To All, As Any Had Need
First is the text itself, this week from the book of Acts. Followed by my commentary and suggestions for preaching. Don’t skip the extensive notes at the end because they contain a good deal of analysis and background material on the story that can also be used in the sermon.As usual, comments are welcome.
Enjoy,
Stan
Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Good Shepherd Sunday
Jubilee Justice Sunday
Acts 2:42-47
The First Converts
Jubilee Justice Sunday
The First Converts
42They devoted themselves[1] to the apostles’[2] teaching[3] and fellowship,[4] to the breaking of bread[5] and the prayers.[6]
Life among the Believers
43Awe[7] came upon everyone,[8] because many wonders[9] and signs[10] were being done by the apostles.[11] 44All who believed were together and had all things in common;[12] 45they would sell[13] their possessions and goods[14] and distribute the proceeds[15] to all, as any had need.[16] 46Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home[17] and ate their food with glad[18] and generous[19] hearts, 47praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number[20] those who were being saved.[21]
Notes and Commentary and Sermon Thoughts
F
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or many of our churches this is “Good Shepherd Sunday.” And to
keep within that theme, many people will want to highlight the reading from the
Gospel (“I am the good shepherd”) or the Psalm (“The Lord is my Shepherd”).
Both highlight important themes in our interpretation of Jesus.
However, a few years ago, the interfaith organization, Jubilee
USA, asked me to write up potential sermon notes for member for this day for
their congregations. Jubilee USA’s work is to campaign for global economic
justice issues like debt cancellation and financial transparency in the
(mainly) developing world. Once a year they used to host a “Jubilee Sunday” to
lift up that work, and one year this was the passage of the day. And, with a
few updates and revisions, here were my comments for that Sunday. If you want
to find out more about them, follow this link and sign up for their newsletter.[22] They are a great
organization and deserve your support.
Acts 2:42-47 is actually a good choice to highlight a
Jubilee/Justice message. It is a remarkable description of the early church
attempting to recreate the justice and equality of the ancient Jubilee.
Following Peter’s Pentecost sermon (which was the Acts the reading for the
previous week), the disciples receive the Holy Spirit, discover a new vision of
oneness, and immediately begin selling and sharing their possessions to benefit
“all, as any had need.” In your own sermon, it would be an easy transition from
Acts 2 to John 10: the Good Shepherd, who calls us by name, protects us from
the wolves and predators and guides us into the fellowship of God.
There is a good argument for seeing the sharing aspects of
this and later sharing stories (see 4:32-37; 6:1-7; 11:19-30; 24:17) as first
century adaptations of the ancient Jubilee and Sabbath year laws of Leviticus
and Deuteronomy. The idea of a “Jubilee” was first conceived by priestly
“legislators” as a way of addressing the growing crisis in poverty and debt and
debt slavery, among the most vulnerable in the agricultural sectors. It was
also an attempt to press the “reset button” on a social order that had become
dangerously skewed toward the wealthy.
On the surface, the law appears to have been accepted by
the ruling classes, but over the years so many riders and conditions were added
to its provisions that it became impossible to execute in practice. An
interesting experiment in your church would be to get a hold of a copy of the
regulations for implementation of the Jubilee as described by the Jewish
historian, Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, 3:12:3), and read it
aloud to your congregation and then see if anyone could repeat back to you just
exactly how the Jubilee was supposed to take place (hint: nobody can). And then
read a few paragraphs from the procedural steps required back in the nineties by
the IMF for debt relief under the “Highly Indebted Poor Country” initiative and
see if anyone could figure out a way to implement that plan (hint: possible but
daunting). They sound eerily similar, and probably were written by people of
similar mentalities and goals: to make sure that as few poor people as possible
ever get any debts cancelled.
Almost as quickly as the word “Jubilee” was created, it was
dropped from public usage (fear of reprisals?) but it emerged later in coded,
inspirational phrases for a vision of a time that was to come that would finally
create (or recreate) the world that
God had intended. It found voice in such expressions as “the year of the Lord’s
Favor” (Isaiah 61:2; Luke 4:19) and “The Kingdom/Realm of God/Heaven.” (Matt.
11:2-6; Matt. 5:3-10; Luke 4:18-21, 43; 6:20-21).
The actions of the apostles in Acts 2:42-47 stand in that
Jubilee tradition. By their deeds, they are acting, embodying, the sharing and redistribution inherent in Jubilee. They
sensed it lying just beneath the surface in Jesus’ proclamation of the “Kingdom
(or realm) of God,” and their first
organizing task as a new church was to act
it into reality. Steven Biko, the South African freedom fighter, once similarly
said that their task was not to bring
about freedom, but to be freedom.
“Our task is to prepare for the freedom that is already coming, and to live now as those who are set free.”[23] That was what was
happening in the sharing actions of the apostles. They weren’t canceling debts;
they were deciding to act now as
though the Jubilee age of cancelled debts had already arrived.
The theological link between Acts 2 and the Jubilee is the theological
conviction that no one actually owns their possessions. Theologically, in the
end all things belong to God and are intended for the human commons, what
Martin Luther King referred to as the “beloved community.” Our desire to hoard
possessions and deny our connection to the weak and powerless in our society
is, therefore, an affront to the unifying intention God. The Jubilee laws were
a visionary (perhaps unrealistic) attempt to bring the world’s unequal
existence back to the relational homeostasis it once had in God’s original
design. (Think Garden of Eden.) They address the truth that, left to our own
sinful inclinations, we will inevitably create societies of rampant poverty and
inequality and injustice. The policy advocates who were trying to pass the
first “Jubilee Act” in ancient Israel, were attempting to craft legislation
that would address that human inclination by mandating statutory years when the
world would be returned to the balance that God intended it to have.
There is a potential homiletical movement in the passage
that could begin with the Apostles being “cut to the heart” by Peter’s sermon,
then devoting themselves to the “teachings” (didache, presumably
the scriptures, salted with the words of Jesus), “fellowship” (koinōnía), “breaking bread” (early form
of the Eucharist, begun first with the stories of feeding the hungry
multitudes) and then “prayers” (proseuche). A sermon on this passage could walk through each of these
four concepts pausing on each with commentary, stories, and applications to
issues of church life, international debt, the housing crisis, banks, and
yawning inequality.
If you do preach following these four concepts in the
passage, pause for a moment on the important word most often translated as
“fellowship” (koinōnía or koinós). It is central to the passage
and is the link to the Jubilee and Sabbath passages, and also to the life of
Jesus (Luke 8:1-4; 12:33). When the apostles began to “believe,” the walls of
differentness between them fell away and they were drawn “together”[24] as one, which in turn
drove them to hold “all things in common” (koinós).
It is that sense of being together,
of being one, that made them attempt
the acts of radical sharing. It was the “beloved community,” God’s original
ordering of life, and it harkened back to the Jubilee vision of the world as
God intended.
King frequently used this phrase when he wanted to describe
the America that God wanted us to become. In 1957 he said that the purpose of
the Montgomery bus boycott was “reconciliation… redemption, the creation of the
beloved community.” And the purpose
and goal of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was “to foster and
create the ‘beloved community’ in America where brotherhood is a reality.”[25] For King, this community
bore striking similarities to the sharing stories of Acts 2 and 4.
It is important to point out for your congregation that koinōnía is a stronger word than the
contemporary (and very passive) fellowship.
It is more than the good times had at the last church supper or that nice
retreat by the Youth Fellowship. It is a much more powerful (and more dangerous) concept than that. It is a
noun of presence that implies action
in its implementation. That can mean (at least) three things:
First, human existence in the world as we know it is
estranged, polarized, and isolated. After the last presidential election that
polarization became stark and scary, but it has been growing rapidly under the
surface for many years. At the same time, we who are people of faith realize
that all of creation is the family of God. The first step in our “salvation”
(from the Latin, salvus “to heal”)
and “atonement” (meaning to be “at one”) is to regain an awareness of our lost oneness.
We are called to reclaim the oneness of creation that is heralded in the
Jubilee of the Hebrew scriptures and in the body of Christ in the Christian
scriptures.
Here you might tell stories of people who felt ill will
toward another race or class or ethnic group until they discovered a similarity
in “the other” that transcended their hatred.
In April, 2017, PBS presented a documentary about a black
jazz pianist who “accidentally” befriended a fan who was a leading KKK member.
The two had nothing in common but their love of music, but that contact over
time mended the hatred of the white man (and much of the fears of the black
man) and they both were changed.
In the spring of 2014, there was a commentary on NPR by a
young college student from India, now at Boston University. He said that when
he was young he was taught to hate Pakistanis, and he did so with great relish.
He told bad jokes about them and made up lies about them whenever it fit the occasion.
But then when he moved to the US he serendipitously wound up rooming with one.
And he discovered that they looked alike, sounded alike, liked the same foods
and liked the same music, and were close to being indistinguishable. And
suddenly he felt embarrassed to horrified at all of the things he used to
believe about his “cousins.”
We are not involved in the global struggle for economic
justice because we are wealthy and therefore
we should help the poor. That would be charity at best and naiveté at worst. We
are here because we are all cousins. When one part of humanity hurts, all of it
hurts. The eye, as Paul says, can’t say to the foot, “I have no need of you.”
Or the head to the feet (1 Cor. 12:21). Jeremiah advises the captives in
Babylonia to pray for their captors because their welfare is our welfare (Jer.
29:7). If they go down, we all go down. “In a real sense,” King once wrote, “all life is
interrelated. The agony of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our
brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one
directly affects all indirectly.”[26]
Second, the very fact of their forming an alternative
community made the first Christians suspect in the eyes of the religious and
political authorities, as did Jesus earlier with his wandering band of healed
cripples, women, misfits and sinners. The idea of modeling equality and unity
in an age of isolation and free-market individualization is a threat to the
status quo that believes in inequality and unequal power. The Death Squads
targeted the leaders of the comunidades
de basa in the eighties in El Salvador, and Vladimir Putin bans unauthorized
protests today in Russia. They do it because authoritarian regimes are always
afraid of alternative models of social existence. Clarence Jordan’s “Koinonia
Farm” in south Georgia and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s underground seminary are important
historical stories that you can add as examples.[27]
Finally, most of us don’t notice this, but the Greek word koinōnía also has the meaning of the action of sharing, not just the being of sharing. It includes both the
sharing in (i.e. Christ’s mortality,
Heb. 2:14; Christ’s body, 1 Cor. 10:16) and the sharing of (i.e. possessions, finances, cf. Luke 5:10). If you are in a caring fellowship, then you do the sharing among your members.
That’s what being a member of the fellowship of Christ means. And when you have
been captured and challenged and changed by the belief and vision that your
fellowship consists of all of human kind,
and that you are “of one heart and soul” with all of God’s creation, then you cannot help but want them all to be
nourished, well, and educated. When the apostles were captured by that vision,
they could not help but share with others “with glad and generous hearts”
(2:46). In good measure, that’s what it means to be “saved.” Saved from the
sinful nature that wants us to stay alone and not a part of the body. That’s
what it means to be “redeemed.” Redeemed from the inward, self-orientation that
makes us isolated, alienated, and competitive and combative with others in
God’s creation.
To live inside this understanding of fellowship may mean
that you want to sell some of your (usually overpriced) possessions in order to
help lift the wellbeing of people around you from their poverty, “those who had
any need” (v. 45). It might also mean that the IMF would want to sell its
overpriced gold in order to cancel the debts and lift the wellbeing of
countries “who had any need.” It also might mean that the good people of the
United States might willingly decide that they want to share a larger portion
of their income in the form of taxes so that the poor, the elderly, and
children among them, might be cared for, supported, and kept well, and so that
the dream, the vision, the commitment to the good society might be made
manifest.
The US in the last few years has enacted numerous and economically
damaging tax cuts and more recently the Trump administration proposed what it
calls “one of the biggest tax cuts in the American history.”[28] And following each of
these cuts in our federal income there are calls for cuts in spending for the
poor, education, health care and more. The logic (phrased my way, not theirs)
is that we simply can no longer afford the luxury of entitlements like Medicare
and Medicate and Social Security because our public coffers have been emptied
out by tax cuts (and trillion dollar wars). We have to be brave and make “hard
choices” on the poor, elderly and non-white, in order to continue allowing the
wealthier parts of our economy to benefit from smaller taxes. However, if we
lived our lives and governed our country according to a biblical, Jubilee vision, we would instead say
that unless all of us in all of America believe that all of us (rich and poor) are cousins, we
will never come close to embodying the realm of God as Jesus envisioned it.
You could also illustrate this same point by referencing the
writings of Paul, someone often unfairly maligned as not having the social conscience
of Jesus. In fact, he truly understood this principle because he often used the
word “fellowship” when referring to giving financial contributions to the poor
(Rom. 15:26; 2 Cor. 9:13; and 2 Cor. 8:4). In 1 Cor. 11:17-22, he criticizes
the class divisions in the church and he chastises the wealthy for coming early
to the Eucharistic meal and eating up all the food, leaving nothing for the
poor who arrive later and hungry. “Do you not have homes to eat and drink in”
he asks? “Do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who
have nothing?” In describing their coming together, he doesn’t use the word koinōnía, but he does use sunágō,
which means “hospitality” or “care.” He says their meal should (meaning it’s non-negotiable) embody sunágō (“caring togetherness”), but instead it shows schísma (“division”).
These are the very key elements of Jubilee, community, and
sharing and with sensitivity and care, they can be crafted into a powerful
sermon.
[1] “They devoted themselves” (ēsan proskarturountes). Periphrastic active
imperfect of proskartureō as in Acts
1:14 (same participle in Acts 2:46). (Robertson,
Word Pictures in the Greek New Testament)
[2] “Apostles” (ἀπόστολος apostolos) Noun
masculine. From apostéllō a delegate,
messenger, ambassador, one sent forth with orders.
[3] “Teaching” (διδαχή didachḗ) gen. didachḗs, fem. noun
from didáskō, to teach. The
act of teaching, tutoring.
[4] “Fellowship”
(Koinōniāi). From koinōnos (partner, sharer in common
interest) and this from Koinos what
is common to all. It has a variety of
meanings all relating to sharing in a spiritual fellowship bound together by
love of (and by) Jesus Christ). Co-operation in the work of the Gospel (Phi
1:5) or contribution for those in need (2Co 8:4; 2Co 9:13; Rom 15:26). The
distribution of funds in Acts 2:44. The oneness of spirit in the community of
believers or to the Lord’s Supper (as in 1Co 10:16, Phm 1:6) in the sense of
communion or to the fellowship in the common meals or agapae (love-feasts).
[5] “Breaking of bread” (tēi
klasei tou artou). From klasis
for “breaking.” Used only by Luke in the N.T. (Luke 24:35; Acts 2:42), though
the verb klaō occurs elsewhere as in
Acts 2:46. The question for interpretation is whether, as used here, does it
refer to an ordinary meal, as in Luke 24:35, or to the Lord’s Supper, as in
Luke 22:19. The same verb can be used for both. Outside of Acts it is only used
of the Eucharistic meal or of Jesus’ feeding stories, so it is highly likely that
Luke here means it in the same sense. A.T. Robertson believes it could refer to
both: “It is generally supposed that the early disciples attached so much
significance to the breaking of bread at the ordinary meals…that they followed
the meal with the Lord’s Supper at first, a combination called agapai or love-feasts” (Word Pictures in the New Testament).
[6] “The prayers”
(προσευχαῖς tais proseuchais).
“Services where they prayed as in Acts 1:14, in the temple (Acts 3:1), in their
homes (Acts 4:23). (Robertson)
[7] “Awe” (φόβος phobos) Sometimes terror
or fear (as in kjv) but better as here, awe, which implies being fearful, but also heavily tainted with
reverence, respect and honor. The net
has “reverential awe.” See also in
Mark 4:41; Luke 7:16; 1Peter 1:17.
[8] “Everyone” (ψυχη φοβος ). Lit. “every soul” (ψυχή psuché), fem. noun from psúchō.
To breathe, blow. “The vital force
which animates the body and shows itself in breathing” (Thayer’s).
[9] “Wonders” (τέρασ teras) Noun neuter. Miracle,
omen. Often used with sign, as
here.
[10] “Signs”
[11] “Were being done by the apostles” (διὰ τῶν ἀποστόλων ἐγίνετο). Some mss. add “by the apostles in Jerusalem
[12] “Had all things in common”( εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινά) “they
shared all their belongings with one another.” “In common” (κοινα, from κοινός, adjective, plural accusative,
neuter gender). “Available to all.” Sometimes translated “unclean” or “unholy,”
similar to the British derogatory expression, a commoner, or “how common.” The idiom, ἔχω κοινός, means literally
“to have in common” to share with one
another equitably—“to share, to share with one another.”
“The mutuality of sharing may
be expressed in some languages as ‘each person shared with all of the rest’ or
‘each person gave to the others and received from the others.’ (Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament : Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd edition.
(New York: United Bible Societies, 1989), 1:568.
[13] “Sell” (epipraskon). Imperfect active, a habit or custom from time to time.
Old and common verb, pipraskō. (Robertson)
“[T]he imperfect tense denotes an on-going, repeated activity, not a
once-for-all act. Thus v. 45 should correctly read, ‘they were time and again
selling their goods and distributing them to all, as any had need.” (Walter Pilgrim,
Good News to the Poor: Wealth and Poverty
in Luke-Acts (Minneapolis : Augsburg
[14] “Possessions and goods” (κτήματα καί τάσ ύπάρξεισ) Vincent
makes a distinction between “possessions”
(κτήματα) as landed property and
“goods” (ύπάρξεις) as possessions in
general; movables. The meaning, then, would probably be that they sold the
former and divided the proceeds, while they distributed
the latter. The net Bible notes
agree with that possibility, but add, “it may also be that the two terms are used together
for emphasis, simply indicating that all kinds of possessions were being sold.
However, if the first term is more specifically a reference to real estate, it
foreshadows the incident with Ananias and
Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11.
[15] “Proceeds” nrsv: Gk
them. The word is αύτά, auta. “The referent (the proceeds of the
sales) has been specified in the translation for clarity.” (net Bible note)
[16] “As any had need” (kathoti
an tis chreian eichen).
“Regular Greek idiom for comparative clause with an and imperfect indicative corresponding precisely with the three
preceding imperfects.” (Robertson)
[17] “At home” (kat’ oïkon) nrsv: Or from
house to house. Κατά , kata is used as a distributive, so the implication is that the services traveled.
[18] “The term glad (Grk
“gladness”) often refers to joy brought about by God’s saving acts (Luke
1:14; Luke 1:44 also the related verb in Acts 1:47; Acts 10:21).” (net Bible)
[19] “Generous” nrsv: Or sincere. Noun,
Fem. (άφελότης
aphelotēs) simplicity, singleness
[20] “To their number” The kjv here
has “to the church.”
[21] “Those who were being
saved.” (tous sōzomenous). Present passive participle. Probably for
repetition like the imperfect prosetithei.
Better translate it “those saved from time to time.” It was a continuous
revival, day by day.
Sōzō like sōtēria is used for
“save” in three senses (beginning, process, conclusion), but here repetition is
clearly the point of the present tense. (Robertson)
[23] Quoted by Dan
L. Flanagan in “The Dark Side of Christmas,” Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. XIX, No. 1, Dec. 2007, p. 42. Emphasis
added.
[24] For “together”
the parallel story in Acts 4:31 uses the word sunágō, which has the sense of hospitality,
outreach, care.
[25] “Martin Luther
King’s Vision of the Beloved Community,” by Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp,
Jr., The Christian Century (April 3,
1974), pp. 361-363.
[26] Where Do We
Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Harper & Row, 1967)’ p. 181
[27] For good
resources, see Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Life Together (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1954) and Dallas Lee, The
Cotton Patch Evidence: The Story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm
Experiment, 1942-1970 (Americas Georgia: Koinonia Partners, 1971).
[28] David Jackson and Herb
Jackson, “Trump team rolls out 'really big' tax cut package, but Congress is
wary,” USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/26/donald-trump-tax-plan-steve-mnuchin/100923518/.
Retrieved, April 26, 2017.
