The Ideal Community – Acts 4 – April 8, 2018

This week in worship, we had the joy of dedicating prayer shawls at the 8:30 service, and not just any prayer shawls, but the 500th shawl made at St. Peter! We also celebrated Taelyn Reed Lander’s baptism at the 11:00 service, so a joyful Sunday all around!

The sermon texts for the 2nd Sunday of Easter in RCL year B are Acts 4:32-35 and John 19:20-31, as well as Psalm 133. Here’s the sermon:

Christ is risen! He is Risen indeed.

This is where we left the story last week. Jesus is alive and the tomb is empty. In our readings today, we begin to see what can happen when we live trusting and knowing Jesus is alive. Throughout the Easter season, we’ll see how Jesus’ resurrection unifies the disciples and turns them into the church.

Today’s Gospel reading from John begins on that first Easter Sunday. By this time, Jesus’ followers have heard the women’s testimony that Jesus is alive. Peter and another disciple had gone to see for themselves, and they’d seen the empty tomb as well. Mary Magdalene had actually seen and talked with Jesus for herself, although some of the men are still a little skeptical.

They’re gathered together that evening, and don’t you wish you could have heard their conversation? They’ve been on an incredible emotional roller coaster this week. And then Jesus appears among them, and greets them, saying “Peace be with you.”

And then he does something significant. Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit onto them. It’s a new moment of creation, similar to God breathing life into the dust to make Adam all the way back at creation. Jesus breathes on them and sends them out into the world.

These frightened disciples hiding in a locked house for fear of the political and religious leaders around them begin to be transformed into the church, into a true Christian community, caring for each other, worshiping and praying together, encouraging one another, and fearlessly sharing the good news that Jesus is alive.

They’re able to live out Jesus’ command from the last supper to love one another, and the church explodes. The Christian faith grows impossibly quickly from a few people hiding in a locked house to the largest religious movement the world has ever seen. This is the story we’ll be hearing throughout this Easter season.

Today, in Acts 4, we get a glimpse of what this early church looks like. Luke describes the early church as the ideal community, being of one heart and soul. In Greek philosophical thought, all the people being “of one heart and soul” was a goal of the ideal political community – but it never worked. None of the Greek philosophers were ever able to translate this ideal into the real world.

I think of this passage as sort of the communist section of the Bible, and of course communism is a great modern example of how a political system can’t succeed at making a perfect community. It sounds great in theory, but sin always gets in the way.

In Acts, Luke dares to suggest that it’s not politics that makes such an ideal community possible, it’s the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ. It’s the Holy Spirit at work. This is not communism; it’s Christian community. It’s the church!

Now, the church is still made up of humans, and in fact the very next chapter will shows problems beginning. As long as people are still sinful (so, as long as we’re alive!) we’re not going to reach this sort of perfection. But this is the kind of living that’s possible because of the resurrection.

Because Jesus is alive, we are set free from our sin, set free for life together, for worshiping, celebrating, serving together as the Church. And this Church, this community we’re part of is not made up of just the people in this room, or the people whose names are in the directory. The Church is made up of the living presence of God at work in God’s people.

What a wonderful vision of what’s possible! Acts 4 shows what God wants for the church, for us. We’re created to be a community. We’re created for life together, to love and serve one another, to care for each other and our world.

Each of us is made a part of this community by baptism. As a church, we proclaim that from birth, we are part of a fallen humanity. You and I are born selfish. We’re sinful by nature. But in the waters of baptism, we drown. Our sinful nature is put to death like Jesus on the cross, and like Jesus rising from the tomb, we’re given new life. We’re claimed by God and made members of the Church, which is the body of Christ.

We’re made part of this community, not only this particular congregation, but part of Jesus’ eternal community. The Church isn’t just St. Peter, or Lutherans, or Americans, or even people living right now. You are part of a community of every one of God’s children throughout history.

In this world, of course, we belong to this particular community, and that’s part of God’s plan. God never intended us to go through life alone. Way back in the garden, God made Eve so Adam wouldn’t be alone. I’m not talking about marriage, either. Of course marriage is one way God gives us for an immediate sort of community, but even married couples need community. We’re supposed to live differently as followers of Jesus, and none of us can do that alone.

And it’s not like the church is supposed to be a country club or something. In this community, we’re not just bound together socially, but spiritually. We’re claimed by the same Creator. Being of one heart and soul means all of us belong to Jesus Christ. We share a mission to point each other and the world to Jesus Christ.

These verses in Acts talk about the group holding their possessions in common, but there’s a lot more going on than just sharing material things. The church is much deeper than just stuff or a building or shared money. Being Church means sharing our lives together. In baptism, we’re welcomed into a group of people who are called to be vulnerable with each other.

We confess together, we pray together, we sing and rejoice together, and we mourn and weep together. The prayer shawls we’re dedicating today are a powerful symbol of our care for each other. We may not always get along; we may fight; we may not even always like each other, but by being part of the church, we’re committing to following Jesus together. We’re committed to showing up for each other.

Now, as you might have noticed, this vision of the church doesn’t always match reality. That really short Psalm we read talks about the joy God has when God’s people live together as brethren/kindred, as brothers and sisters, but the reality is Christians aren’t always good at unity. In fact, we’re often really bad at it. We’re a family together, but often the worst fights are between families.

Churches have been fighting since the very next chapter of Acts. Much of Paul’s letters in the Bible are trying to resolve conflicts. The church split in 1054 between the east and the west over a few words in the creed and nearly a thousand years later we still can’t agree on it.The Russian Orthodox church has been divided since 1667 partially over the number of fingers to use when making the sign of the cross, and thousands of people died over the issue.

Our own Lutheran reformation led to some 9,000 different Protestant denominations today, and the thirty-years war that killed 8 million people. Even our own congregation, people have left the church over fights we’ve had.

We’re certainly not perfect, and we’re never going to be. We doubt like Thomas. Sometimes we hide in locked rooms because we fail to believe the testimony of those who have seen the Lord. We miss all kinds of signs of Jesus’ presence with us. We fail to give as we should and take care of our neighbors; we judge each other and gossip and complain.

And yet, with all its failings, we still believe and proclaim the church is the body of Christ. This is the way God has chosen to work in the world. Our community isn’t perfect, and as long as there are humans here it won’t be, but this is the body of Christ. God is here. As the saying goes, the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. We are the body of Christ.

Let’s live that way, because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Amen