“Of One Heart and Soul”; Acts 4:32-35; April 12, 2015, FPC Holt

“Of One Heart and Soul”
Acts 4:32-35
April 12, 2015, First Presbyterian Church of Holt

Listen to audio here.

Do you ever read scripture and think: “Really?!” “Really?!” was my first reaction when I read this text. I thought, whoever wrote this first line of this passage must be the type of guy who writes greeting cards and inspirational posters filled with empty platitudes. No way could any group unequivocally say that they are of “one heart and soul.” Even one of the commentaries I read this week said, “there is little doubt that our author paints a rather idyllic scene.”[1] Indeed!

But then my second thought was jealousy. I’d love to live in a society that was that incredibly united and without any needs. A culture where “great grace [is] upon [us] all.” Could it be, might it be possible?

This reminds me of a sermon on the feeding of the 5,000 that I heard by Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastor of “House for All Sinners and Saints,” a Lutheran church in Denver, CO. She speaks about the possibilities of what happened at that tremendous miracle, and the disciples’ perceived inadequacies.

She writes, “I started to wonder what was going on with [the disciples] that they would see the scene in front of them as they did. I wondered why they wanted the crowds to go away and fend for themselves and why, when Jesus asked what they had, they said “nothing. Nothing but 5 loaves and a couple fish.”

And with that offering, that meager offering, which they thought was “nothing,” a whole crowd was fed.

She continues saying, “the disciples must have learned… that there was more available to them than what they themselves were bringing to the table…Maybe [Jesus] didn’t want the disciples to send the people away because Jesus knew that those people had what the disciples lacked. Maybe the disciples, like us, need to be reminded that even when we do not have what is needed, what is needed is still at hand…it’s just [going to] come from God or others, because in God’s economy, that’s how it works.”

And then she preached this line that buzzes around in my head, and I plan to cross-stitch for my office wall one of these days:

“What you have is enough because it’s never all that there is.”[2]

For me that has been a tremendously profound thought.

It also takes a lot of pressure off, refocusing what my life and ministry are about, not about being all things for all people, but pointing to our God who is, and our community, which can manifest God’s goodness for each of us.

By recognizing that we on our own are not enough, and allowing God to work through the places where we are lacking, we open ourselves to receiving grace. When we try to do it all on our own, we are operating as functional atheists, ones who see no need for God’s presence and providence in our lives. When we acknowledge that we are not self-sufficient, but still are willing to bring who we are and what we have, offering our lives as contributions to the work of God’s kingdom, all together we have more than enough.

It is important to notice that our scripture says that the believers were all of one heart and soul… not that they were all of one mind or body. The believers in Acts experienced abundance not because they were all the same in their thoughts, physical appearance, and background, but because they were different. Through their individual experiences and gifts, they were able to contribute to a more complete community. Each bringing who they are and what they have, none of them experienced need.

I would argue that one of the joys I’ve found in Christian community is that the less we have in common in body and mind, the more closely we rely on our common faith in Christ to be what unites us. Some of my most profound moments in ministry have been leading worship among a room of people with dementia, exploring what it is to be God’s beloved child with our X-team kids, or joining together with strangers from around the country to serve God in mission at workcamps during my high school summers. Those experiences are impactful because of our commonality found in Christ.

If we decide to spend all of our time together because we’re all the same age, ethnicity, or gender, or because we like that same movies, music, and sports teams, our unification is not one of any depth or substance. But if we come together for worship and service to our God, because of our love of God and our belief in our resurrected Christ, we are indeed of one heart and soul, and privy to God’s abundance in our community and lives.

“What you have is enough because it is never all there is.”

The uniqueness of that community in Acts, is that they understood that. They understood that on their own there was still need; by their own merits there was still sin. The reason they were united wasn’t some common pact to live in harmony or because they liked all the same things. It was because they knew and believed utterly that Jesus was lived and died so that they may have new life, and that they might know a way forward into God’s grace.

In our passage today we read, “with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” That great grace was not upon them because of their own merits, but because of the deference that showed to God, the way that they used their lives to point to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what united them and gave them purpose as they were forming the new church follow Christ’s death and resurrection.

Twentieth century theologian, Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote, “Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were to be added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity. I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ. The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, for eternity.”[3]

Might our community be “of one heart and soul”? As idyllic as it sounds, and as incredible as it may be to believe, this unity is possibly through our common belief in our resurrected Christ. May it be so. Amen.

[1] David L. and Taylor, Barbara Brown Bartlett, Feasting On the Word: Year B, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Feasting On the Word: Year b Volume) Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 382.

[2] Nadia Bolz-Weber “Sermon On Lembas Bread, the Feeding of the 5,000 and Why I Hated Pastoral Care Classes,” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/, August 6, 2014, accessed April 9, 2015, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2014/08/sermon-on-lembas-bread-the-feeding-of-the-5000-and-why-i-hated-pastoral-care-classes/.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. John W. Doberstein (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, ©1954).

“Abundance” Ephesians 3:14-21 and John 6:1-15; July 29, 2012

“Abundance”
Ephesians 3:14-21 and John 6:1-15
July 29, 2012

My Grandpa Charlie was an excellent cook. Our family’s weekly dinners at my grandparents house were not to be missed, as he approached the creation of each meal with gusto. I remember once, right about the time that the internet was becoming popular, that he spent hours researching horseradish to transform a giant horseradish root into the perfect sauerkraut. Still, I think his real gift came not simply in his ability to make a tasty meal, but in his ability to take any leftovers and completely reinvent them into an equally delicious and creative meal. As a child born in the aftermath of the Great Depression, he was instilled with the values of thrift and conservation. If there was food, there was a meal. And if people were hungry, they weren’t anymore after a meal with him.

So, when our gospel reading tells us that five barley loaves and two fish fed thousands, I picture my grandfather rooting around the refrigerator and cooking up a feast.

Our gospel passage tells us that as Jesus had been traveling with his disciples teaching, preaching, and performing miracles a large crowd had formed around him.  Jesus asks Philip, “Where are we to buy food for all these people?” Then in the text we get a bit of a “tell.” Our passage says, “[Jesus] said this to test [Philip], for he himself knew what he was going to do.”

Jesus knew what he was going to do, but as he was in the business of training his disciples, he wanted to let them think through it first. I can imagine Jesus’ disciples a bit exasperated. They were the original hearers, the ones personally selected to be part of Jesus’ entourage, but in joining Jesus they had given up many of their worldly possessions and powers. They weren’t joining Jesus so that they could be benefactors or underwriters of Jesus’ mission. They joined Him because they were interested in seeing what would happen next with this rabble-rousing religious man. They wanted to be a part of this church that was not tied to rules or the law. And now, Jesus wanted them to come up with some sort of catering plan for thousands of people?

Philip answers, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”

Andrew assesses the situation and he says, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.” Immediately he dismisses the thought say, “But what are they among so many people?”

Andrew was looking pragmatically at the facts. If we have five thousand people and five loaves, each loaf divided into a thousand parts, surely would just be one crumb-filled mess.

I’ve always wanted to have a good picture of what these loaves and fish looked like. Were the loaves small dinner rolls? Or were they giant loaves, the sort to hold a sub sandwich? And the fish, were they something small the boy had caught on his line? Or were they something large he had purchased at the market? Like Andrew, I’d like to think that the concrete facts of the case make a difference.

“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish,” Andrew says.

“Make the people sit down,” replies the Lord. The meal is blessed, served, then eaten, and all are satisfied.

Note that the scripture does not say, every one had a snack or everyone made sure others had what they wanted before they ate. In John 6: 11 it says that everyone ate “as much as they wanted.” And when they were done eating, there was still plenty left over. Verses 12 and 13 tell us, “when they were satisfied, [Jesus] told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ 13So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.

They filled twelve baskets. There was not just enough, there was abundance!

The theme of abundance is echoed throughout the Gospel of John. In the 16^th verse of the first chapter we are introduced to Jesus as the Word from whose fullness we have all received grace upon grace. The providence of God in creation and God in incarnation are tied together in one timeless blessing of abundance.

Jesus’ ministry is begun when he turns water into wine. In a noticeable act of providence, this is not just any wine, but high quality wine produced from jars of water filled to the very top. Jesus provided abundantly for this wedding celebration.

As Jesus moves in his ministry to Samaria he meets a woman at the community well in the heat of the day. As they both come to the well seeking water, Jesus tells the woman in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

In the passage we have read today, the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we hear a familiar narrative. While the four gospels have many similarities, this narrative is the only miracle story that is told in all four gospels. However, continuing the theme of abundance, the Gospel of John is the only one to add the detail of situating this story in the context of Passover. This context would not be lost on those followers with Jewish lineage, as Passover was the time commemorating when God spared the lives of the first born sons of the people of Israel and provided safe passage out of Egypt.  All through their journey to the Promised Land God provided for them with manna. God provided for them abundantly.

Even at the end of the Gospel of John the author seems overwhelmed by the abundance of what is left unsaid by the innumerable actions of Jesus’ ministry. The last verse of the Gospel of John reads, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

These stories of abundance are not simply something relegated to the history of our faith. As God continues to move in the world, we are made agents of that abundance. In Ephesians 3:18-21 we read Paul’s blessing to the people of Ephesus: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever.”

So I have to ask, when was the last time you felt, “filled with the fullness of God,” and “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine?”

More often than not, our faith is more likely to reflect the pragmatism of Philip and Andrew, than the promise of abundance of Jesus Christ. Sitting here, on the tail end of a recession, it can be hard to imagine we would have anything to give. We are all too aware of the scarcity in our lives. We are afraid of our insufficiency. We are too young, too old, too frail, too busy. We are those loaves, divided over a thousand times, surrounded by crumbs.

Catholic nun and spiritual author, Marcrina Wiederkehr writes of these crumbs in her book, “A Tree Full of Angels.” She writes:

“We stand in the midst of nourishment and we starve. We dwell in the land of plenty, yet we persist in going hungry… we have the capacity to be filled with the utter fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19). In the light of such possibility, what happens? Why do we drag our hearts? … Why do we straddle the issues? … The reason we live life so dimly and with such divided hearts is that we have never really learned how to be present with quality to God, to self, to others, to experiences and events, to all created things… We are too busy to be present, too blind to see the nourishment and salvation in the crumbs of life, the experiences of each moment.”[1]

There is a provision waiting for us in these crumbs. For when our crumbs are gathered together, there is an abundance. We are “filled with the fullness of God,” and “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” Why do we wait to serve till it is convenient? Why do we wait to help till it is asked of us?

Artist and author, Jan Richardson wrote a poem inspired by our Gospel narrative, called “Blessing the Fragments”:

Cup your hands together,
and you will see the shape
this blessing wants to take.
Basket, bowl, vessel:
it cannot help but
hold itself open
to welcome
what comes.

This blessing
knows the secret
of the fragments
that find their way
into its keeping,
the wholeness
that may hide
in what has been
left behind,
the persistence of plenty
where there seemed
only lack.

Look into the hollows
of your hands
and ask
what wants to be
gathered there,
what abundance waits
among the scraps
that come to you,
what feast
will offer itself
from the fragments
that remain.

We are to live as those cupped hands, extending ourselves outwards to welcome the feast that is present in the crumbs.

There are some who know how to serve from the crumbs, like my Grandfather’s meals made from left-overs. It is a gift, to be able to see the abundance in the scraps.

I have been blessed to be invited to tables where I know that I am sharing in this sort of abundance. Tea and cookies from an older widow with a fixed income sustain and nourish in a way the greatest feast cannot. Lemonade provided by a woman with physical limitations receiving help with home repairs quenches thirst like the most gourmet beverages cannot.

There is a short but important story about this in scripture. This passage comes to us from Luke 21:1:

“Jesus looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’”

God’s abundance in our lives is shared not through our ability to give much, but our willingness to give all that we can.

That boy in the crowd had five barley loaves and two fish. We are not told how many meals he was hoping to get from that bread and those fish. We are not told whether the boy was giving out of his own personal abundance or out of scarcity of a life of poverty. We are simply told that he had five loaves and two fish and was willing to offer them to others. Andrew at first dismissed the idea and Philip thought feeding five thousand from such meager resources was an impossibility. But still that boy gave what he had and it was multiplied.

I pray that we would recognize the ways that God has filled our lives with fullness, knowing that God desires to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. And that we may give to others what we can, even when it seems like mere crumbs.

Amen.

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[1] A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary, Chapter 3