The Beginnings of Community - Social Dynamics of Repentance

Repentance often meant breaking away from one community and joining another.

BREAKING FROM ONE COMMUNITY
1.  If all one's friends were into robbery, then repentance would have meant, in the very least, a breaking away from what that group was doing... and when there is a breakaway from the main focus of a group, there is inevitably a break away from the group itself.
2.  On the other hand, if all that person's friends were very religious, keeping the Laws of the Bible, then repentance would have meant the beginning of walking to the beat of a different drum.  Jesus supported the Law, but had a different emphasis on what was important in the Law.  Jesus placed emphasis on laws that served others.  So when a religeous person repented and was baptized into following Jesus, it meant turning one's back on the traditional focus on holiness and purity, and stressed more serving others in order to serve God.   

Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee (a strong religious ruler in Israel) made feeble attempts to follow Jesus quietly, and saw that there were definite consequences for even the smallest attempts to say good things about Jesus.

Groups like conformity.  Any attempt to be different from a group faces ramifications.  Becoming a follower of Jesus broke conformity within groups that were not centered on Jesus, and therefore set people apart from the different groups of  the first century, as it still does today.

BREAKING INTO A NEW COMMUNITY BEFORE THE RESURRECTION

According to the Gospels, sometimes, Jesus discouraged large tight-knit groups from building up around his ministry and his person.  When a group of listeners attempted to group permanently together (for the sake of miraculous daily food or for the wrong kind of leadership), Jesus rejected the followers and sabotaged the their attempt.  And when a city wanted to make him their king, he left by stealth.

Jesus knew that people grouped around him for the wrong reasons and he knew that until he had been taken to the cross, people would read into him their own personal and national hopes and dreams.  Even his closest followers expected Jesus to lead them into their own hopes and visions, which expectations Jesus called demonic (Mark 8:33).  Jesus knew that until he faced the cross, and until he rose from the dead, they would only look to him for personal and social interests.

After Jesus died and after the resurrection, Jesus' followers bonded together around a messiah / prophet who brought in the kingdom of God by signs and wonders, who taught them how to live in that kingdom's community, and who showed them that the kingdom of God came with suffering and death as well as with glory.

For the greater part of Jesus' ministry, his closest disciples remained perplexed over many of his teachings that did not fit within their own preconceived notions concerning the purpose and the goals of the messiah.
BREAKING INTO A NEW COMMUNITY AFTER THE RESURRECTION

When people repented and were baptized into the group of his followers after his death and resurrection, they shared everything they had with the rest of the group (Acts), just as Jesus taught his disciples (Luke).   More than anything, sharing everything set the Christians apart from all other groups.  It built an identity apart from every other group, because such radical giving made insiders (those who shared) and it created outsiders (those who watched what was going on). 

There were also other ways the new group of followers distinguished themselves from the other groups in Israel.  They believed:
-Jesus rose from the dead.
-Jesus was the messiah.
-Religious rulers were corrupt and filled with hypocracy.
-People from other groups needed to repent and follow Jesus.

Despite being set aside as an odd grouping of people that shared everything, early Christians experienced a short term of popularity with those who were outside of the group.  This was highly unusual for a group llike this to be popular.  But then again, their popularity did not last long.