14Maysermon.htm

"The faith of owning and earning"

Sermon for Easter 4, Year B, May 14, 2000

Trinity Church, Princeton NJ

Reading: Acts 4:32-37

One of the great American experiments
has been that of religion. Many of the early immigrants
came here
to find freedom to worship God in their own way.
They wanted to be able to choose
whether to baptize their children as babies,
or to wait till those children were old enough to make that decision
for themselves, they wanted
the opportunity to interpret the bible for themselves,
taking its words in ways which they considered to be more serious
than many of the people around them,
and to live out
what they read.
And most of all, they wanted freedom from the impositions and penalties of
state mandated religion.
That freedom, which was written into the Constitution, resulted in a huge
diversity of denominations and religions, and for good or ill, an unusual
level
of religious experimentation.
And one of those experiments
was the experience of communal living.

A couple of years ago a friend and I went on a road trip out in the mid west
- we drove from Minneapolis to Lincoln, Nebraska. And one of the places we
visited on the way was the Amana colonies. It was one of those religious
experiments, a group of seven villages settled in the 1850s by the
community of Divine
Inspiration. They lived communally:
everything was owned by the community, and people were assigned living
quarters, family by family. Everyone had a job and everyone had a place in
society, and that community
lasted almost eighty years.

Amana
last century
is a long way
from Princeton today.

But its not so far
from the picture described
in our reading from Acts.

Early on
in the life of the Christian Church
they decided to do things communally.
There aren't many details here, only that
everything was held in common.
No one had too little
and no one had too much.
People
who had an investment property
sold it,
and gave the proceeds
to be shared with others
who didn't have enough to live on.
It sounds
too good
to be true.

When I read things like this
I tend to be pretty cynical.
How did such a community sustain itself? I wonder.
What happened when the investment properties were all sold?
Where did they live if they were selling their houses?
And how many people
were actually involved?
Of course, there's really no way
to find out all the answers
to questions like these.
And I know it.
You see, that's the point.
If my objections aren't answered,
then surely
I don't have to take
this stuff seriously, surely
I can just write it off
as one of the cultural peculiarities
of first century
faith.

But then you have to ask, I have to ask,
what is it doing here in the New Testament? Of all the things
the writer of the book of Acts
could have included
why this? We only read
six verses,
but the story goes on
for the best part of another chapter,
and that's an awful lot
of a 28 chapter book
to waste
on a temporary aberration,
especially when you're copying it by hand.
What
about this little group of people
matters so much
that the story
had to be told?

Well, I think perhaps the clue
is in the very first verse we read. It says there
that the whole body of believers
were one heart and soul.
It's not really clear what that meant -
we can hardly imagine that they didn't ever disagree on anything. But
perhaps the clue
is in what follows,
its in the theme which has echoed through the whole of the first few
chapters of the book of Acts. They gave testimony
to the resurrection.
Whatever else happens
in those early days
of what we now know
as the Christian church,
what ever else happens,
the resurrection
is at the very heart of it.

Through this Easter season
we hear the word
resurrection
time and time again,
and every time I hear it,
I struggle.
I struggle with how it is
that someone who was as clearly dead
as Jesus was,
stone cold body
in a rocky tomb,
could be alive again.
But that's what those early disciples saw, that's what
they had understood to have happened.
The resurrection
changed their lives.
Because in it
they discovered
new hope, they discovered
that security in life
isn't just about what you own - in fact,
that's not such a reliable safety net at all, as those who've had the
misfortune to lose huge sums in stock market fluctuations know all too well,
that real security
lies in God,
real significance
comes in a relationship with Christ
And when they began to put those discoveries into practice,
they found other things as well, they found
the richness of life lived caring passionately
for God
and passionately
for each other.
The resurrection
changed their lives.
And that's what matters so much
that this story
had to be told.

So if we, as Christians, are a people of the resurrection,
which is what all this fuss about Easter
is really about,
if we are a people of the resurrection, I wonder
how has it changed our lives?
How has it transformed us?
Do we look anything like
this little group of believers
who had everything in common, so that no one was in need?
Is there anything
we could learn from them?

Oftentimes
we just ignore stories like these. Impossible, too impractical,
we say. And yet
that leaves us in a bind.

You see, as Christians, and as Episcopalians
we take Scripture seriously. That's why we read it in church, why its
language is wound through and through our liturgy, why we have sermons.
And so that's why I don't think just ignoring this passage from Acts is an
option.

Imitating it is another option. Most of us can't even imagine doing that.
But
recently I heard of some people who have done just that.
A few years ago a couple of students from Eastern College, just outside of
Philadelphia, heard about an abandoned Catholic Church in North
Philadelphia. About 30 homeless families had moved in, and were fighting to
stay. Through talking with these people, the students came to the
conclusion
that their Christian faith
would no longer let them
stay at a distance
from the issues of poverty and oppression.
Over a period of years
they got hold of a house and shopfront in North Philly.
A group of them live there; they work together with local people
to try to find ways
to break the cycle of poverty. They have a thrift story, tutor local kids,
provide food and blankets for people who are homeless, but most of all, they
have made their lives in that community as a deliberate act of following
Christ, following the model of the believers in Acts 4. Their name is
the Simple Way.

I admire what they have done, their courage and their faith. But its not
for
everyone. After all, even in the New Testament, there are stories of other
believers
who didn't live communally.
So, then, how do we live
as people of the resurrection. What might it look like
if that were to transform our lives
as much as it did for the first followers,
as much as it has done
for the Simple Way?
How does
our faith
shape our lives?

One of the central things
about that early community
is that they came to understand
that security and significance
did not lie in what they owned
but in who they were
in relation to God and each other.
And that gave them a whole new freedom
in how they thought about what they owned
and what they earned.
You might be surprised to know, especially those of you who've heard me
preach a few times,
that I
do not
like preaching about money.
It makes me very uncomfortable.
But the problem is, it keeps coming up
in our readings.
What we do with what we own
and want we earn
has a whole lot to do
with what we believe.
I almost wonder whether there shouldn't be a question about it in the
baptism service.
So how might we use
what we own
and what we earn
in the service of God?

One way, of course, is to give to the church. Each year we ask you all to
fill
in a pledge card to help the ministry
of this church. That enables this place to keep running, to have services
Sunday by Sunday, to visit people in hospital,
to..... And at various times we ask you to donate for specific projects - to
help
stop the buildings from falling down, to send out choir to England, to
provide
food for people in need or to respond to humanitarian crises.
That's
really
important.
But there's also a danger there. Sometimes
it can be easy
to put the money in the plate
and forget about it
to figure we've done
our duty
to God.

But using what we own
and what we earn
goes beyond just giving money to the church.
Sometimes
it means thinking creatively
about how we can make the best use
of what we own.
Loaning a van to someone who only has a car
so they can move some furniture
without having to hire a truck.
Offering hospitality to a visitor to Princeton in your own home, even though
you might not know them personally.
Inviting some single people
to join in your celebrations at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Helping out
with one of the projects round Trinity,
up at Bound Brook
or in the Crisis Ministry.

Sometimes, it might even mean
rethinking
some of our traditions.
Just this week I heard of a couple
who decided
for their wedding
not to register for gifts,
but to ask their family and friends
to make a donation to a local charity.

And I've been thinking a lot about what to give my mother this Mother's
Day. There's really not a lot she needs, in fact what she, like most
mothers,
needs, I think, is to know that I love her. So I sent her a card, and
called
her, and then I did something a little different.

This week I found out abut an organization that provides kits to help with
childbirth to mothers in Rwanda. Far too many new mothers die there
because of complications in pregnancy and delivery. Babies die because of
infections from unhygienic birthing conditions. A lot of these deaths
can be prevented
with some basic supplies.
So for my mother, this Mother's Day, I made a donation to pay for a kit
which might mean one more mother
can give birth to a healthy baby.

What we do with what we own
and what we earn
is part of our faith
as Christians.
Because
we are people of the resurrection,
and the resurrection
is about
the whole of our lives.

Amen.

The Simple Way - http://www.thesimpleway.org/community/community.html
Mother and Baby Kits - http://app.netaid.org/SurvivalProject/donate.html

Raewynne J. Whiteley
14 May 2000