April 19, 2009 Des Moines

scripture: Acts 4:32-35

“A Different Center of Gravity”

There has been a lot of conversation lately on the subject of marriage. I think that’s good. And while oceans of ink and hours of talk have been given over to the “who” of marriage, I would give almost anything if even a thimble-full of that ink would be spilled over the “what” of marriage.” After all, when marriage is done right – sincerely, reverently, deeply, fully – something quite dramatic and profound takes place in that awe-striking exchange of rings and vows – though unfortunately the moment is too often lost on those most directly involved.

I wrote a blog this week making light of the couple who was awarded $50,000 in their suit against the Greenbriar Restaurant for the pain and suffering and emotional distress resulting from the allegedly tainted salad that guests consumed at their wedding reception in 2006. Shockingly denied was any award for the “future emotional distress” the couple had asked for in the suit, though it’s clear that their lives will never be the same after this traumatizing incident. I mean, how could they be? Mention, I might add, was never made of the wedding ceremony, itself; that, apparently, being beside the point. We were, however, relieved to get confirmation that the second most important thing about a wedding – the honeymoon – was unaffected.

Lost in all this thick of thin things is any concern for – or apparently even recognition of – the miracle that the celebration was planned to honor: a transformation more amazing and precious than the alchemists’ ageless quest to turn lead into gold. In marriage, we are told in scripture, two somehow miraculously become one and pronouns are fundamentally altered: a pair of “I’s”, by the power of promise, become a “we.” “Mine” becomes “ours” and suddenly community – albeit a small one – is born. Concern for “me” becomes concern for “us” and “personal gain” becomes “shared wealth.”

This “what” dimension, I would suggest, is way more revolutionary than the “who.” What do I mean? To answer that question, let me shift for a moment from the matrimonial to the financial.

In a presentation titled What Happened to the American Dream that all of us will have the opportunity to see and discuss this summer, a group of area researchers working with “AMOS: A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy” review economic statistics from the past 40 years. What they show is that since 1967, under bi-partisan shepherding – Democratic Presidents, Republican Presidents, Republican-controlled Congresses and Democratic-controlled Congresses – U.S. economic policy has been shaped to primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans.

To be sure, the economic pie, as a whole, has gotten bigger over those years, but the only group to see its particular piece of the pie get bigger is the top 20%. Everyone else’s piece of the pie got smaller. Or, to put it another way, the benefit of the “many” has been trumped by the benefit of the “few”. Think of it, to reconnect with our earlier conversation, as the great cultural divorce – pronouns moving in the opposite direction, from “us” to “me”; from “ours” to “mine;” gold, rapidly reverting to lead.

Whatever sense that might make to U.S. policymakers today, it strikes a discordant note with both our patriotic and our biblical heritage. Theodore Roosevelt observed that, “At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.”

Abraham Lincoln, who has been called “the first middle-class President,” once said, “I hold the value of life is to improve one’s condition. Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling man, I am for that thing.”

After his travels across America in the early 1830’s, French sociologist and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of our country, “Nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions.”

Scripture describes an even stronger determination. In the 25^th chapter of Leviticus, the faithful are instructed to set aside every 50^th year for a special purpose. Called the “Year of Jubilee,” in that year whatever lands have been sold revert to the original families of ownership in a kind of massive and equalizing redistribution of wealth.

The book of Deuteronomy continues to assert that concern for the whole, noting that, “If there is among you any one in need…do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” (Deut. 15:7)

The New Testament writer of James echoes that concern with a touch of sarcasm: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them,” Go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:15-16)

And then there is this morning’s glimpse into the life of the early church:

“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. ³³With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. ³⁴There 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. ³⁵They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”

I don’t know about you but that sounds to me like a very different organizing principle than the one to which we are more accustomed – more of the “marriage model” of oneness, than the U.S. economic model of competitiveness; more of an “us” than a “me”; more of an “ours” than a “mine.” But before we start making excuses or starting arguments or protesting about “our way of life” or hypothetically even feeling guilty, let me note that scholars have found exactly zero evidence that the biblical “Year of Jubilee” was ever honored; and if the earliest church really did behave the way the book of Acts describes, they didn’t do it for very long. They could be as selfish, as competitive, and as accumulate as we.

This isn’t about sanctifying “then” and beating up on “now.” It is simply about raising an exploratory question. To put it into the words of television’s Dr. Phil, “How’s it working for us?” Massive debts, over-valued and under-collateralized, divided up into hedge fund slivers and traded in all directions beyond scrutinizing supervision and built into a house of financial cards in a windy economic climate: how’s that working for us?

Even if we weren’t really willing to model our society exactly on the mechanics described here in Acts, aren’t there some themes there that could be instructive?

Every now and then I hear someone raise the question of lawnmowers. Why, these observers want to know, does everyone on the block need to own a lawnmower – a relatively expensive piece of equipment that is used maybe 2 hours per week, for only 4 or 5 months of the year? Why can’t one lawn mower be shared among neighbors? Or snow blowers, or wheelbarrows or shovels or goodness knows how many other things we think we each have to have at our fingertips but in reality stay pretty much at arm’s length. Chain saws, crock pots, bread machines, and gas cans.

And what about on a bigger scale? Think about the number of churches dotting the civic landscape and the number of hours each week those buildings are actually used. Wouldn’t it make common sense for congregations to “partner up” so to speak, and share the kind of spaces they need instead of everybody building their own that then sit empty more time than not?

In our own building, for example, we could, hypothetically, have one congregation meeting here in the sanctuary while another one meets in the second floor chapel, while another one meets in the 5^th floor activity room. Which, or course, isn’t hypothetical at all. It is precisely what happens almost every week. Come to think of it, if we were careful about it, with a little flexibility we could have still another congregation having Sunday School in the classrooms on the 3^rd floor while we are having worship in the sanctuary, then flipping after an appropriate time between. Which, by the way, we are at the present considering and negotiating.

It’s also part of the reason why we partner with the Boys and Girls Club to operate a weekday program in our building, and teach English language classes during the week, and now host a free medical clinic on Thursdays. We have the space, we have the place, and we aren’t otherwise in need of occupying it during those times.

It is, it seems to me, a determination to be good stewards of this space, but it is, I would also argue, an effort to think and act more communally than individualistically – to choose our pronouns more carefully and more broadly: “we” versus “I”; “ours” instead of “mine.”

That, let me suggest, is our biblical imperative. We may never get beyond our need to claim private ownership – we may never become that Acts community – but we can nonetheless be, as was said of those early disciples, “of one heart and soul,” mindful of and responsive to each other to such an attentive degree that what was said of them can be said of us: there was not a needy person among them.

It represents, I will admit, a very different center of gravity – a very different definition of what it means to be upright and standing tall. It means rethinking what we have in light of who we are called to be, and wondering together about all the ways it could be leveraged, shared, and used, in and for this global community that God has placed in our keeping.