2nd Sunday of Easter
April 12, 2015
Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133
There
comes a point in Star Wars, Episode V, “The Empire Strikes Back” when Luke is
training with Yoda and Luke says he’ll give something a try. Yoda responds, “No. Try not. Do... or do not.
There is no try.” This quote has now
been slightly altered in the bestselling young adult book, The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green, to say, “There is no
try. There is only do.” Today’s sermon title is another twist on the
same quote, “There is no they. There is
only we.” That is to say, in the church
we are all on the same side. Our reading
from Acts this morning is about the early church and it says that “the
community of believers was one in heart and mind.”[1] Now, before you say, “yeah, right, that’s
impossible, and certainly never going to happen in any local church,” let’s
elaborate on that a little. It’s
extremely unrealistic that it means that everyone got along and everyone always
agreed on everything all the time. God
made us too diverse for that. There is
no group on earth like that because that’s not how human nature works and
that’s not how we were created. This
unity in the early church isn’t a
unity of opinion. Instead, this is a
unity of purpose and mission and values.[2] What the author of Acts is saying here is
that they were one in heart and mind because they were all focused on the same
thing, they were united around a common cause.
They came together for worship and they took care of one another. There were some arguments among them, which
you’ll find out if you read later on in Acts, but they all worked together as a
team. Perhaps you’ve heard the quote
from then-Senate-candidate Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself
cannot stand.” The future President
Lincoln is quoting Jesus. It’s Jesus who
says, “If a house is divided against itself, that house will
not be able to stand,”[3] or, in a different translation, “If a family divides itself into
groups which fight each other, that family will fall apart.” This early church was not divided into
groups. They didn’t have a concept of us
v. them; it was all ‘us’. There was no
‘they’; there was only ‘we’.
One of the ways they accomplished this unity was by sharing their resources. In the church, there was no private ownership;
everything belonged to the church as a whole.
It was communal property, not personal.
Since this smacks of communism, some commentaries suggest that perhaps
it was not so much joint ownership of property as an extremely lavish sharing
of resources.[4] Either way, it does say that no one was
in need, which means that everyone was
sharing what they had. They were taking
care of each other. This isn’t like our
society today, where Forbes reports that “Almost half of the world’s wealth is
now owned by just one percent of the population.”[5] Or, if we talk about consumption instead of
ownership, where the world’s richest 20% consume 76% of the world’s resources.[6] No, the early church aspired to a 1:1 ratio,
and they must have succeeded if there were no needy persons among them. Imagine what our community would look like if
we shared all our resources such that there was no one in need! Now that’s a cause to unite behind! Could you get behind that? Sharing our resources so that no one in White
Marsh goes hungry? What would it look
like if we all pooled our resources, instead of each doing our separate
thing? What impact would we have on our community if we shared more? What impact would we have on our church if we
held all things in common and ministries became known by what they did rather
than who headed them up?
Now, as I mentioned before, even with all this unity
around a common purpose, there still wasn’t a complete lack of conflict in the
early church. Even when everyone is on
the same team, there is still conflict,
because it is natural and not only natural, but necessary.[7] This is part of what I learned at our
Baltimore Region Leadership Day in February.
Conflict is natural because of the diversity of creation and because all
of us who are created different try to live together and be in relationship
with each other. Conflict is also
necessary to overcome injustice, oppression, and evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
conflict. What’s key is our attitude toward conflict. If we think it’s bad and should be avoided at
all costs, then we’re not going to deal with it well. But if we embrace it as a God-ordained
consequence of diversity, then we learn more about God and how he made us. Some
conflict is healthy. It keeps us
from growing stagnant. Either we change
and adapt and grow, or we die. So, rather
than seeking the absence of conflict, what works better is to seek the presence
of a just peace. Conflict resolution
doesn’t actually work all that well because then you expect a definite end to
the conflict and a winner and loser.
Instead, working towards transforming the conflict means that we’re
committed to staying in relationship no matter what, like a married couple for
whom divorce is not an option.
A
music analogy might be helpful here, if you think about a chord of music. If I ask the pianist to play a chord, she
wouldn’t just play one note, but a combination of notes that sound well
together. Being united in heart and mind
doesn’t mean all singing the same note, it means all being part of the same
chord, with all our different notes together.
Or if you think about the choir, each section has a part to sing: bass,
tenor, alto, and soprano. Not everyone
sings the soprano part, and the sopranos don’t sing so loud so as to drown out
the other parts. We need all the parts
to form the choir. And because the parts
are different, there is occasionally going to be conflict. We’re not all always going to get along. But if all the choir members are committed to
the choir and committed to making beautiful music that honors God, then each
one puts in the hard work of learning their part and knowing when to sing and
when not to, as well as what to sing.
That’s what it means to be united.
Now,
today, someone new is joining our family.
And just like the early church took care of one another, in a little bit
we will commit to taking care of our new
member. It’s in the vows that we as
the congregation make. After I go through
the part with him, then I will ask you, the congregation, some questions. It’s open-book, you don’t need to worry. The answers are already given in the
hymnal. And the answers are a vow to
support him, to surround him with a community of love and forgiveness.[8] Think for a minute what that looks
like. What does it mean to be a
community of love and forgiveness? That
we are united the midst of our diversity.
That we don’t let our differences become barriers and walls between
us. That we forgive each other when
someone does us wrong. The last vow
includes a promise to increase his faith, confirm his hope, and perfect him in
love.[9] We are all on this Christian journey
together. We don’t do this alone. That’s why the community of faith is present
for a baptism. We’re welcoming him into
God’s family and the family has to be represented. The lesson to learn from the early church is
that we are to share our resources, whether they are gifts of money or time or
prayers or what have you. We all have
resources to share, and we are to share them with each other. We are all on the same team. There is no ‘they’ in church. We are all
‘we’. There is no us v. them. Here in God’s family we all belong to
us. There is no they; only we. Thanks be to God, who unites us in his love
to serve him. Amen.
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