Antioch was the first major city outside of Jerusalem in Judea to become a center for the activities of the Jewish believers who followed Christ. From the outset, these believers seemed to follow a different path than the other Jews. Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and scholar, responded once, “The essential thing in heaven and earth is … that there should be a long obedience in the same direction.” The way of the Christian is unique.
The Way
Jesus offers His words of farewell to His disciples in the closing moments of the gathering in the upper room. John records some of the words in the fourteenth chapter of his gospel. In the physical turmoil of life and the spiritual chaos inside the heart, Jesus tells the disciples to stop the “trouble” – the commotion. “Let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1 ESV). The Greek word for troubled (ταρασσέσθω, TARASESTHO) denotes a heavy sea in the midst of the wind and storm.
Troubles Along the Way
This “Moment” article began being written on April 15, 2021. The day began with a shooting in Chicago resulting in 4 people injured in Humboldt Park. Later five people were shot outside an apartment complex in Pensacola, Florida. Police say that four different shooters were involved. Soon three men and a teen-aged girl were wounded on the northern side of Washington, D.C. The stunning incident of the day was a shooting outside a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. Nine people are dead and another 7 injured. Among the dead was the shooter, a 19-year-old former FedEx employee.
The article was finished and posted in the afternoon on April 18, 2021. At 3:00pm, Kenosha, Wisconsin saw three people killed and two others injured after a shooting at a tavern. Another shooting was in progress in Austin, Texas, where three were dead and reports of injuries were beginning to trickle across the newswires.
In between the days, four people were shot at a vigil on the East Side of Detroit on April 16th. Columbus, Oh saw a woman killed and five others injured at a vigil for another homicide victim on April 17th.
The entire area is “troubled.” Things aren’t as they should be. Our culture reels from the trouble, pain and uncertainty.
In the hurricane that is life, or when the hurricanes hit life, I can’t find the way. There is too much wind. There is too much rain. I can’t see the way. I am not even sure there is a way.
Jesus said, “I am the way.”
A Better Way
The history of the faithful is a story of roads. The first followers of Jesus called themselves “the Way.” The name had Jewish roots as the name echoed the “way of life” that was threaded into the Torah. It spoke to the Christians’ belief that Jesus was “the way” to God the Father.
Throughout the history of the religions of people, religious icons claim to be signposts pointing the way. The goals of human existence. The path to the next life. Except Christianity.
As John Stott says in his classic Basic Christianity, “Jesus was not just another signpost, but the destination to which the signposts had led.” Jesus claimed to be the Way Himself.
The early believers seemed so like Him they became known as the Way. From Jerusalem to Damascus, Christians are known as the Way.
But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem Acts 9:1-2 ESV).
And the name was known at least as far away as Ephesus.
9 But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:9 ESV).
Christians
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The actual origin of the phrase is unknown, but it is said to be coined by William Shakespeare. Juliet says the phrase in reference to family and particularly the family name of Romeo.
The truth is the creation of a new name is important. A name is embedded into a context – a context drawing from experiences and circumstances that help define a new reality.
The early church were known as followers of the Way, often shortened to just “The Way.” It wasn’t a name claimed by their own; it was a name bestowed upon them by others. These followers of Christ were first called “Christians” by the leaders of the community in Antioch (Acts 11:26).
The interesting – and quite unusual – thing about this is that sects of the Jewish faith usually did not get a distinctive name among the Gentile population. The Jewish faith had Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes but to the outside world they were all Jews. So why weren’t Christians simply lumped in with all the other variants of the Jewish faith?
More Than Just Another Sect
A little context to the culture might help. The city of Antioch was often referred to as “all the world in one city.” You could see the riches and diversity of the entire world located in one city. Antioch was designed like most cities of the day – a circular wall surrounding the boundaries of the city and inner marketplace at the center of the city, serving as its hub. From the hub of the city were inner walls, sometimes constructed, sometimes natural barriers that served as spokes reaching from the hub to the outer wall. The spokes marked ways that divided different people groups from one another. Jews from Gentiles. Rich from poor. Color from color.
Until the Christians came here. Christians could be found in every spoke of the city’s wheel. The image of Christians in Antioch was not just that they were united, but they united others, breaking down the barriers, seeing life existing through, and in spite, of differences.
And remember Antioch was one of the first cities outside Judea where Christianity spread.
Breaking Down the Walls
The term “Christian” comes from the world realizing that something new and unheard of was happening. Remember what Paul used to write? In Christ there was no male nor female, no Jew nor Greek.
After Acts 11:26 the word “Christian” is only found two other times in the New Testament. King Agrippa used the word in Acts 26:28 – an unbelieving king applied the name that he knew as an outsider. The apostle Paul uses the word the only other time in 1 Peter 4:16 to speak of being oppressed in a wider society because of the label of that name.
I wonder if he used it because of how aware Peter was that the spokes of the city needed to be gone. For a while Peter struggled because he was afraid of unity when he was around some conservative Jewish brothers (Galatians 2:11-17). God nudged him once before in a dream (Acts 10). This time Paul scolded him publiclly to his face (Acts 15).
Christians defied categories. They lived like they didn’t exist. Are we able to show the world a vision of a community in which there is no social, economic, racial or gender divisions (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:10-11)?
Billy Graham’s website carries an article written by Graham about ten years ago. He begins the lesson by asking, “Have you ever thought about what the word ‘Christian’ means? It comes from a Latin word. It means ‘partisan for Christ.’ When you come to Christ, you take sides. You take sides with Christ.
Partisans are never neutral. They never play it safe. They never sit on the fence. They’re never spectators of the struggle of their times. They commit themselves.”
Is it any wonder that on the first psalm sung in the ascent to Jerusalem, the psalmist chants:
Deliver me, O Lord
from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.
Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech,
that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
Too long have I had my dwelling
among those who hate peace (Psalm 120:2, 5-6 ESV).
| The Series | This Lesson: Antioch | This Lesson: The Pointe |
 |
 |
 |