List of Sermons for the Current Liturgical Year |  Archived Sermons | Front Page

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

"The New Testament Vision of Life"

The Rev. David Frazelle Elkins-Williams

In today’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear a vision of the life of the earliest Christian communities.

“Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God . . .”

Such is the New Testament vision of common life and communal stewardship. Such is the vision that we have inherited. What do we do with this vision - this radical, scary, marvelous vision?

It seems that the experience of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead changed everything for the first disciples. The resurrection did not just change how they believed with their minds or how they felt in their hearts – the resurrection changed every aspect of how they lived. The resurrection totally changed how they spent their time, how they spent their money, and how they ate their food. It changed their sense of family and hence the people with whom they shared time, money and food.

“Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God . . .”

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead transformed the most basic aspects of life for the first Christian communities. And in this passage from Acts of the Apostles, we are given access to a vision of this transformed life.

I thought that it would be fun to highlight this first passage from today’s readings, because it sounds so communist. I thought that this academically-oriented, somewhat left-leaning 5:15 congregation would appreciate this passage’s ironic resonance with Marx and Engels’ Manifesto, “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” But this New Testament vision of stewardship is part of a larger vision of a Christian way of life – a way of life that has been tested for 2000 years, a way of life that works.

Relatively few Christian communities have adopted this NT vision of life in its purest form. These communities, of course, are called monasteries and convents. These communities literally live together, gather 4 to 8 times per day to hear the apostles’ teaching, to pray, and to break bread together. They literally sell their possessions and goods, so that they hold all things in common. And they distribute to all, as any has need, so that there is not a needy person among them. They work together, pray together, study the apostles’ teaching together – and it works! Monastic communities have shown incredible perseverance and longevity despite sometimes crushing odds. They evangelized Western and Northern Europe. They kept Western Civilization alive through the Dark Ages. Even today, in their tiny numbers, they produce many of the greatest theologians, scholars and spiritual teachers of the Christian Tradition. Not a bad track record. The New Testament vision of community transformed by the risen life of Christ – this vision works.

Most Christian communities, including this one, have adopted a different form of this vision for the life of the baptized community. The basic unit of our community is not the monastery but the household. We gather in these smaller units for prayer, fellowship and food. We spend the majority of our time and money within these domestic churches, which are often also our primary places of service. Then, from these smaller units we come together, at least weekly, to reconnect with the larger body, to remember who we are in Christ, to give not 100% but a smaller percentage of our goods and possessions, and to do the ministry of the Church in the world. (The proportional giving part comes from the OT model of stewardship, from the Jacob narrative in Genesis, which is a passage for another sermon.) At any rate, these foundational practices constitute the way in which most Christian communities, including ours, have been led by the Spirit into the NT vision of Christian life captured in the Acts of the Apostles. This is the way by which we and the Church Universal have been called to the radical New Testament vision of a Christian community transformed by the Spirit of the risen Christ in its midst.

Thanks be to God for this vision, and for the grace to make this vision our reality.

“Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God . . .”

© 2008: Chapel of the Cross

Top | List of Sermons for the Current Liturgical Year |  Archived Sermons | Front Page