Acts
4:32-35
Alleluia!
Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen
indeed! Alleluia!
At
Exploring the Word, our Thursday afternoon Bible study, we talked some this
week about exchanging the peace. For many people, that is an appealing part of
our liturgy, but not for everyone. At the parish I served in when I was first
ordained, there was a couple who always sat in the front row — friendly,
faithful, there every week, but the moment the celebrant uttered those words,
“The Peace of the Lord be with you,” they dropped to their knees, bowed their
heads, covered their faces with their hands, and avoided peacing anyone. And
back in the day, for many Episcopalians, exchanging the peace just meant
exchanging the liturgical words with the priest and nothing else, except maybe
an icy nod at your neighbor. At Bible study, I shared my first experience of
worship at St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue, in New York City, which is a very
traditional and formal parish, with a beautiful building and an amazing boys’
choir, but not the warmest place to be on a Sunday morning. At any rate, not
knowing better, when the celebrant said, “The Peace of the Lord be with you,” I
turned to the person next to me in the pew, an impeccably dressed older woman,
who said, “Young man, don’t touch me.” I am very grateful that we give one
another the peace so warmly in this parish, thought know it still stretches people. I just had someone
tell me that he had taken a serious step in his life: at the peace last week,
he crossed the aisle. Christ is Risen indeed!
All
of this is apropos of our reading from Acts today. The church in Acts is a
resurrection community. Jesus is risen, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on
his followers, and they are living that out in some remarkable ways: No one claimed private ownership of any
possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the
apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great
grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many
as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.
They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had
need. This is extraordinary generosity, and apparently not mandated by
anyone. The apostles aren’t preaching about giving away possessions and helping
the poor: they are preaching that Jesus is risen from the dead. What happens in
the life of the church happens because they are a resurrection community, an
Easter people.
And
that is what I would like us to focus on today. Now, I’m not going to ask you
to sell your house or give your car away to someone who needs it, so don’t
panic. Those acts of generosity are the result of something, not the something
itself. To get at that, we need only read the opening words from that passage
in Acts: Now the whole group of those who
believed were of one heart and soul. Yes, that’s where we want to land,
that’s what we need to embrace: being of one heart and soul. Everything else
flows from that.
You
see, here’s the thing about the resurrection: it is not a form of personal life
insurance. It’s not like we can say, “Okay, I believe Jesus was raised from the
dead, so I’m in. I’m going to heaven
when I die, and in the meantime I can pursue my own private, ego-driven
agenda.” No, it doesn’t work that way. Sharing in the resurrection of Jesus
necessarily means sharing in the life of Jesus, which we do through the Holy
Spirit that has been given to us. We are one with Christ in the Spirit – his life
is our life, his heart is our heart, his values are our values. Which means,
among other things, that we are one with each other, in the deepest possible
way. Unity in love is a central theme of Jesus’s teaching. In John’s Gospel,
the final prayer he offers is that his followers be one, just as he is one with
them and the Father is one with him. The church in Acts was living that out.
The resurrection of Jesus accompanied by the outpouring of his Spirit made it
all clear. They saw and experienced the truth: they were bound together by a
love stronger than death. Providing for people in need? Well, duh! That’s what
love does! And the resurrected life, which begins even now, is all about love:
the life-changing, death-conquering love that we all share in.
You’ll
notice, however, that those believers were one in heart and soul: they were not necessarily one in mind. They were
human, and no doubt they disagreed at times. In fact, both the book of Acts and
Paul’s letters attest to that fact. But that is the wonder of it all: they
could be one in love even when they disagreed with each other. Is there a more
important witness that the Church of Jesus Christ can make in our world right
now than that? We can be one, even when we disagree, we can love each other
even when we don’t like each other’s opinions. In a world where we are so
fiercely polarized and divided over so many issues, those of us sharing in the
Risen Life of Jesus have a vital witness to make. We make it with our words,
but even more importantly, with the quality of our common life.
Which
brings me back to the Peace. The Peace is not just halftime in the worship
service, a pleasant break from the liturgy when we can say hi to our friends.
It is theologically one of the most important things we do in worship, and, as
it happens, it is one of the oldest parts of the liturgy. When we exchange the
Peace, we acknowledge that we together share in the peace of Christ. More than
that, it says that I need you to fully experience Christ, and you need me and
we need each other. We may not always agree with each other or even like each
other, but we belong to each other. We are one in the Risen Lord. He is our
peace.
I’m
not asking us to make that happen, because we don’t make it happen: God does.
And God already has. Nor am I asking us to conjure up warm, fuzzy feelings for
the people sitting near us in the pews: our unity goes deeper than passing
feelings. I am asking that we be open to the truth. I’m asking that when we
exchange the Peace, or receive Communion, or chat with someone in the gathering
area, that we remember we really are one in Christ. Only when we see that, can
love flow freely among us. Only then can we fully grasp the life-changing truth
of our acclamation today: Christ is risen to new life – and so are we.
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