Powerful Witness/Living in Community

Sunday, May 11
Fourth Sunday of Easter

Weekly Theme
Powerful Witness/Living in Community

Weekly Prayer
Shepherd of all, by laying down your life for your flock you reveal your love for all. Lead us from the place of death to the place of abundant life, that guided by your care for us, we may rightly offer our lives in love for you and our neighbors. Amen.

Weekly Reading
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.

All readings for the Week
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10

Focus Questions

1. Do you think visitors to your church perceive what you are doing as a witness? If so, what are you witnessing to?

2. Are your visitors drawn into the life of your church, or do they remain merely observers?

3. How does this reading sound to our 21st century, capitalist, private-property ears?

4. Would a close reading of the text and a challenge to live in the same way as our ancestors in faith be simply “too much” for us?

5. How might we imagine our lives re-shaped and re-directed, even significantly, so that we might experience “glad and generous hearts”?

Reflection by Kate Huey

Toward the end of the first century of this common era (C.E.), what we have traditionally called the first century “A.D.,” the author of the Gospel of Luke also wrote the book of the Acts of the Apostles. “Acts” is the second half, or Book Two, of Luke’s proclamation of the remarkable “things that had happened”: the good news of God’s saving acts in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the continuation of Jesus’ ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the life of the early church. We see this in the very first verse of the first chapter of Acts, which says: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven…” and then Luke recounts the events that followed: the apostles getting themselves together and setting out on their mission to preach the good news that they had encountered in the person of Jesus Christ. 

The very first Christians studied the Scripture they had, what we today call the “Old Testament,” or Hebrew Scriptures. But here, in the first century, it took some time for the Gospels to be shaped and written down, and gathered together with the epistles that Paul and others had been writing as they traveled around, spreading the Good News and planting new church communities in cities all around the Mediterranean world. When Luke wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, he was reassuring his audience that the teaching that had been handed down to them from the apostles–what they had heard–was reliable. Luke’s purpose was to confirm the faith of Christian believers a generation or two after the apostles, helping them to see the link between the power of the Holy Spirit and the tremendous growth and vitality of the early church.

The Book of Acts tells us about Peter’s early preaching, Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit (just as Jesus had promised), the conversion of thousands of people, healings and wonders, more preaching, meetings with the religious authorities, persecutions, the first deacons, more preaching, the stoning of Stephen, the conversion of Paul and his subsequent preaching, the growth of the church throughout the Mediterranean, more meetings and more preaching, escapes from prison, Paul’s travels and adventures at sea, the council at Jerusalem, controversies, riots, trials, journeys, and, of course, more preaching. (This very brief description of the Book of Acts does not do it justice, so it would be helpful to sit down one quiet afternoon and read it from beginning to end.) In between those stories and sermons are linking passages very much like this one, short summaries that come up from time to time along the way, and sound very much the same: in the midst of all these deedsñ-better yet, in the midst of the working of the Holy Spirit through the apostles, the church flourished, counting more and more people as members, people who prayed together, shared their possessions, broke bread together, and devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles.

Real, or ideal, or both?

The scholars do not agree about whether the passage’s description of the early Christian community is idealized or not. Does it matter? Long ago, in a far-off land, our ancestors in faith did the same things we do today, as communities of faith: they bore witness by doing the things that we are called to do and to be about. These marks identify us as distinctively Christian communities, the devoting of ourselves to the teaching of the apostles, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. It would not be difficult to draw parallels between then and now, to pull out our monthly newsletters and find, here and there, the activities and programs by which we too strive to devote ourselves to study, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. This Bible study or adult education class or confirmation class or church school curriculum, that coffee hour or women’s gathering or youth group outing or film series, this weekly communion service or that opening prayer, that Sunday morning service of worship, that TaizÈ service, that prayer at the side of one who is dying…these are the embodiments and expressions of our own, idealized, shared life in faith. 

What may be missing at times is not the teaching and learning, the fellowship, communion, or prayer, but the awe. The “wonders and signs” may be passing us by, without our taking notice. Perhaps we need to stop from time to time in the midst of all our activity and take notice of the wonders and signs before us. Every church, in its own way, experiences wonders both large and small that merit our time and attention. But so often, the many activities of our life as a congregation get added to our busy calendars as more and more stress, rather than as something different, something qualitatively different from “ordinary daily activities”: they are ministries. Do they feed us, or drain us? These early Christians, clearly, were fed by the things they did and the way they lived.

A spirit and a witness that’s contagious

It can become a regular spiritual practice to stop, take stock, and begin afresh in our shared life so that those “things” we are about actually nourish rather than consume us. (Years ago, our church “took a nap” in January, which is easy to do in cold and snowy Cleveland; the only things on our schedule were gatherings for prayer, learning and worship, but no regular meetings were held.) I’ve always found it helpful–and challenging–to imagine how a visitor experiences a church, that is, its people and its ministries/activities rather than its building or its style of worship, the two things we probably focus most of our attention on. Is the spirit of your church contagious, where others find themselves wanting to learn more, to gather with the folks in your church, to break and share the bread, to pray in community, not just alone? (Not that there’s anything wrong with praying in solitude, but there is value in both.)

And then there are the implications and indications of this shared life outside the church building: first, at the end of worship or a trustees meeting or a mission trip or an adult education class or a church supper, our hope is that lives are affected, changed in ways that may be imperceptibly small and yet quite powerful. Maybe, for some, transformation is sudden and dramatic and even long-lasting, but for others, it’s incremental, born of everyday faithfulness and grace. And yet those gatherings, those studies, and those worship experiences can resound and echo through their lives, after they return to the world, filled with the Spirit and sent to share God’s love and forgiveness with a world so in need of both.

At the heart of this passage: sharing

Our reading is so short and yet, if we pay close attention, if we sit with it for a while, and if we’re brave enough to share it with others, we may find that many “good Christians” (including us) would feel uncomfortable with what it’s implying. (How ironic that this discomfiting text is read on Good Shepherd Sunday, when we hear the beloved and most comforting Psalm 23.) Do you think we even begin to share our possessions with those around us so that everyone has enough? It isn’t just individual lives that need to be transformed, we hear in this text, but the life of the community, the way we share. God is still speaking to us today, through this reading and through the images that come to us on the nightly news, about the ownership and accumulation of property to excess, the movement of wealth upward in disproportionate ways that endanger the poor and the middle class.

We’re probably tempted to side with those scholars who call this an idealized description of the life of those earliest Christians, a way of living that even they weren’t really able to achieve. That certainly makes it easier to let ourselves off the hook. And even if they were somehow able to live that way, we of course live in a very different world, with different economic systems, larger populations, different problems and challenges, and so on, and so on. We even have different and in many ways marvelous methods of sharing that those early believers didn’t enjoy. (I’m thinking of the multitude of charities around us, with more popping up on the Internet each day.)

Courage and creativity and imagination

In a very different time and place where private property is actually called “sacred,” the challenge is to imagine how we can remain true to the heart of this ideal. Indeed, it will require the power of the Spirit to transform the way we live together, to make us more and more generous and less and less focused on our own security. Courage will be required of us, and creativity and a lively religious imagination just as much as a passionate commitment to justice. Of course, the sharing of our possessions, including the generous support of God’s mission through the church, isn’t limited to the church: we can hold up the ideal of this passage from Scripture each time we vote or consider school levies, poverty programs, and issues of economic justice. After all, our lives reach and impact others, even beyond our sight, in ways never imagined when this account was written down. 

Just as awe seems to be in short supply (no matter how much we over-use the word “awesome” in conversation), so are “glad and generous hearts” rare in our time. The rise in the number of people diagnosed with depression, for example, and the number of medications brought onto the market to treat it, are puzzling in a time when the standard of living, and the possibilities for “happiness” (depending on how you define it) are so much higher than ancient times. What has our society done or become that presses down our hearts and minds even in the midst of incredible affluence, for depression does not care about income or class? Do you have stories of people who came to your church, whose lives were transformed? Have we passed by, and failed to notice?

The early Christians faced many of the same problems that we face

It’s important for us, twenty centuries later, to understand that, right in the Book of Acts, in between the summaries that describe with a joyful exuberance the rapid growth of the early church, are those stories of very real, very human differences and conflicts. For example, the early church had to deal with that very important question of whether to let the Gentiles in on this good news. That was a really big problem that required a special council, in Jerusalem, lots of work on Paul’s part, and a very dramatic dream for Peter to get the message that God’s plan included all of God’s children. And then there were some other problems: right after Luke says that everyone shared what they had, two people are found to have held back some of the profits on the sale of their property. In a dramatic story, each of them drops dead when confronted with what they had done. This must have caused at least a little talk in the church afterward. 

And then there was grumbling among the Greek converts who complained that their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. So they had a big meeting, and they decided to designate seven people to be deacons who would distribute the food fairly, so the apostles could continue to preach, teach and pray. Of course, right away one of the deacons, Stephen, starts to preach, teach and pray–the apostles’ job! Nobody can convince me that THAT didn’t hit somebody the wrong way. Today’s short passage doesn’t include those controversies and conflicts, but holds up for us a wonderful model, a memory and ideal not just for the Christians at the end of the first century, but for us, too, here at the beginning of the twenty-first.

Whatever ways the church has failed in the last two thousand years–in religious wars and persecutions, inquisitions, and hypocrisy–it has still passed on the message of God’s saving love, God’s forgiveness and grace, God’s new life and hope in Jesus Christ. The church has held onto the dream of God’s reign on earth, when every tear will be wiped away, when hatred and war and violence will be no more, when love and justice and mercy and joy and peace will fill all the lands. Today, we have received this dream, and we dare to dream it not only with our ancestors in faith, but with our children, and our children’s children, and all those who are to come.

Additional reflection material is at http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/may-11-2014.html.

For further reflection

Mark Galli, 21st century
“If the church is the body of Christ [who was disguised in servant form], why would we think the world would be able to pick us out of a crowd of other well-meaning organizations?”

Pythagoras, 6th century B.C.E.
“Friends share all things.”

Jean Vanier, 20th century
“Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy–in fact, the opposite.”

Wendell Berry, 20th century
“The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.”

Stanley Hauerwas, 20th century
“Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.”

William Shakespeare, 17th century, “King Lear”
“…and we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies,…
And take upon ‘s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies…”

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Weekly Seeds is a resource provided by Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission.