Yes, there is a hierarchical order, but…

Familial language, however, does not preclude hierarchical order, as if calling each other “brother” automatically distributed theological insight and practical wisdom in an equal measure to all. Luke’s sort ofhierarchy is not the kind that so worries postmoderns of various stripes but the kind that is inevitably a necessary part of any communal organization. Even the Quakers have leaders. The more difficult issue is that systematizing Luke’s structure of authority has proved notoriously difficult for modern scholars of his work. To be sure, there are the twelve (with Matthias for Judas), Peter, James, Paul, Stephen, elders, deacons, and so on. But beyond the most obvious observations, arranging these various people and offices into clear tiers has simply not been possible. Still, what is obvious from Acts is Luke's conviction that the new society cannot flourish without orders of authority that guarantee both the movement’s continuity with the earthly Jesus and the pattern of life that is its ethic.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 139

<idle musing>
Perhaps because it is intended to be difficult? The point, after all, is to advance the kingdom of God, not the hierarchy of leaders. Christ is the leader, the ruler, the potentate, the king. The rest are simply to advance his will. After all, isn't he the one who said that the first would be last? Didn't he also say that the one who would be a leader must be the servant?

That kinda turns all the human hierarchies on their heads.

Just an
</idle musing>

Nope, not stasis!

If you continuously show that the Christians are disruptive, aren’t the Athenian prosecutors basically right to try Paul? Wouldn’t the Philippians or the Ephesian Demetrius have correctly discerned that the economic unfolding of Christian practice is a threat to religiously based economic or political order? Wouldn’t the Romans be right to judge Christians seditious, guilty of the crime of riot-causing revolt—the dreaded stasis, the punishment for which is death? Wherever they go, the Christians upset normal cultural patterns, which in turn leads to disorder. What more in the way of evidence is needed?

You are very close to the truth, Luke might reply, but, alas, sit on the wrong side of it. The Christians do in fact bring the possibility of disorder, but such disorder is not the same thing as stasis. In fact, Paul was accused of this very crime—and declared innocent.

The second feature of Luke’s view of church is thus his negation of a particular way of interpreting the cultural disorder brought by Christianity’s arrival. Over the course of a long stretch of the end of Acts (24:1—26:32), Luke tells of Paul's trial for stasis. This trial is the narrative culmination of a long series of occasions when the Christians have been brought before local authorities and accused of disruption. In this particular case, Paul’s opponents have a good argument, at least prima facie. Paul has incited a riotous crowd in the capital of Judea—in Roman eyes, one of the more incendiary provinces of the ancient world—and drawn the attention of the local tribune Claudius Lysias (Acts 21:27-23:35). Upon learning that Paul is a Roman citizen and dealing with a plot to take his life, Lysias does the most politically careful thing he can and sends Paul under protective escort to Judea’s governor in Caesarea for trial.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 137

<idle musing>
And again, he is found innocent. Yes, Paul and the Christian message bring disruption to the local order, but that disruption is a good disruption, not stasis. The same arguments are brought against the early Christians repeatedly. Tertullian, around 200, has to defend the Christians against the same charges. He doesn't deny that the Christian message is disruptive—it plainly is—but instead argues that Christians make the best citizens because they pray for the empire and don't cause stasis.

Would that the same were true of Christians today!
</idle musing>

On trial—again!

Though modern interpreters have long considered the scene in Athens to be a placid philosopher’s dialogue, the ancients would have read it differently. In antiquity it was known not only that Athens grew its own philosophers but also that it could try and kill them. Socrates was the best remembered, but he was not the only thinker who met his doom in Greece’s most famous city. In fact, Paul’s appearance before the court of the Areopagus is a trial. Luke’s Paul is enough of a rhetor to combine a skillful avoidance of the capital charge—bringing in strange deities, as did Socrates—with a comprehensive critique of pagan “piety” as “superstitious” idolatry. Turning to the God who is now newly known in Athens would in fact expose the city as a place “full of idols” rather than of wisdom (Acts 17:16-34).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 136–37

Stasis!

Paul rescues a “prophetic” slave girl by exorcising the spirit that made her fortune telling possible. In so doing he simultaneously destroys the economically exploitative work of her owners. Seeing the destruction of their business, the girl’s savvy masters carefully rephrase their worries in dangerous political terms. Going before the Philippian magistrates, they accuse Paul and Silas: “These men are Jews and are disrupting the city, and they advocate practices that are unlawful for us Romans to accept or to do” (Acts 16:21). Given the gravity of the accusations against the Christian missionaries, it is no great wonder that the magistrates “tore their clothes off, gave orders to beat them with rods," and “after they had inflicted many blows upon them," threw them into prison (16:22-23). Of course the two men are freed from prison, but the businessmen and magistrates have rightly intuited the potential for cultural wreckage in Philippi.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 135–36

<idle musing>
He develops these ideas of the accusation of stasis ("rebellion, sedition") much more in his previous book, World Upside Down, which is definitely worth your time reading. I excerpted from it a few years back; you can search for it to see them.
</idle musing>

Early Christology?

Where modern New Testament scholars have routinely believed that Jesus was acclaimed Lord only after his death and resurrection, Luke makes clear that he was Lord from the moment of his existence. Jesus’ identity is inseparably bound to his emergence in the world as the Lord. To be Jesus, Luke's story line says, is to be the Lord.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 120

<idle musings>
Agreed! I never understood the late Christology position. Even Bart Ehrmann, a self-avowing agnostic, when he researched for his book on Christology ended up in the early Christology camp.
</idle musing>

More than an analogy

The answer to Mary’s question is simple, if also startling. “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you.” With “Holy Spirit” Luke speaks of God in the dynamic way of the Jews. For Jewish tradition, as for Luke, God was alive—“the living God,” as Scripture said again and again—and such life meant for them that God could never be understood as a monad or an analogy to any of the philosophical accounts of “God" as the top Being in a variously tiered universe. God was, rather, a self-relational God, one whose internal life required the Jews to speak with a more subtle theological grammar: to talk of the Living God was to talk not just of his being God but of his Word and Spirit and Wisdom and Presence.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 119

Right next door

For Luke, the continuation of God's dealings with the Jewish people thus results in a division within Israel itself between those who see Jesus as “fulfillment” and those who do not.” Nothing in the story suggests that God has passed Israel by or left behind those Jews who do not see fulfillment. The narrative pattern of Acts shows rather that they continue to receive the prophetic call of their own Scriptures. Paul may well shake the dust off his feet—and then move in next door.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 117