One Heart

Acts 4: 32-35

 

 

          We’re only a week removed from Easter. Only seven days ago, we were here, celebrating. Family came in for the weekend. We had communion. We had a sunrise service and breakfast. The church was packed. We spent forty days of Lent in the approach, a week of services, and then it was done. It was just a week ago.

          After the Easter service, many of us went home to rest, for Holy Week is a big production, even here in little old Jefferson, SC. We visited with family before they said their goodbyes. It felt joyous, even victorious, to celebrate the victory of Jesus.

          But what about Monday? And Tuesday? What about this Friday? Last week was Good Friday. What about this Friday? Last Sunday, he arose from the grave, from the dead. What about this Sunday? It’s only been seven days. What changed? Has anything changed?

          Luke tells us in Acts that the disciples waited in Jerusalem, probably in hiding, until the Feast of Pentecost, as they had been instructed to do by Jesus. About fifty days after the Resurrection, the disciples were empowered by the Holy Spirit during that feast. They came out of hiding and began to speak boldly, proclaiming the gospel to everyone. There were many converts. They numbered in the thousands. The disciples had changed. They were empowered and they empowered others. This, Annas and Caiaphas couldn’t handle them.

          In the book of Acts, Luke is telling us about the early church. It is a story of what those early believers did after the events of that first Easter were written on their hearts. Remember God’s promise to the prophet Jeremiah? He said “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…no longer shall each one teach his neighbor [to] know the Lord, for they shall all know me.” God told Jeremiah that it was the new covenant. At the last supper before his arrest, Jesus raised his cup to the disciples and told them that the wine represented his blood poured out for them as the new covenant.

          Now in the book of Acts, the story of the early church begins to unfold. It is not just about the evangelistic Acts of the Apostles. It is the story of the tremendous power and grace that descended not just upon them, but upon all those who believed. It is the story of people who came together armed only with one common belief…that Jesus was the Christ…and how they formed into a family that became the sons and daughters of that new covenant.

          It was announced in Jeremiah; communicated in the flesh by Jesus. We are the heirs of the new covenant. It is a covenant promising that God is for us and that we are for God. It was made to the people of God and to each of us individually as well. God says in Jeremiah that we shall all know him, from the least of us to the greatest of us. We need not go through a priest or a minister to find him. His love is written on our hearts! The early church experienced this transforming power and grace and showed it in the way it did business with the world.

           Over history, we have made many attempts through various forms of government to be our brother’s keeper. We have seen Roman imperialism, dictatorships, monarchies, socialism, communism and democracy, to name only a few. In the private sector, we have tried capitalism, sectarianism, monasticism and the like. We have experimented with communes and living in solitude. Even in the days of the early church, there were those like the Essenes, who retreated into the desert to start communes set apart from the rest of society. But no matter what the “ism,” sooner or later it failed. If history is our informant, democracy will eventually go the way of all the others. No civilization, no form of government and no type of society designed by man has prevailed over time.

          The early church was different. It worked. It is interesting to see how simple it was. Although it had plenty of leadership, it had little by way of centralized power and authority. It didn’t have layers of bureaucracy. It had a remarkable system of welfare, but no formal programs. It doled out food and shelter, but there were no taxes to raise the needed revenues for such relief. The believers in the early church practiced communal living, but yet they owned their own homes and had their own possessions. They did not form a closed society like their brothers at Qumran. Instead, they lived right in the midst of Jerusalem and the Roman Empire. They were married and continued to marry and raise families.  

          The difference was not in the form of their society or church. The difference was in the application of the new covenant to their daily lives. The early church was a sharing church. They had possessions but rather than consider them exclusive, they used them as they saw fit to help those in need.  The church that Luke describes in Acts was a church that saw its mission as individuals and acted out that mission in community.

          The difference we see in the early church from all other forms of social interaction is not hard to spot. The believers represented in that early church were unified with one another through a common bond, the bond of love. Luke tells us that “those who believed were of one heart and soul”…that “they had everything in common.” The church was unified. It acted as one body with one voice. Everyday life in the church involved sharing. Those who had, shared with those who didn’t. In verses 34 and 35, there is evidence that in extraordinary circumstances, those who had property sold it or some of it in order to deal with that emergency. So sharing was an ordinary, everyday occurrence and sometimes it went much further if there was a need for more.

          Those who believed were of one heart. How strange that sounds to an American today. This is a culture of independence, of doing your own thing, going your own way. Even in the halls of Congress, the only signs of unity are those that surface in discord. Twenty Congressmen band together to reject or protest something. They are the “say no” lawmakers. The church Luke describes in Acts doesn’t seem to have had much time for saying no. It was too busy saying yes. It was of one heart.

          Does that mean that if we are to be effective for God, we all have to be the same? Not at all! We can be as different as night and day from one another and still be of one heart. Look at the Acts church. People were rich and poor, married and single and widowed. Some lived in big houses, some in small houses, some not in houses at all. The economic status of a believer was important only in the sense that he or she could give more money to a certain need. The unity came not from the neighborhood you lived in, but from the understanding that your common allegiance was to Jesus.

          In the thirteenth chapter of John, Jesus tells his disciples that “All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” Here, armed with the Holy Spirit, the disciples got the message. Luke says in that the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power; that great grace was upon them all.

          Last week, we were reminded of the new commandment. It came to us written in red through the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. He died that we might live and live abundantly. This week we take a moment to look at the church he left behind. To this day, it is only partly built. God’s work is not done and the story remains unfinished. The example is there. The mandate is clear. Be of one heart. Have many bodies, perform many tasks, go many places, but be of one heart.  If this body of believers follows the example of the early church, we too can have great power in our testimony. We, too, will find great grace poured out on us all.

          For all its failures and mistakes along the way, the church of Jesus Christ is here some twenty one centuries later. It has survived all the failed civilizations and societies now gone and in the history books. How has it managed to do so? The church is God’s bride. It is not an institution of man. It has heavenly roots. We are at best only its stewards as God writes his story on the pages of history and on our hearts. 

          Yes, something has changed since Easter. Through the resurrection, we are empowered with God’s grace. We are to be of one heart and soul. We are to follow our Savior.  What is the task of the church? To disciple for Jesus with one heart!