Sukkot 2021: Learning from the Early Church about Unity with Diversity

We live in times of political division and cultural turmoil, and these divisions pose challenges for Christian congregations.  In a series of three lectures at Church of the Messiah on September 25, 2021, Rob Wilson looked to the early centuries of Christianity for guidance in dealing with today's challenges. 

Rob noted that this is a wonderful time to study the world of the early Christians, since there is so much information available about their world.  Archaeological finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah fragments have given us greater knowledge of that world.  The Bible comes to life when we see it in its original setting.  When Jesus declared, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), he did so at Sukkot or Hanukkah in the shadow of the large menorahs in the Temple area.  His words have even greater impact when we picture them in that setting.

Christianity began in first-century synagogues, and the synagogues of that time were a decentralized network of small communities.  There was no central doctrinal authority.  Rob mentioned that the New Testament explicitly mentions 24 cities with synagogue communities, and there were an estimated 480 synagogues in Jerusalem alone.  

On the margins of those synagogue communities were lots of Gentile "God-fearers," non-Jews attracted to the God and scriptures of Israel but who had not converted to Judaism.  Many of these people became Christians, so that early Christian communities included both Jews and Gentiles.  They were led by the apostles, with the Jerusalem Christ-followers being preeminent.

After the unsuccessful Jewish revolt, however, tension between the Christ-followers and the Jews who did not follow Jesus increased, and the two groups began a painful process of separation.  By the late first century, Christians were meeting in lots of small house churches around the Mediterranean world. 

New Testament scholar David deSilva presents a picture of what Christianity might have looked like in Ephesus in AD 89 in his book A Week in the Life of Ephesus.  At that point house churches in Ephesus may have included

• those that grew out of Paul's ministry;
• those that were opposed to Paul;
• those connected to the apostle John's ministry;
• those that were opposed to John;
• groups that belonged to none of these categories.   

There was a lot of diversity here.  Rob pointed out that diversity doesn't necessarily cause disunity.  It is schism that we are to avoid, not diversity of viewpoints.  Amid the diversity of the early Christians, unity emerged around the thing they had in common---Jesus, their Messiah and Savior (Col 1:13-20).

In today's divisive world, we should also strive for unity in Christ.  The wave of populism that has swept through the world promotes an "us versus them" mentality that we should resist.

Christians regularly meet to consider the Scriptures.  Rob also presented information about the Jewish lectionaries of Jesus' day.  One model was a cycle of readings from the Torah, prophets, and psalms that was repeated twice in seven years.  Church of the Messiah's semi-septennial reading cycle is patterned after this model.  Each week we trace key ideas as they are developed through the Bible.