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PENTECOST 21, OCTOBER 29, 2006 |
(Preached at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Accra, Ghana) They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.(NIV) GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT CARING A couple of weeks ago we were driving from a church choir festival in Himo, Tanzania, to the college campus in Mwika and we were listening to the car radio. Although the song was in Swahili, I liked the beat and I recognized the names being pronounced, Ananias and Sapphira. I asked about it and one of the students said it was a popular Christian song by a Mennonite group from Dar es Salaam, making the point that when we give to the Lord, we don’t give the “left-overs”, but we give our whole selves. Do you remember the story from Acts 5? Ananias and Sapphira, husband and wife, sold a piece of property, and decided together to keep a portion of the proceeds and give the rest to the church community. There was nothing wrong with this, except that the members of that early church community had agreed on an economic system, an early form of communism, in which you sold your possessions, shared them with the Christian community and together lived from what everyone had given. Ananias and Sapphira were perhaps doubtful that the system would work, so they kept some back for a rainy day—maybe for old age. In any case, Peter got word of the deceit, challenged Ananias, and he, in shock, fell down dead. His wife came in, suspecting nothing, and Peter challenged her, and she likewise, fell down dead. Everyone in the small community was stunned by this, and there was a big message here. Part of it was that it’s not good to tell a lie! (grins) Especially to St. Peter. However, there is something more profound at stake. In the early Christian community, some serious thinking had taken place about how Christians who were put out of their jobs from pagan employers—how Christians who found themselves in a very counter-cultural situation—could care for one another. The economic system they chose had big risks, but, after all, they were people who had been given big gifts. They were recipients of the grace of God! So they accepted the challenge, and for the sake of the common good, they surrendered everything. All except A nanias and Sapphira. They get to be remembered for their duplicity and tightfistedness. And we get to remember that when a community makes a serious decision about caring, everyone should sit up and take notice. Even today. I. Christians have a wholistic emphasis in faith and life There was something very significant about the early church’s decision. When you look at the words in our text—awe, apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayer, having everything in common, meeting daily, praising God, growing in numbers—there was a very wholistic emphasis here. In this primitive situation, they tried to cover all the bases. There were provisions for worship and Christian growth, and there were provisions for caring and sharing. Clearly they had given some thought to their mutual needs and they had worked out a plan to meet them. Although this plan may not have met the need of the Christian community for a long period of time, in the earliest period it was significant. If you would ask yourself, or the members of your church, which of those needs do you think are best met by your church today, which do you think they would be? I think that different churches in different times may take different needs more seriously. There are some church bodies, and you know them, which are known for the ways in which they care for the physical needs of members. I have heard some of you talk with concern about churches which “bribe” people into becoming members because they promise to take care of their physical needs. There may be some truth to this, but it is also true that Christians are both spiritual and physical people. They have wholistic needs. When others consider the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana, which of those needs do you think that they typically think are best met? Which do you think are best met? You know very well that we are known as a singing church, as a church with a rich heritage in liturgy, as a church which is very clear in it’s theology that God gives us life and salvation through our faith Jesus Christ without any merit or worthiness on our part. That’s dealing with our spiritual side. When it comes to meeting our physical needs, however, our churches often have no specific vision or plan. We may be committed to care for our brothers and sisters on an individual bases, but we don’t actually have a plan like the early church had. Don’t you think that’s true? And do you think it’s a problem? Down through the centuries the Christian community has had a variety of economic plans to care for the needs of Christians and others as well. The idea of communal living was tried in many settings, often by Utopian groups in the 19 th century, many of which immigrated to the United States. The Shakers, the New Harmony Community, the Amana Colony and others are all well known. Most of these communities found that their economic plan had limited usefulness as times and situations changed. Martin Luther made recommendations at one point for a community chest into which funds were to be placed so that anyone with material needs could receive help. John Calvin, in his theocracy in Geneva, Switzerland, said that Christians should always have a cash reserve from which they could draw in times of economic need. This recommendation became the basis, as has been shown by Max Weber and others, for modern capitalism. In your own country, the Mormons, who have built a huge temple in Accra, expect their membership to set aside enough imperishable food supplies so that in an emergency their family would not become dependent on others. And some Pentecostal churches here have made promises about aiding members of the church as well. All such approaches show that Christians have often given serious attention to the ways in which care for one another—that they have often had a wholistic emphasis in their faith and life. And as we try to rise up to the full stature of Christ in our own setting, it’s worth asking what our own theology encourages us to do. II. Contemporary Lutheran approaches to wholisitic ministry During the last months I have had the opportunity to live and work in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, a church body which has attempted to ask serious theological question about wholistic ministry. Bishop Martin Shao explains how in the Church’s Constitution, it is explained how the Gospel challenges Christians to address whole people in their spiritual and material needs. In their life together, they have given not only African Lutherans, but Christians everywhere, a modern economic model for caring and sharing in the church. On the one hand, the ELCT has a group which follows the model of the early Christians, the Ushirika wa Neema, the Community of Grace. It is a group of 81 deaconesses or sisters, all of whom work in various ways to produce income for the common treasury of the community. The community itself has a farm with gardens, livestock, poultry and a fish pond. They even have a cow named Reformation! The sisters have a tailoring shop which makes clothes for all the sisters, robes for all the pastors in Tanzania, and paraments for all the churches. They make communion wafers to be sold to all the churches. They run a college to teach Montessori teachers for the church schools and public schools. They run Christian bookstores in many cities. And currently they are building a hotel on Mt. Kilimanjaro in which they will serve the needs of tourists and produce revenue for their Community. Many of the sisters are professionals, veterinarians and nurses, teachers and business people. Their salaries also go into the common treasury. Is this a business? Yes, in many ways. It is an approach to caring for the economic needs of the sisters, who, like the early Christians, stand in awe of what God had done for them in Jesus Christ, and have worked out a plan to reduce the need to be dependent on others. There are other approaches used in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. The church body itself owns several hotels and conference centers which are rented out to the communities in Moshi, Arusha, Keratu and other places. There are hostels where people can stay in other cities. There is a Lutheran bank in which anyone may make deposits or withdrawals, but as an institution it serves the church. There are Lutheran Credit Unions in the villages which help farmers borrow from larger banks by providing the collateral that banks require. The secondary schools and churches often have dairies and butcher shops where farmers can sell their milk and meat. They also have gardens or farms where they grown maize, sunflowers, wheat and beans for sale. Is this a not a business, some might criticize? It certainly is, in one sense. It is business which attempts to make a church self-reliant as it seeks to free itself from colonial ties of yesteryear and mission subsidies of foreign churches. It is business which seeks to help a church take responsibility for caring for the wholistic needs of its people. It may be that this approach, in time to come, will be exchanged for a totally different kind of economic system. However, just as the earliest Christians were creative in their own approach to be self-reliant, so it is incumbent on all Christians to work together to address mutual needs arising from our commitment to serve one another just as our Lord and Savior first served us. IIII. Letting awe challenge our caring When you and I wonder about the future, about the ways in which we can provide for our children and grandchildren, something which Christians have done in every age, we may surely ask where we will get the vision and the strength to create such services in our own situation. Yet, I cannot escape going back to the little word in our text from which those earliest Christians made their beginning: awe. It says: “Everyone was filled with awe.” Why was that so? Is it true for us today? The good news that God loves us, that he suffers for and with us and dies for and with us, and that he summons us to new life which has an eternal dimension to it—how does one fully understand that? Sometimes words fail us, and that’s why art is so important. Here in Africa, there is a marvelous wooden sculpture at St. Paul’s seminary in Malawi. It portrays Jesus dying on the cross with arms surrendered. But rising behind the dying Jesus is an African man with arms uplifted. It is a powerful statement. It says what words cannot fully express. It says visually, “because he died, we live!” It says, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” It says “I live, yet not I, for Christ lives in me.” It says “grace brings eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” What is the word that describes our feeling for such a message, for such power? Is it not awe? This is what the early Christians felt and this is what we feel in the face of God’s love for us. And this awe tells us that “neither death nor life, principalities nor powers, nor anything else that is to come can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is why we can face the challenges to meet the physical and materials needs, the economic needs that we face as Christians, whether in Ghana, or any other country in the world. Christ’s love compels us to reach out to one another in love and meet the wholistic needs of our brothers and sisters. Whatever it takes, whatever kind of vision it inspires in us, we are up to it. Our future is secured. Let us then take care of the present. Let the Lutheran Church of Ghana dream big, make no small plans, secure for its children and its children’s children, a means to stand whole in the midst of huge adversities, illnesses, challenges. You are larger in number than those early Christians who first devised their own economic plan. And you have more experience of God’s love and grace to influence you and inspire you than they did. And you have more models to follow than they ever dreamed of. And you have more resources with which to create things than the ancient world would have thought possible. Some day, when all the brainstorming and dreaming and visioning is done, someday perhaps when many of us have gone to our heavenly rewards, someday when people ask “what is the Lutheran Church in Ghana known for,” even a child will be able to say, “it looks after all of us, not just a part of us. It is a servant church. It is a wholistic church. It is the church of Christ Jesus.” Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus |
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