Have you ever glanced down at your fuel gauge and suddenly discovered you were running on empty? One thing is certain, you did not find the experience enjoyable. If you are driving, there is only one solution: refuel.
But what about personally?
What do you do when you find yourself running on fumes? Our tendency is dig down a bit deeper and attempt to push through. That is not God’s plan. Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it in abundance.”
Sunday we are going to explore another option to toughing out and and pushing though.
The option is refuel.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Brian Krawczyk
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
April 14, 2013
Church: A Shared Life
Acts 2-4
If you’re new to Grace, just to kind of let you know, we’ve been on a journey since the beginning of the school year that we’ve been calling One Story as we’ve looked at the unfolding story of Scripture from Genesis on through Jesus. It reached climax there at Easter with the story of the resurrection. Now we enter into this phase, this chapter of the One Story, of the church and the birth of the church, this thing we’re a part of now 2,000 years later that began and it finds its roots in the story that extends all the way back to Genesis.
So we’re going to take a moment and just really reflect on, according to the Bible, what it means to be the church. I know just in a room this size there are going to be a lot of different stories, baggage, experiences, and ideas when it comes to that word church. Some of you, you come here, and because maybe Grace is different or a person who you’ve met has treated you in a different way, you are willing to set aside some stuff from the past.
Some of you carry some old wounds that maybe that word church kind of stirs up. Some of you may not have any experience. You know, this for you in the last few days or months, or just a couple of years, this idea of church is a brand new thing to you. Then some of you have very rich and beautiful memories that go back to when you were a kid of what church is and what that means.
So when the Bible talks about church, what’s it talking about? It’s interesting that in the Bible, the word church is there 115 times…115 times. But Jesus, who is the founder, the head, the seed of the church only actually uses the word three times. So Jesus, who started this whole thing, really doesn’t talk about it much, but then the New Testament goes on and begins to expound on this idea of church.
But the word there for church, when you read the word church in your Bible, is the Greek word ekklesia. It comes from the Greek word ek, which means out, and the word kaleo, which means to call. So the word there literally translated means called out. In the Greek, it’s used to really mean an assembly, a gathering of people for a set purpose.
When the early church, when the early followers of Jesus began to walk in the ways of the kingdom in this new resurrected life and they were trying to define this kingdom way of life, they grabbed ahold of this word to describe what it was they were a part of. As you look at the Bible and this word in the way that it’s used, it becomes very clear that the word church is not referring to a building. It’s not referring to a service time. It’s not referring to a hierarchy, a way of organization.
I mean, all those things are good, and there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s just not what the Bible is talking about when it talks about church. In fact, the Bible, when it talks about church, talks about people, an assembly, people gathered for a set purpose. So when we talk about the church of God, it’s people who are gathered for a set purpose according to God.
That’s the church. It’s the people who come together who are defined by Jesus and the ways of his kingdom. In fact, the Bible doesn’t really give us a clear definition. It doesn’t say the church equals this sentence, but instead…it’s really interesting…the Bible just uses a bunch of different metaphors for the church.
It’s almost like the word was so rich, it carried with it so much meaning, there was so much packed into this idea the early followers of Jesus are trying to wrap their heads around, led by the Holy Spirit, in community with each other, to try to describe what was happening, what was stirring up in them they just really came up with a series of word pictures. I mean, the Bible uses a bunch of different ones. It talks about an army, a body, a temple, a bride, a vineyard, a city.
All are used to try to wrap our heads around this idea of church, these people assembled, called out for the purposes of God. But the primary metaphor in Scripture for church, the number one, by far, used metaphor to describe this thing we call church is family. It’s family. Brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. The household of faith. From the name under God that we get our name from. Babies and children. Young men. All of these things are used to describe the church. It’s family.
So it’s interesting when we use this idea of, “So how was church?” and we begin to talk about, “Well, you know what? That projector was really kind of screwing up, and there was this random guy Brian, and I kind of got lost in this Greek word he mispronounced. David was pretty good. He did miss this key change,” we’re actually not talking about the church at all, according to the Bible. We’re talking about what we’re doing, this building and this service, which are all beautiful, good things, but they’re not the church.
It’d actually be more appropriate if somebody said, “So how was church?” and said, “Well, Susie has been sick for awhile, but we prayed for her, and God really touched her. Then Johnny has a neighbor he invited, and they’ve been engaged in this relationship with them for awhile, so we’re really praying for them. Then Mark and Stephanie are really kind of struggling a little bit right now, and so we’re going to take a meal over to them.” That’s actually the better answer when we’re asked the question, “So how was church?”
How is the family? How’s the family doing, this 5:15 gathering in this building here at 1400 Dogwood Road? How’s the family? How are we, church? How do we live together as family? What does that mean? How does the family function? Because as we look at how a family functions, we kind of get a little bit of a better idea of what it means to be the church. So we’re going to kind of dig into Acts a little bit and look at the unfolding of this church, the beginnings from which we find our place, our roots.
It’s not surprising that the New Testament writers and the New Testament followers of Jesus grabbed ahold of this idea of family to describe this kingdom movement. In fact, if we pause and kind of go back to the beginning of this One Story journey we started back in August, we really find the roots there.
I did Young Life for awhile, which is an outreach to high school and middle school students. There was this illustration we’d use. It’s a little bit elementary, but I’m going to do it anyway. I debated. Actually, I was back there with Jeremy, and I was like, “I don’t think I’m going to do it,” but I’m going to. It’s so simple; it’s kind of sad.
All right, let’s go back to Genesis 1. Before we get into Acts 1, let’s look at Genesis 1. We have, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) The word that shows up over and over again with God’s beginning is that it was good, that he created, he spoke, and it was good.
So God created, and into that creation, that good creation, that beautiful creation, that creation packed with potential seed-bearing plants, God said, “Let us, this community of heaven, create for ourselves a man and a woman in our image.” Male and female he created them. In Genesis 2, he sets them in a garden, and he gives them this mandate to go, fill, rule, subdue, take the goodness of the garden to the ends of the earth. “Take my kingdom. Reign with me. Walk with me. Know me. Follow me.”
God himself, from the beginning, the first pages of Scripture was creating for himself a family with whom he could dwell. The first pages of Scripture, God creates a family, and that family defined by intimacy, that they were naked and felt no shame. There was nothing hidden, separating them, isolating them. They were altogether one, this shared life experience with God, the Creator of the universe and the man and the woman, created in his image, in intimacy with one another and in intimacy with God. Right? It’s a very simple picture. It’s easy. We see that.
But Genesis 3, right? Everything changes. God says, “Hey, trust me. Walk with me. Know me. Take my reign, my rule, my kingdom ways to the ends of the earth. Discover the potential I’ve placed into the world, and I will be with you.” But man and woman say, “No, no. We’re going to walk in our own ways. We want to make decisions on our own. We’re going to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” So they go their own way.
When they separate themselves from this God of life, the Author and Creator of life, they get what he says they’re going to get. They get death. Into this world, all of a sudden, death comes. This is Genesis 3. Then the consequences God describes are the things that come with death.
I used to think Genesis 2, when he’s describing these two trees, the Tree of Life, which they could eat of as much as they wanted, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which they couldn’t eat of, and, “If you eat from this,” God says, “if you go your own way, if you make your own decisions that are apart from me, you decide what’s best for you apart from my ways, you’re going to get death,” I felt like it was like, “You’re going to get this punishment,” that God was punishing them with death.
But then I began to see that the reality is like if I told Eden, my daughter, “Hey babe, if you touch that hot stove, you’re going to get burned,” it doesn’t mean that if she touches the hot stove, I’m going to burn her, right? It means if she touches the hot stove, she’s going to get burned. “If you walk away from me,” God says, “you’re going to get death.” Does that make sense? Yeah, okay. Yeah, like I said, it’s elementary.
So death comes into the world, and so with death comes survival, right? So all of a sudden, God says to the man, “This beautiful world I gave you to cultivate, to discover, and explore, to mess up in and make mistakes, to find out that a hundred pounds of fertilizer is going to kill that tomato plant, and it’s no big deal; death is not an option.” But all of a sudden, death is an option, and all of a sudden, this fertile soil becomes toil, because he has to survive. That tomato plant has to bear fruit.
All of a sudden, for the woman, childbirth, this delight, this joy of reproduction is all of a sudden going to become painful, because you have to reproduce. Survival is at stake. There’s going to be pain, and that pain isn’t just going to be when you bear children, but when you carry them into the world. All of a sudden, with death came pain, suffering, toil.
We see it in interaction with this man and this woman, this family. All of a sudden now, instead of being defined by joy and peace, abundance, love and life, they’re pointing fingers and setting themselves apart from one another and isolated, with blame and shame and guilt and fear and hiding. This family that God intended is now on its own. I mean, they’re still together. I don’t know if that sounds familiar to anybody. They still live in the same house, but they just exist now. All of a sudden, it’s his fault, her fault.
Actually, this is interesting. This is just a total aside. In the role I’m in, there are a number of married couples I’ve had the privilege of talking with and praying with and premarital counseling and all that stuff. I’ve come to this conclusion. The majority of conflicts in marriage have nothing to do with the issue but have everything to do with the other person’s perception of the other person’s issue.
If you boiled it all down, actually both people are usually saying the same thing but in different ways so that the other person thinks they’re saying a different thing. Does that make sense? In other words, most conflicts are just miscommunication. Just stick that in your back pocket and pull it out later. Maybe that’s what was happening with Adam and Eve.
So into this world… This is our world now, right? Then resurrection, new life. All of a sudden, Jesus takes our sin, our guilt, the separation on himself, and so now God, he never turned. He was always pursuing, always available, always calling his people back to himself. “Return to me, faithless Israel.” All right, it’s the One Story, and always God was seeking to create for himself a family with whom he could dwell.
He calls Abram, and he says to Abram, “Hey Abram, out of your family I’m going to bless all the families of the world.” This has always been God’s heart. Then, with Jesus, all of a sudden, the gospel message that gets proclaimed in the book of Acts from the first page on through is that Jesus made a way, that he took our junk on himself and then extends to us his goodness, that he restores us.
All of a sudden, man and woman, male and female he created in his image, are able to turn back. “Repent. Turn back to me.” All of a sudden, instead of hiding, they are found. Instead of shame, there is freedom. Instead of guilt, there’s grace. Into this context, this turning back to the God who makes a way for us and is able to deal with the consequences of our sin, man and woman, households turn back to God.
It makes sense that the early church, the early followers of Jesus, looking at this and this reality they were able to step into of what God extended to them, naked and without shame, nothing hidden, because all of it is on the cross. There is no shame on my back. There’s no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
They looked at this picture, and the best they could come up with was, “It’s family. We’re family again.” They remembered these words Jesus said right before he walked out the door to his death, John 13. He says, “A new command I’m giving you. Love one another the way I have loved you. By this all people will know you’re my followers, my disciples.”
What is the church? It’s family. It’s a restored family, a renewed family. The church is the shared community that shares God’s life and expresses it in the earth as it experiences the power and presence of Jesus. The church is the shared community that shares God’s life and expresses it in the earth as it experiences the power and the presence of Jesus.
In Acts 1, Jesus says to his followers… He has already told them, “Hey, wait. Wait for this Holy Spirit.” You talked about that last week. Sure enough, there is the fulfillment of that, as Jesus makes good on this promise he’s not going to leave them as orphans but he’s going to come to them. He’s going to give them his Spirit so they’re never alone.
In fact, in John, as Jesus sets them up for this, John 14-17, he says this crazy thing that, “It’s actually better for you that I’m going away, because unless I go away I can’t send the Holy Spirit to be with you.” Then in Acts, we see the Spirit filling these people, this presence, this power of God now at work and available in their own lives.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) So today, we could dig into that, but I really just wanted to spend a few minutes just looking at, “So what does it mean to be family?” As the New Testament unfolds here in Acts, what does that mean?
Then, what does that mean for us today in 2013 here in Snellville, Georgia? So what does it mean to be family? Well, Acts 2, the Holy Spirit comes on these early followers, these men and women huddled together in this upper room. They go out into the streets all speaking different languages, and all the gathered people of the earth there to celebrate this festival there in Jerusalem hear them proclaiming the good news of God and the ways of his kingdom in their own language.
Many of them think, “Okay, they’re drunk. There’s something wrong with them.” Peter, this one who had denied Jesus at the question of a little girl alone in a courtyard, now stands up in front of this crowd.
“Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.'” (Acts 2:14-17) Then he goes on.
Down in verse 22: “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.” You saw it. You thought he was going to be King. “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” (Acts 2:22-24) Go on to verse 36.
“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” Lord and King. “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent [turn] and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.’
With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” (Acts 2:36-41)
So all of a sudden you have this massive gathering. All of a sudden this group of 30, this small number that’s gathered, huddled together in one room is now this mass of 3,000. So what do the 3,000 do? The 3,000, that large gathering proclaiming who Jesus is, does that become the primary expression? Well, it goes on.
Immediately 3,000 were added, and so what do they do? Well, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47)
What does it mean to be family? Well, first, you just simply see, members of families spend time together. That’s that first blank. They spend time together. Now what’s interesting is that Luke, as he’s recording these early movements of this gathering band of followers, is intentional about what that means.
What does it mean that this assembly, these called-out ones were spending time together? It says that daily they were in the temple courts. They were in the public spaces. They were in the large gathering setting, but also they were in homes, breaking bread, sharing meals, sharing life together, giving to each other as each other had needs.
This 3,000 wasn’t just the 3,000 in the temple and on the streets. This 3,000 also did not all fit in one home; they were all gathered in homes, sharing life. There’s kind of sometimes in the church today this debate about the big church versus the small church, the house church. There are those who are a part of the smaller church, this house-church setting, who look at the big church and they say, “No, no, no. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about the intimacy, the closeness, the shared life that can happen in a home. We don’t want any part of that larger gathering.”
Then there are some who look at the house church and say, “Okay, they’re isolated, set apart. It doesn’t have the movement, the potential, the resources of the large church to really see change happen in the world. We don’t want to be a part of that thing.” But the Bible, as serious people of the Bible that we are, looking at what does it mean to define our lives in the ways of the kingdom, we have to just take note that it’s really clear. It wasn’t either/or; it was both/and.
These early followers of Jesus lived their lives on this continuum of temple, public space, and home, intimate, close space. That they lived their lives as a shared experience where they were in this larger gathering, this celebrating, declaring who God was and what he had done, and then they came together to share life.
If we want to really be honest with the Bible about our own lives and families, we have to ask that question. Is that my experience of church, of what it means to be the people of God, the called-out ones? Am I living my life on this continuum, or is there one that is more the primary expression? Obviously, here at the 5:15, as a larger gathering of over a hundred people, the question then becomes for us…Is this our primary expression of church?
I drew this little shape. It’s these arrows, and underneath them there are two lines, and you can write on one temple and on the other home. It’s not just in Acts 2. It’s goes on. There are multiple times through Acts that it makes sure that back to back it tells you they were in the public spaces and in homes. In homes and then in the public spaces, that they were going to the temple with the large crowds, and then they were back in each others’ homes. Then they were into homes and then going to the temple.
What does it mean for us? How do we begin to share our lives in a way as family that spends time together, that spends time together on this continuum of public space and the personal space of home? For lack of a better word, not that we would call this temple… We know that Acts is clear that God says, “I don’t live in a temple built by human hands,” but just in context of the world in which they lived in, the temple was simply the large gathering area. It was the closest expression, the picture we would have of what we experience here.
There are beautiful, powerful things that happen when we all come together and celebrate what God is doing and open the Word together and worship. We just know that actually just from everyday life, right? I mean, there’s a dinner with friends over a good steak, and we swap stories and remember good times and ask deep questions.
But if I’m going to the Georgia game, I want there to be more than my six buddies with me. I want 75,000 people to be standing on their feet, yelling their brains out, right? Nobody else, huh? Yeah, there we go. Thank you. I got one. Or Georgia Tech. Or the Braves, if we want to get a little bit more present day.
But we know that experience. We know what happens in larger settings, and God delights in that. He delights when his people come together en masse and declare and sing and praise. There’s an energy, something that it does in our souls that is healthy and good, but it’s not meant to be it, because there’s also something really healthy and good that it does in our souls when we are with a smaller gathering of friends sharing stories and sharing life, praying and asking questions, looking at the Bible.
See, right now, you are interacting with me a little bit, and we’re filling in the blanks, but the reality is we’re not really studying the Scriptures together. Now the Holy Spirit is speaking into your hearts, hopefully louder than my voice, but to really dig in, to go deep… I mean, think about your own spiritual growth. It’s those times of really digging in deep. You might be able to recall a handful of sermons that really changed your life, but I bet without a second thought you could call to mind the people whom you were close with who changed your life.
So what do families do? They spend time together. There’s this interesting verse in Hebrews 13 that says God delights in the sacrifice of praise, of good works, and of sharing. That word sharing there is actually the word koinonia, fellowship. So there’s this idea there in Hebrews 13 that these sacrifices that God delights in are sacrifices of praise, sacrifices of good works, and sacrifices of sharing, fellowship.
Now the interesting thing about sacrifices is that they cost something. There’s pain, in a sense. There’s a giving up of something. It’s a sacrifice. It costs something to experience fellowship, shared life together. We know that from family. See, dysfunctional families aren’t defined like this, right? Dysfunctional families are isolated, separate, not involved in each others’ lives. They don’t spend time together. But this restored, redeemed family of God…
I spend so much time on that simply to begin asking the questions of ourselves, “If I’m really honest and begin to look at my own life, what’s my experience of church, the people of God?” Then even more so, if God is prompting in you that one of those is your primary expression more than another or something is lacking there, then the question then becomes, “Okay, God, what do you want me to do about that?”
Not the 12 things you should change about your life, but, “What’s the one thing this week, God, you would want me to do to begin to walk towards the other end of this continuum, to begin to experience this shared life in a new way, a fresh way?”
I know that with Stalls I’m sure you’ve talked about this many times, but it’s interesting. The parable Jesus gives about the person who builds their house on the rock or on the sand, I used to understand that parable this way. The one with wisdom is like the one who builds their house on the rock, and the one who doesn’t have wisdom, who’s lacking in wisdom, is the one who builds their house on sand.
But that’s actually not what Jesus says. What Jesus says is, “It’s the one who hears my words and does them is the one who builds their house on the rock, and it’s the one who hears my words, has wisdom, and doesn’t do what it says is the one who builds their house on sand.”
We got to go to the beach this past week for Spring Break with some friends. We were building a sand castle. Jolie is our 6-year-old and the most determined little girl you’ll ever meet. I mean, she has always been super intense about everything. We were building this sand castle right on the edge of where the tide was starting to come up. So we had built this big wall and had dug this big hole behind it for the kids to kind of splash around in and play in.
Jolie was there, and she was trying to put seashells on the wall to keep it from collapsing. The tide was coming up and more and more. So you know how it is. Kind of the front edge starts to fall in and fall in. She just started to be a mess. I mean, crying and trying to get more and more sand on there and working harder and harder. “The ocean is taking the castle!” I was trying to explain, “Babe, it’s a losing battle,” but you don’t tell Jolie it’s a losing battle.
Finally, Eden comes over, and she is kind of standing there, and she goes, “Hmm, it’s what Jesus said,” and walks off. I was like, “Well, thank you, Denise and the KidzLife staff, because…” But that’s it. Sometimes we try to glean more and more and more, and we’re working harder and harder to just get more in our head about what it has to say to us, and God is saying, “Do you know what? You’re building on sand. Just do one thing, just one thing, and watch your spiritual life explode.”
That was a total aside. That simply goes back to this to say as God is prompting in your heart about what it means to be the church and beginning to ask questions about, “What is my experience of sharing life?” and we begin to ask, “Okay, God, what do you want me to know about it?” then immediately, the next question, “Okay, God, what is one thing I can do this week? What’s one?”
So we move from the end of Acts 2, this spending time together, and you also see this picture that they devoted themselves to the teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. Everyone was filled with awe. The believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. They shared their life in a way that met the needs of those around them. That’s what families do, right? That blank there is… What does a family do? Well, the members of family take care of one another.
A lot of times, it’s not even an option. It’s not an option for my mom and dad to go to Kentucky as often as they can, on a regular basis, to sit with my grandmother who’s going through dementia and to ask the questions to make sure she’s being taken care of, and with her brothers, to be family for them, and to make sure her brothers have what they need as they’re taking care of her mom. If it came to that point that all of a sudden they couldn’t do it, then all of a sudden it’s not even an option to not figure out, “How do we make space in our home for her to come live with us?”
Those questions are questions of, “Should we even ask that question?” I mean, it’s just simply… No, it’s what we do. We’re family. We take care of each other. Well, in this redeemed family of God, this household of faith, this church, we take care of each other. We see there in Acts 2, and actually you want to flip forward to Acts 4, and we get that same picture again, this picture of God filling them with the Holy Spirit and then moving in power, of them proclaiming who Jesus is and what he has done for them.
In verse 31, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” And again, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.
With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” (Acts 4:31-35)
In Acts 4, we see this picture that members of a family share their resources. That’s the next blank. They share their resources. Now just to clarify, in that context, cash really wasn’t even what they were talking about. Now it does say they sold fields and they brought that money, but it was the needs that were being met.
So what did they need? What were the things as this family came together, with all their baggage and their broken backgrounds, and in the context that they found themselves of intense persecution and all the things that came with them as they began to profess Jesus… Therefore, it took the consequences of losing jobs and home and families, and they became a family for one another.
So you and I, as we sit here in 2013 and we look at what it means to be family, it’s this idea that we all bring something to the table. It’s not that somebody who has more money than somebody else has more to give. All of us have something to give.
One of the questions in Monroe we’re really wrestling with, and the same in Downtown Atlanta… It may be true for Snellville, but I just know this conversation is happening right now between Monroe and Midtown. It’s that Midtown is located… The new church campus is a block from this area formerly called “The Bluffs,” English Avenue.
Then the Monroe campus is a block from this area of Davis Street and Lacy Street. English Avenue for Atlanta and Davis Street and Lacy Street are the roughest, most impoverished areas of those respective communities. As a church, we need to ask those questions of, “How do we pour our lives, how do we share our lives as a community in this place with so many needs?”
One of the things that is really beginning to come to the surface isn’t just to begin to look at people and communities from the lens of, “What do we have that they need?” but to see the God image in all of them, to ask the question, “What do they have that we need?” What does every person who walks on this planet, who sits in this room, bring to the table, and how do we call that out in each other?
How do we become a community that rich or poor, male or female, as the Bible says slave or free in that context, Jew or Gentile, all walks of life, backgrounds, and stories, all have something we bring to the table. Histories, experiences, skills, talents, gifts… Every one of us carries something different.
In fact, this idea is fresh for me that what if the wedding feast of the Lamb Jesus talks about isn’t so much a banquet served by waiters but it’s a potluck, where we all bring what we have, and we know that this God who takes a handful of fish and a few loaves and feeds the masses, takes the little we have and it becomes a feast?
So maybe for you and for me in 2013 in Snellville, Georgia, the question is…What do I have to bring to the table? What has God given me uniquely, talents, gifts, skills, resources, stories, experiences? What do I have to offer the family? That’s what it means to be family.
Members share risk. One of our core values as a church actually is that we’re adventurers, that grace isn’t safe. That’s the story of Acts. These people who would be beaten and told, “Don’t ever speak this name Jesus again,” would go away rejoicing they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for that name and that together they would walk into lions’ mouths and be strung up on poles and crosses, that together they shared risk in a way that changed the world.
What does it mean for us? What are the scary, dark places God is calling us into? They become a little less scary and dark when we don’t walk into them by ourselves and when we know we carry a light that it says the darkness cannot, will not overcome. But when Jesus says that, he actually uses a plural you. Or in good Southern English Bible translation, “Y’all are the light of the world, the salt of the earth, a city on a hill.”
I think about all the things I’ve done in life, and I was actually trying to think about stories to tell, and then I decided that most of them would either get me in trouble or not be good examples, and so I decided to hold off on those, but any time I’ve put myself in a risky situation, it has always been with other people, both good and bad. Whether it was going into places for positive influence or just to do something dumb, like ride a mountain bike down a really steep mountain. But it’s always easier together. What does that mean for us as we carry this gospel forward?
Lastly, members share responsibilities. Acts 6 tells, “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the [Grecian; Greek] Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” (Acts 6:1) Which, if we pause right there… I love that the Bible contains stories like this, because the other thing about family is that it’s messy. We don’t have it together. We’re a bunch of people needing grace living with a bunch of people who need grace.
In the Bible, Acts, this first church, the closest followers of Jesus in terms of actually seeing his life played out in front of them, it was messy. They didn’t have it all together. There were arguments and slights and misunderstandings and two people struck dead because they lied. Hopefully, we’ve gotten past that era in church history. But it was messy.
“So the Twelve gathered all the disciples [all the followers] together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.'” (Acts 6:2) In other words, to give the food out, which is part of what they were doing, they were sharing resources, making sure that no one who walked in the doors…and I say that like in their homes, into the places that they gathered…was in need.
So they come up with this together. They say, “Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:3-4) So members share responsibilities. In a family, members share responsibilities. We all have our own roles, our own ways of serving. So members share resources, members share risk, and members share responsibilities. And this is the family of God.
For some of us, it may require some rethinking about what church is or what it means and what I bring into it as a follower of Jesus. But let’s at least be honest and have the conversations, and even if it means going home and looking at our lives and beginning to ask, “What am I experiencing as a follower of Jesus and does it reflect what the church in Acts, this story of the beginning movements of the ways of the kingdom into the world, does it look like that?” because it’s interesting.
This family of faith restored into relationship with the creator God of the universe, walking in the ways of the kingdom is that church historians and archeologists have begun to look back at that era. This is a really interesting stat. In AD 100 (actually we’ll do this as a group exercise and we’ll close with this), the close of that first century, any guesses on how many people would’ve considered themselves followers of this new way, followers of Jesus, Christians? Any guesses? In AD 100, how many Christians were in the world? Anyone? Throw something out.
How many? I’ll go ahead and tell you…25,000. That 3,000 over the next approximately 60-70 years had become 25,000. That’s significant, especially when you consider the context in which this church was beginning to walk and discover itself. Intense persecution. They didn’t have the Bible as we have it. Most of them couldn’t read, much less have a written copy of the stories passed from one generation to the next. They didn’t have buildings. They met in public spaces and in homes.
But here’s the really interesting thing. Any guesses as to how many… So 25,000 in 100. In 300, before Constantine makes it official and this era of Christendom comes onto the scene, when it becomes this official state religion and all the hierarchies and organization that came with that, before that, from AD 100 to 300, 200 years later, any guesses as to how many Christians there were, people who would say they followed in the ways of Jesus? Any guesses? A million? Five million?
The best guess that church historians and archeologists can give us is that band of 30 waiting in the upper room for the Holy Spirit, declaring who Jesus was, that becomes 3,000 and begins to meet in homes as a family together, sharing their life and their resources, what they had to give, everyone contributing, enduring intense persecution, that had grown to 25,000 by 70 years later, over the next 200 years, this yeast in dough, this mustard seed, became 20 million people, half of the Roman Empire, who would’ve said they followed in the ways of Jesus…20 million in 200 years.
Why does this matter? How did they do it? Well, Jesus said, John 13, right? “A new command I give you. Love one another. Brothers and sisters. That love, that family of faith, will shine like stars in the universe and the whole world will know you’re my followers.” This matters, because there’s a dark, hurting world that needs to see a different way of life, the true life that comes in Jesus.
So church, family, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, let’s pray. Actually, if you’ll stand with me. David and crew can come on up. This may be a little sappy and cheesy, but if you’ll take the hand of the person next to you… Cross all those scary barriers of aisles. You can do it. Let me pray, and then we’re going to share Communion together as we worship, this act of faith, of remembrance, that it is this common body and blood of Christ that flows in all of us that unites us together as a family. May we begin asking the question, “What does it mean for us today?” So let’s pray.
Father, I do. We lift your name, the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name. That at name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess, “Jesus, you are Lord.” We sit under your authority. You’re our head. You’re the head of the church. Thank you for inviting us into your family.
So I pray we would begin to learn what it means to walk in the ways of this kingdom life and we would share our lives, that you would call to mind what we bring to the table, what we need from those around us, and God, that the love we share, the love we show would be light into the world and that our love for one another would reveal we are your followers. God, show us what it means to be family, what it means to be the church. We need you. Deeply in our souls we need you. Thank you for the Spirit, amen.