Resurrection Revolution Part 3--Raising a Just Community

Our faith in the Living Christ calls us to live completely counter to the world as we know it. The Biblical stories of Jesus and his disciples after his resurrection give us a model for these ways that are counter-cultural and at times radical. In this 5-week series, we'll listen for God's call to disrupt the world with a Living Love. To truly live as resurrection people might even be a revolution. In this second episode, Rev. David discusses Raising a Just Community.

Transcript

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They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. This part of the second chapter of Acts has been held up as the model for Christian community since the beginning. In a way, I think churches have been chasing this ideal ever since. There is beauty and simplicity in the daily patterns of those early followers of Jesus. The apostles were exercising this new indwelling of the Holy Spirit they had received. They took care of everyone's needs. They spent their days in the temple worshiping God. They shared meals together with glad and generous hearts. It says, they were praising God and having the good will of all the people. I mean, as I said, this is a beautiful ideal. How much better would our lives and this world be if we could just live in such simplicity and unity and love? Or is it so radical that it would make us uncomfortable? Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Acts 2 was the church growth model, especially in evangelical circles. If you wanted to grow your church and get more members, you needed to go back to the Christian practices in Acts 2. Because it says at the end, day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. So if you wanted God to send you more people, your church needed to look like the early church in Acts 2. All the big church gurus and thinkers were saying you need to be in Acts 2 church. And that meant dynamic worship, a discipleship pathway model, and a small group program. I can't tell you how many conferences and workshops I attended and books I read that heralded the ideals of Acts 2 to grow your church and hopefully reverse the trend of waning religious participation in America. But eventually I went back and actually read Acts 2. And I thought, I don't think this means what you think it means. Because this looks less like a megachurch and more like a hippie commune. Let's look at it again. It says, All who believed were together and had all things in common. Now this doesn't mean that they had shared interests and that they all liked the same things and had similar backgrounds. It wasn't like they were like, oh, we have everything in common. We all love brunch and iced coffee. It means everything they had belonged to the community. Everything they had was shared for the good of the whole. And it says that if anyone had any individual possessions, they sold them and distributed the proceeds among everyone to take care of their needs. They all lived together and held all things in common like a commune. Economists have a name for this kind of system. And if you believe in it, you'll probably wind up on a list somewhere. You see, in our Americanized version of Christianity, in a Western consumeristic culture, Acts 2 doesn't seem like the ideal, but more like a radical way of life that in many ways we have rejected. But is this what the resurrection revolution is all about? If we want to live like the followers of Jesus after the resurrection, does it mean that we have to sell everything we own and use the money to care for anyone who has needs? Does it mean that we all quit our jobs and spend all day worshiping and praying together? And at night we share a meal. Are we supposed to become an actual Acts 2 church community? In some ways it is really beautiful and simple. But it just may be too radical for us. We may be a little too entrenched in our individualism and consumerism. And even though the Bible says God increased their number, I'm not sure that would attract a lot of people in this day and age. So what are we supposed to do? What would a resurrection revolution look like? You know, in America, we value our independence. This summer we're celebrating our 250th anniversary of declaring our independence. It's a value that I hold. We love to be independent. But when I look at the Acts 2 church, it doesn't provide much space to be completely independent. And sometimes in our love of independence, we become afraid of anything that even hints at dependence. Dependence can be scary because it means we have no control. We're at the mercy of someone or something else. And I don't think there's enough trust in this world to allow ourselves to be dependent on many things. We just look at our dependence on oil and how shutting down one waterway has thrown the whole world into chaos. But in this church community in Acts 2, it wasn't that they were dependent on one another. It doesn't say that there were people who had resources and there were people who were without anything, and those people were dependent on the mercy of others. That's a system of charity. And charity can be good, but it's still a system of dependence on one another. And we certainly don't want to be codependent. Codependence is manipulative and destructive. It's giving that enables the destructive behavior of some, and it depletes everyone. So in our Acts 2 Resurrection Revolution, we can't be completely independent. But we don't want to be dependent or codependent. But what about interdependence? Interdependence means everyone contributes to the good of the whole. Our survival and care are tied to everyone's survival and care. Dr. King called this an inescapable network of mutuality. And what he said, that we are all tied to a single garment of destiny. Interdependence allows us to raise up a just community. Instead of one based on charity and pity for others, instead of a manipulative and controlling dependence, interdependence creates a system of justice. Not justice in the sense of law and fairness or what is right and wrong, but a just community who understands and values the good of the whole. A community that understands that what is best for everyone is also what is best for you. But interdependence allows us to see how we are connected to something bigger than ourselves. We are connected to the community. And in the case of these early followers after the resurrection, how that community is now the living body of Christ. So how are we supposed to make this happen? How do we create this Acts 2 resurrection revolution of interdependence? Because we've already established that having everyone sell everything they own and quit their jobs and spend their days devoted to worship and prayer. That's probably not going to work. And maybe we can't make it as simple as a three-step program or ministry model like the church growth gurus have said. That's just layering our consumerism on top of something that's supposed to be organic and fluid. But maybe it starts with the breaking of bread and the eating with glad and generous hearts. That was central to the Acts 2 church. The sharing of meals together in community. And these meals were more than having supper together at the end of the day. When it says the breaking of bread, it's referring to the Eucharist or what we call holy communion. The earliest practices of communion looked more like a potluck where everyone contributed and all had enough. Instead of just bread and wine, it was a full meal for all. And this regular practice helped them see how they were all interdependent and how it was in their communing that they formed community and became the body of Christ. Maybe there's something in that for us. But we when we practice communion together, it doesn't always foster that same understanding. We've made holy communion an individual act. Each person gets a piece of bread. We even use small individual cups, and each person says a silent individual prayer. But that's not how this sacred meal was originally intended. It was supposed to be about the shared connection. That we were all feasting on the same bread and cup, and it was supposed to be festive and maybe even a little raucous. When we have communion, we get quiet and solemn. And many of you have heard me say before that I think it should be the loudest part of our services, with people greeting one another and singing together and praying together. Maybe a resurrection revolution gets sparked if we were to celebrate communion more frequently with glad and generous hearts. In fact, this summer, we're going to start offering communion each Sunday immediately following each service. And our hope is that the frequency of it doesn't just add an act of piety for individuals, but that it deepens the faith of the whole and strengthens our bonds as a community and we find our interdependence. And I'm not saying that celebrating communion more often is all it takes to create this resurrection revolution that will transform the world. I'm just saying maybe it starts here for us. That it breaks our understanding of our individualism and consumerism and is a reminder that we are independent and part of something beyond ourselves, a just community, the living body of Christ. But I still believe that when we together worship freely and justly and we contribute to the needs of all for the good of the whole, and we break bread with glad and generous hearts, we will create a community. A community so compelled, so compelling to others. But God will add to our numbers daily. Amen.