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© 2009 ZPC 1
ZIONSVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
January 25, 2009 Rev. Glenn McDonald
Acts 2:42-47
Back to the Blueprints
(4) No More Solo Fliers

Sheldon Vanauken once said, "The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians. When they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug, when they are narrow and repressive, Christianity dies a thousand deaths."

A couple of years ago I was given a copy of a book by William Hart called The 100 - Hart's personal choices of the one hundred most influential people who have ever lived. I was certain when I opened the book that Jesus would be number one. Of course he would be number one. Who else in history can hold a candle to the kind of influence that Jesus has exerted? I was floored to discover instead that Jesus came in at number three, behind Mohammed and Sir Isaac Newton. This is how Hart explains his decision: "On his own merits Jesus would definitely be the most influential person ever. The problem is his followers. They have done a relatively very poor job of carrying out his message."

The problem is his followers. All too often God the Father is judged by his kids - his grace-challenged, love-challenged, kindness-challenged spiritual children. That means us. What the world longs to see is a multiplication of spiritual faithfulness amongst a large group of people so that history might be changed. One of the Bible's most impressive snapshots of what a Christian community can actually be is found at the end of the second chapter of the book of Acts. Let's turn there together.

Acts is the New Testament's only bona fide history book, and during these first weeks of 2009 we've been working our way through the story of the early Church. What exactly happened after Jesus concluded his ministry on earth and ascended into heaven? Jesus instructed his disciples to wait for a supernatural power source - the Holy Spirit - who would change their hearts, transform their minds, and send them out on various journeys that would ultimately take his mission and his message to the ends of the earth.

Acts chapter two begins dramatically. On the Day of Pentecost - exactly fifty days after Jesus died on the cross - the Holy Spirit descends on the original group of about 120 believers. Remember the Diehard battery commercial where a car sits on a frozen Minnesota lake for an entire winter? When spring comes they turn the key and the car roars to life. When the Spirit comes into these men and women who are loyal to Jesus, it's as if everything thaws. Peter stands up and delivers a rocking revival sermon that swells the ranks of the church by three thousand. Do these newcomers now say to the original disciples, "Hey, thanks for the spiritual liver shivers, but I need to get back to my real life"? No. What used to pass for their real life is now gone. Luke, the author of Acts, provides a half dozen verses at the end of this chapter that reveal just how different this new life is going to be. Let's look at them together, beginning at verse 42:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

The first thing we want to note is that that last sentence is still happening today. If this is a typical 24-hour period, then by this time tomorrow morning somewhere in the world there will be 12,000 new Christians and at least 300 new churches - most them small, home-based gatherings of believers.

So why does Luke take the time to record these specific observations? He is not a journalist who is trying to present a detached, dispassionate account of what the earliest Christians did to pass the time. This paragraph is both a description and a prescription for ensuing generations of people who are serious about following Jesus. What we discover is that these words are comparatively easy to interpret, but notoriously difficult to apply. So we're going to spend the majority of our time this morning trying to see how we might experience them.

Pastor and author Randy Frazee points out that three essential commitments emerge from this text. These disciples had a common purpose, a common place, and common possessions. Notice the frequency of the word together. Verse 44 says, "All the believers were together..." Verse 46 says, "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread and ate together with glad and sincere hearts." The early Church became the primary life group for its members, apparently supplanting other loyalties. This was far more than a once-a-week, one-hour gathering.

And this is where the book of Acts starts to sound like La-La Land to contemporary Americans. What's the toughest demand that Christianity makes? What is the hardest thing for modern ears to hear? Is it the idea that embracing Jesus is the only way to know God? Or that God's design for sexual intimacy assumes the boundaries of marriage? Or that sharing a tithe or a tenth of our resources is the starting point for generosity?

We can make a good case that the Bible's most counter-cultural demand in the 21st century is that Christianity is fundamentally plural. Following Jesus is a team sport. Within the body of Christ there are to be no more solo fliers. As one observer puts it, "To win all by ourselves is to lose."

Now if all of that is true, then we have a long way to go. According to pollster George Gallup, Americans are among the loneliest people on earth. A startlingly high percentage of our time is spent indoors, staring at electronic screens, with our blinds closed and our privacy ensured. Our homes have become places of virtual solitary confinement. If an alien culture were to watch nothing but our TV ads they might conclude that the main activity of Americans is to drive off-road vehicles to places of stark isolation so we don't have to endure the presence of the people who live next door.

Donald Trump famously said, "Money is life's scorekeeper." Well, you are sitting in the presence of a family that could not disagree more. Throughout history a majority of humanity has concluded that life's true treasure is relationships, and that the Good Life means being rich in family and rich in friendships.

John Ortberg writes, "Of course, we all say that relationships are more important than money. But we constantly cheat relationships for the sake of work or money. There are no TV shows called Who Wants to be a Great Friend? What we have come to call ‘reality' shows are programs that deliberately pit one person against another. ‘Reality' means having someone excluded or fired or voted off the show."

The stumbling block for so many of us is that when we have come looking for true community within the organized church, we've been deeply disappointed. Maybe you've scanned the bulletin or walked up to the Welcome Center and asked, "Could you please tell me where this last paragraph in the second chapter of Acts is happening in this building today?"

Here's this beautiful ideal on the pages of Scripture, yet we so rarely see it before our own eyes. How can these verses go from mere words on a page to a reality that we increasingly experience? Let me make five suggestions.

First, let's be careful not to romanticize this text. I have heard numerous teachers and preachers say, "All we need to do is get back to the first century" - as if a time machine might take us to a place where none of the followers of Jesus were actually sinners. What we'll learn as we go through the book of Acts is that the early Church was not exactly a picnic on a sunny day. Shining a bright light always draws bugs, and there were plenty of bugs hovering around the warmth and the light of this new community. Remember that Jesus said the only people who come to the doctor to get well are those who admit how very sick they are. That means all of us - and it means that all of our sisters and brothers in the Body of Christ, at any moment in time, still have a great deal of growing and maturing ahead of them.

Second, let's understand that God is not so much asking us to add to our lives, as to transform the lives we already have. Coming to church can feel like piling on. Your schedule is already overwhelming, and now you hear that if you really love God you're going to have to excel at the four things in verse 42: being devoted to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

A few years back a feature writer asked a number of experts in a variety of fields (a nutritionist, a home decorator, a sleep researcher, a fitness coach, a vocational trainer, a financial planner, a family therapist, and so forth) how much time the average person would need to devote per day to their particular realm of life just to get by - not to excel, but to do the bare minimum.

When all those minutes were added together - to achieve the minimum requirements for successful life management - the total was 36 hours per day. No wonder we feel exhausted when another expert tells us to "chop, chop" or we'll fall behind everybody else. And no wonder we feel resentment if the church implies that we're going to have to pedal the bicycle faster if we want to experience spiritual fulfillment.

What did Jesus say? Life comes down to two things: We are to love God and to love each other. Everything else is just detail. This first generation of Christians concluded that the best way for them to love God and to love each other was to be in each other's presence on a regular basis.

Greg Rankin (who provided personal sharing before this message) already had to eat breakfast every Thursday. Last September he began to eat breakfast on Thursdays here at ZPC, and to experience Bible study, prayer, laughter, and tears with about three-dozen others in the Men's Fraternity. A number of us have found that we can support each other throughout the course of an average day with encouraging emails and text messages. "I know that one hour from now you have an appointment that's concerning you; I'm praying for you right now."

When we talk about "the Christian life," we don't mean shoehorning a truckload of new activities into an already impossibly overloaded schedule. Instead we're talking about finding ways to do much less - and to remember God, to talk to God, to praise God, and to depend on God with the support of other people within the life that we already have.

Third, think small. Realistically we cannot expect to experience intimate community with everyone else in a church this size. More importantly, there are 58 specific commands in the New Testament that include the words "one another" or "each other." The only way we can experience most of them - like accept each other, and admonish one another, and bear each other's burdens - would be in relationships that are sufficiently safe and long-term for us to get to know and to trust each other.

Verse 46 suggests an important dynamic: "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts." The courts of the temple in Jerusalem were gigantic. They were roughly as spacious as the interior of Lucas Oil Stadium. It's easy to imagine several thousand people mingling there.

But the real work of developing Christ-centered friendships happened in small groups, as people welcomed each other into their homes to share meals. If that's the kind of community you're searching for, let us help you this week by directing you toward one of the dozens of small groups here at ZPC.

Fourth, make a commitment to the Body of Christ by joining this church. Or join another congregation where God is leading you and feeding you. I want you to know that this is the first time in 26 years that I have ever spoken these words from the pulpit. That's because God has changed my mind about the meaning of church membership.

I remember years ago that at the end of a particular ZPC Inquirers Class two couples stayed behind, talking intently to each other. Neither of these couples had ever belonged to a church before. They looked worried. "Can I answer any questions for you?" I asked. "Well," they stammered, "we're not quite sure we're ready to make such a huge commitment."

"What's troubling you exactly?" I replied. "There's attendance, for one thing," said one of the husbands. "I'm not sure we can be here every weekend of the year." Do you want to know what I said? "Oh, don't worry about that!" I watched the tension flee from their faces as I described what amounted to the least common denominator of church involvement - the kind of modest commitment to which I had accommodated myself years earlier.

They smiled. They joined the church. They participated irregularly. And within three years they had dropped out entirely.

I wish I could have another shot at that conversation. I wish I had been courageous enough to honor the genuine tension in their faces and their sincere conviction that God was asking for a major shift in their lives. As the leader of an organization pledged to transform human history, I clearly didn't believe those things myself.

Now I know there was no formal church membership at the time of the book of Acts. But I have come to believe that for us membership isn't just an archaic American way for a congregation to keep track of those who say they are in the flock. I believe that in a commitment-impoverished culture like ours, it matters when we say, "This is my spiritual home base. This where God is asking me to contribute to the vitality of a real spiritual community by being present, by being accountable, and by being responsible to use my gifts to help build what God is choosing to build." I urge you to prayerfully consider where God is calling you to belong. Make a choice. If you're already a member here or somewhere else, find a way symbolically to reaffirm your commitment. Take your stand with all the other astonishingly imperfect people who are endeavoring to please God.

Fifth, and finally, take some risks. True community generally does not come and find us. We have to pray, and discern, and test the ground to enter into life-changing relationships. Do you notice how prayer was a foundational commitment of the early Church? Take a risk and join the ZPC Prayer Community for its monthly gathering this Tuesday evening, even if you have no idea who will be there and what scary things we might ask you to do - like sharing your name.

We will need to risk the ultimate possession in our culture. The hardest thing of all to lavish on another human being is the gift of time. Choosing to give someone our hours and our days makes them feel noticed, important, and valued. Apart from risking the limited commodity of our time we have no shot at experiencing real community - a common purpose in a common place with common possessions.

This we know for sure: We begin to grasp how precious our relationships really are at moments when they seem most at risk - in a hospital waiting room, for instance. Wes Seeliger has made these observations:

I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room watching with anguished people, listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?

The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can't do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of class and race melt away. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.

In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor's next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone is what life is all about.

Could we learn to love like that if we realized that every day of life is a day in the waiting room?

God calls us to love each other just like that. May we receive his grace to give up our licenses to fly solo, and to enjoy the wonder of doing life together.