Eastertide Sermon Series:
Followers of The Way

Brian Zahnd writes in his new book “Postcards from Babylon”:
The original name for what would eventually become known as Christianity was “the Way.” You won’t find the term “Christianity” in the Bible, but you will find “the Way” seven times in the book of Acts. If you had asked a follower of Jesus during the first century, “What’s your religion?” she most likely would have replied, “I belong to the Way.” This is what the Apostle Paul said in his hearing before the Roman governor Felix: “I admit that I follow the Way, which they call a cult.” The earliest believers’ shared life of following Jesus together was called the Way, not because it was the way to heaven (the afterlife was never the emphasis), but because they had come to believe that following Jesus was the new and true way to be human. And because the lifestyle of the Way was such a radical departure from the way of the Roman Empire, it’s no surprise that people viewed the Way with great suspicion and often derided it as a cult.

Throughout the 6 Sundays of Easter (also referred to as “Eastertide”, which sounds way cooler than “6 Sundays of Easter” tbh) we will be looking at snapshots of the early church, these followers of ‘the Way’ especially asking ourselves where our lives need to be reshaped into the Jesus way of being in the world.