Sermon - Sunday, April 13, 2008: Fourth Sunday of Easter

Pastor Heisley

It’s supposed to be a simple life, this Christian life. It’s supposed to be simple because the Bible says so. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” It sounds so simple. And easy. And holy. It sounds so otherworldly. 

As we glimpse back into the other world that was Jerusalem just after Jesus was killed and rose to glory, we are already past the day of Pentecost. Earlier in this chapter the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to people gathered from around the world. 

It’s a little quirk of lectionaries that they assign us to read things a bit out of sequence sometimes. And that’s OK. It’s OK because we live our lives in a time when we have received the Holy Spirit and yet we long for the Spirit’s coming. We thank God for the Spirit of the Risen Christ in our midst and yet we implore God to send that Spirit over and over. 

It’s supposed to be a simple life. It isn’t. We long for the same Spirit we have. We glimpse back and see the apostles gathered with Peter, who preaches a brilliant sermon. So brilliant that 3,000 people came to be baptized that day. 

And then they devoted themselves to living together: to learning from the apostles’ teachings, to sitting at their feet and feeding on the Word of God that is the story of Jesus and his merciful presence. 

They devoted themselves to living together in fellowship: they cared for each other, supported each other, shared their food, their shelter, their clothing, everything they had. Their fellowship was not a cup of coffee before dashing out the door until the next time. Their fellowship was a profoundly communal new life. And they were glad. 

They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread, to gathering around the Body and Blood of their Savior, the One who promised to be in their midst and was there in the eating and drinking, the One who called them together in all of their strangeness, in all of their differences, in all of their alienation from the contemporary culture. 

And they devoted themselves to the prayers. To lives of communing with God as they ate and drank with each other. To remembering the needs of each other and of the whole world. They prayed with sighs too deep for words for the transforming presence of the Spirit of Christ to remold them and their world. 

Right there in Jerusalem they taught and learned, shared fellowship, broke bread and prayed. Right there in the heart of the golden city they formed a village of their own. “And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” 

And their simple life has lived on in the church throughout the ages, but has lived into a complexity that sometimes seems overwhelming. We are confronted with war and violence in the streets, with poverty and losses in the markets, with broken promises for health and happiness. We are confronted with a world that seems too entangled to sort out. 

I occasionally go to St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville and sit quietly in the Abbey Church at Noon. Sit with the monks as a guest in their village, in their slowly paced, quiet prayers. Sit and absorb the simplicity of prayer. Then I return to life in the bustling city. Most of us are called to go beyond such occasional experiences to live in our village AND in our city. To embrace the complexity of the world. 

We are called to immerse ourselves in the teachings of the apostles, to love each other, to break bread together and to pray. Here in our village. But we are called to use the great goodness of these things to empower our living in the greater city that is our life. 

Our mission is to see our spiritual poverty and to be enriched by the great riches of Christ’s resurrection. Our mission is to see the abundance that surrounds us and to give it away so that we become poor –and happy. Poor –and holy. Poor –and God’s children. 

But do not think that the poverty of which I speak is scarcity. The poor gathered together at the north end of the Sea of Galilee and Jesus taught them and fed them with a poor lunch, 5,000 of them, and there were feasts of leftovers. The Israelites, starving on their pilgrimage, begged God for food and the desert blossomed with manna and they ate all they could eat. New Christians gave all they had to each other, to the life of the village right there in Jerusalem and their poverty was their richest joy. 

Living in our village, living and learning and sharing and eating and drinking and praying together – living in our village here in the city returns us to a sort of simplicity. Jesus is the center, the sure knowledge that all is very, very well. God’s abundant gifts are the tools. The Holy Spirit guides our minds and our hands. And we live in a simplicity that forms us for life in the deep complexity of contemporary society. 

Scarcity is false. Abundance is real. Because, as Jesus reminds us today, he came so that we may have life, and have life abundantly. 

In many ways we share this abundance. We teach and learn in a number of programs here at Mount Olive. We hear the Word of God read and sung and preached when we gather for worship and we are changed by it. We get to know each other, to offer help, to share our goods. We break bread and drink wine, together. And we pray. We pray fervently for the continuing gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Resurrected One, to walk with us, as on the road to Emmaus, to walk with us through the cities of our lives. 

Today, here in our village we pay attention to several important ways of simply doing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that God’s love in Jesus has won the salvation of the universe. We pray God’s blessings on Thomas Fenner and Adam Krueger as they ask us, here in our village, to support them in their Gospel-led living. We gather around them and pray for them in the same way that we gather around people who are married, people who share deep friendships, people who long to know the wholeness that comes in giving away one’s life for another, for the village. We can do this because in the Gospel of Jesus there is no scarcity. There is only an abundance of love. 

Today we are also entering into our capital appeal. Its title is taken from a hymn: “In Christ is our calling. In Christ may we grow.” We intentionally seek to grow in understanding that scarcity has not touched us. Cannot touch us, because in Christ we are called to give and to support and in Christ we are made abundantly rich. 

Please notice that we are not calling this a fundraiser. Our consultants continually remind us, continually teach us that this appeal is a venture in the growth of our spirituality. “In Christ may we grow.” It is in giving right here in our village, to support the work of the village that is Mount Olive that we learn about the abundance of God’s love for us and gifts to us, and we are happy. We are joyful. We live in delight. 

So maybe it really is simple. We live here in our village, belonging to each other, giving to each other, and we are made rich beyond our most soaring dreams. 

Jesus came, was crucified and rose from the dead so that we might have life. “And have it abundantly.” Amen

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