Islands in a Common Sea

Acts 2: 37-47

 

 

          I was at a meeting of churches this week. I watched as ministers and elders struggled with the issue of a sister church which wanted to leave the denomination. It looked as if the leadership of that church had pretty much made up its mind, but it was struggling with the rules called, ironically, the “rules of gracious dismissal.” The church conference leaders and the church in question were gracious as the rules for voting on the rules were carefully set out. The body was gracious as it took up each issue presented. It continued to be gracious as it voted down each request from the church. All in all, it was a very gracious time as church and denomination sparred over turf and ownership and rights. No matter how they all tried, the issue was about following the rules rather than about following God. I suspect the next round will not be so gracious. A church no longer feels in harmony with the policies and interpretations of the parent church. It seeks to disassociate itself from the whole.  The bigger body feels threatened and seeks to make severance difficult in the hope that such difficulty will discourage individual churches from leaving the denomination.  In this emotionally charged environment, church professionals and leaders attempt to find some level playing field upon which issues might be discussed. One side begs for tolerance while another pleads for independence. Is the whole more important than its parts? Is the part entitled to determine its own destiny? How do we split the child so that each parent can have custody?

          In the second chapter of the book of Acts, Luke the evangelist and historian gives us a glimpse of the early church. Luke tells us that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” He reports that “many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.” And what were those early church people doing? Luke says that all of them were filled with awe, that “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” They were sharing all their possessions with those in need, even to the point of selling them. Daily they attended temple. Daily they gathered in each other’s homes. Daily they ate and drank together. And daily, they did so with glad and generous hearts, praising God, having favor with all the people. This is Luke’s description of the early church. Its markers are gladness, generosity, sharing, awe and devotion.

          In her best seller, Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh talks about a balance she sought to find in her life.  She characterized it as a “swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion,” being neither in total acceptance of the world, nor in total rejection of it. She does not claim to have an answer—only clues. Her clues are symbolized in the shells she picks up from the shore, shells that are fragments of what they had been and what they had borne.

          The Church is such a splendid organism. It is an organism, you know. To call it an institution does it such an injustice. The Church is you and me. The Church is the Fellowship of the Believers. The Church is the body of Christ. I think that of all the images we might employ to describe the Church, the body of Christ is my favorite.  I am a piece of that body and so are you.

          In Romans 12: 5, Paul tells us that though we the Church are many, we are one body in Christ. This language is pervasive with Paul. He talks often about being in Christ. Thinking of the Church as the body of Christ helps us see that. We are part of one great body. We are in Christ. We do that collectively as the Church. But we also do it as individuals because, as Paul tells us in that same verse, we are “members of one another.” Our different gifts point out our individuality, and our membership in the Church unites us as part of a living organism that functions as the body of Christ.

          In Acts 2, the believers devoted themselves to teaching, to fellowship, to togetherness through common meals and to prayer.  No wonder souls were saved. The previous passage tells us that Peter preached and three thousand souls were added. Can you imagine what would happen to this community of believers if we devoted ourselves to these elements of teaching, common meals and prayer?

          Luke tells us that in the church of Acts 2, “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” Men, women and children came together, bound by the unity of their faith and had all things in common. This doesn’t mean they were all the same. There were still cooks and carpenters and farmers. But in all that counted, in all that bound them in their humanity, in all that measured them for the clothing of Christianity, they had all things in common. As Anne Morrow Lindbergh put it in her book, they were “islands in a common sea.”

          What I saw at that gathering of churches was a poor facsimile of the Church of Acts 2. We have eight pages of fine print of how to leave gracefully. They had awe and all things in common. We have a Book of Order. They sold their possessions to help others in need. We have a General Assembly. They broke bread together in their homes. We gather once a week. They gathered every day. No wonder that we differ. We have little resemblance to the Church that Luke described in Acts.

          What if? What if there were no more fences? What if there were no more walls? What if there were no Presbyterians or Baptists? What if there were just Christians? After all, aren’t we, at the end of the day, islands in a common sea? What is common in us all is that which God gave to us. We are all saved by grace.  We strive to live in Christ.  To the extent that we begin to achieve that, we begin to manifest the risen Christ. We are the body of Christ. We are the mission of Christ upon the earth until he returns.
          The Church is not about one, but about one another. We love one another. We pray for one another. We look after one another. We are not about barriers. We are about bridges. In the same way that we come together as a community of believers in this location, the Church itself needs to come together in community. Whether we are Lutherans or Roman Catholics is hardly the issue. We are Christians. In this world where the presence of Satan and evil is present and powerful, the Church is not isolated. It is, rather, a group of many islands in a common sea.

          Lindbergh walked along the coast line and bent over often to collect shells yielded from the tide. Every shell had a story. Some were pristine, still perfectly formed and even containing the creatures that live in them. Others were broken or encrusted with other animal shells. She wondered about the lives they represented, the places they had been. Seashells are like people. Their surface yields clues, but not final answers. Their commonality, among other things, is that no matter where they have been, no matter what they have endured, they find themselves yielded up in the end to the same destination. So it is with God’s people.

          After Pentecost, Peter said to those gathered in Jerusalem,  “For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”  It was the birth of the Church.  We stand on the shoulders of Peter and those other saints who live in the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is still here. God grant that each of us stay present in the body of Christ. God grant that we understand what he has done for us. Help us to reach out today and every day in generosity and gladness just like the early Church. We are Christians. Help us to celebrate our differences over fellowship and search for our common bonds in a world where our job is not division but multiplication, where we must still march against the power of evil. We are, after all, islands in a common sea. In the end, our destination as Christians is the same. Whether bent or broken and straight, we all end up washed upon the same shore for the same harvest. May we share that journey with all who would join us. “And all who believed were together and had all things in common.”