"...Everything In Common?"

A sermon based upon Acts 2: 42-47

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

22^st Sunday in Ordinary Time,  September 9th,  2018 

(3-14) Sermon Series: Church: Then and Now

At the height of the Cold War, Billy Graham visited communist Russia to meet with their political and religious leaders. Many conservatives in the United States believed that the Soviets were using Billy Graham, and criticized him for not taking a more prophetic role.  One organization even accused Billy Graham of setting the church back 50 years. Graham responded, "I am deeply ashamed. I have been trying very hard to set the church back 2,000 years" (Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace?, 264, as quoted by Greg Breazeale is pastor of Metro East Baptist Church, Wichita, Kansas at “Lifeway.com”).

While we should not over glamorize the biblical picture of the early, young, church, since it was in no way a ‘perfect’ church, it was indeed a ‘Spirit-inspired’ thriving church, where 3,000 people were ‘added’ to its ‘numbers’ in one day (v. 41). Such ‘experiences’ of church growth are rare, but this biblical picture of an exciting, explosive early church continues to challenge us to evaluate the life of our own churches.    

“ALL THE BELIEVERS WERE TOGETHER….”

What is particularly challenging in this text, is not just that the church was thriving and growing, but it was what they were doing with their ‘property, possessions’ and the ‘proceeds’ from selling them (CEB, v. 44).   In the middle of this ‘picture’ is a church that challenges most everything we hold dear as American Christians---our right to ‘private property’ and our American right to pursue ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’.

What I’m talking about here is this picture of the early church “having all things in common.  Selling their possessions and goods… (giving) to anyone as they had need” (44-45).  This is exactly the kind of church that would not grow in most of our affluent communities.  It sounds more like a cult, led by “Jim Jones”, who led his people to drink poison Kool-Aid, than something the Holy Spirit would lead us to do.  Who would want to be a part of a church where people ‘sold everything’ so that the proceeds where given to those who were in ‘need’?  Would you go first?  A pastor friend of mine recent was renting a home, and the landlord sold it out from under him.  At 63 years of age, he and his wife had to move into a hotel and they are thinking of buying an RV and moving into a local Camp Ground.  Would you want to join a church where everyone ‘had all things in common’ and lived in a kind of commune?

Back during the 1940’s, even before our country started dealing with Civil Rights and Segregation, a prominent pastor and Ethics professor at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, decided to develop a planned ‘farm’ community where Black and White folks ‘had all things in common’ and lived together on a ‘farm’ known as Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia.  Clarence Jordan wanted to build a community that intentionally looked like ‘the kingdom of God’ on earth, as it is in heaven.  Year’s later, Habitat for Humanity joined forces with Koinonia Farm, and the Farm is used to provide shelter for refugees from war-torn countries, as well as, provide a training center for people to learn how to reach out to the hurting and hungry.  But of course, as a normal, everyday, this ‘kingdom of God’ experiment is impossible to sustain as a way of life. (https://www.koinoniafarm.org/about/)

This ‘dream’ of ‘communal living’ has returned among many younger Christians.  Not too many years ago, I attended a Seminar outside of Raleigh, and some younger Christians were telling us about moving into inner city areas, setting ‘house churches’ and experimenting with radical types of community and communal living.  Just recently someone wrote in to Focus on the Family, raising questions about living in ‘community’:

“What do you think about the current emphasis on communal living in some Christian circles? We're seriously worried about a couple of close friends of ours. Over the past year they've become increasingly obsessed with the idea of creating "community." Now they want us to sell our home, move with them to a rural area, and help them start a Christian "commune." We're really struggling with this. For one thing, the idea sounds "cultic." For another, we have a feeling that they're motivated to do this primarily because they have problems with authority, especially in the local church. They also seem to want to escape the responsibilities of modern life. Are our concerns off base?”

Listen to how Focus on the Family made a very balanced response: “It's easy to understand why you have concerns about your friends interest in starting a Christian "commune." From a contemporary American perspective, this is a rather strange and unusual idea. Nowadays most of us tend to associate the word "commune" with left-wing political extremism or abusive and theologically misguided cultic groups. This perspective isn't unreasonable….  Nevertheless, the connection isn't necessarily valid. We'd suggest that you won't be able to think this question through clearly until you realize this. AS A MATTER OF FACT, EXPERIMENTS IN COMMUNAL CHRISTIAN LIVING CAN BE POSITIVE, BENEFICIAL, AND GOD-HONORING IF THEY'RE CARRIED OUT IN THE RIGHT WAY. Everything depends on the people involved and their reasons for doing what they're doing.

If you study history, you'll discover that there has always been communal expressions of the Christian life... This tradition has solid biblical roots. It goes all the way back to the early Christian community in Jerusalem (Acts 4:32-37). It has manifested itself again and again over the past twenty centuries in an almost endless variety of forms. It has found expression in everything from the primitive monastic communities of the ancient Desert Fathers to the early American Shakers to the present-day Hutterian Brethren. Catholic monks and nuns live in community. So do certain groups who are heavily involved in inner-city ministry, such as Sojourners and Harambee House, or outreach to the rural poor, such as Rev. John Perkins's Mendenhall Ministries. IN AND OF ITSELF, THE DESIRE TO CREATE A STRONG, VITAL, AND VISIBLE COMMUNAL DEMONSTRATION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE AS BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST (CAN BE) A WORTHY GOAL…The downside to all of this, of course, is that it's very difficult to make the dream work in the real world…ANYONE WHO HAS EVER ACTUALLY TRIED TO DO WHAT YOUR FRIENDS ARE PROPOSING WILL TELL YOU THAT IT'S EXTREMELY HARD TO PULL IT OFF SUCCESSFULLY. That's the way it is when sinful, fallen human beings attempt to live together in close proximity…IF YOU'D LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THIS AT GREATER LENGTH, CALL OUR STAFF OF PASTORAL COUNSELORS.

I think Focus on the Family makes a valid point that this kind of spiritual community is ‘hard to pull off successfully’ in a ‘sinful, fallen’ world.  So what do we do with the ‘challenge’ of this sharing, caring, and daring human community?  How do we respond to the Holy Spirit’s call to be church in ways that challenge the division, the separation, isolation and the social alienation that still exists in our world today? Isn’t our God the God of reconciliation and fellowship, who makes even the impossible, possible?  What happens when we give up on the ‘challenge’ of living God’s dream?  Living God’s dream of human ‘fellowship’ and ‘community’ is more possible in smaller churches, but it is still not ‘automatic’.

The first church that the young pastor Fred Craddock served was a tiny, rural one near Oak Ridge, TN.  During his tenure, the community exploded with laborers brought in to work at the newly developed nuclear plants. The young pastor wanted to attract the workers to his church; there was just one problem.  The church didn’t want them. At all.

Soon after the state of Tennessee became home to the research and development of the country’s first nuclear bomb, Fred Craddock began noticing recreational vehicles, trucks, wagons, and tents dotting the landscape. Since his church was nearby, the young preacher naturally began thinking about reaching out to the workers who’d migrated to the area.

After services one Sunday, he called a meeting of the church’s leadership and presented his plans. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think they’d fit in here,” one church member said. “They’re just here temporarily, just construction people. They’ll be leaving pretty soon.” Rev. Craddock countered with another plea to his church with a reminder of their spiritual obligation to reach out, but time ran out at the meeting, and it was decided that a vote would be made on Sunday.

At the outset of the meeting, one of the church members said, “I move that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in the county.” It was quickly seconded and passed.   Years later, that same pastor – now a nationally-renowned preacher and professor of preaching– returned to the area with his wife and wanted to show her the church where he’d once served. The countryside had changed over the years, along with the roads, but Dr. Craddock eventually found the little white building and stopped the car.

The parking lot was full; cars, trucks, and motorcycles surrounded the old structure which now sported a sign that read “BBQ: All You Can Eat.” Unable to resist, the Craddocks walked inside and saw the old pews lining a wall, and the organ pushed into a corner. The space was filled with different sized tables which were filled with people filling themselves on pork and chicken.   Dr. Craddock leaned over to his wife and whispered, “It’s a good thing this isn’t still a church…otherwise, these people couldn’t be in here.” (Craddock Stories by Fred B. Craddock. Chalice Press, 2001, Pages 28-29).

I don’t think any of us want our church to become a Restaurant or a Museum, either. We want our church, this church; the church where we were raised, the church that nurtured our souls, the church where our ancestors worshipped, and where we still worship and serve God, to thrive and live on, not just in our hearts and minds, but as a vital ministry in our ministry and in the world.  But the question is still before us today, especially in these challenging days of church decline: how do we continue to live out God’s dream of ‘koinonia’, of community, and for fellowship, without becoming a cult, communistic, or worst, become a ‘failed’ church?

…”TO ANYONE, WHO HAD NEED” (v.45).

One thing for sure, what is going on in this text is spiritually motivated, and is not materialistic.  In other words, this is not ‘communism’ which was primarily motivated by ‘materialism’ forcing people to give up private property and material possessions, living on equal terms.  What we all know now, is that ‘communism’ not only didn’t work, but it doesn’t work.  The only exception is in China, where communism still survives because it made economic adjustments based on economic realities, not just socialistic dreams of a more equal world. (https://www.quora.com/Is-China-considered-to-have-a-communist-or-capitalist-society).

One thing I don’t want to do with this message, is get into a discussion of politics, because I have seen the failure of communism in Europe first hand.  I have seen how bankrupt ‘communism’ can be, but I’ve also witnessed the possibilities and potential of capitalism, even with all its flaws and weaknesses too. I’ve seen first-hand, the possibility of a more community based, capitalistic, “Christian” and even socially responsible democracy, that does refuses to force communal living, but does govern with eyes open toward both social and economic realities.  But the question for us is, is not purely political, but spiritual: Where does the ‘church’ fit into all this?  In Europe, the official State Church is ‘spiritually’ and statistically dead, except a lingering ethical influence on its governments.  In America, our churches still have some spiritual life, but politically they are separate from the affairs of government and state, so what kind of spiritual, social, or ethical impact can we have?

In our text, I believe we can still find our place as churches that exist in the ‘real’ world, without having to either become ‘communal’, ‘socialistic’ or ‘political’ on the world’s terms.   The ‘spiritual’ motivation of a church that still makes an impact on it’s own communities, is a church that will continue to ‘connect’ to it’s community by responding to real, human need.  Isn’t this what gave the church its spiritual connection?  It was a church that was inspired by the spirit to ‘get real’ in a way that it did not hold back from making generous and genuine response to ‘all’ as ‘everyone’ or ‘anyone’ ‘had need’ (KJV).

Most every thing we see happening in the ‘young’, ‘new born’ church was not sustainable.  Pentecost is not sustainable, it happened only once.  The coming of the Holy Spirit with ‘great power’ is not sustainable, it happened only once, and only happens now occasionally in limited ways.  People speaking in ‘other languages’ is not easily attainable or sustainable, just like having over three thousand people join the church on one day is not sustainable.  It is also not ‘sustainable’ to have ‘believers’ so ‘united’ that they ‘share everything’, ‘sell their possessions…and their property’ and distribute the proceeds.  Also, meeting in the Temple every day to worship wasn’t sustainable either, just like always sharing ‘food’ with ‘gladness and singleness of heart’ (KJV), isn’t sustainable.  You just can’t continue repeating what the Spirit did, nor can you continue living ‘on earth’, what it might be like to live ‘in heaven’, can you? We must live in this world. We are not in heaven yet. 

So, what is sustainable?  What is humanly possible, or is the kind of ‘miracle’ or prayer that God still freely answers?  What is more than something we can do once in a while, but what is the ‘spiritual’ way we can live that is not only sustainable, but is the very way we can tap into the ‘spiritual power’ of God’s Spirit which can ‘empower’ and continue to ‘sustain’ us as Churches, and as Christians, both spiritually and physically, while we live out our ‘faith’ on earth, before we reach the heavenly world to come?

A few month ago, Solus Christus, a home for women struggling with Addiction, was introduced to us, as a viable, Christian, effective way of connecting with human need.  We heard not only how these women were being helped, and how courts were ‘ordering’ women to go there, but how these women were being helped by gaining and growing faith in Jesus Christ.  It is a ministry that reminds us that human need is still there, and that community in Christ still saves. 

But what about us, as a church?  In a world were even our own families, and sometimes our own children have less need of the life of the church, how do we become churches that not only meet human need where the crisis is, but that we are sustained ourselves for the ministry and mission of the church?  The question that is alive and well out of this text is simply this: How do we connect with the real needs of people which are just as real in our world, as they were in the world of the very first Christians?  Can Solus Christus, or other social ministries be examples of how we are again ‘empower’ for life in the Spirit?

I have a book in my study, entitled “Excellent Protestant Congregations” which tells the stories of how certain churches, big ones and small ones, have found ways to respond to the needs of their communities.  I got to hear the pastor of one of those churches, Kevin Cosby, in a meeting recently.  In that meeting he spoke of how he took over a church in Louisville that was barely alive in a dying, difficult community.  The relatively small church. St. Stephens, was surrounded by crime and criminals.  On one side of the church were houses of drugs and prostitution, and on the other side, were bars, night clubs and strip joints.  But as the church began to minister to the people in those ‘dirty’ places and communities, and respond to real needs, loving the sinner, while hating the sin, the bars started emptying, the night clubs closed, and prostituting stopped.  The church didn’t stop them, the Spirit did.  The Spirit stopped them when the church met the needs of the people in those troubled places head on.  For you see, it’s hard to keep all these ‘sinful’ destructive places open when the sinners ‘are being saved’ and have better things to do with their lives. 

Now, where those bars, strip joints, and men’s clubs are gone and have been replaced with homes, families, reputable businesses and even more churches.  How did this happen?   It happened when the church, filled with the spirit, met the needs of those people head on.  They didn’t close down all those degrading places, but they gave ‘hope’ to the people.  As one grandmother used to say in eastern North Carolina, the church didn’t just go out there and ‘help’ somebody, but they went out there and ‘hoped’ somebody  (https://www.thenation.com/article/hope-is-a-verb-and-it-can-revive-our-democracy/).  They didn’t just oppose the prostitution, the drinking, or the dancing, but they introduced the people to ‘hope’ and gave them ‘help’ and lived together with them ‘in the Spirit of Christ’ so they needs were met and lives were changed.    

I don’t think that other churches serve as good patterns for us, but the biblical pattern, though impossible to implement on our own, does reveal to us what it takes be a church becomes so ‘devoted to the apostle’s teaching’ about Jesus, that we too are guided by the Holy Spirit to genuinely respond to actual human needs around us.  We are called to be churches that are empowered by the Spirit of Christ, not just the do good, not just to meet physical needs, but go out there and ‘hope’ somebody.  

“AND THE LORD ADDED …” (v. 47)

What does a real, genuine, spiritually practice response to ‘human need’ get us as a church?  That may be the wrong question.  It is more biblical to ask, what can we ‘give’ to become a church that is spiritually responsive to human need around us?  

I think this is an important question for us, because there is a part of the spiritual reality of the early church that is ‘repeatable’ in our lives, if we would be respond more seriously and intentionally to God’s gifts of goodness and grace.  Not only do we see here in Acts a church that was vital, alive, as it dared, shared, and cared in the power of the Holy Spirit, but we also see a church that was growing and thriving, as ‘the LORD added to the church daily those who were being saved.’

Two things need to be said in conclusion.  The text clearly states that the growth of the early church was not connived, plotted or manipulated by human ingenuity or invention.  The text clearly says that it was ‘the LORD’ who ‘added to the church’.   This ‘growth’ was not manufactured or programed, manipulated by humanly devised ‘strategy’, but this was God’s divine strategy given as a gift resulting from a church recognizing and respond to real human need around them.  This was not communism, but it was real community; a spiritual, actual, and immediate human response, perhaps unsustainable, but real and heartfelt.  It was a ‘generous’ response to reach out to the needs of their community where the church lived.  We shouldn’t follow them as a ‘pattern’ for everyday life, but we should follow the same ‘spirit’ who can motivate us to respond realistic to both the physical and spiritual needs of our own world.

The second thing I see in this ‘growth’ of the church is that the people who were ‘added’ to the church where not always immediately saved all at once, but they ‘were being saved’ as they also responded to and continued to follow Jesus Christ in obedience and service.  God’s  gift of salvation was immediate, but it had to be continually unpacked to have a lasting, real, impact in life.  Salvation was a journey of life, not a destination in life.  

A great example of how God still adds to the church, beyond what we can do, but also through the community we must be is found in the story how a very messed up fellow became a member of a church in Denver, Colorado.  It is est that you hear this story of community in Christ directly from the pastor:

"It was Rick’s first OPERATION TURKEY SANDWICH. He’d been looking forward to it, as the event suited his manic personality.   It was his chance to be involved in our church action to feed the homeless.

Six months prior, Rick had come to us himself as a homeless, bipolar, pathological liar. Now, half a year later he was OUR homeless, bipolar, pathological liar…..

Two years earlier, in the summer of 2009, the FBI investigated an Iraq War veteran named Rick Duncan. Duncan had been seen in TV ads endorsing political candidates and telling his story as an antiwar vet who had also been present at the Pentagon on 9/11. He had started a nonprofit fund dedicated to helping returning war veterans receive their benefits.

Rick was incredibly helpful. But his name wasn’t Rick Duncan. It was Rick Strandlof. And RICK STRANDLOF HAS NEVER SERVED IN THE MILITARY. He admitted all of this in an awkward interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in July 2009.  Soon after the interview, he was charged with violating the Stolen Valor Act, a federal statute prohibiting the unauthorized wear, manufacture, or sale of any military decorations and medals.

On July 16, 2010, a federal judge in Denver ruled the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional because it violates free speech. In other words, a federal court determined that when Rick Strandlof lied about being a decorated war hero, it may have been reprehensible, but it was legal. All charges against him were dropped since it ends up that, unlike most con artists, Rick never deceived others in order to steal money. He just wanted to be liked. And he just wanted to be helpful.

WHEN RICK STRANDLOF SHOWED UP AT CHURCH in August of 2011, my first instinct as pastor was to try to get rid of him. YOU KNOW, LIKE JESUS WOULD DO.   But the real Jesus keeps on showing up in people, even when we’d like to keep him out of our nice church business.

Now that Rick Strandlof has found our church,  as church that accepts not just saints, but also sinners, Rick is trying to be a real person for the first time in his life and he doesn’t really know who that person is anymore.  But he sees a glimpse of it at the communion table. He sees it in the eyes of the person serving him the wine and bread, saying, “Child of God, the body of Christ, given for you.” That’s his way to repentance.  He sees both who he is and who he isn’t in being loved anyway.

It’s still hard to love people like Rick, at least at first.  Left to my own devices, the pastor says, I would never welcome the likes of Rick Strandlof into my life or my church. I hate being lied to (have I mentioned that?) and I mistakenly trust more in my ability to protect myself from others than I trust in God to change my heart to love them. But I really do love Rick, the man who wants to, but can’t change himself.  Loving someone like Rick is just one more thing that makes me believe in God.

HOW DID RICK BECOME PART OF THIS CHURCH COMMUNITY?  The first time we met for coffee and about ten minutes after my latest spiritual heart transplant, I said, “Hang out at House for All Sinners and Saints and just be Rick Strandlof.  You’re a mess, so I plan to love you, to try to keep you honest, and to keep an eye on you, but seriously, Rick,” I warned, “you’ve got to take the edge off that crazy. Go get some help.”

He agreed to this. We now call it “the Plan.” So for the first time in his adult life he is just being Rick Strandlof. But being Rick Strandlof is more painful than being Rick Duncan or Rick Gold because the real Rick has a history of childhood neglect, mental illness, and alcohol abuse. “It hurts a little, being loved for who I really am,” he told me recently. Rick has been sober now for six months, he is getting help for his manic depression, and recently moved indoors. He is also one of the loudest people I’ve ever met and is so spastically hyperactive that I often wonder if he’s lying about taking his medication. He could be lying about everything, but that’s true of everybody. All I know for sure is that HE’S STILL UNBELIEVABLY HELPFUL at every church function and that he is loved and wanted at House for All.

In the fall of 2011, during the Occupy Denver actions, he organized and oversaw all of the food distribution at the hub of the local protests. “Distributing food at Occupy Denver is awesome!” Rick chirped to me over the phone. “Everyone is fed. It’s doesn’t matter if you are a homeless guy who is scamming and doesn’t even care about Occupy or a lawyer on a lunch break.” He pauses. “THE ONLY PLACE I’VE EVER REALLY SEEN THAT IS AT COMMUNION.” As we hung up, I tried to pretend that I wasn’t crying.

 (BOLZ-WEBER, NADIA. Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint (pp. 190-195). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.). 

So, what about us?  Where are we in this spiritual calling and adventure of ministry as the people of God on earth?   Are we still challenged by this immediate surge of the Spirit in the lives of those first Christians, so that we also respond in ways that are needed in our own communities?  Again, we need not ‘fear’ what is happening here.  This is not communism, but it is a call to live in a SPIRIT DIRECTED COMMUNITY IN CHRIST.   When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we join a club of THE ELITE, but we are to be a fellowship that dares, cares as it shares what it is to meet the spiritual and physical needs of its own community.    Being such a daring community is the true evidence that our lives too, have been invaded, and changed by the love of God and the fullness of God’s Spirit.  Amen.