Acts 2: 42-47
I once had a dream to be part of a movement transforming the world.
Like all dreams its origins were hazy, hard to recall after waking up and yet it was powerful.
The dream was a utopia, a hope for the best possible world.
Let me ask you a question:
have you a picture of the best possible world ……?
Would any one like to share something about that dream?
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Luke shares his dream of the best possible church in Acts 2. Did a congregation ever exist like this? Probably not. In a few words he crafted a picture of being a good news church. A commentator said this picture is like a woodcut, in which all the important features are emphasised in relief.
But a wag said that if you do find the perfect church, and join then it will probably be spoiled!
Do you recall last week I contrasted fast church and slow church?
This perfect fast church comes into being following Peter’s preaching.
Three thousand in one day!!!
Then they don’t quibble about committment: it was a learning community, a fellowship community, a sacramental community, and a prayerful community. There was no grand plan, just a response to an invitation to join the new humanity in Christ where all the ancient boundaries of gender, hierarchy, religion, culture and race were pulled down in the name of Christ.
When I became a Christian I was so excited – it felt as if I had been totally transformed, and I expected to look in the mirror and see a different person.
Well, it didn’t happen that way .. but the dream lingers.
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I meet with a small group of ministers every month. We spend time sharing our experiences, good and bad, we break bread with one another and discuss our reading.
This year we have been reading “Spiritual Defiance: Building a beloved community of resistance”. It’s been a really stimulating, stirring and for each of us sparked the memory of that dream – what if ….?
Robin Meyers ( the author), pastor of a UCC in southern America begins by declaring “The church is dead… Long live the church!” He then unpacks that ancient announcement about the passing of royalty as he calls his audience to what means to be a christian community of resistance, rather than accommodation, a community of learning, hospitality, holy communion and prayer.
What it might mean to be a people who listen for the radical, sometimes dangerous call of Jesus, the good shepherd.
Art archaeologists have discovered many wall paintings of early Christians. It is not uncommon to see Jesus depicted with a sheep carried over his shoulders, or near to his feet. It is a much more common symbol than the cross which began being dominant in the second millennium.
It is an image which doesn’t resonate personally because it is passive, although I totally get the picture of the shepherd calling his sheep, into the safety of the pen, and then out once the day has broken.
These days the old sheep pen of the church has collapsed, and sheep are everywhere – and many don’t hear the voice of Jesus, certainly not through the presence of many churches.
Robin shouts .. “even though the old ways of being church are dead of dying, the spirit of the Beloved Community never dies… Perhaps we are the ones who have forgotten where we came from, where we are going and to whom we belong?”
He asks ˆWhere are the holy fools for God today? Who stands out in the crowd as a troublemaker for justice? Where can we find the spiritual contrarian, unplugged and unmoved by the hysteria of celebrity culture? Where do we find real wisdom in the age of the blog?
Acts 2 little scenario of a dream church contains seeds of resurrection, in which a church grows from nothing – and sets the world on fire.
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Is this just a young person’s dream? No, I don’t thinks so. I am no longer a young person – I’m about to become a grandad! My dentist and optician both told me this week I’m ageing – who me?
In that very same chapter of Acts (ch 2) the preaching Peter declared to all those bothering to listen the radical words of the prophet Joel.
I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men shall see visions and your old men dream dreams.
I will pour out my Spirit upon men and women.
I stumbled upon a second-hand book that influenced me, its author, a famous Methodist preacher (Leslie Weatherhead), said ( he was writing in the 60’s) he was now an angry old man. Not complaining angry, but changing the status quo angry, upsetting the tables of the temple/church angry.
Angry because much had been tamed in the name of being good Christians, not wrestling with hard questions, and accepting unquestioning orthodoxy, being a church which ( still in the 60’s) assumed a privileged position.
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Acts chapter 2 pictures an embryo church which is an attractive community.
It’s characteristics have echoes here, but we can never take ourselves, nor this community for granted.
Does the church have a future? Yes, indeed … but not by resting upon the past, wishing the old authority would return.
It’s good to have a dream, even a Utopian vision, for they spur much action. Nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without someone dreaming what if … as John Lennon sang “imagine .. I wonder if you can?”
The church of the Resurrection has its origins in these four practices:
- learning and exploring questions of faith;
- sharing and building relationships with friends and strangers;
- praying with, and for one another and the world,
- breaking bread and sharing wine in Jesus’ name.
That’s the spiritual DNA, that’s enough to renew an old church, that’s a dream to which we may aspire even in these times when so much which taken for granted by churches has vanished.
Is it just a dream to imagine changing the world?
The good news of the new humanity of the risen Christ says NO.
Let us recall something of its expression in the affirmation of our sister church, the United Church of Canada.
We are not alone, we live in God’s world….
Rev David Carter