Easter 4, Year A
May 15, 2011
Acts 2:42-47
If you were wondering, these colorful papers stretching above us are the Alleluia butterflies that each child in the Day School colored for chapel on Ash Wednesday. They disappeared for Lent and then emerged from the empty tomb at Easter. They have now spread their wings to fly, just as the stories about Jesus and the joy at his risen life began to spread after Easter.
I was worried that you all might feel left out of the fun, and so each of you should have received a piece of paper and a pen when you came in. In a few minutes, I’m going to ask you two questions. If you would consider sharing your answers anonymously, I invite you to put your piece of paper in the offering plate when it goes around later and the papers will be part of what comes up to the altar as our offering to God. But we’ll get to that part in a few minutes.
First, let’s think a little bit about our reading from Acts for this morning. We hear that the fledgling band of early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” And, not only that, but they shared all things in common. “[T]hey would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” These couple lines show how radically the Easter message affected the lives of the early believers.
It’s hard to know exactly what all that might look like in practice, but in my mind, I picture the early Christians were telling and re-telling their stories about Jesus, sharing their collective memories of his wisdom and his parables. Not just at worship, but in their homes and in their conversations. I imagine them opening themselves to God in prayer. Not just with their heads, but with their whole hearts. I imagine their meals, including their remembrance of the last supper in their worship, as being full of celebration and joy. I picture them nurturing each other, listening to and caring deeply for one another, making efforts to include new people in worship, extending hospitality to everyone. And then that “sharing all things in common bit” – wow! That is almost more than I can get my imagination around.
The reading says that their devotion and the way they lived in harmony so impressed the people around them that every day they grew in number. Their faith changed the way they lived in such dramatic ways that everyone around them could see it.
Last night my kids and I happened to read this very story in Desmond Tutu’s children’s bible and it was about as beautiful a picture as any I could concoct: "They were filled with joy and love for one another, and love for God. They became one big, happy family sharing everything together, just like God had always dreamed it could be."
That’s pretty impressive and a hard act to follow. And yet following it is what we promise to do in our baptismal covenant. Verbatim, in fact. Question: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” Answer: “I will, with God’s help.” The “sharing all things in common and giving to anyone that has need” part isn’t quite as explicit in the baptismal covenant, but those also seem to be pretty well covered in our promises to proclaim the good news in “word and example”, to “love our neighbor as ourself”, and to “strive for dignity and peace among all people.” These aren’t idle or empty words. They are our promises – our solemn vows to God of how we will be. (With God’s help, of course. Thank God for that!) They are essentially the definition of how to be a Christian. Our faith is supposed to dramatically change the way we live.
It is all pretty daunting, when you think about it. But don’t feel too bad if you, like me, are not feeling quite up to snuff. We know from other parts of the book of Acts that the perfect harmony we hear about this morning didn’t last long. And there is even some debate about whether the Church described in our reading this morning was actually the early Church or just the ideal to which it aspired.
The week before last we had our spring clergy retreat and one of the retreat leaders introduced an interesting kind of Bible study that he called “mirroring.” In mirroring, you read a text and try to intuit what the community to whom the words were addressed might have actually looked like, with the understanding that the community may have been the mirror-image of the words themselves. As a sort of comical example, he explained that if a text said “Don’t jump on the bed!” it was likely written for a group that is jumping on the bed. The text we used at the retreat was from 1 Corinthians, where Paul is teaching the people about spiritual gifts and telling them that the Church should be unified like the parts of a body and that love is the most important thing. Using mirroring, we talked about how the community Paul was addressing probably was not using their spiritual gifts or appreciating and including the gifts of others and was probably not living in love. And then, using what we’d discussed, we tried to discern what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us in our own context.
I thought about this mirroring technique when I read today’s passage. Using mirroring, it seems like the people being addressed by the writer of Acts probably weren’t devoting themselves terribly well to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Maybe they only worshipped and prayed and thought about the Bible while at church, then went back to their “regular” life and didn’t think about all that stuff at all. Maybe they weren’t particularly joyful in their meals or the other time they spent together. Maybe they weren’t sharing what they had but considered it their own hard-earned stuff. In other words, maybe the original audience of Acts was a whole lot closer to us living in our modern and secular times than we realize!
Maybe the words from Acts that we read this morning were intended to inspire the early Church that had already grown careless and less-than-energetic in their faith. And maybe these words are just as needed to inspire us to truly become Easter people – people who devote so ourselves to scripture, fellowship, worship and prayer that our lives are radically changed. And maybe these words are just as needed to encourage us to truly become an Easter Church – a place where the deepest human longings for God and for community are satisfied and where all live together in abundance and harmony.
So with that in mind, let’s read our passage again:
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."
And so I ask you, from this reading, what might the Holy Spirit be saying to you? This is where that paper and pen come in. We’ll sit in silence for a minute, and I invite you to write down how the words of Acts might be inspiring you to think differently about how you live out your own faith. Is there one thing, maybe, that you could do differently to live out more fully those promises in the baptismal covenant? Something you could be doing to live more fully into the dream of God?
(silence)
And of course, it is the early church we hear about in Acts, not just individuals acting upon their individual spirituality. That’s true for us here today, too. We gather in this place as a community in order to support each other and to be supported in our lives in Christ. So, turn over your paper to write down your answer to this next question. How can this church better live out this reading from Acts? How can St. Aidan’s -- this community of believers and this institution and clergy – better support you in whatever it is that you wrote down on the other side of the paper? We’ll take another minute in silence for you to write that down.
(silence)
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. Hopefully it’s just the beginning of the conversation!
May 15, 2011
Acts 2:42-47
If you were wondering, these colorful papers stretching above us are the Alleluia butterflies that each child in the Day School colored for chapel on Ash Wednesday. They disappeared for Lent and then emerged from the empty tomb at Easter. They have now spread their wings to fly, just as the stories about Jesus and the joy at his risen life began to spread after Easter.
I was worried that you all might feel left out of the fun, and so each of you should have received a piece of paper and a pen when you came in. In a few minutes, I’m going to ask you two questions. If you would consider sharing your answers anonymously, I invite you to put your piece of paper in the offering plate when it goes around later and the papers will be part of what comes up to the altar as our offering to God. But we’ll get to that part in a few minutes.
First, let’s think a little bit about our reading from Acts for this morning. We hear that the fledgling band of early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” And, not only that, but they shared all things in common. “[T]hey would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” These couple lines show how radically the Easter message affected the lives of the early believers.
It’s hard to know exactly what all that might look like in practice, but in my mind, I picture the early Christians were telling and re-telling their stories about Jesus, sharing their collective memories of his wisdom and his parables. Not just at worship, but in their homes and in their conversations. I imagine them opening themselves to God in prayer. Not just with their heads, but with their whole hearts. I imagine their meals, including their remembrance of the last supper in their worship, as being full of celebration and joy. I picture them nurturing each other, listening to and caring deeply for one another, making efforts to include new people in worship, extending hospitality to everyone. And then that “sharing all things in common bit” – wow! That is almost more than I can get my imagination around.
The reading says that their devotion and the way they lived in harmony so impressed the people around them that every day they grew in number. Their faith changed the way they lived in such dramatic ways that everyone around them could see it.
Last night my kids and I happened to read this very story in Desmond Tutu’s children’s bible and it was about as beautiful a picture as any I could concoct: "They were filled with joy and love for one another, and love for God. They became one big, happy family sharing everything together, just like God had always dreamed it could be."
That’s pretty impressive and a hard act to follow. And yet following it is what we promise to do in our baptismal covenant. Verbatim, in fact. Question: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” Answer: “I will, with God’s help.” The “sharing all things in common and giving to anyone that has need” part isn’t quite as explicit in the baptismal covenant, but those also seem to be pretty well covered in our promises to proclaim the good news in “word and example”, to “love our neighbor as ourself”, and to “strive for dignity and peace among all people.” These aren’t idle or empty words. They are our promises – our solemn vows to God of how we will be. (With God’s help, of course. Thank God for that!) They are essentially the definition of how to be a Christian. Our faith is supposed to dramatically change the way we live.
It is all pretty daunting, when you think about it. But don’t feel too bad if you, like me, are not feeling quite up to snuff. We know from other parts of the book of Acts that the perfect harmony we hear about this morning didn’t last long. And there is even some debate about whether the Church described in our reading this morning was actually the early Church or just the ideal to which it aspired.
The week before last we had our spring clergy retreat and one of the retreat leaders introduced an interesting kind of Bible study that he called “mirroring.” In mirroring, you read a text and try to intuit what the community to whom the words were addressed might have actually looked like, with the understanding that the community may have been the mirror-image of the words themselves. As a sort of comical example, he explained that if a text said “Don’t jump on the bed!” it was likely written for a group that is jumping on the bed. The text we used at the retreat was from 1 Corinthians, where Paul is teaching the people about spiritual gifts and telling them that the Church should be unified like the parts of a body and that love is the most important thing. Using mirroring, we talked about how the community Paul was addressing probably was not using their spiritual gifts or appreciating and including the gifts of others and was probably not living in love. And then, using what we’d discussed, we tried to discern what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us in our own context.
I thought about this mirroring technique when I read today’s passage. Using mirroring, it seems like the people being addressed by the writer of Acts probably weren’t devoting themselves terribly well to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Maybe they only worshipped and prayed and thought about the Bible while at church, then went back to their “regular” life and didn’t think about all that stuff at all. Maybe they weren’t particularly joyful in their meals or the other time they spent together. Maybe they weren’t sharing what they had but considered it their own hard-earned stuff. In other words, maybe the original audience of Acts was a whole lot closer to us living in our modern and secular times than we realize!
Maybe the words from Acts that we read this morning were intended to inspire the early Church that had already grown careless and less-than-energetic in their faith. And maybe these words are just as needed to inspire us to truly become Easter people – people who devote so ourselves to scripture, fellowship, worship and prayer that our lives are radically changed. And maybe these words are just as needed to encourage us to truly become an Easter Church – a place where the deepest human longings for God and for community are satisfied and where all live together in abundance and harmony.
So with that in mind, let’s read our passage again:
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."
And so I ask you, from this reading, what might the Holy Spirit be saying to you? This is where that paper and pen come in. We’ll sit in silence for a minute, and I invite you to write down how the words of Acts might be inspiring you to think differently about how you live out your own faith. Is there one thing, maybe, that you could do differently to live out more fully those promises in the baptismal covenant? Something you could be doing to live more fully into the dream of God?
(silence)
And of course, it is the early church we hear about in Acts, not just individuals acting upon their individual spirituality. That’s true for us here today, too. We gather in this place as a community in order to support each other and to be supported in our lives in Christ. So, turn over your paper to write down your answer to this next question. How can this church better live out this reading from Acts? How can St. Aidan’s -- this community of believers and this institution and clergy – better support you in whatever it is that you wrote down on the other side of the paper? We’ll take another minute in silence for you to write that down.
(silence)
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. Hopefully it’s just the beginning of the conversation!
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