Reading from Acts for April 7, 2024

“SHARING” by Aaron Concannon.
“All the believers were one in heart and mind….They shared everything they had.” Acts 4:32

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Acts 4:32-35
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This is a description of the early church in the very first months and years after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It is bracketed on either side with accounts of the healings accomplished by Peter and the other apostles, persecution by the Sanhedrin, and discipline of the miscreant church members Ananias and Sapphira.

Actually, in Acts 2:42-47 there is a more detailed description that covers their activities far more completely.

Here in Acts 4:32-35 the focus is on the early stages of “communalism,” not to be confused with communism.  They seem to share all of their possessions generously and in common.  Note, though, that this claim follows a far more important condition:

The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul.

Sharing all things in common was predicated on a sense of unity in love (heart) and doctrine (mind).

The doctrinal message, called the kerygma, was simple and direct:

With great power, the apostles gave their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Great grace was on them all.

This preaching was made effective by the power of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had promised in Acts 1:8, and completed in Acts 2.

There is even a word about the practical application of their “communalism” — there were no needy persons among them because any who had money brought it to the apostles to be distributed among the needy in the Christian community.

APPLY:  

In the Western church, this passage may raise hackles if we take the Scripture seriously and apply it rigorously.

We like the sentiment of being one heart and soul.  We like the thought of proclaiming the Gospel with great power! We thrill at the thought of the grace of God powerfully at work in us all!

But selling our property and giving the money to the church to be distributed to the needy? Hold on just a second!  What about private property!?  Are we advocating some kind of communism?!

Obviously, two thousand years of Christian history, the rise of the “dismal science” of economics, the rise of the middle class, the struggles of capitalism and communism, have all influenced our contemporary reading of this passage.

To many of us, this description of the early church may even sound like a cult.  It should be pointed out that there have been Christian communities that have experimented with just this kind of model of communal ownership — monasteries, Christian communes like Koinonia Farms and others.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, many such experiments have dissolved in failure because of human greed and suspicion.

Can we have the unity of heart and soul, the power of apostolic preaching, the power of the grace of God without this sense of mutual sharing and generosity?

Obviously, we can’t recreate the conditions that prevailed in the early church, but perhaps we can at least recognize some central Biblical principles:

• God is the creator and owner of everything. We don’t own anything, we simply manage it as stewards on God’s behalf.
• We are to be faithful stewards of all we have received, which means generous sharing of all of the resources with which we are entrusted by God.
• When it comes to the common resources of the church, we are to be reminded that nobody has “turf,” that we are not to claim any possessions or property as our own, but share with all.

RESPOND: 

I don’t know how I would fare with the kind of “communalism” that seemed to prevail in the early church.  On the one hand, I idealize it and think “wouldn’t it be wonderful to share everything the way they seemed to?” But the realist in me recognizes that there is more than just a little Ananias and Sapphira in most of us — that we tend to hold back.

I do know this — when it comes to our church buildings, even Sunday School classes and other groups in the church can be terribly possessive.  When I was a pastor, I had to remind some church members from time to time that the early church would say that:

Not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.

May I practice the kind of unity of heart and soul, bold proclamation of the Gospel, and generosity that I see exemplified in the Acts 4 church!

Lord, bring unity to each church in your kingdom, and give us boldness to preach the Gospel; and may we be as generous as our spiritual forbearers have been!  Amen.

 PHOTOS:
“Sharing” by Aaron Concannon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Reading from Acts for April 11, 2021

“SHARING” by Aaron Concannon.
“All the believers were one in heart and mind….They shared everything they had.” Acts 4:32

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Acts 4:32-35
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This is a description of the early church in the very first months and years after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. It is bracketed on either side with accounts of the healings accomplished by Peter and the other apostles, persecution by the Sandhedrin, and discipline of the miscreant church members Ananias and Sapphira.

Actually, in Acts 2:42-47 there is a more detailed description that covers their activities far more completely.

Here in Acts 4:32-35 the focus is on the early stages of “communalism,” not to be confused with communism.  They seem to share all of their possessions generously and in common.  Note, though, that this claim follows a far more important condition:

The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul.

Sharing all things in common was predicated on a sense of unity in love (heart) and doctrine (mind).

The doctrinal message, called the kerygma, was simple and direct:

With great power, the apostles gave their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Great grace was on them all.

This preaching was made effective by the power of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus had promised in Acts 1:8, and completed in Acts 2.

There is even a word about the practical application of their “communalism” — there were no needy persons among them because any who had money brought it to the apostles to be distributed among the needy in the Christian community.

APPLY:  

In the Western church, this passage may raise hackles if we take the Scripture seriously and apply it rigorously.

We like the sentiment of being one heart and soul.  We like the thought of proclaiming the Gospel with great power! We thrill at the thought of the grace of God powerfully at work in us all!

But selling our property and giving the money to the church to be distributed to the needy? Hold on just a second!  What about private property!?  Are we advocating some kind of communism?!

Obviously, two thousand years of Christian history, the rise of the “dismal science” of economics, the rise of the middle class, the struggles of capitalism and communism, have all influenced our contemporary reading of this passage.

To many of us, this description of the early church may even sound like a cult.  It should be pointed out that there have been Christian communities that have experimented with just this kind of model of communal ownership — monasteries, Christian communes like Koinonia Farms and others.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, many such experiments have dissolved in failure because of human greed and suspicion.

Can we have the unity of heart and soul, the power of apostolic preaching, the power of the grace of God without  this sense of mutual sharing and generosity?

Obviously, we can’t recreate the conditions that prevailed in the early church, but perhaps we can at least recognize some central Biblical principles:

• God is the creator and owner of everything. We don’t own anything, we simply manage it as stewards on God’s behalf.
• We are to be faithful stewards of all we have received, which means generous sharing of all of the resources with which we are entrusted by God.
• When it comes to the common resources of the church, we are to be reminded that nobody has “turf,” that we are not to claim any possessions or property as our own, but share with all.

RESPOND: 

I don’t know how I would fare with the kind of “communalism” that seemed to prevail in the early church.  On the one hand, I idealize it and think “wouldn’t it be wonderful to share everything the way they seemed to?” But the realist in me recognizes that there is more than just a little Ananias and Sapphira in most of us — that we tend to hold back.

I do know this — when it comes to our church buildings, even Sunday School classes and other groups in the church can be terribly possessive.  When I was a pastor, I had to remind some church members from time to time that the early church would say that:

Not one of them claimed that anything of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.

May I practice the kind of unity of heart and soul, bold proclamation of the Gospel, and generosity that I see exemplified in the Acts 4 church!

Lord, bring unity to each church in your kingdom, and give us boldness to preach the Gospel; and may we be as generous as our spiritual forbearers have been!  Amen.

 PHOTOS:
“Sharing” by Aaron Concannon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.