"All Things Common"
The paradoxical need in our over-crowded world, is for “community”, to know that we belong and matter to those around us. The proliferation of gangs and radical militant groups are just two negative ways of meeting that need, in which common enemies, ritual practices and causes form a sense of power and meaning for destructive ends. Another emerging and rapidly growing community builder is blogging. “My Space”, “Blogspot,” and a host of others join together people from all over the world. But whether it is the counterfeit brother and sisterhood of gangs and militants or the virtual communities of the internet, there is a sense in which they fall short of what people truly need.
The Acts 2 picture of community is dynamic and radical. The dynamism is best described when Luke writes that they were a people of “signs and wonders.” As much as churches talk about how caring and friendly they are, the most important point of commonality is the presence of the power of the Holy Spirit. It was the fall of the Holy Spirit that made the Acts 2 people of faith into a dynamic, multipliable force. The authentic church is still characterized by signs and wonders: changed hearts; healed bodies, minds and relationships; and witness and social action in the world. It is sad that “signs and wonders” is a description that people often apply only to charismatic denominational and non-denominational churches. At its heart, the Church is not about what people do, but rather about what the Holy Spirit does through open-hearted, open-minded people. Properly the book of Acts should be called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” Providing good parking, communicating in the vernacular and style of the people, and having well-organized welcoming strategies is good, but they cannot substitute for the work of the Holy Spirit. In many congregations, there is little opportunity given for signs and wonders to occur. Because our results are not as dramatic as Acts 2 or because we are afraid of becoming sensationalist, we are reluctant and prefer just to “talk” about signs and wonders. It is worth asking whether a church without signs and wonders is a church at all.
The Acts 2 picture of community is deeply radical to American Christians. Luke writes, “They had all things in common.” For a slave community with little or no property or assets, this kind of sharing makes sense. As the church grew, however, this model became rarer. But the clear picture is that the church was as economically bound as it was spiritually.
“…they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
Most church-going Americans would be hard-pressed to name their areas of need, economically or otherwise. In fact, they work hard at presenting the image that because God has blessed them, they are not needy. We love to help “the needy”, but we don’t want to be like them. We secretly believe that needy people are deficient and inferior to us, put there by God to make us feel grateful and guilty for being more blessed. It may be accurate to say that most Sunday mornings, we gather as the Christ-believing self-sufficient. Dare I admit that without my brothers and sisters in Christ, I am poverty-stricken, relationally stunted, and spiritually immature? Dare I admit that there is a sense that without you I will never be whole? Could it be that this is one of the reasons our sense of community is often artificial with very little holding us together? Down deep in our fallen selves, we really do want to believe that we don’t need each other.
The Acts 2 picture of community is also in the investment of time community requires. People don’t “go to church”, they are the church. I don’t mean, nor does the bible mean that people have to be “in church” every time the doors are open. That is Christian cloistering, which is quite different from Christian community. Early Christians were the community at work, home, worship, fellowship and witness. Luke writes,
“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.”
How different this is from the characterization of the 21st century American and western European Church, which might be described this way:
“And since they were very busy people, they spent as little time with each other as they could get away with, eating on the run and never feeling satisfied, competing and scrapping over worship, and having the mistrust and criticism of the majority of the people.”
The opportunity to be a dynamic and radical community of faith has been given to our two-campus congregation. At our three-year-old southwest campus, we have experienced the death of two young fathers, one with an enlarged heart and one with Hodgkin’s Disease. They left behind wives and seven children. We are learning the hard way what it is to be the body of Christ be built as a community of faith. Members from both our campuses joined together to turn a family room into a third bedroom. Youth surrounded one of the teenagers with love and care. Parents and friends took the children to the park and to athletic events so that their lives might have some normalcy. They have formed bank accounts and held golf tournaments, sold flowers and openly solicited offerings to sustain these wives who have become suddenly single parents. Both deaths happened during our capital campaign to build the first unit of the Southwest Campus. Common grief became a source of common commitment and purpose. Through these tragedies, we are learning better than ever who and whose we are: the people of God, dynamically and radically bound in spirit, in goods and in shared time. And with it there have been and there will be more “signs and wonders.”
Worship Aids:
When Dr. Zan Holmes preached this passage at the New Mexico Annual Conference he began by asking the people to take out their driver’s license and asked the question, “Do you look like your picture?” This passage gives us the community of faith as it is supposed to be and invites us to compare and adjust.
Call to Worship:
Pastor: We are the people of God.
Congregation: By God’s Spirit we have been drawn together and offer our praises.
Pastor: God has blessed us abundantly above all that we can ask or think.
Congregation: We offer our gifts to God and one another, and we are built up together.
Pastor: God of signs and wonders, come visit upon your people.
All: Make us to be that force for love that transforms the world. AMEN.