“A new community”

I have a confession to make. Large buildings and big numbers in the church have always made at least a positive first impression on me. A little more than thirty years ago, a congregation in Garden Grove, California moved into its new building. It was called the Crystal Cathedral and it had seating for 2700 people. The leader of that congregation was Robert Schuller. His preaching didn’t do much for me, but I admit I was impressed by the grandeur of the building and the size of the congregation.
Last November, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the cash-strapped Crystal Cathedral to the Catholic Diocese of Orange County. According to reports, the Protestant congregation will lease the sanctuary for worship for another three years, after which the Catholic Diocese plans to remodel the interior of the building so that it can be used as their cathedral and the home of their bishop.
Scott Thumma, a sociologist of religion at Hartford Seminary said “the huge debt that led officials of the Southern California ministry to accept the sale of their 35-acre campus reflects what happens when a prominent pastor, a television ministry, or an iconic structure becomes the focal point. Leaders retire and die; television gives the congregation an unrealistic larger-than-life image; and buildings become a drag on finances.”
In other words, churches can focus on the wrong things; or, as the early church did, on the right things. As you are able, please stand as we hear the word of God read from Acts 2:37-47.
Let us pray. Living God, help us so to hear your Word that we may truly understand; that, understanding, we may believe; and believing, we may follow your way in all faithfulness, seeking your honor and glory in all that we do. Amen.
I suspect Luke knew exactly what he was doing when, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he described the four-sided focus on the early church. Once again today, I think it is helpful to be reminded that the audience for this book written by Luke is not the church of the early 30’s A. D., but the church that exists some 40 years later. As one reads the story of that particular Pentecost celebration, there is a temptation to think that life in the church is going to be a trip from one mountain top to another. The Spirit comes to the church, pilgrims are confronted by the wonderful news of God’s plan for redemption and 3,000 are added to heaven’s family that day. What do they do next? They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
It appears these four things are rather ordinary, even mundane, when compared to the excitement of the mountain top sort of experience. There is however, a different way to look at it. Think of any aspect of life, your profession, your hobbies, your relationships and I believe you will find this principle applies—the mountain top is only reached when one has made adequate preparation and provided a firm foundation. Years ago I heard a concert pianist, I believe it was Horowitz, who said something like this: “I practiced eight hours a day for twenty years. Now they call me a genius.” Luke is telling us there are mountain tops to attain in the Christian life but only when adequate preparation is made, only when a firm foundation is provided.
It is possible to argue that all four aspects of the Christian life to which the early church was devoted are equally important. I can’t dispute that; but I can tell you that both my heart and my head say the apostles’ teaching is first among equals. If you have your Bible with you or one of the pew Bibles open, flip back one page to verses 21 and 22 of chapter one. Someone is being chosen to replace Judas. The starting point for this choice is described by Peter: So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”
What did the apostles teach? They taught that God had focussed all the promises of his Word in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and that God had confirmed this Jesus as the Messiah or Christ by raising him from the dead. The apostles were witnesses to his resurrection. This, friends, is the primary reason, for example, that we worship on the first day of the week and not the seventh as our Jewish ancestors did and as Jews still do today. The first day of the week is resurrection day. Every Sunday is a little Easter. The early church believed it was absolutely vital for every Christian to devote him or herself to the knowledge that God had made good on his Word and Jesus was the proof.
There is more to the church though than teaching and preaching. I found this out years ago when the pastor of our church decided it was time to serve somewhere else. Our family got news of his resignation when we were at the cottage in July. By the time September rolled around it was obvious that it wasn’t just George who had left. All the people who were members of George had also left. The second thing folks were devoted to in the early church was fellowship.
This is more than pot luck dinners or sandwiches with the crusts cut off. William Barclay says the early church had a great quality of togetherness. The common life of the early church was more than friendship but it certainly included that wonderful aspect. Willimon puts it this way in his commentary: “Some have remarked that the real miracle of Pentecost is to be found here—that from so diverse assemblage of people from every nation under heaven (2:5) a unified body of believers is formed.”
If there is a practical need among them, it’s taken care of. 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. Again, following a suggestion of Will Willimon, it appears what is going on in the early church is people took seriously the idea that they were to embody the promises of God. In other words, if God had promised something, and Jesus was the fulfillment of those promises, and they were the ones who, through Jesus, had joined in on what God was up to, then they had to live out the implications of being part of this new thing. In Deuteronomy 15:4 God had promised a land free of poverty if only God’s people would live in obedience to him. So if God blessed me, God did that not in order for me to hoard, but in order for me to share with those who were now part of my spiritual family.
You see, the Wall Street and the St. James Park Occupiers are right—there is a sinfully unequal distribution of wealth in our world. The remedy for that sin may in part be political, but in part any remedy that actually works must include the spiritual aspect of our lives. We must come to understand that we are part of a new family; that’s who needs us to share with them. This fellowship is more than eating, but it includes the breaking of bread.
It is my opinion that the breaking of bread refers to a number of activities that were part of this church’s life. I think it’s a bit of a moving target. In the infancy of the church, I am certain it refers to the practice of eating together and to sharing in what we would recognize as the Communion or Lord’s Supper as part of a meal.
The reason I talk about a moving target is that by the time Luke writes this book some 40 years after the resurrection, the breaking of bread would also refer to something that had been quite a shock at the beginning; that is table fellowship that included everyone. It is true that right from Pentecost the church had included people from many nations, but at the beginning all of them had been Jews. Luke, of course, is himself a non-Jew and was no doubt part of this life-changing coming together of all who followed Jesus.
There is one other aspect to mention here. Do you remember the story of the two disciples who were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter evening. Jesus, risen from the dead, joined them on their walk and spoke with them. They did not recognize him until he broke bread with them. This aspect of church life is not them primarily about eating together, but about what is possible in the church because Jesus is alive and in our midst.
There is one more thing. They were devoted also to the prayers. I want to share something Tom Wright says in his commentary on our text.
Where no attention is given to teaching, and to constant, lifelong Christian learning, people quickly revert to the worldview or mindset of the surrounding culture, and end up with their minds shaped by whichever social pressures are most persuasive, with Jesus somewhere around as a pale influence or memory. Where people ignore the common life of the Christian family, they become isolated, and often find it difficult to sustain a living faith. Where people no longer share regularly in ‘the breaking of bread,’ they are failing to raise the flag which says Jesus death and resurrection are the centre of everything. And whenever people do all these things but neglect prayer, they are quite simply forgetting that Christians are supposed to be heaven-and-earth people. Prayer makes no sense whatever—unless heaven and earth are designed to be joined together, and we can share in that already (Acts for Everyone, Part One, 44-45).
Once again, I think it likely that Luke had more than one thing in mind when he described this aspect of the life of the church. Faithful Jews had three designated times of prayer each day—morning, about 9 o’clock, afternoon, about 3 o’clock, and in the evening at sundown. I suspect what happened in the early church was something like this. At first the Christians simply continued to pray at these specific times. They prayed also when they came together on the first day of the week. As the Christian movement became separate from Judaism, those who believed in Jesus as their Saviour continued to pray at specific times of the day, to pray as part of worship and to pray continually as part of their relationship with the Father. To use Tom Wright’s language, the believers prayed because they knew Christians are supposed to be heaven-and-earth people.
In 2,000 years everything has changed and nothing has changed. If we are truly the church, we proclaim the resurrection, we embody, we live out the promises of God, we recognize Jesus is alive within the church and we connect heaven to earth through our prayers. If that’s who we are at Blythwood, then this is church.