LIVING IN COMMUNITY
Acts 4:32 – 35
Acts 4:32-35 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (33) With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (34) There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. (35) They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
There is the story about a monkey who reached into a jar to get his favorite fruit. As he went to pull his hand out, it got stuck in the mouth of the jar. Why? The reason why was that his fruit-filled clenched fist was too big to exit the mouth of the jar. The monkey could have had his hand free if only he had unclenched his fist. The monkey was imprisoned by his own desire. Is it possible that we share anything in common with the monkey in this story? (Russell F. Anderson. ed. Lectionary Preaching Workbook. Series V. Cycle B. Limas, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company Inc., 2008, p. 188). Do we have any ties to possessions that hold us back? How did the people in today’s text handle their material things and wealth? Did they withhold any resources? Today we will look at the greed, grace and how strong their grip is in our lives.
GREED
Do you believe greed is a dangerous thing? After all, it is one of the seven deadly sins.
1) Vice: Why is greed deadly vice? Greed is selfish, stingy, self-gratifying and self-absorbing. Greed is not about being a taker and a giver. Greed is more about taking more and giving less in return. Greed is about the love of money: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (1 Timothy 6:10 NRSV).
2) Dead Sea analogy: The ultimate worse case scenario would be for someone to be what has been referred to as a Dead Sea person. Do you know why they call it the Dead Sea the Dead Sea? They call it the Dead Sea for two reasons. First, the Dead Sea is so salty that nothing can live in it. Secondly, the first explanation by the second. The Dead Sea is a dead end. It has all of these bodies of water that trickle into it but it does not have an outlet for any water to go out because of its dead end which is why nothing can live in it. There are people that resemble the Dead Sea.
How does the issue of greed apply to salvation?
1) Salvation: Salvation is about a relationship between ourselves and the Lord. “Greed is the logical result of the belief that there is no life after death. We grab what we can while we can however we can and then hold on to it hard”. http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/g/greed.htm [source: Sir Fred Catherwood, Evangelicals Now, September, 1994]. Salvation is also about living a holy life while we strive to be holy as God is holy. What we do while we are in the here and now bears fruit that will carry on when we go on to life after this life.
2) Love: Greed runs counter to what it means to live a sanctified and holy life. Why? The reason why is that only our Lord can save us. In fact, God’s love is so great for us that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us (John 3:16)! Could that be one of the reasons that Jesus asks us in scripture “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Mark 8:36).
3) Greed: “Leo Tolstoy once wrote a story about a successful peasant farmer who was not satisfied with his lot. He wanted more of everything. One day he received a novel offer. For 1000 rubles, he could buy all the land he could walk around in a day. The only catch in the deal was that he had to be back at his starting point by sundown. Early the next morning he started out walking at a fast pace. By midday he was very tired, but he kept going, covering more and more ground. Well into the afternoon he realized that his greed had taken him far from the starting point. He quickened his pace and as the sun began to sink low in the sky, he began to run, knowing that if he did not make it back by sundown the opportunity to become an even bigger landholder would be lost. As the sun began to sink below the horizon he came within sight of the finish line. Gasping for breath, his heart pounding, he called upon every bit of strength left in his body and staggered across the line just before the sun disappeared. He immediately collapsed, blood streaming from his mouth. In a few minutes he was dead. Afterwards, his servants dug a grave. It was not much over six feet long and three feet wide. The title of Tolstoy's story was: How Much Land Does a Man Need? . http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/g/greed.htm [source: Bits & Pieces, November, 1991] This peasant farmer is a fictional character in what seems to be a parable by Leo Tolstoy. Sadly, what happens to the peasant in this story will be a reality for too many who realized too little, too late that life is about far more wealth. How many are there today who live life today with no thought about tomorrow or those who will come after us?
Greed is a lot like salty water because they more someone drinks the thirstier they will become. Remember that Jesus once said that no one can serve two masters: "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24 NRSV).
GRACE
How does grace fit into the understanding of today’s text? If greed is about coveting (and it is), then how does that compare with God’s grace?
1) God’s gift of grace: As we know, Grace is God’s unmerited gift to us that comes through the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross for our salvation. All who are Christians in this world understand that we are saved by God’s grace. The Apostle Paul gives us one of the best explanations of God’s grace and mission for the church : Ephesians 2:8 - 10: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (NRSV).
2) New creatures in Christ: For all who confess with their mouths and believe with their hearts that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead (Romans 10:19), we can become new creatures in Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). Jesus came to save the last, the least, the lost in order to heal us, forgive us, and redeem us as an atonement for our sins.
3) New Community: What Acts 4 seems to be describing is the Body of Christ. Elsewhere in the New Testament the term “the Body of Christ” is used to refer to the church. There is no other community like the Church because Jesus Christ is the head of the Church. Just as Jesus’s kingdom is not of this world, we understand as Christians we are called to live in the world as resident aliens which means that we are in the world but not of the world.
What is the primary role of the new community?
1) Hospital: The church is called to be a hospital for sinners and not a rest home for saints! Through scripture Paul reminds us that this new community does not exist for the sake of being a club member, but for the sake of being in ministry for the forwarding of God’s Kingdom here on earth. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:26 “If one member (limb in the Greek) suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
2) A stubbed toe: What happens if you stub your toe on something? Naturally, our body’s nervous system communicates that our foot hurts, so we suffer with it! We go and get ice for it if necessary. In the Body of Christ, “If someone among us hurts we hurt with them; if someone is honored, then we celebrate with them” (I Corinthians 12:26).
3) Generosity: The Marquis de Lafayette was a French general and politician who helped George Washington during the American Revolution. He then returned to France and resumed his life as the lord of several estates. In 1783, the harvest was a poor one, but the workers of Lafayette’s farms still managed to fill his barns with wheat. “The bad harvest has raised the price of wheat,” said one of his workers. “This is the time to sell.” [Let’s interject a question: What would a company have done here? More than likely, they would have raised the prices to make up for losses right? What do you think Lafayette did with these circumstances? If we were in his shoes what do you think God would have us do?] Lafayette thought about the hungry peasants in the surrounding villages. “No,” he replied, “this is the time to give.” https://www.proclaimsermons.com/illustration.asp?LoggedIn=No&ID=Visitor&illust_type=category&illust_cat=Grace By Lafayette’s fruits, we know that he did would what brought God glory!
GRIP
What is it that grips the world, grace or greed?
1) Conditioning: In our world, we have been conditioned to be suspicious, cautious and sometimes if not often, judgemental. We have been conditioned to see the problems and ignore the person or people. We have been conditioned to avoid getting involved.
2) Self-preservation: We have been conditioned out of all of these things that collectively make up our ways of self-preservation. Can the sum of these things lead to greed where we look out only for ourselves?
3) Self examination: What did the good Samaritan do for a complete and total stranger in danger? What will we do for the least of these? What did Jesus do?
Does the example of Jesus Christ our Lord condition us with a “Grace awakening?” Look at Leonard’s story and how he helped the desperate and dangerous.
1) Leonards’ story: “Leonard 76, is a tall, dark–skinned man with a deep, gentle voice. He is the type of person you know is kind and is overflowing with love from the moment you meet him. He attends a church near his home in a senior citizen complex and also volunteers at a homeless shelter. He is the overnight guardian at the shelter.
He spent 40 years of his life homeless. He understands homelessness better than most people.
When I asked why … he simply replied that he wants to make sure there is always a safe place for people experiencing homelessness, especially women and children.
If you get to know Leonard, one of the things he will tell you is that most of his homelessness was a choice. He chose to live on the streets. He says that the way to really be free is not to own anything at all; not to owe anyone money, not even a landlord or a utility company. He says that when you are homeless, you are invisible. No one wants to see you or engage with you, and that frees you up to move around and meet people who really need community. I can think of examples in the gospels of a man who advised selling all your possessions to engage with the people who really need community.
One night on a park bench, Leonard sat by himself, rolling a cigarette close to his body so it would be covered by the hood of his sweatshirt in the falling snow. Two young men approached him, pulled a gun and told him to give them his money. Leonard didn’t have any money, and he asked the duo if whatever they had hoped to buy would be worth his life. That gave them pause enough to give Leonard time to offer his park bench to them to sit and share his cigarette. They sat down.
Since he now had some time to get to know these young guys, Leonard asked what could make them so desperate for cash that they would want to pull a gun on an elderly man in the park. One of the young men told him that his girlfriend had just had a baby and they didn’t have any money for formula or diapers and he just needed the cash to buy some food for the baby. Leonard told him he sure wouldn’t be helping his girlfriend or the baby if he got picked up for armed robbery tonight.
While they finished the cigarette together, Leonard reached into his bag and pulled out the forms for SNAP benefits, better known as food stamps. Leonard had once worked in the welfare office. He kept copies of the aid forms in his bag, just in case he might meet someone who needed them. Since he was an aid worker, he knew how to fill out the forms, which made him especially useful as many of the people he met in the homeless community could not read or write. He sat with the young man and filled out the forms and told him where to take them in the morning. He explained how the program worked and told him how to get what he needed for the baby in the meantime.
Leonard always sees the person first and never asks if the wound is deep enough to be worthy of help. Leonard’s first response is always to address the humanity of the people he meets. He never assumed the young men were “bad,” or inherently dangerous. He carries around SNAP benefit forms, not on the condition that he meet qualified individuals, but with the assumption that anyone without food is qualified based on their humanity. He didn’t need to know more about this young guy than that he must be desperate if he would be willing to commit murder for a few dollars”. https://www.proclaimsermons.com/illustration.asp?LoggedIn=Yes&ID=Wil2850260583&illust_type=category&illust_cat=Grace Leonard had had obviously been placed there for that moment in what we often call a Divine appointment by God’s design. Though we might not be held at gunpoint in our Divine appointments, God call us to be His disciples in action in both word and deed.
2) Grace awakening: Though today’s text explains some of the details of what happened immediately following Pentecost, we can see how God wants us to share our “Grace awakening” as the Easter people in the world today. Perhaps, the Mennonites and the Amish do a better job helping a needy person than we do. Nevertheless, God calls us to be the Body of Christ in the world today as a big part of our stewardship.
No doubt that God wants us to be less like the clench-fisted monkeys of the world we mentioned at the beginning and more like the Leonard, more like Jesus as we minister to others through His grace and in His Name.
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
