Abstract
In Acts 2 and 2 Corinthians 8, the New Testament links together economic sharing and Christian unity, in that through the generous act of material sharing, our unity in Christ is made manifest in the world.
A world divided; a church divided
I don’t think I am surprising anyone if I say that we are living in an increasingly divided and polarized world. The world has always been this way since the garden, when people divided themselves from God, from one another, and from the earth. The story of Scripture is littered with these divisions. And I suppose every age feels this way, that their age is one of hostility and division. But it feels more palpable these days, like it’s something almost in the air which you could no more escape than you could the breath in your lungs. It’s this inescapable feeling that division is just the way things are, that every opinion is the occasion for a fight, and that everything we say is going to make someone mad.
To be sure, this story does not surprise us as Christians, for this story of division has been the story that has haunted the people of God from the beginning: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, David and Absalom, Peter and Paul. It is not a story which we evolve out of, or transcend, or could ever forget about.
But, at some point in our lives, we go from thinking that division is not the way things should be, and begin thinking that this simply is the way things inescapably are. We assume this is simply a natural state of things—that people should, at the very minimum, be wary of one another and that we have to just make do with that. It’s why we buy insurance. It’s why we build fences on property lines. It’s why doors come with locks. It’s why we write our names on our suitcases. In a hundred little ways, we are always thinking defensively about what is ours and what is not ours, and this is simply the way things are.
Brothers and sisters, this is not how things were meant to be. We were not meant to live with division as our natural state, protecting ourselves from others, with disunity as just the way things are. We were meant for more than taking care of our little patch of the world and hoping for the best. We were meant for giving ourselves to others, with all of the joy and risk that entails. We were meant to be peacemakers, for these are called the sons and daughters of God. We are called to be those who extend the hospitality of God to others, because God has shown great hospitality and kindness to us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
For in John 17, we find these words from Jesus: I ask you not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
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This prayer for the disciples in John is quite literally the last thing that Jesus teaches his disciples before his betrayal and death, that they would be one, and be one in a way that mirrors the very unity of God. For here, Jesus is not only saying that the unity of the disciples is a nice or helpful thing, but that it is an essential thing. Jesus repeatedly says things in John like “I and the Father are one” and “I only do what I see the Father doing,” not only to demonstrate to the disciples who he is, but to model for the disciples what they are to be like. If the disciples lack unity with one another, it’s not only bad press, but it is literally communicating to the world something false about who God is.
The material of unity
Acts gives us a picture of the early church in all of its warts and glory, not as an ideal that should shame us, but as a picture to show us the depths that the Spirit wants to move the people of God toward this end of unity. And God does this, in no small part, by making us one for the sake of the mission of God, in part by helping us think differently about our possessions. We read Acts 2 most often for the story of Pentecost, to hear about the pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh, but I want us to turn our attention to what happens after that, to the days after the flash and glory of Pentecost.
If God were really interested in making unity among disciples easy or simple, the Spirit would have played it safe and drawn only people from one walk of life—say, only middle-class fishermen or only radical left-wing Zealots. But the Spirit draws not only from all corners of Israel, but also from all corners of the world, adding all kinds of people, different languages, countries, and cultures into this already teeming mix of witnesses to Jesus. For in Acts 2, we find the Spirit coming bringing in people from across the world—from Syria, North Africa, Rome, and the ends of the earth. This sounds like a great and wonderful thing, but it is also a very difficult thing; it’s far easier to talk about or to celebrate in theory than to put into action.
Directly after this bringing in of people, we find this amazing description of what this new conglomerate of people did to maintain that unity: They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
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This passage is more than simply a description of what they did, as if we the readers were simply interested in information. This passage is a deep description of what keeps this group together. Think of this passage like a ladder whereby Luke intentionally creates an up-one-side and down-the-other motion. Both sides of the ladder are the same, for at both ends of the passage we find mention of many people being added in, of the people worshipping, of people eating and meeting together in prayer and worship. And the thing in the middle, the top of the ladder that holds the two sides together: they shared all that they had, to the point that they were willing to sell what they had for the sake of one another.
The heart of these descriptions—seen here and again in Acts 4—has been challenged across church history as too radical, too naïve, and too wild to be taken seriously. But consider what is happening here in Acts—the church bursting at the seams, with diversity we could only imagine, followed by a practical description of how to hold all that together.
The material revolution of unity
Acts feels so revolutionary. But if we’ve been paying attention, this idea has been here all the time. For the New Testament talks about money more than it talks about almost any topic, because it knows what a challenge our possessions are for us, particularly the way that our stuff can divide us from one another. Jesus talked a lot about money. Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables were concerned with how to handle money and possessions. In the Gospels, an amazing one out of ten verses (288 in all) deal directly with the subject of money. The Bible offers 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but more than 2,000 verses on money and possessions.
Money is, in truth, one of those things that we think about all the time even if we’re not talking about it: credit card debt, school loans, salaries after you get out of school, church budgets. And because it’s always in front of us, it’s one of the things that Scripture describes not as a private issue, but as something that is deeply public. For it affects the way we live, the way we think about our future, the way we think about ourselves. And for Scripture, it is one of those things that keep us from one another: for if we are constantly worried about our stuff, everyone around us is a threat—a competitor.
So, to return to the prayer of Jesus in John 17, the problem of the divided disciples, the wonderful problem of having 3000 people with all kinds of ideas and backgrounds: how do you keep this together? Being one with one another involves patience; it involves forgiveness; it involves listening to one another instead of talking past each other. But over and over again, for the New Testament, unity with others involves sharing our money and our possessions. It means breaking the grip of our culture which tells us that money exists to be accumulated and not shared, that our things exist to be guarded and not given to others, that our possessions exist to be kept and not perhaps given away.
I will say it again: to pursue unity with other Christians is going to involve giving up our stuff, our position, our power. For, of all the things in the world, the things we own teach us over and over again not to trust others: the DVD that was borrowed and returned scratched; the lunch that you floated for your friend but they never repaid; the new car that you don’t want to let just anyone ride in because who knows where they’ve been.
That kind of response of sharing what we have been given—the giving away of our possessions, the giving of our resources for others and not for ourselves—puts flesh on the bones of words and communicates that we are really in this. It is a commitment to unity that takes the form of sharing your belongings, your space, your time, your resources, making sure that the ones to whom you are trying to be united have what they need.
But surely this is just the idealism of the early Christians! Maybe. But maybe not. Paul picks up on this theme in 2 Corinthians 8 as he works with the most internally divided and fractured of his congregations. None of the churches in the New Testament was ideal, but the church in Corinth was a complete mess. First Corinthians depicts a church divided by race, money, religious conviction—one which, as far as we know, is unrepentant. And so, in his follow-up letter, Paul begins by talking to them about how he is a minister of reconciliation, called by God to bring together a fractured world, and telling them that God wants them to be united.
But how can this happen? How can the Corinthian church, divided in every way imaginable, begin to join in the mission of the Gospel? After laying out his case for what an apostle looks like, Paul turns a surprising corner with this passage: And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people … But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.
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Paul goes on to compare this material giving to the riches that Christ has poured out, and the point is unmistakable: the way toward reconciling, the way toward unity with others goes beyond sharing in their confession and their words, but sharing with them materially, imitating God’s material generosity by sharing those things which we think of as “mine.”
The material issues and Christian unity
As a body of churches, you are fellow laborers in the Lord, gathered here to celebrate and plan together. But you may not agree with the other workers. You may not even like the other workers. But you are in this together, as one body of Jesus.
As co-laborers, maybe this means helping pay down a building debt that isn’t yours. Maybe it’s supporting a ministry that’s not yours, or giving time to help another church’s initiative succeed. Maybe it’s building into your ongoing budget the ability to give for others simply because giving to others is the way we give shape to our commitments to others.
It’s going to mean asking some basic questions that seem unthinkable, like “why do our churches have space that goes unused five days a week?” or “should we build a building with another church?” It’s going to mean taking some risks, like paying for a mission trip that you don’t go on, or donating to a Christian group that you may disagree with because they’re doing amazing things in other ways. It’s going to mean churches joining together to build a ministry for the homeless instead of each one having their own separate ministry, or maybe Christian universities in the same city banding together on an initiative that none of them separately could pull off. It’s providing space for someone to meet even when you have nothing to gain from it. It’s offering your time and energy and material goods for someone else’s problems while trusting that someone else in God’s kingdom will do the same for you.
If you want to be a part of the solution for disunity, and to foster unity among Christians, if you want peace in God’s creation, it’s going to involve giving up your stuff for others, bearing costs that are not yours but that become yours because you are bound together with others. If we are one body, and if we are to be a people who have been called to be for others, this unity will not happen apart from real costs, and will only happen in trusting that the God who calls us to this work will supply all of our needs according to his abundant riches in Christ Jesus.
And this is hard. And sometimes this does not go well. And sometimes it goes amazingly well. And this is the work of God. The gift of unity is one that God gives to us, that we might mirror to the world what the world should be like. Let it be so.
Footnotes
1.
This sermon was initially preached for the Rolling Plains Baptist Network Annual Meeting, October 27, 2017, Snyder, TX.
2.
John 17:20–21 (NRSV).
3.
Acts 2:42–47 (NRSV).
4.
2 Cor 8:1–4, 7 (NIV).