Dionysus on a Bike

Acts 2:37-47 – 8/4/2026

During my first semester in seminary, I took a theology course on the Lutheran Confessions, the foundational doctrinal documents of the Lutheran tradition. One of our assignments for that course was to take a social statement of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and comment on it in its relationship to the Lutheran confessions. The ELCA’s statement on Economic Life, “Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All” makes the case that the Christian should work toward a world where everyone has equitable access to the social-economic goods society produces.

In my commentary on this social statement, I noticed that while the document articulates a worthy goal, sustainable sufficient livelihood for all, it does not describe how a society might get there or what a church looks like that is working toward that end. “Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All” also fails to articulate how an economically just system might be structured. At the end of the commentary, I note that Christian Scripture, both New Testament and the Hebrew Bible, present radical economic principles that work toward the goal of sufficient livelihood for all. These economic principles would completely transform our collective economic life. For the purposes of that paper, I left unarticulated what those radical economic principles that would transform our collective economic life are.

Today’s reading in Acts is one of those portions of Scripture that presents a radical economic picture for the church that would lead to sufficient livelihood for all. Here in the earliest church, just after Pentecost, everyone who belonged to the church shared all things in common, selling what they did not need and distributing the excess to those in need. No one had too much. No one had too little. Everything was shared in common with no private monopoly or inequality of resources. This is indeed radical. It goes against our current economic system, Capitalism, that functions by some hoarding resources to rent them out or sell them at a profit while exploiting the classes who must sell their labor to acquire the basic resources needed to survive, like food and housing. Sharing and giving what one does not need are not a part of this system and stand opposed to it when it includes everyone, so that no one is able to benefit from the need of another.

The church did not long maintain this model of no private property with all goods shared, but it stands in stark contrast to those Christians today who believe that it is acceptable for them to hoard housing and other resources to make a profit while others in their communities go without these necessities. The Christian commitment to help the poor and the Lutheran commitment to sustainable, sufficient livelihood for all must resist Capitalist modes of accumulation and look to emulate the early church’s resistance to oppressive economic inequality by sharing with everyone as they have need.

Revised Common Lectionary Readings for 8/4/2026:
Deuteronomy 26:1-15
Acts 2:37-47
Psalm 78:1-8, 17-29

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary by Justin Marquis