“Great Grace Was Upon Them All” (Acts 4:32-37)

I want to begin by saying what a privilege I consider it, to be invited into this pulpit on the occasion of your anniversary. Karen and I have just been attending over the last five weeks and it are clear to both of us that God is doing great things in and through this church.

Thirty-three years! Sometimes (especially when my knees are bothering me!), I wish I could go back to the age I was then. But it excites me that many of you were not even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes back then. Thirty-three years! A third of a century—take a moment to think how much has changed in that span of time! I was still using a typewriter thirty-three years ago! Anyone here know what a typewriter is?

Thirty-three years: the tender age of an innocent man who hung dying on a cross. As he cried aloud, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the curtain of the Temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, the earth shook, the skies darkened, and the world would never be the same again.

It is in the shadow of that event that we meet Jesus’ followers in the book of Acts this morning. In those final verses of chapter 4, Luke gives us one of his little glimpses into the life of the community of believers that had begun to form in Jerusalem. And a remarkable picture it is! The church was barely in its infancy. But just take a look at it. Luke tells us in verse 32, “The full number of those who believed were one in heart and soul… With great power the apostles were giving their testimony … and great grace was upon them all…”

Now I am convinced that Luke, the author of Acts, has given us that amazing portrait of the church for a reason. It’s not like a picture in an art gallery, where you stand and admire it for a few moments and then move on to something else. No, as beautiful and compelling as it is, this picture is really far more than that.

In fact, it is the second little portrait of the church that Luke gives us in the early chapters of Acts. And, just as with the first, he has written it down for us not only to show us what the church was, but also to teach us what the church is both called by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be.

So we can see these verses as a kind of pattern, a model. Not that we’re required to follow it precisely to the letter. But we are to learn from it, to glean principles from it, and then by the Holy Spirit’s power to put those principles into practice. So what are the principles that Luke wants to share with us?

I want to suggest that there are three. And they fall under the headings of community, testimony and generosity.

Community

So, let’s begin with community. We find it right there in verse 32: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” I believe that that description stands in dramatic contrast to so much of what many people are experiencing in our society today. What we see around us again and again is not community but estrangement. It is not connection but alienation. It is not togetherness but a profound loneliness.

It’s more than twenty years since Robert Putnam wrote his book entitled Bowling Alone. In it he detailed the gradual decline over the previous fifty years in community involvement, in everything from political parties and public meeting attendance to membership in civic organizations and social clubs (and that of course includes the church). In the years since he wrote, the decline has become only more precipitous. Social media for an increasing number of people have taken the place of real relationships. We spend more time texting on our cellphones than in face-to-face conversation. And now, to put the icing on the cake, we have covid, which has forced us even further into our own separate cocoons—where we hesitate to give one another a hug or exchange a handshake. Even a friendly smile is obscured by a mask.

All of this stands in stark contrast to God’s plan. You only have to read two chapters into the Bible, where God has just created the universe in all its complexity out of nothing. Each day God brings more and more things into being—sun, moon and stars, dry ground and seas, plants and trees, animals and birds and fish in all their endless profusion. And at the end of each of those days, what is the chorus that we hear? “And God saw that it was good.” “And God saw that it was good.” “And God saw that it was good…”

Then we turn the page and we read of God forming the first human being from the dust of the earth. God looks down once again upon the creation he has made, but this time what does he say? Not, “It is good,” but, “It is not good…” “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

You see, God has created you and me for community. And when God begins to bring about his new creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the gift of the Holy Spirit, what is one of the first things we begin to see happening? Community.

And an amazing community it was—a community where people saw themselves as belonging to one another. Years later the apostle Paul would reflect on this and write about the church as a body, where feet and hands, eyes and ears and noses (not to mention all our internal organs) are all interconnected and interdependent.

“Community,” wrote Henri Nouwen, “is not a human creation but a divine gift…” But it doesn’t just happen spontaneously, Nouwen warned. “[It] calls for an obedient response. This response may require much patience and humility, much listening and speaking, much confrontation and self-examination, but it should always be an obedient response to a bond which is given and not made.”[1]

I believe that one of the greatest challenges facing the church in our western society today is to be that kind of community, where the self-giving love of Christ is visibly and tangibly present. I believe that’s what many people are looking for in our society today. And I believe that when it happens people will flock to it like bees to a honeypot.

Testimony

If the first mark of the church was community, then the second was testimony. Luke tells us in our passage this morning that “with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus”.

Now it may have been the apostles who were tasked with proclaiming the good news about Jesus at the beginning. But that did not last for long. We have only to turn to chapter 8 of Acts to read that it was ordinary believers who carried that good news beyond the confines of Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and eventually into the farthest reaches of the known world. I love the way Eugene Peterson put it in his translation of the Bible: “Forced to leave home base, the Christians all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they [proclaimed] the message about Jesus” (Acts 8:4).

I remember when Karen and I were in Libya in north Africa, strolling through the ruins of a Roman city that had flourished a century or two after the time of Christ. Those were years when being a Jesus-follower was still forbidden by the powers-that-be and Christians were severely persecuted for their faith. Yet, scratched and carved into rocks and walls, I could spot an “ichthus” here and a Chi-Rho there. I have to tell you, it was a deeply moving experience to stand in front of that silent witness of my Christian forebears, who would not be stopped from sharing their faith. Could they have imagined in all their wildest dreams that nearly two thousand years later their message would still be visible?

Those early believers were simply practising what they had learned from the example of people like John: “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you…” (1 John 1:3). They were convinced of what the great evangelist Paul had declared years before. Like him, they were not ashamed to proclaim the good news about Jesus, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). And they could not be kept silent.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you start carving Christian symbols into walls. Or that you start buttonholing people on the streets. But what I am saying is that we cannot be silent. And in that regard we need to take to heart the wise advice of the apostle Peter. “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15)

I believe that what Peter was recognizing in that verse was that the Christian message is most commonly and most effectively communicated in the context of relationships. It’s when people are able to see the difference that Jesus makes within our lives that they begin to ask questions. And then we have an opportunity, not to cajole or coerce or to get into some kind of sales talk, but to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through us.

Generosity

So, we have community and we have testimony. Which brings us to the third characteristic that we see in those early believers, which was generosity.

If we are to believe what people report on their income tax returns, we Canadians are not a generous society. Taken as a whole, Canadians give just 1.6% of their overall income to charity; and half of those who do contribute give less than $200 annually.[2]

Now I recognize that you can’t measure everything in dollars and cents, and that generosity can be expressed in a whole variety of ways. But the generosity that we see in that first body of believers in Acts was an extravagant generosity. It is the generosity that Jesus talked about: “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, pouring into your lap” (Luke 6:38). For it is the generosity of God, who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all and now graciously gives us all things (Romans 8:32).

I remember a wise friend of mine once saying that when people met Jesus, they moved from being centripetal—that is, where they see everything in their world as spinning inwards towards them—to being centrifugal, where everything flows outwards for the benefit of others. He gave the example of Zacchaeus, the miserly tax collector in Luke’s gospel. Zacchaeus had spent his whole life squeezing the last penny out of the hapless citizens of Jericho. But after meeting Jesus it was as though he couldn’t give enough away. And it wasn’t though he did it grudgingly or because Jesus had been guilting him out or twisting his arm. He did it willingly, joyfully, extravagantly.

The same was true with the little Christian congregation in Corinth a generation later. When they heard that their fellow believers in Judaea were going through a hard time because of a drought, they gave generously. They could be generous because they had experienced God’s generosity in Jesus. “Though he was rich,” wrote Paul, “yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). So it was that Paul could urge them not to give “reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7-8).

It is important at this point to remind ourselves that generosity is far more than money. What I am talking about is an attitude of generosity that colours every area of life—a whole culture of generosity, of extravagant open-heartedness, of joyful largesse, that permeates every aspect of the whole Christian community. I am convinced that where this happens there is little that could be more attractive to an unbelieving world.

Let’s leave it there, then, with those three thoughts in our mind: community, testimony and generosity. And as we move into our thirty-fourth year, may the Holy Spirit so move among us that Jesus may have all the glory. Amen.

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[1]     Henri Nouwen, Community

[2]       https://afpglobal.org/sites/default/files/attachments/generic/WCDW2021.pdf

“On His Majesty’s Service” (Colossians 1:1-14)

What a perfect day to celebrate an anniversary! I’m sure it wasn’t in anyone’s mind twenty-eight years ago, but this day is recognized in many church communities as the festival of Christ the King. (Some of you on your way here this morning may have noticed the sign outside St Thomas Aquinas proclaiming Jesus as King of all creation.) Many of those churches will be reading today from Colossians 1, beginning at verse 15, which runs as follows:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Those verses call us to look upwards to the incomparable splendour of the risen, ascended, glorified Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned at the right hand of God the Father. Few other passages in Scripture give us such an exalted picture of Christ, the unrivalled Lord of the church and indeed of all creation.

This morning, however, I want us to lower our sights a little, if you don’t mind, to look at the verses that immediately precede that passage. The apostle Paul is writing to his fellow believers in Colossae—and if I could hazard a guess, I suspect that that church still had a way to go before they would reach their twenty-eighth anniversary. But I believe we can learn some significant lessons from what Paul says both to them and about them. So, if you have a Bible with you, you might want to turn to the opening verses of Colossians, chapter 1.

Faithfulness

First-century letters always begin with the identity of the sender, followed by the name of the recipient. And take notice of how Paul addresses them in this case. They are “faithful brothers and sisters in Christ”. Now it seems to me that we must understand that word “faithful” in two senses. The first could almost go without saying: that is, that the brothers and sisters in Colossae were people of faith, men and women who had put their trust in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. I have no need to tell you that faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which the whole Christian life—and, by extension, the church—is built. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6).

I well remember a young man who had begun attending a church where I once served. He was a genuine seeker and his quest went on for months and months. He joined us for one of our annual church retreats and at the closing service I noticed that he came forward to receive communion for the first time. Afterwards I asked him about it and he said to me, “John, I could have kicked myself. All this time I have been thinking that Christianity was about knowledge. Today it finally dawned upon me that it’s about faith—and I took that step.” Yes, it’s all about faith, putting our trust in Jesus Christ.

Yet if that were all Paul meant by “faithful”, he could just as easily have left the word out. Surely there has to be more to what he is saying. Surely what Paul is referring to is not merely their initial act of faith that brought them to Christ and into the church, but also their ongoing faithfulness to him. That’s why the Bible speaks of faith in terms of a race. It’s more than just getting off the starting line. It’s running with perseverance, keeping our eyes focused on Jesus, not giving in to exhaustion or to the world’s enticements, until we reach the goal.

This past week Maclean’s magazine published an article based on a recently conducted study of Protestant congregations in Canada. Their byline read, “An exclusive remarkable study finds that mainline Protestant churches that focus on the Gospel and prayer are growing, while those that don’t are in decline.” I consider that as something of a no-brainer, don’t you? However, the study concluded that churches were considerably more likely to be growing where the pastor and the congregation agreed with the statement, “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb,” read their Bibles on a regular basis, believed that “God performs miracles in answer to prayers” and upheld that it was “very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians”. The study also found that about two thirds of the attendees at churches where these statements were affirmed were under the age of sixty, whereas two thirds of those at churches that did not were over sixty.[1] If our churches are to prosper and grow, then faithfulness to Christ and to the gospel make all the difference.

Twenty-eight years ago First Congregational was born out of a spirit of faithfulness—out of a desire to be faithful to God’s word and obedient to Jesus Christ. God has blessed you over those years and I have no doubt that he will continue to bless you as you continue in faithfulness to Christ and to contend “with everything you have in you for this faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish” (Jude 3, The Message).

Fruitfulness

At this point we need to go farther. We need to recognize that faithfulness is not limited to adherence to a set of doctrinal standards or theological propositions. I know churches that are like that and they can be every bit as deadly as those that have left doctrinal standards behind—perhaps even more so! No, true faithfulness will inevitably lead us to action, or what Paul in this morning’s passage calls fruitfulness.

Twice he speaks about bearing fruit. In verse 6 he points to the gospel, the saving good news of Jesus, bearing fruit in their lives and growing throughout the whole world. Then in verses 9 and 10 he tells of his ongoing prayer that they “may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work…”

In all the world I can’t think of anything that I find more delicious than fresh fruit. What is usually the first section you encounter as you enter a supermarket? The fresh fruits. The grocery marketers know what they are doing when they place them right at the entrance. I remember when we lived in Halifax previously I planted a peach tree in our back yard. What a delight it was in late August to go out and pick a ripe, luscious peach warmed by the afternoon sun! So too, I believe, a church that is fruitful brings delight to the heart of God—Christian men and women and children in whose lives are seen those marvellous fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, what the New English Bible calls “the harvest of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23).

It is clear from what Jesus taught his disciples in John 15 that this kind of fruitfulness is a consequence of faithfulness: “I am the vine,” he says to us, “you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing… This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” (John 15:5,8). It is as we remain connected to Jesus, as his life flows into us and through us, that we are able, as Paul teaches us in this morning’s passage, to “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God”.

In its final chapter the Bible gives us a beautiful picture of the river of the water of life flowing through the city of God. “On each side of the river stood the tree of life,” John tells us, “bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). Fruitfulness in the Bible is not just a matter of personal enrichment; it’s about making a difference in the world.

From the beginning you at First Congregational chose not to follow an isolationist route. Instead you chose to be fully engaged both with the wider Christian community (for example through Jesus to the Nations and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship) and with the world (through such ventures as Sunday suppers and the Crisis Pregnancy Centre). There can be a sacrifice in that. It means that resources are often spread thin, people sometimes stretched to their limit. But I want to say that the sacrifice is worth it. And you here this morning are the living proof.

Fortitude

And so we have faithfulness and fruitfulness. And to these we can add a third “F”: fortitude. In far more ways than I can number the world is a very different place from what it was twenty-eight years ago. (And why should we expect otherwise?) The church that once was prominent on Canada’s social landscape has long been relegated to the sidelines. Indeed we are off the map altogether. A generation ago the church may have been regarded as outmoded or even comical. Today in many places Christians encounter overt hostility. I don’t need to tell you. You know as well as I do that as often as not nowadays Christianity is associated with narrow-mindedness, bigotry and intolerance—and, sad to admit, we have to take some of the blame for that.

Yet what we face in North America does not begin to compare with what many of our sisters and brothers are encountering in other parts of the globe. Last Sunday was the World Day of Prayer for Refugees. I am encouraged by the strength shown by our fellow believers in other parts of the world who find themselves under considerably greater pressure than we can imagine. When I was here a few weeks ago I told you how my previous congregation was “invaded” by more than a hundred Karen refugees from Burma. Some of them had spent their entire lives in a refugee camp. Others had been shot at and even shot, sliced with machetes, seen their relatives and neighbours murdered before their eyes. Their suffering for the cause of Christ at the hands of an authoritarian government is little known, and it has gone on for nearly seventy years. Yet their witness for Christ continues to burn brightly and in spite of vicious persecution the church continues to grow.

Their experience is replicated by believers in many other parts of the world, most notably in North Korea, Syria and Iraq. Compared to them, what we face in Canada are minor irritations. Nevertheless, it is easy to become disheartened. In our passage this morning, however, Paul says just the opposite. He challenges us to be strengthened—to look to the Holy Spirit to give us endurance and patience. He encourages us to remember that the darkness that surrounds us must inevitably yield to the kingdom of light. He reminds us that the frustrations of the present cannot begin to compare with the glory that awaits us.

As you look ahead to the next twenty-eight years, who knows what may await you around the corner? But one thing you can be sure of. You serve the King of heaven and earth and his will will not be thwarted. May you continue in faithfulness to him and to his word, in fruitfulness as you serve him in the world, and in fortitude as you learn to depend more and more on the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’d like to conclude with an old prayer that has been traditionally used on this Sunday and that seemed fitting for us this morning.

Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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[1]        http://www.macleans.ca/society/it-has-risen-is-this-the-key-to-growing-protestant-churches/. See also https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/17/literal-interpretation-of-bible-helps-increase-church-attendance.