Rick Olson, April 13, 2008
Believe it or not, we pastors can get a little cynical now and then. I know it’s shocking . . . but between all the feudin’ and fussin’ and fightin’ that goes on and all the scapegoating and railroading and power-tripping, well, it’s hard not to sometimes. And there’s a scene in one of the Coen brothers’ movies – Barton Fink, to be exact – that sort of sums it all up. Barton – I guess you could call him “our hero” – is riding downstairs to meet the cops who want to interrogate him about a murder, and on the way down he asks the elevator operator a question: “Pete,” he says, “Have you ever read the Bible?” And Pete thinks about it for a beat and says “The holy Bible?” Barton says “Yeah.” And Pete says “I think so. At least I heard about it . . .”
This is funny, and all, but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t more than a little true, I wonder if anyone in our churches ever reads the Bible (present company excluded, of course). And if we do, does this passage make us a little uncomfortable? I know it does me . . . I’ve done pretty well in our free-market capitalism, thank you very much, I’ve got a house and a couple of cars, and the last thing I want to do is sell it all and redistribute the wealth. I like my stuff.
But there it is . . . Luke—who wrote Acts—gives us an early example of how Jesus’ followers interpreted the mandate to live as Christians, and they come up with a way of life that resembled, in some respects at least, communism. And it was a reaction as much as anything to the system in which they were embedded, which might be considered an extreme form of unregulated, market capitalism . . . and it’s unregulated nature resulted, in part, in a two-tiered system: there were wealthy property-owners on one hand, and on the other . . . everyone else. There was no middle class . . . and the “everyone else” included kitchen workers, craftsmen, farm workers and tenant farmers, as well as slaves owned by the land-owners. The wealth of the relatively few land-owners was thus supported by the labor of many in the lower socio-economic classes. By Jesus’ day, the transfer of wealth from many small, family holdings was largely complete; many who’d held land in their families for generations had been turned into tenant farmers or day workers by that same old same old: in marginal times—and there were a lot of those in Palestine—they wouldn’t quite make it, so they’d borrow from the landowners, at a hefty interest rate, and in the next marginal time they couldn’t pay the vig, I mean, interest; they get deeper into debt and eventually, they lose the land and become mere tenants. We saw it in the last century in
That’s the economic system that Jesus came into, a two-tier system of wealthy landowners and everyone else, and that everyone else being many of the followers of Jesus, many of the hundreds of disciples that the scriptures tells us he had. And after the Easter experience, after the cataclysmic events of a resurrection—a new age indeed!—and the coming of the spirit at Pentecost, his followers sat back on their knees and reflected upon what it meant to live in the spirit, to have life, as ___ read from John, and have it abundantly.
And Luke provides us with a snap-shot of how they attempted to live out their Christian faith, what they thought was important, what kind of economic system they thought was dictated by the life and teachings of their master Jesus Christ. First of all, he says, they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship . . . they learned as much as they could about this new way of living their lives . . . study is mentioned right off the bat, it’s seen as fundamental to the way of life that they learn about it as much as possible. And they devoted themselves to fellowship—the Greek for that is koinonia, and it’s derived from koine, “in common,” as in they were together, having things “in common,” and goes beyond just Wednesday night suppers and coffee after the surface, it implies a true, holistic one-ness with one another. Paul often used the metaphor of siblings, of family, but he also used the metaphor of a body, with each person as organs in that body. Thus, the connection between members of a fellowship was to be much more intimate than mere acquaintance, or even friend . . . it was to be a filial relationship or—closer—a connection as of tissue and blood and bone.
Thus, the connection between members of the early apostolic church—who devoted themselves to koinonia—was one of mutual dependency, of mutual vulnerability, quite unlike that in our modern-day Western churches. Steeped in rugged individuality, in the can-do, self-sufficient national myths of the West, we are very uncomfortable with intimacy, with interconnection, and most of all, with mutual dependency and vulnerability. If we’re in need, we’re embarrassed, we hide our finances one from another . . . our society equates need and vulnerability with failure, as in the people who succeed are better than those who fail, and only failures need help . . .
And this carries into the churches, where we certainly no longer devote ourselves to Christian education, in many churches—especially, the perhaps not-so-coincidentally dying main-line churches—in many churches, adult education is limited to barely an hour on Sunday morning, and then of course a 15-to-20-minute sermon . . . and very much less than half of the adults in most mainline churches attend any form of Christian ed . . .
But the early Christians devoted themselves to learning and koinonia, and their communal meals became the Lord’s Supper, which is doubtless the breaking of the bread that Luke describes. And they were filled with awe because of the signs and wonders, because of the clear inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, and they were all together and had all things in common, and holy socialism, Batman, but that was the way they tried to counteract the oppressive economic realities in which they were embedded . . . having all things in common, all things koine, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had any need.
And so we see the shape, as well as the results, of this intense koinonia, this interdependency as of one bodily organ to another. We can see how it was accomplished, as they had a common pool of goods and distributed them to any who had need. And we should note that this didn’t mean they were totally uncoupled from the economic system of Palestine . . . they certainly continued to work for their masters to earn whatever they were paid, it’s just how they lived in community that was different . . . and note too that they were not necessarily living in common, or in a commune as this sermon’s cheeky title implies . . . good Jews that they were, they spent much time together at the temple, and then in their homes—perhaps what would come to be known as house-churches—they broke their bread, celebrating the Lord’s Supper with glad and generous hearts.
And this . . . way of living was a response, it was a considered rejoinder to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Teachings such as “whatever you do the least of these you do unto me,” teachings such as the story of the king’s banquet, where the servants are sent out into the highways and hedges to bring in the poor, the halt and the lame . . . Jesus offered a radical way of living—abundant life, he called it—and the followers that Luke describe interpreted those teachings and Jesus’ example while amongst them, and this is how they tried to live them out. They held all things in common—and remember that’s the same root word in Greek as fellowship—they held all things in common and redistributed it as any had need.
And it was a radically different way of living, in that world as much as it would be in our own . . . it was very different from the surrounding culture, distinct and apart, and Luke tells us what the reaction of that surrounding culture was: they had the goodwill of all the people—and this is important—day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. And in this context, being saved is purely physical: it’s being saved from the oppressive economic system surrounding them
Day by day the Lord added to their number, people were flocking to join the church where all goods were held in common and distributed as any had need . . . where the people were devoted to Christian study and the breaking of bread together and the prayers . . . where the members were devoted to fellowship, to being in common one with another, to being as interdependent one upon another as bodily organs, as an eye is to the lungs or as the kidneys are to the heart.
People flocked not to a place where the livin’ was easy—nobody said this was easy—but to where the livin’ was different, more rewarding than what the society around them offered. It was a place that provided shelter, respite from the ravaged system, where not only their spiritual needs were met, but their physical ones were as well. The Christian way of life provided a clear alternative to the societal norm, and it attracted converts by the droves.
And it continued to be this way for quite some time . . . early Christians had a well-known and well-deserved reputation for integrity and care for the weak. The 2nd and 3rd-century Christian leader Tertullian wrote, "Our care for the derelict and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy...See, they say, how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each other." Even the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate acknowledged the radically counter cultural life of the early Christians: "The godless Galileans feed not only their poor but ours.”
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve lost that reputation . . . we’ve become so assimilated into today’s culture that our lives are essentially no different from our non-Christian friends. At a time when the poor are ever-more front and center, when the difference between the haves and have-nots is wider than ever, studies have shown that Christians overall give no more to the poor than the society at large . . . at a time when social-scientists have documented how disconnected and isolated people feel today, leaving them longing for a "more collectively caring community," Christian churches have abandoned the devotion to fellowship and interdependency Luke describes in our passage, and their have become just as individualistic, just as disconnected as folks in the world.
Is it any wonder folks aren’t flocking to churches nowadays? Is it any wonder that the Lord is not adding to our number daily those who are being saved? Why should people come in through those doors if we’re no different from anybody else? Why should they spend even the one hour most church members do a week—when the way we live is no different than the Sunday morning crowd down at Starbucks, where at least you can get a decent cup of coffee?
Brothers and sisters, I’m convinced that one of the keys to the renewal of the modern church is a renewal of commitment to lives that are different from the surrounding culture. A life of dedication to learning about Christ and what he would have us do. Do I think we are called to sell our goods and redistribute the proceeds to anyone who has need? Not necessarily . . . but we are called to be in the world but not of it . . . to live in a style that, as pastor Dan Clandenin puts it, “prizes intellectual vibrancy, economic generosity, and communal caring.” Maybe when we’ve figured out what this means in the 21st century, what it looks like in our current socio-economic system, we too will be turning ‘em away in droves, as the Lord adds daily to the number who are being saved. Amen.
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