RESURRECTION LIFE: TRANSFORMED COMMUNITY
ACTS 2:42-47
APRIL 13, 2008—EASTERTIDE 4
THOMAS H. YORTY, WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Today’s story from Acts follows Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. Perhaps you remember how the Holy Spirit descended upon those forlorn followers of Jesus like tongues of fire and they came to life, out of despair, speaking many different languages.
We will hear this account again on Pentecost Sunday, May 11. But I want to note as a starting point that when those who witnessed this strange event heard their own languages being spoken by the Spirit-filled disciples they were confused.
So Peter preached to them. One third of the book of Acts is comprised of sermons. Don’t let that scare you away. These are not three point-and-a- poem sermons. These are the earliest explanations we have of the impact of the presence and power of the Risen Christ on Jesus’ followers.
What Peter said was that the new age has come, inaugurated by Christ’s resurrection, and powered by the Holy Spirit. This is the time to turn your life around, he said. Imagine the redefining moments of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Three thousand people responded on the spot to Peter’s invitation to baptism.
And then the writer of Acts reports in the very next verse, verse 42, something quite interesting. He says simply, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers.”
There you have it—the founding of the church. That simple. Right then and there. From Westminster Abbey to West Ave. Presbyterian—every single one of them large and small created to embody Acts 2:42.
Not only were depressed individuals finding hope in the power and presence of the Risen Christ but whole communities of these hope-filled individuals were popping up everywhere. And it was their life together that kept them going.
The formation of Christian community tells you something not only about the power of Peter’s preaching and the Holy Spirit but also about the times in which those first converts lived.
Times not unlike these when society seemed to be hanging on a precipice of some impending change that would reorder life as they knew it. Change that might not make them happier than they were now—which our presidential candidates like to promise—but change that would make life harder.
You see, those first century folk who heard Peter’s sermon were worried and alone. Worried about how they would survive with fewer resources and more restrictions.
And lonely, not like we might feel on a long business trip for our family and friends.
But lonely like Abraham and Sarah when, in their old age, they realized they had no heir; lonely like Jonah in the belly of the whale trying to escape his inner voice; lonely like Saul when he learned that his son Absalom was killed in war.
They were frightened and alone in a dangerous world. But then word started to spread about an empty tomb and people were coming alive.
Let me say again it was their life together that kept them going. Imagine! They didn’t have buildings or committees or monthly reports or calendars or computers. All they had was each other and their simple mission.
They were filled with awe says the writer of Acts because signs and wonders were being done by the apostles. The old barriers, the old fears, the old crushing defeat of the world as they knew it neither deterred the apostles from preaching Good News nor the new converts from hearing it. It was as if the old enemy was powerless over their message, powerless over their ability to change.
And this: when they came together to share their experiences and common mission they sold their possessions to create a common fund that provided for everyone’s needs. That personal divestment alone was living testimony to their changed hearts—no one had seen or heard of such a thing before. And the equal status of women, lost to later generations but a tribute to the transformation of the early church not just spiritually but socially and economically.
Unless I miss my guess something like that kind of change is taking place in many lives, in many communities across our land. Not in every church but in many churches.
There is a fresh wind blowing. A new spirit of hope that is building deeper relationships and transforming otherwise casual friends into spiritual families—where a radical attention to one another’s needs and a radical recognition of each one’s dignity and place is honored regardless of class or economic status.
These communities or church families are places their members are drawn to in order to refuel for the week ahead; they find strength in one another’s presence not because they hear great success stories all the time but because they share the struggle to live the Good News of Easter in a death dealing world. And in that struggle they hear God’s call and receive strength from beyond themselves to respond, to risk, to do things they never thought imaginable.
I have participated over the years in the institution of the church, tending to the needs of the organization: fund-raising, strategic planning, building and reducing budgets, designing programs for outreach and new member recruitment.
But my sense is that as hard as we work at becoming efficient and effective there are no guarantees that what happened among those first followers who became the church at Pentecost will happen among us.
I am not saying all the institutional maintenance is not important, it is. It is a fact of life. But maintaining the institution is not ultimately what this entity called the church is about.
The very word church which comes from the Greek ‘ekklesia’ means ‘called out.’ You and I are called out of the world.
We are called out from the way the world does business, to the way God’s people do business. It doesn’t mean leaving our talents we use in the world at the door.
It means bringing those talents into this one of a kind community called the church to see what God has in store for us.
Honestly, I think it is as simple and intimidating and scary and wonderful as that. One writer puts it this way. “Somebody appears on your front stoop speaking your name, say and you go down to open the door to see what’s up. Or sometimes while it’s still raining, the sun comes out from behind the clouds, and suddenly, arching against the gray sky, there is a rainbow which people stop doing whatever they’re doing to look at.
They lay down their fishing nets, their tax forms, their bridge hands, their golf clubs or newspapers, to gaze at the sky because what is happening up there is so marvelous they can’t help themselves.
Something like that, I think, is the way those twelve men Matthew names plus Mary, Martha, and Joanna and Saul who became Paul and those three thousand converts on the day of Pentecost responded too. One way or another Christ called them and they saw the marvel of him arch across the grayness of things—the grayness of their own lives perhaps, the grayness of life itself. They heard his voice calling their names. And they went.”[i]
What makes a strong and healthy church is our responding to him when we hear his voice calling us and then letting go and letting God take us where he needs us to go.
The metaphor of the wind for the Holy Spirit is an apt description of how God’s church works. The Spirit of God blows like the wind. We neither control nor possess it. It moves when and where it will.
Our job is to be ready for it. To be alert so that when we feel its fresh breeze or gale force winds we can go with the flow rather than fight it. So that we can let if fill our sails and power this ship called Westminster and then voyage to new worlds and destinations.
I don’t want to be premature but I believe I have sensed the gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit in and around our life together here at Westminster.
When I’d heard the other day that forty people volunteered to be Sunday morning greeters I remembered several years ago when finding greeters was like finding hen’s teeth and I felt the fresh air of God’s Spirit; I’ve noticed and maybe you have too, how people are engaging one another before and after the later service in the Heavenly Grounds Café; I thought of some committees trying hard to make their budgets stretch farther not with doom and gloom but a voice of confidence seizing the moment to make some deep changes that we’ve needed to make.
And in our recent strategic planning retreat I felt the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing in a vision for change and new life. This plan is being considered by the Session over the months of spring but the presence of the Holy Spirit was discernable at that retreat.
We have many issues before us: implementing the New Beginnings Campaign projects that will involve new construction and much disruption;
improvements at our school; launching a vital ministry on the West Side called WEDI which has had great success but is hard work and has a long way to go; we are looking for the right formula for Sunday School and Sunday schedule;
meeting our annual budget has been harder this year than I can ever remember given our capital campaign solicitation at the same time.
Sometimes it can seem overwhelming to be the church but then I remember Acts 2:42 and how all they had was each other and their simple mission. I say to myself if we stay focused on that: on our mission to teach, to care for one another, to worship God and to pray for and serve the world we’ll be OK.
And this: if we can lift up our hearts like the sails on a tall ship so that when it starts to blow we will catch the Spirit of God as it moves in and through our life together from coffee hours to committee meetings.
Of course, if we do not lift up our hearts to the Lord, from whom life itself comes, we may never reach the new land he intends for us to discover.
Being open to and letting the Spirit of Pentecost guide us changes everything.
Then the movement that is sweeping across this land renewing many churches in many places and that swept across the lives of those three thousand souls Peter preached to and baptized,
that same life force will sweep across this congregation and bring new life. Amen.