There are two ways,” he told me, “and they are love and not love. I choose love.

What the Didache doesn’t say is that the community should shun or excommunicate those who commit the forbidden sins. In fact, “correct some, pray for others, and some you should love more than your own life” makes plain that the worst sinners should be showered with the most love.

One of our group said that a lot of people in church spend a lot of time correcting each other these days, but in order to correct another person in love, you really have to know that person. Only then, she told us, can you practice the kind of community that the Didache teaches.

an unknown and forgotten treasure of the earliest Christians, a manual for living used by the generation of Jesus followers immediately after the apostles.