TEXT: Acts
Clay in the Potter’s Hands
I’ve had some slight experience with
the kind of living described in the story from the book of Acts -- my first,
I’ll have to admit, a bit unexpected and certainly unintended. When I went to college, I was fully aware
that I would be sharing a room with another student. It came as a surprise to me, however, that my
roommate assumed that we, too, would “hold all things in common.” My clothing, my toiletries, my hairdryer, my
classwork -- anything and everything were regularly scavenged for whatever he
had need of. Community property. Share and share alike. Based on my frequent reactional outbursts, it
was an experiment well-below the biblical model. I can share that my current experiment with
community property has been a great deal more satisfying, although I do find
that Lori borrows my socks and Chapstick about as often as Maxwell.
As good
capitalist, boot-strap, independence-minded Americans, we aren’t altogether
comfortable with the New Testament’s characterization of holy living. As the native residents of this soil learned
the hard way, we value “possession”, and tend to equate the number of possessions – the amount of
“stuff” we own – with happiness, significance and success. It can create some challenges for people,
like me, who live in facilities jointly owned – townhome associations. There is a quasi-independence to such designs,
but there is also a collective with which to contend. We have covenants and rules. We have expectations and limitations and
responsibilities. As I heard one
townhome owner express it in the midst of a conflict over how another resident
was configuring his deck, “It’s an adjustment for people who earned the money
to live in such a place by being good capitalists to accommodate life in this
little touch of socialism.”
But utter
independence is not an entirely fair characterization of our society. Sure, we can be crassly materialistic; yes we
can drive into our garages, press the button that lowers the door of our little
cocoons, and remain sequestered from outside human contact until the following
day; yes, we are addicted consumers who have learned to shop as a form of
entertainment; yes, we can be ruthlessly ambitious at the expense of our best
friend or cousin.
But I have been outside the door of a
grocery store when a customer’s sack tears, spilling all manner of cans and
boxes and bags across the parking lot, and seen countless strangers stop what
they were doing and help gather it all back together. I have seen acquaintances show up with
pickups to help a co-worker or a neighbor or a preacher move furniture into an
apartment. And just in the past few
weeks I have seen dozens of people give up perfectly good Saturdays and
precious sunshine to come clean up and clean out places in the church for the
good of the group, and presumably the enjoyment of each other. We aren’t as privatistic as all that. It is no rarity for people to help each other
carry, help each other build, help each other grieve, help each other make a
decision, help each other buy groceries or pay a month’s rent.
But even then,
the story in Acts sounds extreme. To
count nothing as private. To hold everything
in common. Wow!
There are a couple of curious – if
subtle – elements in the description of this early community. You might remember that once upon a time,
Jesus was asked to boil down the law into the single most important one. Reaching back into his Jewish heritage, he
lifted from one of the Books of Moses, this familiar instruction: “You shall the Lord, your God, with all your
heart, soul and mind.” In the story in
front of us this morning, the narrator observes that the people were “of one
heart and soul.” Could there be any
significance to the absence of the ‘mind’ in that description – any hint about
what draws people together and what gets in the way?
And I wonder if there is anything to
learn from the very order of the description.
Notice that sandwiched in-between the first statement,
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and
no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned
was held in common.
And the last statement
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.
…is the observation that…
With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
It is a theological statement, bracketed on either side by comments
about ownership and property in the community.
Could it be that both of those descriptions are somehow connected – as
if to say that the community’s relationship to property and each other is
somehow influenced by resurrection power?
It has often
been pointed out that perhaps the greatest evidence of the resurrection is the
transformation that occurred in the disciples of Jesus. After Easter, this group of bumbling,
seemingly incompetent spiritual klutzes who would make the Keystone Kops suddenly
look expert and set the world on fire with their courage, their steadfast
witness, and their centered, compelling spiritual strength. In short, they changed. Within the aura of the resurrection, they
didn’t act the same, they didn’t live the same way, they didn’t talk the same
way, they didn’t think the same way.
They were different. Their
experience with the risen Lord made a palpable difference.
Whatever else we can say about the
disciples in this story, we can say that their faith has changed them. They have become clay, molded afresh in the
potter’s hand. Their faith has made a
difference in the way they live and manage their lives. There
is an element in that that makes we wince.
I think of the reports we read showing statistically that Christians and
non-Christians have the same divorce rates, the same rate of bankruptcies, the
same susceptibility to lifestyle-related illnesses, and so on. Are we any different? Has our clay yielded very much to the
potter’s hand?
Years ago, when I was in seminary
working as an intern with a creative mentor, we developed and subsequently
published a simulation game for youth called “Romans and Christians” that
probed a similar question: “If you were
arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Has your faith, in other words, made any
observable difference?
What are the “marks of recognition”
by which you or anyone else can be recognized as a follower of the risen
Lord? The good news is that I don’t
think this passage is intended to suggest that we all join a commune or live in
collective poverty. It is, however, a
statement about what values in life, when push comes to shove, finally trump
which others.
Thomas Troeger, Professor of
Christian Communication at
…a cartoon picturing a lone religious pilgrim with a staff, a cowl, a
long beard, and a haggard look. Stopped at a fork in the road, the religious
seeker faces a sign. One arrow points toward “The meaning of life.” Another
arrow points in the opposite direction toward “Cheese and crackers.” If that
pilgrim believes in the incarnation,
Troeger asserts,
he will not hesitate for a second. He
will head straight for the cheese and crackers, where others will be gathered
to eat and to talk, and perhaps to sing and to dance.
The incarnation affirms that the meaning of life is not an abstract
concept, not a vague ideal, not a collection of words and thoughts. Rather we
find the meaning of life in the love and grace of God as embodied in a
particular human being and in the community that gathers around him.
What, for disciples of Christ, trumps
what? According to Acts, it is the practice of faith that trumps any
attempt to nestle into its abstractions.
According to Acts, it is our relation to each other and the needs we
experience in each other’s keeping that trump the possession of any good or
gift in isolation. What good is it, to
paraphrase the song, to be “rich in things but poor in relationships?
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and
no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned
was held in common.
Even each
other.
The poet,
Phillip Larken, had a resurrection moment one springtime afternoon in the midst
of grass clippings and a stalled lawn mower.
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I
found
A hedgehog jammed up against the
blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
----Phillip
Larken[1]
Careful of each other, kind – concretely kind – while there
is still time. Indeed.
[1] Phillip
Larken, “The Mower” in Collected Poems, (New
York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1989), p. 214.