Faith and Community

Sunday 7 April 2024    

1 John 1.1-2.2

John 20.19-31 

Somebody once commented to me – I forget who, and I’m pretty sure it was meant to be a criticism – that Christianity was an early experiment in Communism. Which failed. Along the same lines, I do remember it was Mahatma Ghandi who once remarked that he thought Christianity was a good idea – and that somebody should give it a try. You get, of course, that I’m working my way around to talking about the first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles.

Acts gives us a fascinating glimpse of the very early Christian community - a community in transition, still perhaps reeling from the discovery that has changed their lives and is set to change the world - that Jesus who was crucified is very much alive. A community expecting Jesus to come back again any moment and apparently waiting to be told what to do next - but most notably a community in which everything is shared, not just money and food, as they live and pray together and care for one another and testify with uncharacteristic boldness to the power of resurrection. A community of radical equality that looks very different not just from the wider community in which we live today but also from our own lives as Christians. Just to rub it in, the psalm chosen for today reminds us: ‘how good it is when families live together in unity’! So, what might this snapshot of the very early Church mean for us?

We get a good dose of the Acts of the Apostles every Easter, the six-week season that begins with Easter Day. Not just because the Acts of the Apostles is what happens next, in the chronological sense – but because what happens next is the immediate consequence of resurrection – empowered by the resurrection life of Jesus and giving witness, simply and directly, to the reality of that life. The first and obvious point is this – that the apostles are transformed men and women. The bewildered and defeated disciples who deserted Jesus on the cross become the living proof of the resurrection as they begin preaching and living lives of radical generosity in the name of the risen Christ. We see them setting about the fundamental task of discipleship, which of course is to imitate Jesus. To live as Jesus lived, forgiving and experiencing forgiveness, loving wastefully, healing and restoring and tangibly changing the lives of others just as Jesus modelled. We see them, in short, living their resurrection belief, putting resurrection into practice, and the reason we have these readings set before us during the season of Easter is that this is our task too. We have heard the good news of Easter and say we believe it. Our job now is to live it.

And so where we come in today, Luke, who is generally recognised as the author of the Acts of the Apostles, provides a practical example of what resurrection living means in Christian community. In fact he gives two examples, a positive example that we hear about in today’s reading - immediately followed by a fairly grim negative example that comes immediately after. The community is characterised by a spirit of sharing that means the needs of the most vulnerable members are met. And the positive example of that is the two verses we read this morning that tell how one man, Barnabas, sells his property and lays the proceeds at the feet of the apostles. Incidentally, it is this man, Barnabas, who in the Acts of the Apostles is held up time and again as a positive example of discipleship. The negative example is the scary little story of Ananias and Sapphira who keep back what they own. Maybe Luke’s idea is to show that the ideal of radical sharing, even though it has become the hallmark of Christian community, is not yet fully put into practice. 

Metaphorically, the story of Ananias and Sapphira represents how a Christian community dies when its members, one by one or two by two, choose self over community rather than self in community. The point, perhaps, is that the community of those who love and follow Christ only thrives when its members, individually and communally, choose to follow the way of love and self-sacrifice. Otherwise, it’s just lip service. If we live generously and boldly, the Gospel grows through us. If we choose to live self-defensively, we collapse.

For those who haven’t read, or don’t remember the cheery little story of Ananias and Sapphira, when their selfishness is revealed they drop dead at the apostles’ feet. Certainly a bit harsh and in the context of a sermon that, let’s face it, is necessarily about stewardship, about how we behave with what we presume to call our own – not quite the message any preacher would want to get across. But we can certainly take from it the point that in Christian community our lives are necessarily interconnected – we belong together, and if our life together is not marked by compassion and generosity then the community dies.

And the reason the example of radical sharing is chosen as an example of resurrection living? Is because resurrection is first and foremost a relational or communal event. Jesus does not resurrect himself for himself or to himself … God’s work of re-creation is made visible in Jesus in order to empower Jesus’ followers – us – to live in ways that transform death-dealing spiritual and material circumstances in the lives of the communities in which we live. I think Thomas, in this morning’s reading from the Fourth Gospel, is an example of this. Thomas can only come to faith in community, his honest doubts can be answered and his relationship with the living Christ restored only within the community that is called into being as the outworking of resurrection life. 

Historically, resurrection faith spread like a pebble thrown into a pond that grows in power and momentum as it travels in ever-widening circles. Not static, but viral, spreading throughout the ancient world with the speed and power of the recognition of what, deep down, we already know. Because this way of living is built into us, as men and women made in the image of a loving Creator - the way of radical self-giving is built into our DNA, we are made to live beyond ourselves and to share who we are with others.

Resurrection faith means recognising that we are not, and cannot live, as isolated individuals answerable only to ourselves. It means recognising that the underlying template of human life connects us to one another and to all with whom we share our humanity. And rumours of resurrection – rumours of the superabundance of life that is the essence of our humanity – aren’t meant for hoarding but for sharing. If Christ really is alive then that changes everything!

I don’t believe the ideal of Christian community that the Acts of the Apostles point to has ever been perfectly lived out. But it took off like a firecracker! About a century after Luke wrote his Gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, the theologian Tertullian notes Christians in Carthage had a reputation for social generosity and care for the poor that rather exasperated their opponents. And they kept on doing it - in the mid-fourth century the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate who vehemently opposed the Christians was moved to complain “These godless Christians feed not only their own poor but ours as well!” 

Julian the Apostate wasn’t accusing Christians of being Communists, just of being do-gooders. We still occasionally get labelled as do-gooders - a snide criticism that implies living with compassion and generosity and loving wastefully is unsustainable and can only come from a suspect view of reality. I’m afraid we don’t get labelled as do-gooders nearly as often as we used to, and it would be great if we could get back to that! I don’t have the answers, of course, but as Christians nowadays we are more likely to be labelled as intolerant and judgemental, or hypocritical and narrow-minded. We fail at resurrection living when people come to us hoping for acceptance and inclusion and healing but go away with the message that they are not good enough - that their sexuality disqualifies them or that their ethnicity or social class or poverty makes them suspect, or that mental illness or past criminality makes them not good enough. We don’t have to pool our income or sell our houses and live in a commune to be Christians. But we do have to practise radical inclusivity and generous hospitality, and we do have to give of ourselves sacrificially if we want to live the resurrection.

We live the resurrection when we choose to live in ways that bring life to others. And the alternative to that, as a Christian community, is to die. If we are not living expansively, oriented to the needs of others, then we are contracting and dying. If as a church we are not engaged with the needs of the community we live in, if as individual Christians we are not giving generously for the needs of others, then we begin to shrink into ourselves, which is the opposite of resurrection. As modern Christians, like the early Christian community in Acts, we must look back to the beginning to see the way forward. How is the resurrection being proclaimed - by us? 

Amen