The Weekly Perspective
by Burke Shade, Associate Pastor
Pentecost is a great time of remembrance and celebration. The giving of the Holy Spirit upon believers in order to be lights and temples in the pagan and unfaithful Jewish culture is worth remembering. Also worth remembering is the beginning of the filling of ordinary Christians with the Holy Spirit upon baptism (Acts 2:38). The text relates that none of those 3000 baptized that day went about exercising extraordinary gifts such as healing, tongues, or prophesying. They were just normal Christians who were temples of Christ filled with his Holy Spirit.
So what did the normal baptized Christians do? Verse 42 says they devoted themselves “to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Things you can be doing today in the modern church!
The Apostles’ teaching? We have that recorded in the Acts and the Newer Testament. But are you devoting yourself to their teaching? Are you discussing their teaching in your family and with Christian friends? And are you giving yourself to the fellowship which that devotion creates? At church when the doors open? And linger to fellowship? And attend other outside gatherings and get togethers? The Christian faith is about relationships, not just propositional truth. But you can’t get to know people without being around them!
“Breaking of bread” is probably a reference to the Lord’s Supper, and in those days, daily. So keep up your weekly worship, whether at St. Mark or another church if you’re on the road or vacation, etc. Prayers? Probably those that occur in the liturgy, but there’s nothing wrong with a personal prayer life after reading the scriptures. There’s always plenty to give thanks for—like the Holy Spirit!