April 30,
2000
KINGDOM AND
KIN-DOM (Acts 4:32-35)
In the first twelve chapters of
Acts, Luke gives us at two places insights as to what was
going on in the early church following the news that
Jesus had risen from the grave.
At Acts 2:42-47 Luke tells us
that in their daily life together, believers distributed
their possessions as anyone among them needed something,
they worshipped in the temple in Jerusalem, and they ate
a celebratory common meal by households. And they grew in
numbers.
The second insight is our text
of today, Acts 4:32-35, and it informs us that people
sold their land and homes and gave the money to the new
community to be distributed by need. Let us hear
this:
NOW THE WHOLE GROUP OF
THOSE WHO BELIEVED WERE OF ONE HEART AND SOUL, AND NO ONE
CLAIMED PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF ANY POSSESSIONS, BUT
EVERYTHING THEY OWNED WAS HELD IN COMMON. WITH GREAT
POWER THE APOSTLES GAVE THEIR TESTIMONY TO THE
RESURRECTION OF THE LORD JESUS, AND GREAT GRACE WAS UPON
THEM ALL. THERE WAS NOT A NEEDY PERSON AMONG THEM, FOR AS
MANY AS OWNED LANDS OR HOUSES SOLD THEM AND BROUGHT THE
PROCEEDS OF WHAT WAS SOLD. THEY LAID IT AT THE APOSTLES'
FEET, AND IT WAS DISTRIBUTED TO EACH AS ANY HAD NEED.
(Acts 4:32&emdash;35)
This sounds very much like
primitive Christian communism. It is not practiced
today, nor even admired as an ideal.
This entire text suggesting
that the normal Christian life involves selling your
possessions and mixing the proceeds into a common fund to
support each person according to need, is so far from
modern experience and values as to seem
fantastic.
Many commentators believe, in
fact, that Christian communism was never practiced and
they explain away this text about life in the early
church in several ways. Some say that Luke was not
historically accurate because he was idealizing early
Christian sharing. A phrase such as "there was not a
needy person among them" is viewed as an exaggeration
suggesting that Luke is only imagining an ideal primitive
church.
Another explaining away is that
Luke is probably historically accurate but that Christian
communism prevailed only so long as believers were
expecting the imminent return of Jesus. With such an
expectation private ownership and the exploitation of
possessions would seem not important since Jesus' return
to earth was going to end history anyway.
But when it became clear that
Jesus was not going to come back as they had expected,
the early Christians promptly abandoned what was
impractical anyway.
Yet a third explanation put
forth by the early Protestant reformers maintains that
Luke was speaking spiritually and that a true sharing of
material possessions was always impractical but what
Luke was really getting at was that the early church was
"of one heart and soul" and that is a goal to which every
church in every age can strive.
Whatever, we know that early
Christian communism rather soon collapsed. And while
there have been innumerable attempts throughout history
to revive or reapply it to other circumstances, they have
failed.
Today, there are a few thousand
Hutterite Christians living in the wilds of Canada and
some Mennonite and Brethren living in the U.S. who farm
in common, share the produce in common, and reject
possessions like telephones, cars, and any electrical
appliances. In these Christian communities important
decisions like whom the young shall marry and what
improvements are to made from the common treasury are,
indeed, laid at the feet of the apostles, the elders of
the kinship family. .
There is, of course, the more
prevalent and enduring example of monastic orders with
brothers and sisters who commit to individual lives of
poverty (not to mention sexual abstinence.) for the
common good of the order and its work. But modern men
and women are infrequently willing to undertake such
vows.
And secular communism, the great
experiment of the last century, has largely collapsed.
And other idealistic and less perverse attempts at
communal sharing, like the Kibbutzim in Israel, once so
vigorous and exciting, are nearly finished.
The fact is that any kind of
presumptive sharing and cooperative labor toward a common
goal flies in the face of every value regarding
individualism and freedom of movement and decision, and
of capitalistic competition and achievement, which we
have evolved in the last 300 years since the
Enlightenment.
**********
And yet I suggest that we should
not brush aside this text. It is in the scriptures and it
seems to me that Luke means business. He follows today's
text with two dramatic examples of just how seriously the
early church took its obligation to share all things in
common. One of the early believers, named Barnabas,
owned a piece of land which he sold and gave the money
from its sale to the church leaders. About the same time
a couple, Ananias and Sapphira, also sold a piece of
property and pretended to give all the proceeds to the
church family. But they held back a portion of that and
for their deviousness both were struck dead.
So it seems that Luke meant
business.
Our problem is that we lack any
standards or norms by which to understand and accept this
text because it comes from a society totally different
from our own. We hear the text as middle class and upper
income people; we read it from the perspective of
Enlightenment values. Therefore, it seems plainly wrong
and crazy that we should be expected to abandon our
possessions and individuality for some kind of bizarre
common sharing.
And we can't believe that early
Christians did it either.
To understand the text and find
any relevance to our own situation we need to use some
historical imagination about what was happening in first
century Jewish society.
To begin with, it was not a
society with any middle class whatever. Ninety per cent
of the people were poor and maybe l0% were Hellenized
Jews with wealth. Very, very few of the latter became
Christians. The poor of Jesus' society were not like the
desperately poor of India and China and Ethiopia where
millions keel over dead of drought, starvation, and
neglect. It took the modern world and its inbalances to
produce a horror like Ethiopia.
The early Christians were poor
but they survived because of their family kinship
support system. Almost no poor lived exclusively in
nuclear families of only one, two, three or four persons.
Calamity hits such small family groups with regularity
but when it came, those worst afflicted knew they could
turn to members of their kinship network for some extra
grain or fish. And they in turn when other members were
sorely afflicted would expect to come forth with a little
extra to share.
First century Jews, and to some
extent poor gentiles, hearing Acts 4 would have heard it
as not unusual. They were already sharing in varying
degrees their meagre possessions and annual incomes in
order to sustain themselves and their kinship group. Life
was so simple and possessions so few that what Luke
reports of the early church in Jerusalem, and presumably
in the Galilee, would not have been radical. The poor
were already, by necessity and long tradition, sharing
and to some degree sustained by communal
systems.
What would have surprised the
poor people was who was sharing. The idea that complete
strangers were to share was totally radical. Until the
Christian movement you shared only with your kin, persons
with whom you were related by blood.
But in Jerusalem, as the church
began to grow, strangers flooded into the city from the
countryside. Being uprooted they arrived on the threshold
of the early church with little food and meagre
possessions. AS they began to develop their faith, they
had to be provided for. The only way to achieve this was
for everyone to share into a common treasury and trust
the church elders to distribute what little there was on
the basis of need. It was need and a shared faith,
rather than need and blood kinship, which shaped the
first Christian economy.
And the early experiment was not
doomed to immediate failure because there was some
pragmatism attending early Christian pooling of limited
human and material resources. Thh growing number of
Christians who wanted to associate with one another
brought their skills into the new Christian family: some
were fishermen, some weavers, some carpenters, some
bakers. As in the Jewish kibbutz movement of l800 years
later, these separate skills and talents could constitute
a significant pool of labor able to generate some income,
especially in a largely barter economy, and to take care
of the practical needs of the Christian kinship. The
building of the Kingdom of God began with a kin-dom.
The early church had to organize
itself so that all believers were taken care of. This
assumed an attitude of hospitality with a welcome to the
growing newcomers and then communal sharing, assignment
of duties, and willingness to respect the authority of
the leaders. All of this was achieved by the
readjustment of moving from one community defined by
blood ties where good were already largely pooled in
common to a new kin group where everyone was related by
allegiance to Jesus rather than by biological
ties.
What would have astounded first
century observers of this Christian movement was that
the trust given to siblings and cousins in the extended
family kinship circles could be transfered to a
collection of strangers or acquaintances from different
places, occupations, and somewhat differing strata of
society.
***********
As life was so different 2000
years ago, of what possible use is such a text for us
today? Capitalism has replaced societies dependent on
slaves or serfs. Communism, at least Soviet style, has
collapsed. Are the theologians who say that such radical
sharing of possessions is impractical right?
Well, let me suggest some ways
we can and do interact with this strange text.
First, communal sharing is not
dead in the modern church. Right after church we are all
invited to descend to the Executive Club on the Third
Floor and partake in a common meal. Everyone is invited.
You are invited whether or not you brought food to share
or not. Now some people at every potluck give more than
others; some take more than others. Few worry about it
because it is Christian communism at a simple and
hospitable level.
A more universal application of
Christian sharing is the annual church budget. While I
have not been informed that any among you sold any
possessions in order to make your annual pledge, the
church has to assume that people are giving proportional
to their means to share.
And then there are some further,
even more universal applications of this text. Early
Christian communism was possible in part because
possessions, to start were relatively few. Early
Christians did not have to think about buying a large
screen TV for the family this week, and then and then
turning around and buying individual TVs for every child
in the family. They did not have to assess nearly
infinite models of computers and determine where they are
to be placed in many rooms; and then go through the
harrowing anxieties of the technical breakdowns and
fixing up. They did not spend up to an hour sorting
through the dross of 50 daily e mails to find a few
nuggets of true communication.
In short, they did not have to
contend with the excessive variety, the time consuming
petty decisions, the clutter and the obsessions which
attend us who are children of the capitalist and consumer
society. This makes early Christians not only different
from us; but radically different. Were they also possibly
happier?
Many traditions, and not just
Christian teachings, keep reminding us fixated
materialists that there is greater happiness in
simplicity than in multiplicity; that a special kind of
joy comes in giving it away and a special anxiety seizes
us in grasping to it. There is a practicality and relief
which arises when instead of buying one more closet
organizer to fit in more shoes and ties and blouses, we
simply don't buy any more clothes and stop organizing
closet space which has a limited elasticity
anyway.
There is a new joy which comes
when we look up from our crowded diaries and take time to
visit actually with a friend, or even to read the entire
book of Acts. Consumer experience is not the same as
first hand experience.
A final suggestion that comes
from this brief text from Acts which has real and
challenging application is its teaching that Christians
can identify with total strangers, with people who are
very different from us. We may embrace others who are
different from us politically, ethically, socially, even
religiously.
Do you know your neighbors well
enough to ask a ride to work in a personal emergency, or
to take the rare opportunity to offer them a ride when
you know busses aren't running and taxis are
scarce?
The other morning I was waiting
for the Central Plaza shuttle at Star Ferry. . The 8:20
shuttle didn't come. The line kept growing. The 8:40
shuttle didn't arrive either. Now there were about 20
persons growing disappointed. Then a thoughtful woman
walked along the queue informing us that the shuttle bus
was broken down.
With typical Hong Kong speed all
twenty of us swung immediately to the nearby taxi stand.
Did anyone take time to ask to share a taxi given that
all 20 were going to the same destination?. Of course,
not. We are individualists and consumers, so 20 different
taxis were claimed. And that extended across the globe is
crazy!
It's rare but I do know that
someone one or two among you actually invite a stranger
to share lunch after worship. Sometimes one among you
actually buy lunch for a visitor at our worship. But it's
rare.
My impression is that most of us
are still locked in the traditional kinship preferring to
spend meal time with our own blood, or our friends like
us.
We confess the kin-dom of the
family of Jesus Christ but hesitate to invest ourselves
in its fellowship.
Who among us has in the last
year has stepped out of the familiar comfort zone to
visit Christian or non-Christian prisoners; to visit a
homeless shelter, to go to an orphanage. Last Saturday
some of us visited the Home of Loving Faithfulness and I
presented a check from us of HK$60,000 to the staff. But
it's an exception, isn't it!
Our text in Acts 4 reminds us of
how truly radical the gospel of Jesus Christ is. We are
called to displace the primary loyalty to our own blood
and kind of people because we as believers are all
equally accepted by God's grace and not because of where
we studied, how much we earn, how savvy we are, or how
smartly we are turned out. Because of our commitment to
Jesus, we are called into the same kin-group and through
sharing our lives and possessions with one another to
build the Kingdom. Acts 4 is still radical and still
relevant. The Kingdom is found in our kin-dom.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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