Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible)

by Willie James Jennings

Ownership and discipleship are never easily aligned. Luke has made this clear from early in the Acts narrative. Ownership aligned with discipleship is possible, but only under the conditions witnessed by Lydia and not the owners of this slave girl. It is possible only under the conditions of a life being drawn irrevocably by the Spirit into the new reality of intimacy and community. Only those willing to open their lives, their homes, and their possessions to use for the sake of the gospel can escape the seduction of ownership. Only those whose ownership tips the economic balance away from enslavement might inhabit a form of ownership that follows Jesus. The church has always struggled against the identity-constituting powers of ownership and has often been overcome by its seductions. We are yet to grasp fully the struggle of discipleship precisely at the site of ownership where the voice of the Spirit must be heard over against those voices that wish to weave together in us possession with social control, the concern for maintaining our things with the willingness to kill others to do it. These owners enact the same logic of violence that was pressed on the body of Jesus. They have the disciples stripped and beaten. Again disciples will wear their familiar clothing—humiliation and torture and chains—and in this way perform the body of the slave that is also the body of the prisoner and that is ultimately the body of Jesus.