We continue studying the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament.
During our next gathering, we’ll be discussing Acts 11 & 12.
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One Response to “July 18th Acts 11 & 12”
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The Abbey organized in the fall of 2008 on a neighborhood back porch with two commitments, exploring the way of Jesus for city folks, and seeking the growth of the community from within instead of from outside. Several of us had kids and we prayed that the girls we were raising and the girls walking the sidewalks as prostitutes would benefit together from our church's presence. Never one at the expense of the other.
We took on the language of the Abbey to communicate the historic tradition of orders of faith plopping down in the middle of a city and making "sanctuary"' for the wanderer and for the beautiful. We wanted our identity to be tied to this kind of posture and practice.
We took as our patron saint, the Good Samaritan, our Neighbor. He knew what is was like to be outside of religious groups. He was not the person the religious reader would have expected to act with God's desired compassion. And yet his "neighboring" became the exemplar in Jesus' tale told to the lawyer who wanted to be awarded life eternal for his doctrine or his behaviors.
Neighbors Abbey does not simply bring the dreams of God to SW Atlanta, we expect to learn them from neighbors who have already been participating in these ways. This is part of what it means for us to walk in Jesus' Way, its just what those early disciples and the lawyer and the neck-craning religious leaders would have run into walking along with Jesus.
Now we meet for meals, to help our neighbors, to pray, to discuss scripture, to design public performance art projects, to mentor youth, and many other things.
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14. July 2010 at 09:59
I am stuck by the call to transcend identity groups. In the historical context it was more of a tribal or genetic identity. Today it is nationalism. The narrative of Peter and Cornelius sets the expectation that we are to reject the us/them nationalistic bias that can be emotionally comforting, but spiritually and humanly isolating.