Acts 2:37-47
David A. Davis
May 7, 2023
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They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Awe and wonder and joy and generosity and mercy were all on the move among them. The apostles’ themselves were drawing on the Spirit of God and their ministry among them was full of wonder and signs of God’s presence, God’s grace, God’s resurrection power. Those who believed were together. They had all things in common. Possessions, goods, and proceeds were shared. The needs of all were met. They spent a lot of time together in the temple. They broke bread from house to house to house. They ate. They worshipped. They prayed. They demonstrated the goodness of God to all people. Day by day. Day by day God added to their number those who were being saved. Day by day.
Studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, praising God, and testifying to the signs and wonders of God. And prayer. Day by day. Day by day.
Our text this morning provides a description of life in the community of faith in the hours and days after Pentecost. Pentecost when all were filled with the Holy Spirit and there was a sound like a mighty wind coming from heaven. All were speaking in tongues. An incredible gathering of devout Jews every nation under heaven. Each one heard talk of God’s deeds of power in their own language. People were amazed and perplexed. Observers thought the crowd had too much wine on the morning of Pentecost. Amazing. Perplexing. Luke’s account of the morning of Pentecost is near the top of the list in terms of the miraculous when it comes to the strange old world of the bible.
Later that day, and in the days ahead, day by day. Studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, praising God, and testifying to the signs and wonders of God. And prayer. Day by day. Day by day. The text offers a glimpse of church life of the earliest followers of Jesus.
Peter’s Pentecost sermon cuts to the heart of all who were listening. When they ask what they should do, Peter tells to “Repent and be baptized”. He promises them the gift of the Holy Spirit. “For the promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls…” The bible says that “about three thousand people were added.” Saved. Saved from the corrupt generation. In real-time the sermon had to have been as divinely inspired and directed as the breathtaking events of the mighty wind, the tongues as of fire, the great gathering from every nation. Three thousand were added to those who would become known as the Body of Christ.
And then, later that day, and in the days ahead, day by day. Studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, praising God, and testifying to the signs and wonders of God. And prayer. Day by day. Day by day.
One has to question how long it lasted. The day by day. That slice of church life. The Book of Acts goes on to tell of Peter and John healing a man lame from birth. Peter preached some more. They were tossed in prison for proclaiming that in Jesus there is resurrection from the dead. The text records another five thousand join the community. Five thousand joined the day by day of the Body of Christ. You have to wonder how long it lasted. The chapters that tell the Acts of the Apostles do not take the form of an hourly or daily diary. So how long did that idyllic glimpse of the earliest church life last?
Probably until the couple named Ananias and Sapphira decided to break the community’s covenant and hold some money back after the sale of some property. That’s in chapter five. As the story goes, both were struck dead for breaking the covenant, rocking the boat, and keeping a bit of the cash. Seems a bit harsh for a lie and a bit of money even by biblical standards. Perhaps right here is where it all ends. The story of Ananias and Sapphira marks the end of the day-by-day, day-by-day honeymoon era of church life. As Luke writes after the two were struck dead, “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.”
Studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, praising God, and testifying to the signs and wonders of God. And prayer. Day by day. Day by day.
It seems an odd thing to say when it comes to the divine bluster of Pentecost, but there is an ordinariness to the biblical account of the day-by-day. Amid signs and wonders and numbers in the thousands come studying and growing and fellowship and generosity and sharing and breaking bread and praising God and prayer. Amid all the miraculous of those days, there was also an everydayness of it. The followers of Jesus demonstrating the goodness of God in the run-of-the-mill life together. So much about that Day of Pentecost is so unimaginable and unrelatable for you and for me. And yet, so much in that day, in the days ahead, in the day-to-day is so very imaginable, so very relatable. Studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, and praising God, A recognizable slice of church life to this day. For by God’s grace, Ananias and Sapphira did not, in fact, bring an end to the day-by-day era of church life. Experiencing the extraordinary presence of God in the ordinariness of life together in the Body of Christ. I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it.
The witness of the New Testament makes clear the vulnerability, the tenuousness, and the fleeting reality of the day-to-day. Disagreements are real. Factions rise up. Conflicts fester. Life together in the community of faith is challenged by humans being humans. The peace and unity of the church is a delicate balance and has been from day one. But still, and yet, by the grace of God, there are these glimpses of the day-to-day, studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, praising God, and testifying to the signs and wonders of God. And prayer. Day by day. Day by day. How long did it last? That glimpse of the ordinary. In the resurrection power of Jesus Christ among us, it’s still here.
Craving the ordinary in the body of Christ. What transcends the strange miraculousness of it all, what connects us is our life in Christ, our life as the Body of Christ. What binds us to the communion of saints, to the great cloud of witnesses, is the Risen Christ himself; Christ and his promise. Our unity is not by the merit of our belief, or by the purity of our discipline, or by an adherence to one moral code or another, our unity is in Christ and him alone. And according to the Reformed theological tradition, according to traditional Christianity, “wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ’s institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.” (John Calvin, 16th century) The body of Christ, formed, reformed, shaped, built, and sent into the world by Word and Sacrament, carries out the very mission of God, day by day.
Some dismiss the first account of life together in the body of Christ as so strange, so otherworldly, so irrelevant, and unimaginable. Some dismiss the life in the body of Christ today as so different from their own expectation or yearning and are content to walk away. Some mistakenly label life in a faith community as “organized religion” to make it much easier than to write off or pile on. But others, crave the ordinary of life together in the Body of Christ. Praying for the eyes and ears and hearts to behold the wonders and signs of the living God present and at work in our lives, in the lives of those around us, and yes, in the world. Like the first-century followers of Jesus, they celebrate with awe the saving grace of Christ that still fills hearts and changes lives, and meets us afresh every morning. They yearn for a kingdom where the hungry are fed and those that have much, work to help those who have little and do it with generous, joy-filled hearts. Like the prophets of old they cry out for justice and righteousness and wholeness, not just in the community of faith, but in all the land. They foster a community of faith, maybe not of all like-minded and like-looking people, but a community that weeps with those who weep and rejoices with those who rejoice, a community that’s less concerned with who is in and who is out and more concerned with reflecting the goodness of God and the hospitality of Christ to all who come in and all who go out and to all who pass by, a community that will sing for you when you can’t sing, pray for you when you can’t pray, and believe for you when there is little to nothing left in you, a community who knows its collective worship life to be sacred, and its fellowship a gift of God, and the life of discipleship to be the absolute highest calling. A community that believes that our life in Christ is precious and we live it day by day to God’s glory.
Studying, learning, and growing in the faith of Jesus Christ. Fellowship, generosity, sharing, caring for those in need, demonstrating the goodness of God. Breaking bread, praising God, and testifying to the signs and wonders of God. And prayer. Day by day. Day by day. Still. Day by Day.
Come to the Table, that our craving for the ordinary in this life together might be nourished. Come to the Table, so that you and I, so that our life as the Body of Christ might be fed by Christ himself.