Sunday Sermon: In This Together
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Text: Acts 4:32
Series: “Why Church Matters”
August 23, 2020, Community
I have always counted it a special blessing to have grown up in a small town. I wasn’t born in that town. I was born in Mobile, a much larger place. And when, even as a child, my father moved us to that small town in west Alabama I still call home, I wasn’t quite sure that I would be happy in a smaller place.
But as I came to discover, growing up in a smaller community was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. It didn’t bother me at all that I knew everyone by name and that they knew me. It didn’t bother me that I knew their business and they knew mine. It didn’t bother me that my cousins in Birmingham had more places to go and more things to do, I felt at the time I had everything I really needed. I had friends I could count on and their families were like my family. I had teachers and coaches who knew my strengths and my weaknesses and committed themselves to magnifying the former and lessening the latter. I had a church that taught me the lessons of faith and provided me countless opportunities to develop my spiritual gifts and in the process to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
Of course, you don’t have to grow up in a small town to benefit from these sorts of things. You just need to make sure that even if you live in a much larger place, you must find a smaller community you can call “home.” After all, larger places, whether they be schools or businesses or clubs or even churches, are just a bunch of smaller communities under the same roof, smaller communities where people are able to invest themselves deeply and where they are able to experience the support and the encouragement they so desperately need.
So, how does our church measure up in terms of being a place for investment, support, and essential encouragement? The best way for us to answer that question is by evaluating ourselves against the picture of spiritual community we find in the book of Acts.
The book of Acts is, as you know, the story of the gospel’s advance “from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That advance was made possible through the power of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit came to fill and direct those first Jesus-followers. But what’s important to note throughout the book of Acts is how those first believers didn’t turn their world upside down for Christ by moving out into it as solo practitioners. Yes, there are stories of certain individuals whom the Spirit used to reach others and draw them into the Kingdom – people like Stephen and Peter and Philip and Paul. But undergirding all of their efforts was a Spirit-filled community of believers who were praying and providing and supporting and encouraging. Otherwise, their impact for Christ wouldn’t have been significant at all.
We get a glimpse of this type of undergirding in the last part of the fourth chapter of Acts. Pentecost has recently taken place in which the Holy Spirit has come down upon the believers and filled them with the power the risen Jesus had promised them. Now, they are learning how to cope with all the challenges of being Jesus’ followers in a world that isn’t quite sure what to make of them yet. In this fourth chapter, Peter and John have been called to appear before the religious leaders to give answer for their teaching on Jesus’ resurrection and the power made available to those who trust themselves to it – a power that has produced through them remarkable acts of healing that have left the religious leaders scratching their heads. Long story short, the leaders choose to let these two disciples go, whereupon they return to the gathered body of believers and report what has taken place. A celebration ensues. The place where they are meeting is shaken and all are filled yet again with the Holy Spirit. And this continues to be the case, as our text for the day tells us, as “all the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” They shared everything they had.
Do you want to know why few churches today are able to live up to this picture of community? It’s because they have yet to reach the place where they are willing to share everything they have. They prefer to look upon their relationship as a mere arrangement between people who are marginally connected to one another in terms of common beliefs but who emphasize one another’s individuality in the process. I have nothing against individuality. I am in no way interested in being a part of anything that would have me forfeit my sense of self. That’s what cults do. Cults seek to take away one’s personal identity by mandating compliance with whatever the group says is paramount. Communities, on the other hand, deepen personal identity by surrounding us with opportunities both to encourage others and to be encouraged by them as we pursue together a purpose that is greater than all of our individual purposes combined. Do you see the difference?
So, where do you find this sense of community today?
What concerns me as a pastor is that fewer and fewer people are locating their sense of community in the church. At one time, church was considered the “third place” in society, behind home and work, where they could exchange ideas, build relationships, and engage in meaningful activities. But that has become less and less the case as the role of the church has been devalued in today’s world, viewed with suspicion as a place characterized more by judgment and spitefulness and meanness and cruelty than by anything good.
Do you see any of that in this picture of the community those first believers in Jesus enjoyed? Do you see any judgment, any spitefulness, any meanness or cruelty? Of course you don’t. How then do we here at Mountain Brook Baptist Church bear witness to the possibilities of being that “third place” for people today, even as no doubt the early church was in its day?
I think the text gives us two practical suggestions. First, it’s important that we emphasize the only thing we really have in common in the church, which is our experience with God’s grace in Jesus Christ. As the first believers “were one in heart and mind,” so should we be around our devotion to Jesus. Anything else will fail to sustain any sense of real community.
Secondly, just as did the early church, we make it a point always to put others first. “No one claimed any of their possessions as their own, but they shared everything they had.” In other words, no one compelled them to adopt this point of view. They did it willfully and gladly because of how they saw everything in their possession as something that derived ultimately from God. Seeing your possessions as something on loan from God enables you to be a better steward, one who is able to invest in others, however the opportunity presents itself, because you know that in the end your investment will reap huge rewards in terms of your relationships.
Are you ready to walk together in such a way? Are you ready to invest yourself in this fellowship so that Mountain Brook Baptist Church becomes a place where you find true community in the midst of all kinds of other places that promote anything but? I trust that you are, because in a season such as the one we’re in now, we need each other and the strength our being together in the presence of the risen Jesus provides.
I’m reminded of the story of the Sunday School teacher who asked his group of young boys to define fellowship. For a moment there was deafening silence, until one young man broke the silence with this rather insightful response: “It’s two fellows in a ship.” That’s actually not a bad image, especially when you consider how throughout Christian history the church of Jesus Christ has often been compared to a ship sailing through the waters of time and space, facing whatever threats or storms may come their way. But of course, it involves much more than just our occupying the same physical space. It involves being one in heart and mind and sharing everything we have to support and encourage one another.
None of that is about size, which so many churches are obsessed with today. All of it is about substance. All of it is about getting as small as we can in order to position ourselves as a community to advance Christ’s cause in a larger world.
Only then will we know the blessings of true community, where we are a part of a place and a people who share faith together and are truly “in Christ” with one another in a way that will see us through all life’s inevitable turmoil to a much better and a much brighter day.