Sermon: Idyllic Community

Acts 2:37-47

Idyllic Community

James Sledge                                                                                       March 31, 2019

The congregation in our scripture reading is the very first one. It’s brand new, and there is no church building, no Sunday School, no youth group. There is no paid staff or formal governing structure. There is no budget, committees, task forces, or ministry teams. But despite having almost none of the things we associate with church, this congregation has something absolutely remarkable and astounding, the goodwill of all the people.

Think about that. What group or institution in our world has the goodwill of all the people, the entire population? Traditionally things such as education and medicine were held in high esteem, but not as much these days. When I was a kid, I got the impression that everyone trusted Walter Cronkite delivering the CBS News each evening, but I’m pretty sure the news media doesn’t have the goodwill of all the people these days.

What about religion? If you took a clipboard and walked the sidewalks of DC, asking people their opinion of religion in general, and the church in particular, what sort of response might you get? What if you went door to door here in Falls Church and asked about FCPC? How likely would you be to discover the goodwill of all the people?

Many years ago, I read a church growth book that recommended doing an assessment of what the surrounding community thought of you. It suggested visiting homes in the area and asking people to complete this sentence. “XYZ Church, they’re that church that…”

One of the churches I served tried this. They didn’t discover much goodwill, or any real bad will. Turned out that most people scarcely new the church existed. If they didn’t have some association with us, the closest thing to goodwill was that some liked our playground.

Yet First Church Jerusalem, with no building, no staff, and no programs somehow has the goodwill of everyone. This must be an extraordinary group of people, a miraculous mix of just the right folks. Except, the book of Acts makes clear that is not the case.

The members of this new church had not been followers of Jesus before his death. Peter has just implicated them in Jesus’ crucifixion. It seems likely that some of them were in the crowd that asked for Barabbas to be released and shouted, “Crucify him, crucify him!” So how did they become this remarkable church?

According to our scripture reading, it is rooted in a number of intentional, communal practices. American Christianity has often emphasized personal salvation or its updated version: personal spiritual fulfillment. But First Church Jerusalem is characterized by intense, spiritual practices of community-building.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, what we might now call the teachings of the church. They also devoted themselves to fellowship, to breaking bread and prayer. In fact we hear about breaking bread twice. Fellowship meals were incredibly important, so much so that it isn’t always clear when this refers to regular meals and when it refers to the Lord’s Supper. They gathered together at the Temple regularly. And most striking, they shared all their possessions in common, making sure that no one went without.

Over the years, many have commented on how idyllic this faith community sounds, how impossible it is to replicate. Some scholars suggest that this picture is meant as an idealized image of what the Church should be, rather than a historical report. I’m inclined to agree, but I worry that modern folks misunderstand what this ideal image means.

In our culture of constant striving and anxiety about being good enough, this idyllic picture can feel like a lofty standard we are called to struggle toward. It can make us feel bad for not giving enough to charity or church, for how, despite the wealth many of us enjoy, there never seems to be enough, much less enough to create an idyllic community.

But that misunderstands the story of Acts. It isn’t an impossible standard dangled to motivate us into more striving. Rather, it is a picture of what can happen when we are so secure in God’s love, so filled with the Spirit, that we no longer need to strive at all.

Striving, at least the sort that fuels the anxiety of our consumer culture, leaving us tired and burnt out, is rooted in fear, in what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls “the myth of scarcity.” Believing this myth, we are certain there is not enough. We must get ours before someone else does; we must guard what we have. Everything is a competition with winners and losers, and we must struggle not to be losers, wanting and not enough.

But the generosity and community described in our scripture is about a congregation released from its fears and anxieties. The indwelling of the Spirit, the wholeness, the salvation they have experienced completely reorients their lives. They are not generous and sharing because they give until it hurts. Instead their fears of not having enough, of not being enough have been washed away and replaced with Christ-like love that is more concerned with whether or not their neighbor has enough.

What sort of community might be possible here if we opened ourselves to the movement of the Spirit, if we experienced grace and wholeness, if we experienced the renewal, the salvation offered us in Christ Jesus? What might be possible if we were released of our fears and anxieties and freed to live as God’s beloved?

During the season of Lent and beyond, our congregation is introducing new structures and plans for ministry that have emerged from a long period of study and discernment. Each Sunday (with a break for Palm/Passion Sunday and Easter) the sermon and a presentation from some church leader highlights one facet of this Renewal process and its new structures. This means we are not following the usual lectionary scripture readings. Today’s focus is on Community Building Ministry, one of the new ministry teams of this new structure.