April 7, 2024
Easter 2, Year B
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Acts 4:32-35
John 20:19-31
Did you hear it? When the writer of Acts says that this is what they did when the church was brand new and fresh: “No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”
We are hard wired, or so it seems, to own things. We have some kind of national housing crisis, by trying to make it easier for people to own a home rather than rent a home, because owning is just naturally the better thing, right? There’s a great car Co-op in Winnipeg, but who wants to sign up to use a car when you need it rather than just own a car? And make the loan payments and pay for the insurance and the fuel and the maintenance even while it just sits unused for most of its life because that’s better, right?
And then we hear about those weird first Christiains: “No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” I like the sound of that, but I own a home, and ours recently became a two-car household and I own seven pairs of skis. It would have been eight if the store hadn’t put away their winter stock two days before I showed up with my credit card.
“No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”
This is one of those things in the Bible that just sort of sits there when we read it and it says, “Well? What do you think?” It’s one of those things in the Bible that asks a question and waits for us to answer, or it pokes at us and says, “Do you re really think that what you think is normal and better is normal? Or better?” Is private property so great? Apparently they didn’t always think so: “No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. The resurrection was boldly proclaimed and there was great grace among them. The ones who owned lands and houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what they sold.”
The risen Christ and the grace of Christ was what made them who they are. Not their possessions, or for the others, not their poverty. The resurrection and the grace of Christ is what makes us who we are. In a world where the ones who have the most power are also the ones who are able to own the most things, and in a world where it’s really easy to feel like you’ve failed because your car is too old or you rent or don’t have a home at all, this news is good news. The ones who owned sold, everything was held in common, and nobody lacked anything.
If you or I hear that as good news, that’s good. It is. If we hear that and get uncomfortable that’s good too. The Bible’s job is not to approve of everything we do or just to make us feel comfortable. It is tempting to try to say that they didn’t really do that in the early church, or to say that it is all really saying something else. But maybe what we need to do is listen, and let the story make us uncomfortable if that’s what it does.
Let’s just let it do that.
We don’t share all things in common. But we do hold so much in common, and we do have so much that we carry together. Try this: Look around for a minute, all the way around, and just cast your eyes over whoever is sitting here this morning. Stand up if you need to.
As you scanned to whole room you saw someone here, maybe a lot of someones here, who is afraid today. I won’t speculate about what anyone might be afraid of, but someone here is afraid. And if I’m not or you’re not, we have been. And if someone is coming here today carrying fear with them, we all carry it now. It’s in the room with us, and even if nobody speaks it out loud it’s here, and we carry all that together. To be afraid doesn’t have to mean to be alone.
Somebody might have brought deep sadness here today, and now we’re here, holding that sadness together in common. Because we’ve all carried sadness around, and even if some of us aren’t sad today we hold on to it together, with anyone who is sad today. The same goes for anger or frustration.
We hold all these things in common, and that’s a good thing.
If someone is here and just filled with happiness, or filled with wonder, we share that in common today too. If you feel like this is the best day of your life then you’ve brought that here, and we all hold that together with you in common. We hold that with you, and that “best day in your life” feeling is here, in the room. And that’s a good thing too.
Maybe you’re one of the people here who wonders if they really believe all this stuff today. You’ve brought your questions and your sense of not quite being sure, and we all carry that with you today. We hold it in common.
Look around…and whatever you’re carrying here today, all of us around you carry that with you. You don’t have to tell us what it is, this isn’t Oprah or Gerry Springer (sorry, those are kind of old references), but we all carry whatever you’re carrying together. And all that just means that none of us needs to be alone. We don’t carry our stuff alone.
“But everything they owned was held in common.” That’s what we’re doing here when, together, we’re holding one another’s sorrows and joys and hopes and fears.
That’s what’s going on with those disciples who are gathered in a closed room on the evening of the day when the news breaks that Jesus is risen. Now I’ve heard a thousand sermons on this and I’ve preached about twenty of them, and so often I have criticized the disciples for hiding in a closed room and being afraid. As though it’s bad to be afraid when your world has been turned upside down and nothing that happened this week has been normal and you think the law or the leaders are looking for you. Of course they’re hiding and afraid, and Jesus never scolds them for being afraid, and nowhere does it say that being afraid right then is bad. What the disciples are doing is coming together to hold in common the fear that they all feel. None of them need to carry that fear alone.
It’s good news, actually. Jesus has already made them into a community of people who will carry each other’s fears so nobody needs to be alone with that. And he’s made them into enough of a community that when they see him alive and they know that it’s true, they will share their joy together, and they will be made alive together.
And then, even when Thomas says, “I won’t believe it until I see it, til I touch it,” he doesn’t get in trouble. They all just hold his doubt and his questions together. It’s OK that Thomas with his questions is there with them. Jesus has made them into enough of a community that they can have room for someone’s doubts and questions; they can hold on to those things together, and Jesus can work with that, and the Spirit can work with that in the Spirit’s own good time.
That’s the community that Jesus keeps on making of us – where there is room for whatever we bring here today, and there is room for whoever brings it. That’s the kind of life that the Spirit keeps on breathing into us: a life where when one struggles we struggle together, and where one celebrates we share in that celebration together. We hold all things in common.
Jesus comes into the room, this room here, and shares all of that with us, and holds it in common with us. Jesus comes in and gathers up all that we bring here – our possessions and time and abilities and gifts, and our fears and loves and wondering and worrying and our joy and our grief. Jesus comes in, and it’s like we used to sing at every communion and I’m not sure why we don’t any more: “Gather a harvest from the seeds that were sown, that we may be fed with the bread of life. Gather the hopes and dreams of all, unite them with the prayers we offer now. Gather the hopes and dreams…. Grace our table with your presence, and give us a taste right now of the feast to come.” Jesus comes into this room, gathers up everything that we bring, and then feeds us with his own life; with body and blood, bread and wine. Jesus gives us his life; gives away his home and his land like those ones in Acts, becomes needy so that we will need no longer….
Then Jesus speaks a gift of peace to us, and sends us out with the gift of the Spirit, to love as we have been loved, to give the gift of peace as we have been given the gift of peace, to share the burdens of the world just as Jesus has shared our sorrows and joys.
Jesus, who comes into the room today, has given away all, so that no one, no one, will be in need.