I am a big fan of history. To me, the story of what has actually happened is far more fascinating and often far more fantastic than any fiction that the human mind can conceive. I know that, for many people, history is boring and irrelevant. No one enjoys memorizing old names and dates. And it can seem that old stories don’t really mean much in the modern world. But to understand the modern world you do have to know how we got here, because where we are is a product of where we have been. And so history is important.

For example, to warm you up to the idea of the fun and usefulness of history, did you know that in the 1500’s most people bathed only once a year, usually in May? That is the reason that so many people got married in June, when they were still reasonably presentable from a hygiene perspective. But given that a month or more may have already passed, brides started carrying bouquets of flowers in order to freshen the air. When people did bathe, one large tub of water was heated for the purpose. The father of the household went first, followed by the other men, then the women, and finally, the children and babies. After a while the water would grow quite dark, and so the saying developed, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” There are lots of other fun facts like this from history that I’d love to share with you, but we don’t have time. Instead we need to consider some of the most important history there is, the history of the beginnings of the church of Jesus Christ.

The one document written expressly to tell the history of the early church is the book we call by the name Acts. Its full name is the Acts of the Apostles, and it was written as a sequel to the gospel according to Luke. We also know something of the subsequent history of the church from other documents of the time. Typically on this Sunday, which is the celebration of Pentecost, we remember the pivotal scene when the assembled disciples were blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit following Jesus’ ascension into heaven. But today we are looking at one of the episodes that followed shortly after Pentecost. We are doing so because we want to have a clear picture of the kind of events that shaped and formed the early church and we want to take some lessons from these stories. While the story of the early church is always of interest, it has become particularly imperative to study it once again because of the current misconceptions being spread by the book and the movie, The Da Vinci Codeⁱ. In previous sermons we have looked at Dan Brown’s misrepresentation of the person and work of Jesus and of the relationship and stance of Christianity toward women in the church.

What The Da Vinci Code presents about the history of the early church is that Christianity grew exponentially in the first three centuries after Jesus and therefore became a huge threat to the existence of the Roman Empire. In order to end the hostilities between Christian and pagan forces, Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the empire, even though he himself remained a pagan. Constantine saw that Christianity was going to overtake the empire eventually, and he simply “backed the winning horse.”ⁱⁱ

The true history goes more like this. Christianity was growing rapidly in the early centuries, but by the fourth century it was hardly a threat to Rome and in fact was viciously persecuted. There was no sense in the established hierarchies that Christianity was anything more than an insult to the many gods of pagan faith and a dangerous ideology to be wiped out. Constantine did in fact become Christian and he did in fact begin the process of establishing it as the official religion of the empire, but he did not, as we have seen previously, have anything to do with declaring Jesus as the Divine Son of God. To hear Da Vinci tell it, Christianity was a might political and social force that Constantine co-opted for his own purposes, when in fact it was still a tiny minority of people who often paid for their faith with their lives.

The far more reliable view of early Christian history is in the pages of Acts, from where we learn about the dynamics that propelled the faith from the start. Consider the example of the apostles like Peter and John, who following Pentecost began to preach and teach about Jesus and his resurrection, often in the outer courts of the Jewish temple itself. More than once they were put in prison by the Jewish officials, and more than once, by the direct intervention of God, they were released, only to begin their preaching again. In several periods of history up until the time of Constantine, Christians were imprisoned, tortured, socially and economically isolated, and even killed for refusing to bow to Caesar. In a society which believed that all its members must pay homage to the many gods of nature or suffer the consequences of poor harvests and bad weather, such persecution was understandable, if unfortunate. Nevertheless, it is true that the early church survived the first three centuries of its life because its people had the courage of their convictions about the Lordship of Jesus Christ, enough to withstand even murderous pressure to quit their faith and return to the dominant beliefs of the time.

When Constantine declared a truce with Christianity it was a turning point of history. In many respects, it became the popular and even expedient thing to do to join the cause of Christ. The protection afforded by official decree was a welcome boost to the faith, but some have rightly pointed out that true Christian faith has nothing to do with becoming socially and politically acceptable. Conversion for any reason other than the call of Jesus and the movement of the Holy Spirit is not true conversion at all. The purest faith is that which is refined by fire and tested by adversity. Following Christ just because everyone else is following is less than what Jesus had in mind. Perhaps the greater challenge for Christian faith is the challenge of remaining pure and honest in the comfort and ease of social acceptance and cultural blessing.

It is vital, then, that you and I return again and again to the stories of our beginnings. How did our faith survive the difficult early years? The Pharisee Gamaliel, a member of the Jewish council and a respected leader, had it right, I think, when he advised the council not to come down too hard on the first apostles. He reminded the council of other religious movements of their time that fizzled out on their own, suggesting that the people who followed Jesus would perhaps do the same. If they did not, Gamaliel reasoned, then perhaps there really was something to this business about Jesus and the resurrection and his being the Son of God. Only time would tell. To me, one of the most convincing proofs of the truth of the claims of the early believers and the truth of the witness of scripture is the fact that, from such unlikely beginnings, the church survived. There is much in Christian faith that doesn’t make much sense to the outside world, much that flies in the face of what seems to be true of human life and existence. But still, people believe. Still, the church continues to grow, especially now in South America and Africa. Still, people continue to come to faith and to live by faith, even in many places of the world where Christianity is again a persecuted faith. If there really is nothing more to Christianity than the lies and political maneuvering of people like Constantine, then how has the faith survived all these centuries, when everything else militates against it?

Our history teaches us the necessity of courageous and committed people who will buck the trends of either persecution or popularity in order to preach the message of the gospel. Our history teaches us the truth that Gamaliel understood so well, that if something is not of God it cannot survive, but if it is, it cannot be stopped. Our history challenges us as individual believers in Christ. Do we have the courage of our convictions? And it teaches us about our place in the great movement of Christianity. Will we and will our church be part of the continued growth of the people of Christ? If my faith and your faith is not of God, then it must surely die. But if what we believe is of God, then it cannot be stopped.

Amen.

ⁱDan Brown, Doubleday, New York, 2003.
ⁱⁱ Ibid.