Sunday, April 23, 2006

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (B)
at Trinity Episcopal Church, Clanton, Alabama
Acts 4:32-35 Psalm 133 1 John 1:1-2:2 John 20:19-31

I am a real fan of our reading from Acts for this Sunday; it's one of my favorite passages in the New Testament. And perhaps it betrays that my mama was an English teacher, that my appreciation for this particular passage in Acts is in large part a declaration of my affection for a well-chosen conjunction, and my abiding resentment of those who left that crucial conjunction out of the translation of Acts 4 that we heard earlier this morning.

It's true, and I’m sure that you'll share my indignation when I tell you that Acts chapter 4, verse 34 is probably missing that conjunction in your bibles.

Or maybe you won't initially, I understand.

But what if I told you that the missing conjunction was "FOR"? OK, maybe no recipe for instant empathy with me there. But let me put it another way.

Acts, like Luke (which makes sense given that it's a two-volume work by a single author), makes a very important point about something core to the order of the world as it is – namely money; and about that part of ourselves that is both the most sane and most imaginative (these things go together, I believe) and that anticipates the coming of God's kingdom. And Acts 4 puts it together for us very neatly – which seems clear to me once we've put back the missing conjunction that was part of the original Greek. Let me read it again, and if you would look at your copy of the Acts 4 reading you’ll be able to see where the change occurs.

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all, FOR (onde gar = for-not) there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

In the translation that we have in our lectionary reading today, Acts 4 sounds too much like an idealized story of how things were in the "good old days"; not a recipe, but rather a status claim. "Things were great in the early days of the church … we had unity, and testified with power … oh, and there weren't any poor people then."

Of course, that wasn’t the case. Luke-Acts repeatedly makes a direct causal connection between community of goods and unity of spirit. In other words, all of this "we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord" stuff of youth group songbooks of the 1970's, and all too much rhetoric elsewhere, is just so much theological muzak if we don't live out what that crucial missing (in most translations) conjunction tells us, which is that the power of the apostles' testimony, the experience of grace in community, even the unity of the Body of Christ has a direct relationship with the extent to which all of those of us who call ourselves Christians share what we have with those who don't have it.

The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of anything, but they had all things in common. And in great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all, FOR there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold, laying it at the feet of the apostles, and it was distributed to any as had need.

Oh, for the recovery of that lost and much-needed "FOR" and the resulting understanding in both the church's imagination and the popular imagination! And what an experience of God's power and of the reconciliation for which the world was made and for which it and its Creator longs, that we could have IF (to use another important conjunction) we had not a needy person among us.

People say that could be, you know – not crazy dreamers like me, but people with degrees in important and useful fields like economics at big and well-respected institutions like Harvard and Oxford. We really could have not a needy person among us – not through some imposition of gated so-called "community" shutting out the poor – but by seeing that every person on earth has a chance, has clean water and some education; a chance of surviving to build communities and families of love.

Our own Bishop Andrus serves on the board of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. He lives out, and has asked us to join him in, a vision for ending extreme poverty in our lifetimes. It wouldn't take us all selling all we had, but sharing a mere 7/10ths of one percent of what we have. Less than one percent of our treasure shared, and we'd know to the core of our being that about which the psalmist sang and many dreamers dream:

How good it is when sisters and brothers in the human family live together in unity! For there the LORD has ordained the blessing: life forevermore.

We miss that aspect of Jesus' message, of the prophets' message, of God's own heart all too often. There seem to be many Christians who proclaim a Jesus who is all about taking people from earth up into disembodied heavens, like some kind of transporter from Star Trek. The theology of the Gospel According to John is sometimes caricatured along those lines too: Jesus as some kind of E.T., come down from the heavens, recognized as the force of love by only a few and even then misunderstood by those closest to him, dying solely as a means to more efficiently "phone home" and ascend into the heavens, leaving humans amazed or ashamed, but in one way or another, behind in all cases. Left gaping at stars they can't reach or seeing the world that gave them birth as just a pit of cruelty and death.

That's not Jesus' message, in John's or any canonical gospel. And as much as John emphasizes Jesus' crucifixion as being "lifted up", John drums into our head perhaps more than any other gospel where Jesus' heart is, FOR even as Jesus is "lifted up," even after Jesus, having been faithful to God's call, is raised and qualified to ascend to the heavens to the fellowship of the Trinity whose love is so great that a universe was made and is being redeemed and sustained, Jesus keeps coming back to those he loves.

And Jesus is engaged with the world. He is the Word who was with God in the very beginning, and whose love was present in the birth of creation. He is the peasant child who knew and loved the earth he walked and all those who walk with him. He is the naked, vulnerable and tortured man nailed to immovable wood and still moved with compassion for his torturers. He has died, and he is risen, and yet he comes again, to touch doubters and healers, soldiers and peasants, persecutors and apostles – who are sometimes the same people, after all… especially after Jesus' touch.

Jesus comes to the women at his tomb and his followers huddled in fear. He comes to those who confess him and those who grieve him, miss him, or doubt him. He comes to those who love him and those who hate him. Jesus comes and he comes and he comes to this world because he is not done with this world, no matter how many times people of this world say they are done with him, or with the way of peace and compassion he walked and walks. Jesus is not done with any of us, and never will be, until we know in our heart of hearts, experience in the deepest part of ourselves, and are bursting alongside the whole of creation to share the wealth of love and generosity for which we and the world are made.

We may grow weary, but Jesus will not grow weary of us. We may close our eyes and forget to dream, but Jesus is alive, and still dreams with and for as well as through and among us. God is redeeming the world God made and loves, and we may as well let ourselves get accustomed to this love that is the most basic force of the universe. The Christ has died, the Christ has risen, and the Christ WILL come again. Let us rejoice now with all whom Christ loves in celebration and anticipation!

The Lord is risen! Alleluia – and thanks be to God!