Heavens Above (Acts 1:1 - 11)

      One of the most important things for us 21^st-Century types to understand is that the authors of the New Testament did not have the same world view we “moderns” have.  The ancients viewed heaven as having geographic reality just like earth; that is, they believed that heaven is a physical place that has a relationship to earth you could point to, and that relationship of course is “up.”  The abode of the gods was thought to be up above us, in the sky, and further, the Earth was thought to be an imperfect reflection of this godly realm.  This of course is seen in Greek drama, where what happens in heaven is mirrored on earth, but for us imperfect mortals, often to tragic effect.  You can also see this in the New Testament . . . every Sunday we say:  “Our father who art in heaven” – there’s heaven as a place – “Hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  We’re asking that things be done here on earth as they are done in heaven.  In fact, the whole notion of the Kingdom of God is shot through with this.  If God’s rule in heaven is just, if the poor are never hungry or oppressed, if the blind see and the lame walk in heaven, then the coming of the Kingdom of God is nothing less than making Earth – now an imperfect reflection – into a perfect reflection of heaven.
      One of the problems many of us moderns have – although surely nobody in this room – is an overweening arrogance about it all . . . we’re convinced that our world-view is superior, we call it an “enlightenment” world view, for Pete’s sake, as in, aren’t we enlightened compared to those primitives in the pre-modern era, primitives like Michelangelo or Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, Leonardo Da Vinci or Plato or Martin Luther . . . and this arrogance filters down lo unto the very basics of our faith . . . my favorite Episcopalian ex-Bishop, John Spong – who I may have said before my friend calls Spronnngggg! – has made a career out of it, a career out of ridiculing pre-modern beliefs . . . he’s written the same book over and over again, telling us that we’d better get rid of all these quaint beliefs like the virgin birth or the resurrection or the insert-your-miracle-here, cause nobody in the modern world would believe that, and I suspect that this obsession tells us more about John Spong, and his embarrassment over his faith, than it does about that faith itself . . .

      And of course this primitive guy Jesus said something about how those who are ashamed of him and his words of them he’ll be ashamed, but aside from that, whenever I read this morning’s lesson I think of Spong, who singled this episode out in one of his books, deriding it as Jesus lifting off like a rocket ship, isn’t that quaint, and I think it betrays a remarkable literalness about the modern mind-set, a remarkable lack of imagination . . . Luke’s audience would have had no trouble seeing this as symbolic, they would have had no trouble viewing it on more than one level . . . like biblical literalism itself, the obsession with debunking the miracles in Scripture is a purely modern affliction . . .

      In fact our passage is shot through with symbolism, beginning with its first line . . . Luke addresses it to Theophilus, and though there has been speculation over the years about who this person’s identity – Was he Luke’s patron?  Was he an elder of the church? – I rather think that Luke has written it to all of us, because after all, Theophilus is Greek for “God lover,” and we do all love God, don’t we?  Even though the idea of God itself is a pre-enlightenment notion?

      But the inscription reminds us of something else, it reminds us that the book of Acts is not just a history, not just a record of the activities of the early church, although it is surely that . . . the book of Acts is a Theological document as well, it has a viewpoint, an agenda, if you will . . . this is a story not only for the God-lovers, it’s about the God-lovers as well, it wants to project a certain image of them, it wants make certain theological points.

      And one of the points it wants to make here is the obvious one . . . Jesus Christ was lifted up into heaven . . . and note the passive construction, it said he was “lifted up” and that of course implies somebody doing the lifting . . . Jesus didn’t lift himself up, he was lifted up, as the two men in white said he was taken up, and we all know by whom . . . and what about those two men in white, anyway?  White symbolizes purity, it symbolizes holiness and righteousness . . . in his Gospel account of the transfiguration, Luke describes Jesus’ clothes as “dazzling white.”  And then again, at the tomb, the women find instead of Jesus two men in dazzling clothes . . . are these men in our passage the same guys?  In a way, they’re acting like kind of a Greek chorus, telling the disciples what’s going on, giving them needed information . . . kind of like angels . . . are they angels?  Angels means messenger in Greek . . . and they’re delivering a message, all right . . . and here’s the point: God took Jesus – now the risen Christ – God took Jesus up to heaven . . . and if we don’t get the point, it’s pounded into us: the last verse repeats the word heaven three times: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus who was taken into heaven, will return the same way you saw him go into heaven.”  Where has Jesus gone?  Into heaven, already . . . And of course, this gives us a clue as to his identity, doesn’t it?  The messengers are telling us that Jesus is the Son of God, returning to live in the home of his heavenly parent.

       But even though Jesus has gone from them, even though his heavenly parent has reached down and scooped them up, the apostles are not left high and dry.  As Jesus says “John baptized with water,” Jesus says, just before his departure, “but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."  And of course, that is what we celebrate not many days from now at Pentecost . . . but the disciples, there at that last meeting with him, want to know what’s going to happen,  they want to know how it’s all going to go down, and so they ask the question they’d been asking from the beginning “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  Is it finally here?  And we know what kingdom they’re talking about . . . it’s the Davidic kingdom, the kingdom of their once and future King . . .

      After all this time they still don’t get it, they still don’t understand what’s going on . . . it’s as if they’re thinking “ok, we got that crucifixion and resurrection stuff outa’ the way . . . now let’s get on with the real deal, the real agenda . . . let’s get that kingdom restored.  After all, you are the Messiah, are you not?”  But Jesus just patiently lays it on the line: it’s not for y’all to know the times or periods that God has set . . . sorry.  I don’t care how many Y2Ks come and go or how many charts John Hagee puts up on the wall, it’s not for you to know.  Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins can write a whole library on the subject – and trust me, they will – but you’re not gonna figure it out.  It’s just not for you to know.

      But here’s what I will do for you, he says, I’ll give you power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and everywhere, to the ends of the earth.  And this witnessing business is no small potatoes, no small deal . . . it takes power to witness, the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon the disciples at Pentecost.  And that makes sense, doesn’t it?  After all, the Greek for witness is “martyr,” and that title came to be associated with Christians whose witness included the ultimate act of self-giving, the giving up of their lives . . . those Christians took Christ at his word when he said “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their lives for my sake will save it.”  Their witness was a sign-post pointing to Christ’s ultimate act of self-giving, his death on a Roman cross.

      Of course, that kind of total witness, whether it involves giving up your physical existence on this planet or not, isn’t easy . . . and that’s what the power of the Holy Spirit is for, it’s to support Christians in this risky, difficult, downright-dangerous undertaking of being a witness to Christ.  And this imbuing of individual people with the Holy Spirit’s power is something entirely new that God is doing with us Christians . . . the Hebrew scriptures – which we call the Old Testament – tells of the Spirit of God working in the world . . . Jesus himself tells Nicodemus that “the wind, the spirit, blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes,” and it’s still like that, the Spirit of God is still loose in the world, wild, unpredictable and free, but now – through the agency of Christ – we are able to wield some of that power . . . or at least that power can undergird our actions, it can support our witness to Christ.

      Early on in the movie The Apostle, the title character Sonny Dewey is doing some tag-team preaching . . . y’all don’t know about tag-team preaching?  Well, it’s when one of the evangelists is preachin’ and steppin’ and hollering about the Lord, and another comes up and pops him on the back or the arm, he comes up and tags him and takes over, and it goes on like that sometimes for hours, and Sonny is tagged by this humongous preacher in a white suit who starts stepping across the stage yelling “I got the Holy Ghost powah!  I got the Holy Ghost powah!”  He’s happy about it, it animates him, it gives him joy . . . it gives him strength to live in a world that’s not always sympathetic to three-hundred pound black men . . .

      And you know what?  We got the Holy Ghost powah as well . . .  we got that high-steppin’, blowin’ in the wind Spirit power to uphold us as we undertake the dangerous business of witnessing to Christ . . . what?  You say that you’ve never felt endangered by your witness for the Gospel?  You’ve never been afraid, you’ve never felt like you might be called upon to actually take up that cross and follow Christ to the end?  Ok, maybe not . . . I’ll buy that.  There’s at least a veneer of religious tolerance in this country . . . it’s not like we’re Muslims or anything . . . but we’ve all felt the ridicule as we bear witness in public, as we give credit to Christ for a good work – we always say we’re doing it in Christ’s name, don’t we? – or we bow our heads in a restaurant to give thanks . . . if we haven’t – and again I’m sure all of us in this room have – but if we haven’t, perhaps we ought to examine our witness to Christ . . .

      Our whole reason for being is to be his witnesses in Cincinnati, in all Ohio and Indiana and, lo! even to the ends of the earth . . . if we are not fulfilling this, if we’re not witnessing to Christ in thought word and deed, then what good are we to God?  After all, heaven is up there, not down here, and as that Greek angel chorus said “Why are we looking up into heaven?  Christ’s gonna come back here, back to earth.”  The action’s here on earth, the witness is here on this planet.  Fix not your hearts on heavenly things, brothers and sisters, but on our witness here on earth.  Heaven will take care of itself.  Amen.

Faith 'n' Agora (Acts 17:16 - 34)

     Paul got thrown into jail a lot.  He was always getting arrested on some trumped up charge or another.  There were those two long-term prison stays of a couple of years or so apiece, one in Rome around 60 CE and another in Caesarea, about the timeline of which we aren’t certain.  Paul himself mentioned them in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, comparing himself to everything, where he boasts just a wee bit: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? . . . I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.”

And to that I say . . . well.  If trials and tribulations are the measure of how great a minister you are, then I must not be much of one . . . don’t say it . . . but I’m a pretty typical, well-fed, well-looked-after American yuppie whose only trial is when they run out of black ice tea at Starbucks.  But for Paul, floggings, shipwrecks and imprisonments were just the cost of doing business, of proclaiming the gospel.  It’s been estimated that over and above the four years he spent in Roman and Caesarean prisons, another two years might have been added on by all the more minor, short-term jailings he endured.

Many of those episodes are described in Acts, and today we have one of the most famous: his speech on Mars Hill, in Athens.  Athens!  Cradle of Western Civilization!  Home of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle!  Home of Spiro’s Gyros, juiciest gyros this side of Corinth!  Or so I hear, anyway . . . But even without such delicacies, Athens was quite the place, even some 400 years after its prime.  It was still a center of learning and the arts, and it lived on its past glories.  Even Rome left it pretty much alone because after all, it was the Cradle of Western Civilization . . . Every philosopher worth his salt ended up there . . . they were as thick as thieves, they literally wandered the streets . . . philosophizing. It was a heady atmosphere . . . ideas perfumed the air like hyacinths, or like jasmine on a summer’s eve . . . they flew back and forth across the market square like demented shuttlecocks: an idea was thrown up by a Heraclitian, folded, spindled and mutilated by an Aristotelian, and then lobbed back the other way.  This was considered fun, but more important, serious business.

And that's what got Paul in trouble . . . philosophy, if you can believe it.  He'd gone down to the Marketplace—the Agora, in Greek—to do what anybody with a rhetorical bone to pick would: he set up on a corner and began to declaim.  And to dispute.  You know . . . standard philosopher stuff.  And it's important to understand why he felt compelled to do so:  he was deeply distressed, Luke tells us, at all the idol worship going on.  The little critters were everywhere, almost as thick as the philosophers, and it hurt his heart to see folks venerating those cold, dead things.

So he heads for the Agora, and begins to speechify, and there were some Epicureans and Stoics listening in—Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, that is, not food-lovers and guys not in touch with their emotions.  And they took especial umbrage at what Paul was saying.  They were materialists, they thought everything was made of matter, even the Gods . . . Just really, really good matter. Epicureans believed that the highest good was pleasure, and the highest pleasure was that of the mind . . . their gods were so interested in their own pleasure that they ignored people. For the Stoics there was a divine, rational principle in everything, and their goal was to live in harmony with it, which amounted to living in tune with nature. Both Epicureans and Stoics were rationalists, who thought the mind was superior to the emotions. In this, of course, they would have made good Presbyterians.

Anyway, these were the folks that Paul irritated, enough so that they hauled him before the council—the Areopagus—on Mars Hill. And though Luke doesn't tell us what he had said in the marketplace, he does give us his speech before the council.  He opens with a complement: “I see how religious, how pious y’all are, you even have an, ah, object of worship” (he meant idols, which were getting on his last nerve) “you have an object of worship dedicated to an unknown God.”  And I can just see the look of piety on Paul’s face—he’s only there to serve, you understand—“I can help you out there, I can tell you who that unknown God is, it's the one who made everything, the whole shootin’ match, who's Lord of heaven and earth, and who doesn't live in any old shrine, let me tell you.”

And now we can begin to see why he made the Stoics and Epicureans so nervous: they were materialists, they didn't believe in spirit, and they began to work it out in their heads . . . If this god doesn't live in shrines made by human hands, if it didn't need any food like other gods did, just where did this so-called Lord of heaven and earth live?  And more important, perhaps, what was it made of?

Well, as to the first question, Paul makes a remarkable statement: quoting their own poets he tells them that this deity is not far from each and every one of us, and further, that in that unknown god “we live and move and have our being,” and this is a extraordinary claim on multiple levels, not least if all its stunning universalism.  God's not far from any of us and in that god we—each one of us—love and move and have our being.

This was a far cry from the dominant view of the day . . . the prevailing notions of the Divine were very . . . territorial.  Each nation had a separate deity, each peoples their own god.  And those gods were not only different, but they were exclusive as well.  With those ancient gods, you were either in or out, and if you'd were in, the god would help you.  But if you were out . . . Well.  It would be best not to meet another peoples’ god in a dark alley.

What's more, each god had a place where they hung out, a place where they lived.  It was possible to meet them face-to-face, or walking down the road as Abraham did the Hebrew god at the oaks of Mamre.  Or Moses did on that mountain.  Or Elijah, who got a glimpse of that god’s backside on yet another mountain.

But Paul’s “unknown God” was radically different . . . he was near to each one of us, Paul said, each one.  Not just the Jews, not just the Medes or the Greeks or the Phrygians, but everyone.  And if this God was near everyone, how could it be localized to one place?   How could it be locked up in a little idol, a little effigy made of wood or gold or clay, one that you could up and take with you everywhere you went?  Far from us moving God, we move within God.  We walk in God, talk in God, chat with our neighbors in God, we are bathed in God.  But more than that, we have our being in God, we are sustained by God, we are shot through and through with God.  In fact, without God we would not exist.

Today, we call this view panentheism: pan (all) en (in) theis (God), and it did not become the dominant view in the Christian church.  Soon, God was in heaven—which was up there—and we were down here, as reflected in the Lord’s Prayer, where we pray to God “who art in heaven” and that God’s will be done, “on earth as it is in heaven.”  But in this episode from Luke, we can see that it was alive and well—at least in Paul and Luke—in Christianity’s earliest days.

Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was famous for his atheism.  Or that's what he claimed anyway, but I always thought he protested just a little too much, because a good chunk of his films are about God’s distance or absence.  And how could you rail against God not being there if you didn't believe in God?  It seems to me that this is one consequence of our self-imposed alienation from God, our distancing of ourselves—promoted by our own religion—from the divine: we imagine God out there, away from us, who deigns to “come down” to help us.

Eastertide is a time of reflection on the nature of the Divine . . . It's why we "What if"?  What if our idea of God is wrong?  Or not wrong, so much as inappropriate—I don't that we can't get our finite minds totally around the notion of God.  A lot of us think of God as up in heaven, a bearded Santa Claus, who we call upon when we need something, and who may or may not respond, according to some obscure rules that we don't understand . . . What if God were all around us as Paul thought, within us, even, as Jesus taught in John's gospel, in the person next to us, as he teaches in Matthew?  How would it change the way we live our lives, treat one another, treat ourselves?  Amen.

Spiritual Milk (1 Peter 2:1 - 10)

      Last week, we saw how the first Christians attempted to live out their calling as followers of a risen God.  We saw how the devoted themselves to fellowship, to koinonia, and prayer and care for one another.  We saw that they had all things in common, that they sold all their possessions and gave the proceeds to whoever had need . . . for them, the post-resurrection reality was substantially different from that before, Christ’s teaching and living among them necessitated a re-thinking of how they lived their everyday lives.

      This week, we get another look at that post-resurrection reality, the state in which believers are now living after that first Easter morning . . . and it’s important to remember that fact: it’s a reality only in light of the revelation of God’s Word on that Easter morning . . . just before our passage is a rather famous assertion:  The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.  That word is the Good News that was announced to you . . . and so it’s only in the light of that Word—who remember is Jesus the Christ, crucified and then resurrected on the third day—that the reality described here stands.

      Rid yourselves, 1^st Peter says, of all malice, guile, insincerity, envy and slander . . . a laundry list of maladies we are to avoid.  And note that that they all take two or more to tango, they’re not solitary sins before God—malice is toward someone or something; envy is of something somebody else has; and slander, of course, is about saying bad things about somebody else.  And thus, they interfere with living the Christian life which, as we saw last week, is meant to be lived with others.  Malice and insincerity.  Envy and slander: all are things that make living in that post-resurrection koinonia difficult, if not impossible.  And what are we to do instead?   We are to long for the pure, spiritual milk . . . Like newborn infants—like sucklings, like helpless, mewling kittens, like hairless, baby rabbits—like infants, longing for that pure, spiritual milk . . . and notice that 1^st Peter writes as if we have a choice, as if we have a choice between insincerity, malice and guile, and longing, desiring that spiritual milk.  We normally think of desire as involuntary, as in we like what we like, we can’t help it, sorry about that . . . but 1^st Peter acts like it’s our choice to long for this pure, spiritual milk . . . and if we drink of it, we may grow into salvation, into our vocations as children of God . . .

      Let’s pause right here and consider this remarkable imagery . . . the Gospel as pure spiritual milk, as if from a mother’s breast . . . it’s a feminine image, in a sea of masculine prose for the divine.  In the 1^st century, just as here in the 21^st, milk has a comforting image, a nourishing image, a down-home connotation . . . milk is nurturing, it comes from the mother’s breasts, so this is a pretty radical image of the Gospel—and the Gospel, of course, is personified by that Word incarnate, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  The Gospel is likened here to milk—as nurturing, comforting, body-building, as milk, come from the breast of God . . . how does the commercial go?  Milk does a body good?  Well it certainly does . . . that pure spiritual milk, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Word incarnate, does the church body a world of good . . . it causes us to grow into salvation, into sanctification . . . if we have tasted that the Lord is good, that is . . .

      And it is this tasting that the Lord is good that defines believers for 1^st Peter, if we have indeed tasted the sweet nectar of salvation . . . and if we have tasted thus, if we are believers, we are to come to Christ, and in the Greek it’s clear that Christ is the living stone in this instance, so a better translation might be “come to him as to a living stone,” one that has been rejected by mortals, and yet chosen—and in the Greek it’s our old favorite “elected”—by God and precious in God’s sight . . . and this election, this choosing of Christ is the basis of our own election, our own choosing, and that of course is the true wonder of this living stone, this living milk from the heart of God . . . through our association with Christ, we are like living stones ourselves, and like those living stones, we are to let ourselves be built into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.

      And so here’s another metaphor for what we are, what congregations are . . . alongside the family metaphors in the Gospels, the bodily metaphor in the writings of Paul, here we are likened to a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.  We are to be a building, a house, and the word in Greek is oikos, house, home . . . it’s where we get ecos as in ecology . . . and calling it a house or household or a home implies that someone lives there.

      So as living stones—molded in the image of Christ—we are to let ourselves be a house, a home . . . and a home is for something or someone to dwell . . . so the question is, who are we a home for?  Who are we—collectively, as a body—a home for?  Paul thought it was the Holy Spirit . . . he said—using his body metaphor—that your body, that is plural, as in the congregation, the body of Christ—is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so is that what 1^st Peter is saying?  That we, as living stones, fed spiritual milk from God, are to be a house of the Holy Spirit, a place filled by it, animated by it, quickened by it?

I think so, though it’s not totally clear from the text, but I can tell you something that I do know:  this wing of the house, this particular branch of the body called Greenhills certainly is spirit filled . . . I see it every day, I see it when we greet visitors with kindness and empathy, as we embark on new ministries like the very successful community dinners, as we fulfill our promises to our mission partners like Soul and Winton House.  And I can't help but see it in our dynamic music program, singing to God's glory, helping young people to get the training and experience they need.

And I can feel the movement of that Spirit, rustling against my cheek, swirling around and through you all out there in the pews, over and under and beside us all, as we begin to awaken, as we begin to stir in our concern for this beloved congregation.  The Spirit is here in the whispers as we discuss the possibilities for renewal and hope for our future . . . make no mistake about it, the Spirit is with us, as halting and as incoherent and frail a vessels as we have been . . . I am enormously grateful for each and every one of you out there.  We members of Greenhills are a temple, collectively, a house, an ecosystem for the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I for one feel it every day.

But wait . . . there’s more!  We’re to be made a priesthood, a holy priesthood, set aside for a reason . . .  to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God . . .   Our sacrifices are not just material, though those are important, they’re spiritual as well . . . we’re to intercede for the world—that’s one of the functions of a priesthood—we’re to intercede for the world, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  And the most obvious way we do that is through prayer, which floats up like incense, a pleasing odor to the creator of the universe . . .

But that said, I have to say as well that we often create a false dichotomy between spiritual and material in our teaching and—I know you’ll be shocked by this—our preaching.  (Ok, I’ll just up and say it . . . my preaching)  We separate our mission as a household of God into two separate spheres . . . the spiritual, which includes praying and contemplation and all that stuff, and doing, which includes social justice and making programs and plans and et cetera.  And like Presbyterian congregations tend to do, we make jokes about what a bunch of head cases we are, but we lose sight of the fact that they are two sides of the same coin, or of the same mission of God.  All the prayer in the world, all that vertical stuff between us and God, isn’t worth a hill of beans without action, without process, without doing in the world; by the same token, all the activity, all the horizontal work—in the community and within our own house—is incomplete without the listening, the stillness, the vertical dimension between us and God.

I think it’s one of our tasks in our Greenhills household to find a unique spirituality for ourselves , to discern what spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God look like for us,alongside and apart from what others have found.  Oh, we should listen to the advice of others, we should consider about Christian spirituality in its many forms, from social action to contemplative practice, from William Sloan Coffin to Richard Foster, but honed and particularized for our neck of the house-of-God woods.

A spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God encompasses everything we do, everything we say, everything we pray, and as such it presupposes a balance between the doing and the being, the activity and the listening, that is bound to be unique for Greenhills Community Church,  Presbyterian at 21 Cromwell Road in Cincinnati, Ohio, 45218.  And the trick is, we must be continually involved in discerning that balance, and of what it should consist . . . We must put into place practices that allow us to continually and perpetually hone and tune that balance to fit our time and surroundings, what we call in church-speak our ministry context.

But you know what?  Saying we must put into place, we must discern is misleading . . . one of the first things that struck me about this passage is it’s continual passive construction . . . like newborn infants—the most helpless kind of human being—we are to let ourselves be built into that spiritual household, that holy priesthood . . . allow ourselves to be built, and we know who the builder is, don’t we?  We know who the construction foreman is on the spiritual household project, don’t we?  But we must allow it, we must let go and let that foreman do that foreman’s business . . . if we don’t, if we try and do it ourselves and build it in our image instead of God’s, then it’s doomed to fail.

 Brothers and sisters, we are a chosen race, a priesthood of the royal house of Christ the King.  And the one who did the choosin’ was God, not us . . . we didn’t elect ourselves, we were elected by God, and for a reason: proclaim the mighty acts of the Christ who called us out of darkness, as 1^st Peter says, into this marvelous light.  So let’s long for that spiritual milk, let’s pine for that milk from the bosom of God with every fiber of our being . . . let us put aside the power-mongering, the turf-protecting, and the malice and bickering that tear us down . . . we are a household of God’s spirit, a temple of God’s mighty motivating force in the world.  Once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people . . . once we had not received mercy, but now we have.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Movement Begins (Acts 2:42 - 47)

     Our passage is situated not long after Pentecost, not long after the flames, dancing around the apostles’ heads, not long after the babble of languages became one . . . structurally, it's a bridge between two sermons of Peter—yes, that Peter, old deny-him-three-times Simon Peter’ who must have been one heck of a preacher, ‘cause he stood up at Pentecost and let her rip, and Jesus’ followers grew by three thousand that day alone, and our passage describes what was going on in the early days of the Christian movement.  And I use the word movement advisedly, because that's surely what it was.  Even in Luke's dry recital, you can feel the urgency, the excitement.  They devoted themselves  to the apostles’ teaching. They devoted themselves to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayers.  Everyone was amazed, awe came over each and every one of them because the apostles were doing signs and wonders, healing folks, driving out demons, multiplying fish and loaves.

And their faith spilled over into their actions: they were with each other every waking hour—when they weren't working, that is—and they had everything in common.  In fact, they sold everything they had, their goods and possessions, and distribute the proceeds to anybody who had need.  And they didn't abandon their old faith, either, they didn't quit being Jews:  they spent a lot of time together in the Temple, the very center of Judaism, and then went home to break bread, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and to eat their food with glad hearts.  And do you know what?  They had the goodwill of all the people, and day by day God added to their number.

It was a movement, all right, and as any sociologist could tell you, movements don't last.  As movements, anyway . . . to survive they have to change, they have to gain structure and leadership, and rules.  They go from being movements to institutions.  Something like that is going on with the Center for Action and Contemplation, the parent organization of the Living School which I have attended the past year and a half.  It began as a movement with a charismatic leader—Richard Rohr—and as he nears the end of his life, they are trying to figure out how to continue without his integrating presence.  And so they are becoming more institutionalized, and it's not always a pretty sight.  People who are good at teaching, especially teaching and organizing religious programming, aren't necessarily great at administering an institution.  I was able to spend some time last week with the new CEO they hired, and he's a good guy, but we'll see how he is able to navigate the rocky waters of managing employees used to the looser structure, along with strong-willed “talent” like Richard and Cynthia Bourgeault.  The change is beginning to show up in their communication with us, and it's making some folks uncomfortable.

But that's what happens as a movement ages, and the cool thing about Acts is you can kind of follow it, at least a little ways.  Acts is far from what we today would call a history, attempting to be unbiased and all that:  those beasts didn't exist back then.  But you can see the beginning of the cracks in the movement if you know what to look for.  After Peter’s next sermon, in Solomon’s Portico, the reactions were mixed.  They added a bunch of new members, but not everyone was thrilled: it landed Peter and John in the pokey.  Only one more mention is made of having all goods in common, and the story of Ananias and Sapphira are stark reminders that the practice lived and died at the mercy of human frailty. (Recall that they dropped dead after withholding the proceeds of a property sale.  Let that be a warning to you not to get behind in your pledges.)

We don't know how widely the practices in this passage spread; it could be they were localized, or they could be representative of wider ways of doing church.  We do know that there were a variety of ways to be Christian in that first century, but by its end, by about 100 Common Era, the institution of the church—with Bishops, Archbishops, etc.—was beginning to take hold.  Christianity was transforming from a movement to an institution.  It had to to survive.

And now it's two thousand years later, and the framework of that institution is getting a bit rickety, at least here in the West.  There are all kinds of reasons for this, debated hotly, of course, among us.  Being too conservative, being too liberal, too unbending, not unbending enough, not changing with the times, changing too much with the times.  This isn't the place to talk about it except to say that it all boils down to this moment, this place, and these pews . . . We are the result of that movement begun two thousand years ago, we are the children of that enthusiasm, that excitement, that vision.  We are the descendants of Peter and John, Barnabas and Paul and, yes, Ananias and Sapphira . . .

And is there anything we can learn from them?  Is there anything at all to say about this passage, other than the obvious?  It would be silly to say we should begin doing what they all did, selling all our goods and property and distributing it to all who have need . . . that ship has sailed.  The practice, even if it was at all widespread, was very short-lived in Christianity at large (except in monasteries, of course).  But an extreme, perhaps even sacrificial, generosity did remain, for a while, at least . . . And I think we have to ask ourselves: why are there poor, especially in the ranks of our sisters and brothers in Christ?  There are Christian sisters and brothers right here in Hamilton County who don't know where their next meal is coming from.  If we really “took care of our own,” shouldn't their numbers be on the decrease instead of on the rise as they are?

Well.  One of the issues with this passage is that the bits about having “all things in common” and selling their goods and possessions and distributing the proceeds to any who have need tend to wash everything else out, because, you know, it sounds like the S-word, like socialism, and we all know that's bad.  But there's more to the passage, and it lies in the actions of the early Christians, in what they were doing.  Yes, they were practicing charity.  Yes, their experience of the Divine radically re-ordered their economic priorities.  But their other practices were equally radical.

First, they “devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching.”  Devoted.  And though I'm not sure what that word implies, the way I read it is as somewhat more fervent than spending an hour in the pews each week, an extra one in Christian Ed and perhaps another at Bible study.  Devotion implies, to me anyway, a giving ones self over, a dedication to, something which I admit, I personally have trouble with.  There are so many distracting pleasures: the latest in that mystery series I'm reading.  My favorite tech web-sites—when is that new iPad going to be here?—and which has-been demi-celebrity is going to get thrown off “Dancing With the Stars” this week?  Then, of course, there's the family, and all the energy one puts into those relationships . . . And while they're good and necessary, how do they fit in with the notion of devotion to Christian teachings?

In addition, Luke says, they devoted themselves to fellowship, which is koinonia in Greek, and it's not a coincidence that it's the same word as “in common,” as in “they had all things in common.”   Not only did the gospel radically re-order their financial priorities, but their way of life as well . . . Their entire lives were lived in common with their fellow converts.  Instead of remaining holed up in family units, going to temple or synagogues within those units or as individuals, they devoted themselves to doing the difficult work of being in community.

That included a devotion to breaking bread together, and it's likely that this held kind of a double meaning for Luke . . . It's likely that he meant both the Lord’s Supper and general, communal meals, perhaps kind of like our pot-luck suppers, and that has been a mark of Christian gatherings for our entire history, hasn't it?  And it's more than just “you gotta eat sometime,” there's something satisfying, something sacred about gathering around the table together . . . and of course it's not just formal church gatherings.  Pam and I are associated with a group of Christian contemplatives, and whenever we meet, a meal together is a big part.   Some of our best ideas are hatched while breaking bread together.

One time, I was asked by a disaffected Methodist whether I thought you could be spiritual outside a church, and I answered “Sure.  But it won't be a Christian spirituality.”  Christianity is practiced in community, it's practiced with others.  We believe that the hard work of being in community is worth it, that it brings us closer to God, as well as each other.  And as our passage shows, it's been that way since the beginning.  They devoted themselves to fellowship and breaking bread together.

And there’s one more thing they devoted themselves to, and that's prayer. Again, that's devoted themselves to it.  Not just when there's something they wanted, or when they were feeling particularly thankful.  And I must admit that I have just as much trouble with this one as I do anything else.  I have my prayer times, and I give things to God in prayer, but devotion?  I don't know . . . And in everything, I rely on the grace of God, and sometimes God’s good humor.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this passage is that I spent last week in a Benedictine monastery.  There, the monks’ lives are ordered according to the Rule of Benedict, designed to guide its followers in living the Christian Life.  And the monks’ days are structured around prayer, fellowship, communal meals and study.  Their lives follow a rhythm, nestled in the work of God, the work of living in Christian community.

And while it would be silly to suggest we all need to join a monastery, I wonder what would happen if we modern Christians, members of this congregation and others that are showing their age, that are steadily shrinking, I wonder what would happen if we rededicated ourselves to prayer, fellowship, breaking bread and learning.  I know what God did back then: God did a completely new thing, he grew their numbers like a weed, exploding the Christian faith over the Middle Eastern landscape.

And I wonder: would God do the same?  Would God increase our number like God did back in the day?  Perhaps . . . But if it happened, if God enriched our lives, both together and in part, it might not look like a thing that's ever happened before.  Because that’s the nature of our God, the modus operandi, if you will: our God is always doing a new thing.  Amen.