A Common Purpose

We all have heard many sermons about today’s text from Acts (4:32-35). Most of which probably focused on how this would not be possible today. Those sermons are shaded by our political history more than by theological reasoning. A close reading of Acts will show that this early community was not perfect. We have the story about Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5) and the complaints of the Hellenist against the Hebrews (Acts 6) to show us that. We also know that Luke does gloss over the differences between different persons (Paul and Peter, for instance) in order to show that the community of Christians were a unified group. But we know better. Like a modern day church (or any other organization) there were differences of opinion, debates, fights and arguments. But, back to our lesson for today and the sermons we have heard -- those who preached those sermons were wrongly emphasizing something that the early community had no idea about: common ownership of property. The property was not important, the community was. As early Christians they expected Jesus’ return to be in their lifetime or soon after. There was no need to own anything. By sharing what they had freed them all up for the task at hand. A very important task indeed. That task was to proclaim Jesus and his salvation to the world in the short time before he returned so that more people would be saved. They shared a common purpose.

This was a great change from the community in our text from John. They too had a common purpose – to hide from the authorities out of fear of death. Although that changed quickly for we find them proclaiming the news of Jesus publicly 40 days later. That is what an encounter with Jesus does. It changes lives and outcomes, makes fear fade away to boldness, turns hate into love, and brings people together into one body. 

The question for us is how have we lived up to that common purpose that all Christians share? It is difficult to do. We are bombarded so often by the idea that Christianity is an individual thing – finding your own personal savior – that we forget that we are called to serve others. That is where the ideal Christian community broke down in Acts. When people started to think about themselves instead of others. Where would we be if those first disciples continued to think and worry about themselves and their own lives instead of others? Yes, what held the early Christian community together was their  common purpose of spreading the gospel of Jesus. Their desire to share what God had given them was so great that they showed it by their lives – sharing everything that they had with each other. 

In the end, I suppose, that is sharing the ownership of a common property. But the common was Jesus and the property love. That is also our calling. Together we share God’s love because we have become the property – the body – of Christ. Go therefore into all nations or just the grocery store and share God’s love by seeing and believing that all are God’s children to whom we are called to serve.