Sermon
If you are a member of the finance committee, I’d like to you to raise your hand. I just want everyone to know who they are. In light of today’s scriptures, that we can always trust God when we are in the shadow of death, and that the apostles shared everything in common, the finance committee is prepared to receive your car keys, deed to your home, life insurance policy, etc. just as soon as your ready.
How come no one is moving? You mean today’s scriptures weren’t powerful enough for you to give up all your worldly possessions and trust entirely in the fidelity of God and your brothers and sisters in Christ? Well, I thought I could save you the sermon if we were all ready, but ok, I guess I’ll give one anyway. But don’t let me stop you...any time you feel so inspired the finance committee is ready and waiting.
Ok, so in our contemporary culture, this seems like almost an absurd request. None of us, I assume, are prepared to so radically turn over our possessions and our lives to one another for the purposes of care. Is this just a radical cultural difference that we cannot wrap our heads around? It is true that there were jewish sects present at the time of Jesus who lived in communal life. These Essenes, as they were called, practiced asceticism, voluntary poverty, and abstinence from worldly pleasures like marriage.
So, at a certain level, we can acknowledge that this type of living wouldn’t have been as foreign to the early disciples as it is to us now. We also have to recognize our difficulty in reading this passage with fresh eyes in light of our own culture. We live in a society that greatly values individual rights, and individualism. We want to be unique in our expressions and we do not want to be dependent on any other person to get by in life. We are a “pull yourself up by our bootstraps” kind of culture. Though this has always been a part of our american dna, I think this was made even more prominent in the last century. First, because increasing wealth as a culture meant that we moved from inter-generational households to a culture where failing to live on your own as an adult is interpreted a sign of failure. Second, because of the role communism played as a key fear and oppositional force in so much of our culture for generations. For those born of my generation and younger, communism has always been a relatively faded relic. But I know to many here, it was a living and breathing threat to our mortality. How many of you ever had to practice hiding under your desks in a nuclear drill? How many remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? Or for whom the Vietnam war is quite formative.
So when we hear verses like “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”, I recognize that this sets our cultural alarm bells on high alert. So lets try to delineate between our gut reaction to this bible verse and the disciples actual position. Communism, as experienced in the 20th century, took the form of a violent revolution led at the top levels of society. The Jesus movement was non-violent and largely consisted of people on the margins. Communism was largely imposed on the societies whereas the Jesus movement was voluntary and open to all. Communism, at least in the form we are most familiar, was opposed to expressions of God whereas the Jesus movement was initiated by our living Lord God.
So, lets just take a minute, breath in and out, and let go of some of our cultural alarm bells and try to hear the scripture again with fresh ears.
Acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This was a community devoted to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread and prayer. Sounds like a lot of what we try to do in church, right? We try to share our knowledge of scripture and God, to enjoy one another’s company, to eat together, boy do we eat, and to share of the troubles of our souls and life our concerns to God. Well, to a greater or lesser extent, we try to do all that. But, then how come we aren’t ready to take the disciples’ next step and hold all in common?
I think in many cases its about a lack of trust. We are afraid that if we fall down and are hurt, no one will care. Or, maybe people will express sympathy at first, but if our pain continues for months on end unceasingly, that people will just avoid us rather than deal with our pain. Or that we are struggling financially, and can’t see the bottom, but don’t feel like there is anyone we can turn to who will provide assistance without a large dose of judgment. Or that we are lonely and sad, and see happy people and happy families, and assume that we can have no place in their happy little worlds.
And so, when we experience this pain, we have a tendency to withdraw. To retreat into a small corner and hope to just outlast the dark time. I think its one of the reasons Psalm 23 is such a comfort to people. It speaks of a God who seeks us out in the darkness. A God who walks with us in when we stagger through death’s dark valley, a God who stands with us when we are mocked by our enemies.
I want to affirm that God is there in these moments. When we are at our weakest, God is there trying to care for us. God’s love is ever-present. And yet, and yet, in these moments we often don’t feel it. We often feel as if everyone, even God, has abandoned us.
So what’s the key? How do we reconcile this ever-present God with our feelings of loneliness? And how do we find this wonderful community that you can trust completely with all that you own and all that you are?
I think it begins with admitting our need for help. That almost sounds cliche now- the language is all around us in AA and other addiction programs. But whether or not you have a substance abuse problem, the ability to admit that you do need to rely on others is the key first step to entering into and experience the wonderful community promised by God and the early disciples.
Imagine that you are a sheep here for a second. You just know that you have your life together and all is going well. Eventually, you decide you are tired of all this bleating around you, and you are tired of the shepherd constantly watching you and dictating where you are allowed to go. So you set off on your own and leave the flock. It seems good for awhile, but then, on a dark night, you begin to hear howling all around you. You’ve realized you’ve found yourself in danger and have very little chance of finding your way out. You suddenly feel scared and alone. Now- its not that the shepherd and the other sheep don’t care, they just are at such a distance that they can’t hear your call, can’t protect you with the crowd, and thus, you face the wolves alone.
Well, we can be grateful we have a God that is never satisfied in leaving us alone. In the last verse of Psalm 23, it reads “Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.” Even in those moments of darkness, God is chasing after us. And unlike the shepherd, God is guaranteed to find us, if we can stop running long enough for God’s love and beauty to catch up.
Its the same with that magical experience of this first Christian community. They were able to share in each others joys and pains, but it required two things-
First, a community that was willing to show up and care. Are we such a community? When someone shares a need, do we rally to their cause? When we notice someone in pain, do we seek to comfort them. I’m happy to say I have heard many stories where this is true. I remember Jane Kozdrone expressing how this community rallied behind her when her husband died. But we must be vigilant about this. It only takes one failure by a community when someone is in need for that trust to dissolve.
And second, we as individuals are called to do something crucial. Each individual who came into the community brought with them everything they had- and they trusted to it to the care of others. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to bring both our blessings and the darkest places of our heart, and share it with one another? Because if we are not, its hard for the community to respond. Unless we have invested something of ourselves in the community, how are they to recognize us when we have need? If we almost never come, or if we slip in and out Sunday morning without sharing with one another, how are we to know when that day comes that you need a hand, or a shoulder to cry on, or our prayers? We don’t operate as a quid-pro-quo organization, its not that you have to give something to receive any kind of care. But its in the giving of yourself that you truly become part of the community. Its in the giving of yourself that a true bond can be created. And it is then, when we are in community, that we may praise God, have the good will of all people, and add to the number who will be saved.
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