Experiencing God In The Church

"Experiencing God In The Church"
Acts 4:32-35


I read about a man who owned a variety store.  The store had been, at one time, a successful business.  But during the owners later years, he spent all of his time arranging and rearranging the goods in his store.  He never unlocked the doors so that customers could come in to buy things.  Making sure that the merchandise was well organized and attractively presented became more important than selling it.

I thought, what a striking parable about the church.  At some point in the life of any organization like the church, that organization is tempted to veer from its intended purpose.  The bait and hook of the temptation are usually swallowed and the organization begins to forget its original direction and main aspirations.  It becomes something it did not set out to be.  It forgets its roots, and makes the attempt at growing some sort of trunk and branches without any form of nourishment or support.

You would think the church would be above that sort of aimlessness--that the church would always have a clear idea of what its purpose and direction should be.  But the church, more so than any other organization I know, is probably the biggest offender of trying to be something that it never set out to be.  The church of Jesus Christ is probably the most gullible, the most side-tracked institution on the face of the earth.  I have never known another organization that is so unclear about what its identity should be, and what purpose that identity should serve.

The presbytery of Southern Kansas, that body of Presbyterian churches located and bound together within the length of the southern half of our state, has reorganized its internal committee and governance structure twice in the three and a half years I've been here.  Jan Luttrell got to be part of the reorganization that was happening when I got here.  It was an innovative and exciting plan.  Slowly, that plan has been cast aside, and we are currently reorganizing back to what it was before the new plan was voted in.  I say, "voted in" because the new plan, even though it was voted on and accepted by the presbytery, it was never fully enacted.

It's no different than any other presbytery I've served in.  When I was in Colby, in the Northern Kansas Presbytery, in my 11 years there, that presbytery was reorganized  from top to bottom three times.  We are like the store keeper who gets side-tracked on his display and forgets how to do business.  Or maybe forgets what business he's in.  The more we are reorganizing, the less we end up actually doing ministry, because we are always preparing to do ministry, but never doing it.

That's why we constantly need to listen to the verses read from the Acts of the Apostles.  These verses are not only about an idyllic community where everything is shared.  There are deeper truths here.  There are guiding, foundational principles that the church has to constantly hear and hear again.

Management expert, Peter Drucker, says that no non-profit, volunteer organization will last long if there isn't a clear idea amongst all those involved of what the mission of that organization is.  Every organization has to have a mission--a clear and distinct purpose.  I think in these verses from Acts we are given that mission and purpose for the church.  It is what captivated the believers from the beginning, solidified them into a church, and then mobilized them for action.

The first purpose has to do with the Resurrection.  We are told that, "In a powerful way the apostles told everyone that The Lord Jesus was now alive.  God greatly blessed his followers..." (Acts 4:33, CEV).  Our first and primary purpose must be this:  to tell people, in a powerful way, Jesus is alive!  Without that mission we are not the church.  We may be something else, but we will not be the church.

In the 18th century, the U.S. Congress once issued a special edition of Thomas Jefferson's Bible.  It was a simple copy of a New Testament, but it had any and all references to the miraculous eliminated.  Jefferson, in doing this cutting and pasting, had confined himself solely to the moral teachings of Jesus.  The closing words in Jefferson's condensed version of the New Testament were:  "There they laid Jesus and rolled a great stone at the mouth of the sepulcher and departed."

If that's where the story ends, then we are faced with a big question:  what caused the change in the disciples?  The Crucifixion certainly didn't enliven the depressed followers of Jesus.  Imagine going to the place where the disciples congregated the day after the Crucifixion.  Compare that with what you would have seen with the mood in that same place the day after the Resurrection.

The greatest testimony to the reality of the Resurrection is the change that overcame and mobilized the disciples.  They went from being cowering wimps into powerful witnesses.  The Resurrection is the centerpiece of every sermon by the apostles in the book of Acts.

Without the Resurrection we can not be the church, because the church is at its most basic level a collection of people who are witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We are the ones who are here to tell the world that God has raised Jesus to life.  That is our primary and fundamental belief as the church.  And it is our primary reason for being.  All of the church's organization and structure should be founded upon that belief.

President Carter was a faithful churchman, not only attending worship as often as he could while President, but he also taught Sunday School.  One woman called the Pastor of the Baptist church in Washington, D.C. where President Carter attended.  She asked, "Do you expect the President to be in church this Sunday?"
"I cannot promise you that," replied the minister.  "But I expect the Risen Christ to be there, and I believe that should be sufficient incentive for your attendance."

The reason we come to church every Sunday morning, the first day of the week, the day Christ was made alive, is because we are Resurrection people.  And we are resurrected people.  We not only come to celebrate Christ's Resurrection, we also come to celebrate the ways God has also brought us back to life.  Without the Resurrection we become a people without hope who have a message without hope.  And the reason we go out from our worship each Sunday morning, out into the world, is to be witnesses of what we have seen and heard.


But there is more to the Christian community than celebrating this foundational belief that Jesus is Risen.  One of the ways we witness to the Resurrection is by the way we treat each other.  That's the other point of this story in Acts:  "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul...neither was there any among them that lacked."

What seemed to be happening at this point in the growth of the early church was a kind of circular pattern that fed itself.  What I mean is, when the primary task of the church--witnessing to the Resurrection--was being done, the church was growing.  As the church kept to its primary purpose, "...great grace was upon them all."  Those blessings motivated the people to, in turn, be givers to each other, caring for each other's needs.  That community of caring then encouraged the apostles go out and witness to the Resurrection all the more; and on and on the cycle continued.

The caring of this early Christian community was full of loving, active support.  It wasn't just a pious word spoken here or there; or, the speaking of some religious sounding platitudes.  It wasn't high sounding morals that appear to have no substance behind them.  The caring of the early Christian community was defined by actual, hands on involvement of people with others.  They formed their identity, not with a capital "I", but through a sense of unity--a unity that begins with Y-O-U:  you-nity.  The first believers, mobilized by the power of the Resurrection, said "you" before they said, "I."

When I was pastoring up in Colby, I got to teach a college class titled, "Christian Morality."  I used the book, Money, Sex, and Power, by Richard Foster who used to teach at Friends University.  If that isn't a provocative title to a book, I don't know what is.  In one of the chapters about money, Foster told about how one man involved himself, similar to the involvement of the early Christians:

Someone I know who always has given of his resources generously is attempting now to give more of himself.  He decided that he needed a closer personal tie to the poor, so instead of just writing checks to organizations that work among the poor, he decided to make a commitment to one family.  This family has known little stability over the years, because of drugs and related problems.  But with this man's help, the husband has secured a job and the family has learned to live by a monthly budget and weekly food menu.  My friend meets with the family every week to review their budget with them and evaluate their goals.  He also has had to invest some of his own resources in the family (none of which is tax deductible).  This kind of giving is much more costly than writing a check, yet giving oneself along with money can produce dramatic results.

Imagine a whole church of people like Richard Foster's friend. As in the early days of the Christian church, it wasn't just one or two people, but "...they all shared with one another everything they had."

Remember when, back in the book of Genesis, God asked Cain where his brother Abel was.  Do you remember what Cain's reply was?  "I don't know.  Am I supposed to take care of my brother?"  Cain took care of his brother all right--murdered and buried him.  But what happened in the early days of the church is the other side of care-taking. Yes, we are to take care of our brothers and sisters, in the best and most involved ways we can.

There was a woman who while taking a walk in the city, rounded a corner only to see a victim of a mugging.  He was beaten up and bloody, lying on the sidewalk, half conscious.  As she was later retelling the incident to her husband she said, "I was so grateful for the first-aid course I had taken at the YWCA.  When I saw that poor man lying there I promptly put my head between my knees to keep from fainting."

As Christians, we are not to use our sympathies only to put our heads between our knees when we see some need.  When a fellow believer is in a position of urgency, or lonely, or hurting, we are not to look the other way.  We are not to hope that someone else will take care of them.  We are not to look after ourselves only, but create unity amongst fellow believers by saying "you" not "I".

The church is not a place where something is walled in to be protected from the world.  Instead the church exists to pour itself out to others as witnesses of the resurrected Christ.  The church is not a fortress which simply defends the troops.  It is rather a supply house from which we give of ourselves and our substance, daily and freely, to all those who are in need.  If we can keep that purpose clear in our minds, then we will never lose sight of what it means to be the church.