How do you spell Church? ~ Acts 2:41-47 (Life Together Sermon Series, No. 2)

⁴¹ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ 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, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. ~ Acts 2:42-47

Can you spell the word koinonia? Well, if you can you could have been the winner of the 91^st Scripps National Spelling Bee.  

It was correctly spelled by wild-card contestant Karthik Nemmani, a 14-year-old Indian-American boy from McKinney, Texas, who beat 514 other contestants for the win. Now maybe you didn’t know how to spell it but that doesn’t get you off the hook because, if you are a Christian you have a more difficult task, you have to know how to live it. Koinonia was one of the first words the early church used to talk about themselves. It appears 19 times in the Greek New Testament and is often translated “fellowship”, “sharing”, “participation” or “contribution”. Its first appearance in the New Testament is in our text, Acts 2:42. So what does koinonia or Christian community? How do you spell church? According to Acts 2 . . .

1.    You spell “church” – p-e-o-p-l-e. 

This may seem like one of those “duh” remarks that are akin to these obvious warnings. Take a look at these "real" warnings.

The problem is that we habitually speak about the church in a way that the New Testament never does. Our passage reminds us that the church is a fellowship of: “Those who accepted the message”, “they”, “everyone” who was eating, praying, and praising God both in, and outside of, the temple and their homes. We, however, speak differently. For us the church isn’t so much a “they” but an “it.” We say things like, “See you at church”, or ask, “What time is church?” or “Doesn’t the church look nice?” We need to retrain ourselves in an obvious but almost forgotten point that the church is neither an idea, nor a place, nor an event. It’s flesh and blood, diverse people who acknowledge Jesus as Lord.  So look at a few people and say, “We are the church.” 

By the way, do you know who you just spoke to? Do you know his or her name, what they do for a living, or about their family? Have they been to your home? We will never be able to live into our existence if we can’t call each other by name and eat with one another outside these walls. Sometimes it feels like the church is a team that doesn’t know each other, “Hey you, red hair and freckles go up, I’ll pass it.” “Hey, kiddo, kick the ball!” So we need to eat in each other’s homes, hang out together in public, and call each other to ask for advice or help. So this morning we acknowledge the passing of Mark Fineran’s father and offer our love and support. He is part of our “we”. The church spelled p-e-o-p-l-e is the launching place for everything else. Another word for church is ekklesia (from ek-out, and kaleo – called) which means that we are a called-out, called-together, and called-forth community: a visible, organic reality. It’s the wisdom of the proverb, “If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  

But we are more than just a group that knows each other’s names or does stuff together. This leads us to our next spelling word. 

2.    You spell “church” s-h-a-r-i-n-g

Our koinonia doesn’t only mean “fellowship” but can also mean “sharing” and it’s interesting to consider from our passage what it was that they shared. What bound the community together?

First, they shared a message of oneness – one with God and one with each other. Vs. 41 first defines this “fellowship” as “Those who accepted his [Peter’s] message [and] were baptized . . .” But the gospel message is not simply that we are saved in Jesus Christ but also seeks to reconcile us to each other. It seeks to make us one. That’s one of the reasons why we worship together. In Life Together, Bonhoeffer asks, “Why do Christians sing when they are together? The reason is, quite simply, because in singing together it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word.” To be sharers of the gospel message is to “devote” one’s self to a message and practice of love of God, love of neighbor, and love of enemies. In the Evangelical Covenant Church, we also believe that we share this message that Jesus is Lord with other believers, which means that we share Christian identity with Presbyterians, Catholics and Baptists. So we believe that we share the Bible and the church. That means that we don’t simply claim it as our own but that we also recognize that others interpret this Word differently and that that’s okay – we still share it. We can still be one. So sharing becomes our sense of what a Bible study looks like. We share it with others acknowledging that our different interpretations don’t place us in an all-together different family. Sometimes churches are like a group of people who all live in the same house and continually say, “Mine. My house. Not yours!” So if we share this message – then it should make us one – and the message will be “ours.” But they didn’t just share the gospel message. They also shared something else.

Second, they shared their needs, vs. 45. We don’t simply share a message of one Lord, one faith, one baptism. To be a sharing fellowship we also have to participate in something even more difficult – we have to share our needs. I don’t mean to say that this is easy or comfortable or even that I am where I would wish to be on any of this. But we will never be the church that God intends if we are incapable of sharing our hardships. So we need to establish love and trust and talk about the broken places in our lives, in our society, and in our world (often in that order). This is why I will share about my own failures – like my failed marriage – in church. Too often we are like people who go to the doctor and when he asks, “Why are you here?” We say, “I don’t know.” Or, get mad and yell, “I don’t know, doctor, why are you here?” We will never be whole if we cannot share about our wounds. Friends, I have furniture at my house and I’m ready to make you dinner and hang out. Do you know how I got furniture? I shared my need for it.

Third, they shared their food and their stuff, vss. 44-45. In Acts 4:32 it says, “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.” What we might miss in this passage is not the hard word of holding things in common but the fact that what grounds this sharing is “friendship.” The ancient world defined “friendship” as a “single soul dwelling in two bodies” [Aristotle] which is the point of “one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). The reason the church was able to share was not because they followed some difficult command to do so (there isn’t one) but because the Spirit of God had made them friends – often between people who shouldn’t have been friends: Romans and Jews, slave and free, men and women. And that friendship is what animates us to be followers of the Messiah whom Isaiah prophesies about “They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities . . .”

It’s why we are helping the Mutambala family – refugees from the Congo. It’s why we do Community Corner. And this work of sharing is wonderfully messy. We share our stuff because what brings us together is a message of friendship, sharing our needs and also our stuff. Bonhoeffer is right when he says, “he who breaks this fellowship of the physical life [i.e. sharing food] also breaks the fellowship of the Spirit.”

3.    You spell “church” t-i-m-e

And now for the two scariest words in this passage. They can sneak up on you. Do you know what they are? Vs. 46 “Every day.”

And I have to tell you this spun me a bit this week. I began to craft a whole point-for-point list of all the things that we should be doing. Not surprisingly, I found myself growing more anxious, nervous and stressed – in no way acquiring a glad and sincere heart. But thankfully – this is not about me or my message to you but the message of Scripture – and so as I wrestled with this Word I recognized two features of this “every day” life that it made it less scary and more hopeful. First, it was about celebrating signs and wonders and offering friendship and love “with glad and sincere hearts.” They were not hammering out a list of “to dos” as much as they were cultivating a disposition of gladness and gratitude. The "everydayness" of their faith was about enjoying God and one another. Second, the results weren’t due to them or their efforts. Our text ends with the remark, “the Lord added to their number daily . . .” When is the last time you took the time to break bread in someone’s home and eat together with glad and sincere hearts? Our life together is no more difficult than that. My mom’s family and relatives are farmers in a small town Texas. To put it bluntly, no one was getting rich. But there was quite a stir when one of my cousins married a girl from extreme poverty with many siblings who ate her meals with a knife and one hand and her arm tucked around the plate to fend off any would-be-food-takers. It seemed everything that she did was for her own protection and due to a fear of scarcity. She could never take the time to eat with a sincere and glad heart. After I wrote this I was struck by the fact that I shared that story in this section on “time” rather than on stuff. When I asked myself “why” I quickly discerned that it was because time is the area of life where I feel a certain assault. I discovered that it’s “time” that I treat like this girl’s dinner place. Friends, you spell church t-i-m-e because “every day” is an opportunity for gladness, for friendship, for sharing. It’s not one more day to protect what’s yours. It’s a day that is pregnant with God. It’s time to put the knife down and open arms to each other. We will be the church when we understand that “every day” is redeemed by God and that there is enough - enough time, enough love, enough stuff – to ask for, to share, to offer. We are the sharers. Amen.