity in the sense that he has recognized that Christians do not know the times or seasons for the final intervention of God’s rule/kingdom (Acts 1:7). That does not mean that he has given up his hope for the second coming or lost his estimation of values consonant with a theology in which this world is not a lasting entity.
5 At the beginning of the second century Ignatius of Antioch is an eloquent exponent of this: “Make sure that no step affecting the church is ever taken without the bishop” (Smyrnaeans 8:1); “I must count you blessed who are united with your bishop, just as the church is united with Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:1); “You must never act independently of your bishop and presbyters” (Magnesians 7:1).
6 In my judgment 1:76-77 represents Luke’s adaptation to the context.
7 See “The Pater Noster as an Eschatological Prayer” in my New Testament Essays (New York: Paulist, 1982 reprint), 217–53, for the idea that peirasmos originally referred to the trial of the endtime (not simply to daily temptation), and for the fact that epiousios, the word that most often has been translated as “daily,” may not mean that.
8 This fact is sometimes overlooked by those who search out NT theology or ethics. The points of unique importance mentioned in the NT are like the tip of the iceberg, the bulk of which is the unmentioned, presupposed teaching of Israel.
9 The gathering of writings was a part of the canon-forming process particularly active in the late second century. During the same period a somewhat similar process within rabbinic Judaism produced the Mishna, a second set of teachings alongside the Scriptures. Thus by the end of the second century both those who believed in Jesus and the Jews who did not had written authoritative supplements to the Law and the Prophets. The different character of the two writings (one a collection of stories about Jesus and the early church, letters to the churches, and an apocalypse; the other a collection of legal interpretations) reflects essential differences in the respective religious focuses.
10 In anti-Christian Jewish polemical stories in circulation by the end of the second century, the (evil) power of Jesus was attributed to the fact that he had gone to Egypt, learned magic, and had the divine name sewn into his thigh.
11 The language of Acts echoes the Lucan account of the passion: There Pilate could find no guilt in Jesus and wanted to release him (Luke 23:4, 14-15, 20-22); Barabbas was said to have committed murder (23:19, 25); the centurion confessed Jesus to be just (23:47); and Jesus prayed for those who crucify him, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (23:34a). In my The Death of the Messiah (2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2.§40, I argue that 23:34a, although missing from many manuscripts of Luke, is more likely genuine.
12 Notice also the thesis in Romans 10:3 that it was out of ignorance that Israel according to the flesh did not submit to God’s righteousness in Christ.
13 Through the centuries many have used the reference in Acts 4:13 to the apostles as being untrained in letters to portray them as illiterate. That is unnecessary.
14 There are anachronisms in Gamaliel’s speech, e.g., he mentions Theudas’ revolt and “after him Judas the Galilean.” If this Sanhedrin session took place around A.D. 36, Theudas’ revolt had not yet taken place, and Judas’ revolt had taken place thirty years before.
15 Acts 23:6-9 will show Pharisees siding with the Christian position on resurrection against the Sadducees, but that is not offered by Gamaliel in the present situation as the reason for toleration.
16 The selections from John 6 overlap into the Third Week of Easter.
17 To understand the uniqueness of John among the Gospels it is necessary to recognize that the others never refer to a previous life that the Son shared with the Father; they are never specific about an incarnation. Whereas for them Jesus is the Son of Man during his earthly ministry and will come back from heaven as the Son of Man at the end of time, for John Jesus on earth has already come from heaven as the Son of Man. Please note: I am not saying that the first three evangelists deny or would deny an incarnation, but simply that there is nothing in their writings that shows they were aware of it. An awareness is found, however, in other non-Gospel passages in the NT (Philippians [probably]; Colossians; Hebrews).
18 He thinks Jesus has been raised up by God whereas Jesus has actually come from God. A commentary on the Gospel will explain the many plays on Greek words in this passage, e.g., the same word means “begetting by” (a father) and “born from” (a mother); the same word means “again” and “from above”; the same word means “wind” and “spirit.”
19 Interestingly in the Roman Catholic liturgy only one Mass is designated as the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, namely, the Mass celebrated on Holy Thursday.
20 The exegesis behind this particular point seems to be based on the ability to read a form of Hebrew ntn (the root for “give”) as either a past indicative or a present participle.
21 I am deliberately simplifying by stressing revelation as the main theme in 6:35-50 and the eucharist as the main theme in 6:51-58. The interweaving is more complicated.
22 An underlying Semitic bŘr was rendered more literally in some Greek-speaking communities as sarx (“flesh”) and more idiomatically in others as sōma (“body”).