April 28, 2024 The Early Church 4. “Who is the Gospel For?”

 

Readings: Psalm 22:25-31, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8, Acts 8:26-40
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, April 28, 2024

Who is the gospel for? Is it for me? Is it for you? Is it just for Christians? Or is it for everybody? And if it is for everybody, how inclusive is our idea of everybody? Does it include people who are different from us, strangers to us, maybe even ‘curious’ to us?

Such are some of the questions that our reading from the book of Acts raises for us, as it chronicles a Holy Spirit initiated meeting between the disciple Philip and an Ethiopian dignitary who is returning home from Jerusalem. However before digging deeper into the story, I want to tell you about Carmarthen, a small Welsh market town.

Most times I ever visited Carmarthen it rained. It was usually a gray day. Not that Carmarthen doesn’t have its sights worth seeing. When the sun shines it certainly does. But on a gray day, its streets of gray buildings bustle to and fro with graying older ladies in gray anoraks and farmers in muddy boots, overcoats that have seen better days and large brimmed hats or sturdy black umbrellas. Sort of like television before color was invented.

One of the first times I visited Carmarthen was whilst I was a student in seminary, and I responded to an invitation to attend a Missions conference organized by the Council for World Mission that was held on the campus of Carmarthen’s educational college. Also in attendance were some visiting missionaries, including from Africa a gentleman by the name of Samuel Ateimo.

Samuel and I became buddies over the weekend and on a rainy, rather windy, and certainly gray afternoon had some free time to wander into town. Samuel was interested in visiting the market. So off we went.

I, in my dark clothes, and coat buttoned up and hood to keep the rain off. Samuel, in a brilliant white suit, a dark shirt, a bright yellow tie, carrying a brilliantly colored umbrella, his dark ebony skin emphasizing an enormous Cheshire cat smile and saucer like brown eyes.

Suffice to say, people noticed Samuel. There was soon a little trail of children following us. Little old ladies faces broke into smiles when he said in response to their stares, “Hello and how are you today.” Farmers raised the hats or pulled their pipes out of their mouths for an extra puff of smoke.

The teenage girls working the market stalls giggled and nudged each other and pointed. Even the sun came out for a while from behind the clouds as though the sun wanted to see what was going on in usually gray Carmarthen.

Our story from Acts gave us this account of the African, a servant of the Queen of Ethiopia, traveling in a fine chariot, returning from Jerusalem. I would imagine that he had attracted his fair share of smiles, double takes and whispers, rather like Samuel Ateimo experienced the day he wandered into Carmarthen market.

 It didn’t take a brain the size of a planet to figure out, “Buddy, You ain’t from round here, are you?” Phillip could have mingled with the Jerusalem crowd, not so the Ethiopian.

He was different, curious even. Compared to Phillip not only would he look different and dress differently, not only was he of a different race and culture, he was also in a different social class. This guy was about as close to royalty as you could get without actually being royalty.

Whether he was a Jew or Gentile, we do not know. There is an ancient tradition that speaks of African Jews as a lost tribe of Israel. We know also that, as the Queen of Sheba honored Solomon with her presence. It was not unknown for a leader of a different nation to pay homage to another nations Deity.

One thing we do know for sure about him. That despite his social status and beliefs, he was returning from Jerusalem, traveling through the wilderness, with a great deal of confusion in his mind. Going to worship had not satisfied his seeker instincts, and he is struggling to understand a passage from the book of Isaiah as he travels along the road that leads home.

Sometimes coming to worship God can get us like that. Sometimes the experience leaves us with more questions than answers. Sometimes it doesn’t all fall neatly into place, even though we’ve been in the place where everything is supposed to fall into place. You’re driving home from church, “Now what was that preacher getting at, I just don’t get it!” We get our bibles out and read and pray and ponder and still we don’t get it! And that can be very frustrating!

Am I the only one who has ever been in the situation of praying along the lines of, “Lord, I believe in You, even though I’m not so sure what I really believe. I know that You are there for me, but I just can’t quite piece together, why or how or when.  I know Your Word is true, I just truly don’t know what it means for me right now!”?  Some days I can wholly identify with the person in the scriptures who prays, “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.”

And that’s the situation of this Ethiopian Official. He’s returning from a place where he stuck out like a pork chop at a Bar Mitzvah. He can’t get his head round the Scriptures. He’s in the wilderness. And I’m guessing that He believes enough about God to have asked for God’s help.

Meanwhile, Phillip is having one of those curious encounters with God that can come to us. Ever had that experience where you just get a feeling that you really should call so-and so, or you should buy that card in Hallmark, even though you can’t think of who on earth it applied to right then, or that you should maybe drop in to see such and such a person and you really don’t know why?

That’s the way the Holy Spirit works in our lives on occasions. And on this occasion things are really specific. Philip gets a message, some translations say it was through an angel, others simply use the word ‘messenger’, however the notion comes, he feels he just has to get up and start heading south on the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.

Phillip’s having an “In tune with God” day. He acts on the notion. I wish I could say that we were always as in tune with God and available to God as that, but I don’t think we are. We tend to rationalize, to want to know what the second and third steps are, before we are prepared to take the first ones. We don’t like taking risks that have the possibility of making us look foolish.

What if Phillip had met the apostle Peter coming the other way? ‘Hey, Philip, where you headed?” “Well, Peter, I’m actually headed South.” “You got an appointment or something?” “No, Peter, not exactly, just you know, out jogging, Got to watch that cholesterol!’ “O.K. Phillip, whatever you say, catch you later, may be!?” And Peter goes on his way thinking, “That Phillip, now he’s out there somewhere!”

Faith. Acting upon what we perceive the Holy Spirit may be leading us to do, can be risky. In this instance though, it pays off. There would be no story to tell if Phillip hadn’t acted in the way he felt God was leading him.

That’s not to say we should go through our lives waiting around for a voice or an angel before we get out of bed and start the day. If faith were dependent on angels and voices, Christianity wouldn’t have survived the centuries. Central to this passage is not only the work of God’s guiding Holy Spirit, but also the study of the Scriptures on the part of the Ethiopian Official. It’s not an either/or situation.

Church history shows how an over-emphasis on the Spirit can lead to all kinds of excesses that could be avoided by an intellectual grasp of the Scriptures, but at the same time, if faith becomes purely an academic pursuit that leaves no room for the fire to burn in our hearts or the unexpectedness of resurrections to take place then it can be equally unpalatable.

The Scriptures, the prayers of the Ethiopian, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the obedience of Phillip:- it all works together in this passage. The conclusion is that Phillip leads the Ethiopian out of the wilderness to a step of commitment, and the Ethiopian is baptized in water, and he goes on his way, a much more assured and committed person, and who knows how his faith influenced others or what became of him. The Scriptures don’t tell us.

We are told that after Phillip’s encounter with the Ethiopian is over, he finds himself in a place called Azotus, and he continues proclaiming the Good News in the way he felt called to do.  The language of the passage suggests that the Holy Spirit whisks him away to a new episode, rather like that Sci-Fi program “Quantum Leap” (If any of you remember that one).

All of which goes to underline what I was saying earlier about our faith, sometimes we just can’t understand how or why things work out. They just do!  That person we called was just thinking of calling us. That Hallmark card suddenly had a purpose. That visit we made encountered a situation that we weren’t aware of, and we were glad to have been around. ‘God moves in mysterious ways.’

And Samuel Ateimo who I mentioned earlier? He went back to Kenya and God kept guiding his life as God has kept guiding mine over the years.

 In 2003 (many years after I had wandered around Carmarthen market) I volunteered as a small group leader for the Montreat Youth Conference that is held every year in North Carolina. I’m sitting in the training session and I see this guy who looked familiar sitting across the room. Somebody mentions he is from Kenya. I’m about to say; “I knew this guy from Kenya” and  I look at his nametag. Go figure. It was Samuel Ateimo! No longer in a brilliant white suit, but still with a smile as broad as a Cheshire cat.

We spent some catching up and sharing the unlikely stories of how we had ended up once again in the same place as each other and how we were still on a mission from God. I have never seen him again since that week. We never did get around to exchanging addresses or phone numbers... because sometimes that’s just not what’s on your mind.

The Kingdom of God surely does set us up for some unusual encounters. We meet the most wonderful people and share in the most unexpected of adventures. And anybody and everybody is invited by Jesus to discover that for themselves. He had all of us in mind when He said “Come and Follow Me.”

Which brings me back to the question I started out with. Who is the gospel for?

It’s for us to be faithful to.
It’s for others to discover.
It’s for the curious. And the stranger.
All those that are near and far off.
Everybody whom the Lord calls to Himself.
It’s for you and it’s for me, and it’s for us and for them.

“Go into all the world” said Jesus “And preach the gospel to all creation.”

To God be the Glory. Amen.

The Reverend Adrian J Pratt B.D.

April 21, 2024 The Early Church 3. “The Cornerstone”

 

Readings: Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18,  Acts 4:5-12
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, April 21, 2024

In our bible reading, Peter and John have been hauled before the most important names and dignitaries in town because of their faith in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. They are challenged to make clear by what name or by what power the healing of a lame man had taken place – an event that had prompted many to take seriously the message of the gospel – causing the authorities to fear for their seats of power.

Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, speaks boldly to them of how, what had taken place had transpired, because of the power and the name of Jesus Christ – the very same Jesus Christ that they had rejected and condemned to crucifixion, whom God had raised from death.

To these religious leaders, Peter quotes their scriptures, “The stone that was rejected by you – the builders –has become the cornerstone.” That which they had sought to destroy had become the very cornerstone of salvation. So far reaching was the implications of resurrection that Peter goes as far as to proclaim, in verse 12, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given amongst mortals by which we must be saved”.

I want to continue this morning, in these Sundays that follow Easter, to look at the life of the emerging church, the first resurrection centered community. A couple of weeks ago we were considering how they were inspired by God to live in deep fellowship with one another, then last week we learnt a little about the healing of the lame man and the sermon that Peter preached following it. This week we observe how these events evoked a negative response amongst those who held the keys of power.

I am not surprised that the ruling powers felt that Peter and John were a threat. Basically, Peter is telling them that everything they had up to that point in their lives been building their futures upon, had been a mistake.

That the cornerstone of the structure of their lives didn’t hold up anymore. You know, if you are on the top floor of a skyscraper and somebody comes along and starts to tell you that the foundations of the building have started to crumble, then I believe you are going to feel threatened!

Johnathon, Alexander, Ciaphas, the High priests, rulers, elders and scribes. These are the people at the top, the big whigs, the cream of the crop, the movers and shakers. These are the power moguls, the city shapers, the ones that the ‘yes men’ said ‘yes’ to. We’re talking the mayor, the pastor of the biggest church in town, the head of the Board of Education, the Chief of Police, the city Fathers and their families who had long had the say of what was what and were seldom challenged.  

And here is Peter saying “As high as you may be flying, as hard as you may have worked to get where you are, as secure as your bank balance may be, as religious as you make yourselves out to be, guess what? The goalposts have moved. And you moved them when you rejected Jesus Christ. Seriously bad move, because God has turned the tables on the lot of you, Jesus is alive… and unless you start building your life on the cornerstone of His resurrection love then it’s game over.”

That’s not exactly the words he used, but hopefully you get the feel for the situation that this bible reading presents us with. It’s about power, it’s about naming names, it’s about the things we build our lives upon. It’s about how the resurrection of Jesus Christ shakes the foundations of much that we seem to hold dear and count as significant.

I was conducting a wedding one time, in a small country church. As it was a fairly intimate setting, I had the bright idea of inviting the congregation to offer any advice to the ‘about to be married’ couple. Tell them something they could build their relationship upon. I should have known better. “Any advice for the happy couple as they prepare to say their vows’? “Don’t do it” one grumpy old man shouted out from the back “Don’t do it!’

Maybe the moral of that story is “Never work with children, animals… or grumpy old men.” But reflecting on the experience afterward it reminded me that relationships are hard. Relationships are not easy. Not with each other in a marriage. Not with each other in a church. Not even with God. Relationships need a solid foundation.

Peter had not been looking for an argument when in Jesus name he offered healing to a man sitting at the temple gate. He hadn’t expected to be hauled before a judge for doing so. But now that it had happened, he wasn’t going to just let things go. This was a moment for declaring exactly what he believed and being clear about the grounds of his actions.

One of the biblical truths, that is particularly witnessed to when we baptize people, is that we need to make faith in the living Lord Jesus Christ a cornerstone of our lives. None of us is too old or too young to do that. That’s why in our tradition we baptize infants.

 Indeed, it could be argued that that the sooner in life we realize the need for a life foundation built upon the grace of God as it is shown to us in Jesus Christ, and manifested in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, then the better it will be for us and our families and our communities.

There was a hymn we sometimes sing at baptisms that contains the verse “Our children Lord in faith and prayer, We now devote to thee, Let them thy covenant mercies share, And thy salvation see!”

As Christians we believe we are the people of a New Covenant, a covenant that has been brought into existence through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we meet around the Lord’s Table we recall Jesus words, “This cup is the New covenant in my blood.’ In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we see the source of our salvation, the cornerstone of our faith.  .

We are maybe impressed by Peter. “You go boy, challenging all those high and mighty hypocrites, telling them they’ve been building their lives on the wrong foundations, telling them they’ve got to get their lives built on the cornerstone of faith in Jesus Christ, telling them they were wrong to reject Jesus and they needed to wake up to the fact that although in murder they put him down, just three days later and he was back round town.”

We can applaud Peter’s boldness and witness and totally miss out that he’s not just addressing those people all those years ago, his message is flying across the centuries and challenging our lives.  

The history of the early church is recorded for us in a book appropriately named “Acts.” A book of action. It was because God acted in the person of Jesus Christ that the early church was born.

It was because God acted in the life of a lame man to affect his healing, that Peter and John found themselves standing before the leaders of Jerusalem.

It was because God acted in the communal life of the early church that they started to share deeply in fellowship with each other and people sat up and took notice and said, “Wow, see how these Christians love one another!”

It was because God acted in the power of the Risen Jesus Christ that time and time again, the disciples could not be thwarted or contained or restrained in their mission to proclaim that Christ is Risen “He is risen indeed.” We read that Peter, “Filled with the Holy Spirit” (verse 8) addressed the rulers of Jerusalem.

Our lives ‘act’ upon what our hearts are full of. A service of worship is an opportunity to open our lives to God that God may fill them. As we allow God’s love to flow in, it should be with the intention of allowing that grace to flow out to others in acts of service and expressions of God’s love towards them.

We commenced our service with words of the 23rd Psalm, describing the Lord as “Our Shepherd.” It is that same ‘Great Shepherd of the Sheep”, that we need to seek to be our cornerstone, to lead us through the darkest valleys and refreshing waters that we travel through.

Let us pray that our lives, may truly be full of “Acts” of God, that we may make the cornerstone of our lives; “Faith in Jesus Christ”. That we will allow the gospel not only to comfort us, but also to confront us about those areas of our lives that are less committed to God’s will than they could or should be.

You see there are many voices around us that will shout out, like that grumpy old man at the wedding, “Don’t do it!” Don’t make that commitment. Don’t follow that religious path. It will lead you nowhere good.

I recall attending a New Year Eve communion service during a visit to my homelands. It was taking place in the seaside town of Llandudno and my friend the Rev Neil Kirkham was conducting a midnight service.

The town was buzzing as the hotel and public bars were busy, as they are on New Years Eve. Some revelers across the road saw us entering the church, and shouted out, ‘Don’t go in there mate, don’t do it, come with us to the pub and have a few drinks.”

Well, we did go into church. And we did have a drink as we celebrated communion. We had a bite to eat in the bread as well. And we nurtured our lives to prepare for the coming year with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone of our lives.  

One time Jesus told His listeners a story about the wise man who built his house upon the rock. When the storms came, He stood firm. But the man who built his house upon the sand, saw everything he own destroyed.

Peter cautioned those who accused him of doing something wrong, high and mighty though they may be, to be careful what they built their lives upon.  We should take note! There is no greater cornerstone for our lives than faith in the living, loving Jesus Christ. The Lord can be our Shepherd who leads us and guides us, to the clear cool waters and through the darkest, deathly storms.

At least, that’s been my experience, as it was that of the earliest disciples.

To God be the Glory
AMEN!

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D

April 14, 2024 The Early Church 2. “Peter's Message”

 

Readings: Psalm 4, 1 John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36b-48, Acts 3:12-19
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, April 14, 2024

We are in the time period described in the Lectionary as the 50 days of Easter. Over the next few weeks our scripture readings will be from the book of Acts, and we’ll look at how the message, that ‘Christ is Risen’, helped form the life of the earliest church. Last week we were considering how they reacted by sharing all things in common. But what’s going on this week?

Well, Peter and John have gone to the synagogue. It’s a busy place, lots of coming and going. Every week, on the steps there sits a man who can’t walk, hoping to get some financial aid from those whose consciences may be in a charitable frame of mind, as they head to and from worship. He asks Peter and John for help.

They can’t help him financially. Instead, they heal him in Jesus name and he goes on his way whooping with joy. People are astonished, because this was not something that went on every week. Peter has some explaining to do.

The first thing he explains, is that what had happened to the man, was nothing that he or John could take credit for, but it was because of Jesus. Jesus, Peter explains, was a prophet, after the manner of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but a prophet whom they had rejected.

In fact, people, just like them, had approved of the release of a criminal and allowed Jesus to be crucified. But that wasn’t the end of the story. God had raised Jesus from the dead, and it was because of the resurrection that the man had been healed.

But there was more. God knew that when people had rejected Jesus it was because they hadn’t understood. They’d acted in ignorance of God’s scheme of things. So, God wasn’t mad with them, even though they had messed up. On the contrary, in Jesus name, they could all find forgiveness and all find wholeness.

The only requirement was that they their way of thinking about Jesus and start living in a way that recognized how God had acted through Him. And the Good News (if you carry on reading beyond our text) was that if they would believe God had acted in Jesus, then God would send the Holy Spirit to refresh their lives and enable them too truly live.

That’s what is going on in and around our scripture reading. In this account of one of the earliest recorded Christian sermons we are given an insight into what the earliest church taught and believed. It’s a message in which the resurrection of Jesus Christ is central.

The man is healed, because Jesus lives to heal. The people can find forgiveness, because after Christ had died for our sins, God raised Him from death. The Holy Spirit comes to refresh the lives of believers because the Risen Christ promises His presence to those who wait upon God.

One method of understanding the Bible is to put your self into the story. To ask, if this morning, I identified with any person in this account, who would it be? It needn’t be a single character; we maybe carry traits of a number of them. But I suggest this. We all came to church this morning in some ways that resemble the characters in this account.

Maybe some of us can identify with the lame man. I don’t mean physically, (although we may have physical needs that only Jesus can meet).  I mean in the sense that it was the lame man’s lot to be taken along to worship and just sit there every single week. Maybe we walked through the door this morning with zero expectations. The notion that here and now may be a meeting place with God is completely absent from our hearts. Maybe all we are expecting today is more of the same.

Or it could be we identify with those who were confused. Things have been happening around our life that don’t quite piece together. There’s been blessings, but there has also been pain. Sometimes it seems like God is in control, the next moment it’s like everything is out of control.  One minute we’re up, the next we’re down. Things going on in the world around us, just don’t add up. Wars. Suffering. But then, victories and stories of courage and hope. It just doesn’t hold together. What’s going on?

Then in the account there are those who feel guilty. Peter tells his listeners, “Y’know you did the wrong thing, letting a thief go while approving of the murder of Jesus.” He implies that they should have known better. I’m glad in our service, quite near the beginning, we have that time for confession of sin and assurance of pardon. Because quite frankly, as I read the scriptures or whenever I allow God’s Spirit to search my heart, it becomes pretty clear that I’ve messed up. I’ve made bad choices. There are things not done that should have been done, and things done that would have been better left undone. If that sounds confused, then maybe you know how it is that sometimes you just can’t seem to do right for doing wrong. Maybe there is no one thing that you can say, “Well that was a mistake”. Could be it’s just that awareness that, “Oops, I did it again.”

Finally in our account there are those who have acted without knowledge. Peter tells them that in the past they had acted in ignorance. He could of course have said, “You know what? At times you can be so stupid!” But he didn’t. But he could have. Because we can. Be so stupid. Be so ill informed about issues that we make decisions that are just plain wrong. Be so prejudiced in our opinions that we believe we are right and we’re not. Believe that because we know a little bit of the story, we’ve got the whole story and so act on false assumptions. Think we can determine “What would Jesus Do?” when in reality we haven’t spent a whole lot of time studying our bibles to understand what Jesus did. Blithely assume God will answer prayers that we have failed to make.

Our reading came from the “Book of ACTS.” Peter’s message is that God is a God who has acted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This action of God should affect how we see the world and how we live in that world.

Having spent a moment to consider who we may identify within this passage, let us consider how God acts in each situation.

God ACTS in the life of the lame man to move him out of his comfort zone. The man is asking for money so he can get through life in his current state. Instead, Peter and John offer healing. Such is a challenge to us, as we consider our prayers.

I suspect that we sometimes would prefer to remain as we are, cradling our hurts and bemoaning our sins, rather than to be set free to serve Jesus Christ wholeheartedly and with no strings attached. It is easy to become comfortable with a religion that comforts rather than confronts.

Notice that when God acts, God ACTS in the name of Jesus. Acts 4:12 tells us: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." The man is not healed in the name of Peter or John, but in the name of Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all”.

It could be the confusion that sometimes strikes at us comes because we don’t live in a way that focuses on Jesus. Rather than making His message central to our lives, we try a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and it all gets messed up. There is no shortage of voices, within the media, within the different religions and philosophies people embrace, even amongst our families and friends, who will tell us, “Well, this religion stuff is fine... up to a point… here’s what you should really do.” God does not act in the name of families, philosophies, or friends. God acts in the name of Jesus.

A major way that God ACTS in the name of Jesus is to forgive sin. The closing line of our bible reading had Peter proclaiming, “Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.” As he had previously laid the blame upon them for their wrong choices that had led to the crucifixion of Jesus, the news that their sins could be wiped out by turning to God, was truly Good News!

Friends, we are all guilty of making wrong choices. We are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. If this were a service in a church where altar calls are a part of their regular worship, I would labor on this particular point for a while longer, until you all felt thoroughly guilty, and than we’d sing ‘Just as I am’ until somebody came forward to accept the Lord.

However, that’s not how we roll! Instead, I will simply remind you that unless your sins are forgiven through Jesus Christ, unless they are confessed and dealt with, then you are stuck with them, and tainted by them, and they are holding you back in your walk with God and pulling you away from Jesus Christ. That’s not the right way to head!

Because we also see in this verse that God ACTS to turn us around. The meaning of repentance is to stop going in one way and start heading the right way. To turn from self and turn to God. To turn from inability to action for Christ’s kingdom. To turn from unbelief and fear to faith and confidence. To turn from guilt to forgiveness. To turn from living as though the resurrection hadn’t happened to living as though your life, past, present, and future depended upon it! (Which of course it does).

While our bible reading finished before the closing of Peter’s message, he goes on to say that how this happens is through the refreshing of God’s Spirit working upon our life. That repentance is not so much an emotional response initiated by guilt at actions, which were ill conceived, but an action of God’s Grace towards those willing to accommodate the gospel message, which proclaimed Christ is Risen. ‘He is risen indeed!’

One early church writer went as far as to say, ‘If Christ be not risen, nothing matters. If Christ is Risen, then nothing else matters.” To put it another way, if life is nothing more than ‘being born, getting by and then we die’, if there are absolutely no consequences to the way we live nor meaning to the actions in which we are involved, then we might as well go through life pleasing ourselves, hurting and being hurt, with God or without God, with standards or without standards, with love or without love, because at the end of the day, it all amounts to a great big zero.

But because Christ is Risen everything else about life is changed. It means death can be defeated. It makes the cross a symbol of overcoming victory as opposed to a numbing defeat. It makes the lame leap for joy, the fearful heart become empowered with confidence, offers the sinful life forgiveness and the seeker a road that leads to glory.

The resurrection means that nothing else matters, in the sense that all other things must be evaluated in the light of Christ’s glory. Such was part and parcel of Peter’s message the morning a lame man was healed and went away leaping with joy. Such is the gospel message, that should we likewise receive it with expectant and hopeful hearts, it can set our lives dancing.

To God’s name be Glory!
AMEN

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.

April 7, 2024 The Early Church 1. “Communal Life”

 

Readings: Psalm 133,  1 John 1:1-2:2, John 20:19-31, Acts 4:32-35
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, April 7, 2024

Here’s what I want you to do. Go home and have a Yard Sale. Sell everything you own and put the money in the bank. Then put your house up for sale. Next session Meeting, empty out all your accounts, cash in your savings, bring the money from the sale of your property and lay it all the Clerk of the Sessions feet. Trust us. We’ll take care of you!

Now don’t get mad at me! I’m only being biblical. That’s how the book of Acts tells us that the earliest church organized itself. One in heart and soul, having everything in common, and the apostles preached with power, such that people sat up and took notice, not only of what they were saying but how they were living!

Why do I get the feeling that in this “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is up to you” world in which we live that somehow, this is not biblical advice that you are going to be taking to heart? How is it I’m getting the feeling that you think that that is just a little too radical for the East End? Try it out in California somewhere.. and maybe you could get the idea to fly, but here in the Hamptons, I don’t think so buddy!

One of my all time favorite movies was made in England back in 1963. It stars Peter Sellers (of Inspector Clusaeu and “The Pink Panther” movies) and is titled “Heavens Above.” I’m doubtful if any of you will have seen it but I’ll tell you about it anyway.

Peter Sellers plays an idealistic Church of England Vicar (the Rev John Smallwood), who has a habit of telling the truth as he saw it at all times. Through a clerical error he becomes parish priest in the wealthy town of Orbiston Pava, a small community whose livelihood is entirely related to the production of “Tranqilax” a three in One sedative, stimulant and laxative.

He decides the town needs the real three-in-one, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. He makes the local West African garbage man his churchwarden and befriends a family of gypsies whom he moves to live in the spacious manse with him. He challenges the wealthy lady owner of the factory with the thought that the rich person is like a camel who cannot make it through the eye of the needle. She ‘sees the light’ and sets about giving her fortune away in order to benefit the poor and needy.

Being a comedy much upheaval takes place as the social order of the community is turned upside down. Human nature being what is, things get out of control, and in the end Rev Smallwood gets the blame as the local factory is heading for financial ruin. Well, one thing leads to another, the ending is out of this world, but you’ll just have to see that for yourself sometime.

The movie bravely faces the question, “What if something like the social pattern of this mornings bible reading, really were taken onboard?” The idea for the script came from the late Malcolm Muggeridge, in the United Kingdom a well known political and religious correspondent for the London Times, and person of faith whom amongst his other works wrote a biography of Nobel prize winner Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  It asks a serious question, but chooses to explore the answer through comedic reflection.

So what do we do with this passage of scripture? It’s not there in scripture as a source for our amusement. It’s a disturbing passage. It offers us a picture of early Christianity as a theocracy. All things held in common and under the guiding hand of the apostles and those whom they appointed to take care of financial matters.

Let me suggest just a couple of things we should take note of.

1.    Sharing was an act of devotion not of compulsion

One of our objections to wholeheartedly sharing all we have in common with others is that we feel we have the right to own what we own and hold on to it, because we have earned it. Whether others feel the same way about whether we deserve what we have or if they feel that we ‘have it easy’ or that we ‘work hard for every cent’ can be a different story, but our acquisitions are definitely something we guard and hold onto, however they may have been acquired.

We do so partly for survival. If things go wrong who is going to take care of us? If the kids are going to get through college, who is going to pay the bills?  If we want to retire, how will we manage without some kind of financial resources behind us? In order to get through life we need a certain amount of stuff.

And then there’s all the other stuff. We like comfort. There are things that those who have lots of income can do that people with no income can never do. Money talks. Wealth opens doors. Like it or loathe it, that’s the way of the world.

Now here’s the unusual thing about the common life of the church community in the Book of Acts. It stemmed not from the needs they saw around them, nor from a desire to fulfill any particular religious duty. There was no sense of compulsion laid upon them to give all. Neither was their giving a prerequisite of their acceptance by the church.

They gave not as an act of compulsion, but as an act of devotion. Their liberality had a direct relationship to their spirituality. They experienced the Risen power of Jesus Christ in their midst and the Holy Spirit prompted them to worship through sharing. In the misfortunes of others they saw an opportunity to minister to Jesus who had taught them, “In as much as you do this for the least of my brethren, you are doing it for me!”

They shared because they believed that, in Christ, they had become a family that transcended the boundaries of flesh and blood. They spoke of each other as sisters and brothers in the faith, looked to their leaders as mothers and fathers in the truth.

You know how it is in a loving family. If a member of a family has a serious need, then if there is another member of that family that can meet that need, they’ll often do it, because that’s the way a family acts. They were not so much demonstrating generosity as they were practicing unity – a unity that had been granted the early church through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Sharing was an act of trust and devotion, not compulsion. They shared because their lives had been gripped by the truth of the resurrection.

2.    They shared in support of the Gospel being declared

Acts 4:33 tells us that “With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” The communal life they shared was deeply connected to the gospel message the apostles preached.

Sometimes the distinction is made between two sorts of Christianity. The spiritual sort and the social sort. That one way of serving God is by being of social service to others – the so-called ‘social gospel’. Others say, “No, it’s not about social work, it’s about saving souls”.

In this early church, that preached with a rare power and exhibited a depth of sharing that we today consider impossible, there was no disjunction between the two. The caring went hand in hand with the proclaiming. It was the way Jesus had ministered to others, so those who carried on His ministry saw no distinction between the two. They were two sides of the same coin, two complementary ways of worshipping God.

Sometimes books that give us accounts of church history create the impression that Christianity eventually became the religion of the Roman Empire primarily because of the powerful preaching of its spokesmen and the bravery of her martyrs. That’s not quite the whole story.

Historian Paul Johnson, writing on the history of the church from AD 250 – 450, in a chapter called “From Martyrs to Inquisitors’, writes “It was the Christian spirit of mutual love and community charity that most impressed the pagans. Tertullian (one of the earliest historians of the Church) quotes the pagans as saying, ‘How these Christians love one another’

And he adds that the funds which financed their charities were essentially voluntary: ‘Every man once a month brings some modest coin, or whenever he wishes and only if he does wish, and if he can – for nobody is compelled.’ And the funds were spent ‘not on banquets and drinking parties’ but ‘to feed the poor and bury them, for boys and girls who lack property and parents, and then for slaves grown old and shipwrecked mariners; and any who may be in the mines, on the penal islands, in prison… they become the pensioners of their confession”
(Paul Johnson. “A History of Christianity” Penguin Books 1976)

Such an attitude of commitment to meeting the needs of others left a strong impression upon the empire of Rome and won the church many supporters. The words the preachers spoke about the love of God that could be found in Christ were substantiated by the actions of those who shared what they could to bring healing and wholeness.

That’s how it seems to have been from the earliest days of the church. Of course, wherever there was money involved, invariably corruption came along with it. Greed is a not so subtle and certainly soul-destroying manifestation of mans sinfulness. The judgment of Ananias and Sapphira, that appears in the next chapter, seems to be a judgment on the sort of greed that later became so destructive in the life of the church.. but that’s another story we don’t have time to explore right now.

3.    In Conclusion….

Am I expecting any of you to sell all your possessions and lay all of your property and riches at the feet of our clerk of Session next meeting? Do I think that you will leave this morning and explore ways of communal living and sharing such as have never been witnessed before in Bridgehampton? Let’s be honest. It’s not going to happen. We don’t trust each other that much. We’re not that committed to being a church family. We are prepared to give, but fear that such a dramatic reversal of things, as envisaged in Acts Chapter 4, would be economic suicide.

So let’s instead see this passage as one that invites us to ask some searching questions.

Firstly, it challenges us to consider where our trust lies. It is ironic that upon our currency we have words about trusting in God, but in reality tend to trust more in the coins the message is written on. We rest in the security of our achievements rather than on the salvation that Christ has secured for us upon the cross of Calvary.

Secondly it challenges our societies notion that “He who has the most toys wins.” Scripture teaches that after death, (an unavoidable consequence of having been born)  comes judgment and that not one single item we possess can help us negate the consequences. Only faith in the saving death of Jesus Christ will get us through.

Finally, it calls us to ask deep questions about our faith. If our experience of Jesus Christ is not of such a depth as to disconnect us from our quest for worldly treasures, in what sense can it be a genuine faith? Have we missed something? We may affirm Christ as Risen, but are our lives being molded by the Holy Spirit, being formed on a daily basis under the influence of the resurrected Jesus?

Indeed, if we find the notion of selling all we have and living in a communal fashion, in the way the early church did, if we find such a notion only laughable, it could be that it is our faith that is the laughing matter, rather than the faith of the early church. And if that sounds rather a harsh observation to make, I make no apologies. This is a challenging passage of scripture. We shouldn’t let it just wash over us and comfort us.

Because if we do, maybe we won’t really hear it!

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D