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
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