Intro:
Again this year, I’ve found amusement in the “Butterball Turkey-Talk Hotline”, which is now “going on-demand and on the go with Turkey Text Messages. Text the word “TURKEY” to 36888 to have weekly turkey tips, thawing reminders, and cooking alerts sent straight to your mobile phone.” (from http://www.butterball.com/tips-how-tos/turkey-experts/overview). The “Hotline” gets interesting phone calls:
“A young mother once shared her tale of turkey woe. Apparently, her kids had been playing in the kitchen while she was stuffing the turkey. These kids were fond of matchbox cars, and had decided that their toys needed a new place to park. Many hours later, the mother discovered that the kids had chosen the turkey for their new parking space. It isn’t clear whether she discovered the toy cars immediately after removing the turkey from the oven, or if they were revealed during carving. Regardless, those turned out to be some hot, melted, and probably traumatized little vehicles. She should have entered a contest for the most creative stuffing recipe.
A Kentucky woman called the Butterball Turkey-Talk Line in 1993, asking how to get her Chihuahua out of a turkey. It soon became apparent that the tiny dog had dived right into the carcass and couldn’t get back out. Pulling the dog didn’t work. Shaking the turkey didn’t work. Finally, she was instructed to make the hole a little bigger so that the pooch could escape. It worked! At least she didn’t have to perform a C-Section.
It’s not easy to misplace a turkey. But it happened to a caller from Colorado, who had shoved her turkey into a snow bank to store overnight, as she had no room in her fridge. She called the Turkey Talk-Line to ask if it would be okay to eat the turkey after it had been stored thus. However, she soon found that a heavy blanket of snow had fallen. The white, featureless landscape made it impossible for her to find where she had buried the turkey. We never learned if she recovered the bird. If not, well, at least the local wildlife had a nice buffet once the snow melted.” http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/438621/the_butterball_turkey_hotlines_most.html?cat=22
Acts 2:40-47 (NLT):
40 Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!” 41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all. 42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.
43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity—47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.
Context:
For the past two weeks, we’ve been hearing God speak to us through the story of the birth of the church on the day of Pentecost. This passage tells us of the result of what God had begun to do – it is essentially a summary statement describing the character of that first church, and it has a lot to say to us, especially on this Thanksgiving Sunday. Last week in particular we noticed how the listeners came to the realization that God had sent the long-awaited Messiah – Jesus – and the people had rejected and murdered Him, and they cried out in desperation, “what shall we do?”, and heard the reply that they were not lost, condemned, and rejected, but could repent and be a part of an incredibly new thing that God had begun. I started the reading today with their response – a large group believed and responded.
Gratitude is Transformational:
Last week I asked you to try to imagine what that conviction felt like; today I want to ask you to try to imagine what the experience of forgiveness and new life felt like. We imagined that burden of guilt, the knowledge that we had caused harm; now imagine that burden lifted, that harm healed, that staleness breathed into freshly, that death given new life. Imagine that for a moment. Dream of that freedom.
There are a lot of emotions that we experience when we are forgiven, one of the strongest is a sense of gratitude. It is deep, energizing, life-bringing, restorative: I believe that gratitude is transformational. Gratitude changes us, from people who concentrate on the “I wants” to people deeply moved by the “I haves”; it frees us to live in the abundance of God’s great creation and interaction, instead of being mired in negativity and remorse and rejection; it frees us from our focus on ourselves so that we can focus on others. Gratitude opens us up to real relationship, it opens us up to deep sharing of all of our lives, it opens us up to new understandings of God’s presence in us and our world, and it opens us up to deeper experience with God through prayer.
That is what I see in vs. 42 – a grateful people with transformed lives expressed in concrete action. Because they had experienced the Holy Spirit they were transformed from people who felt they knew and understood how to live to people “devot(ing) themselves to the apostles’ teaching”. Because they had experienced the Holy Spirit they were transformed from loneliness and isolation “to fellowship”, which included shared meals within a radical new community. Because they had experienced the Holy Spirit they were transformed into deeper people of prayer as they poured out their hearts of gratitude, their requests, their intercessions for others through prayer.
Since I believe that gratitude is transformational, I asked you in my thanksgiving letter to carve out 30 minutes to reflect on all that God has done and been for you, to think on it, feel it, immerse yourself in it, not just for the good emotions that come but also because that habit transforms us. Once you have done that exercise, I urge you to share that with someone else – or even do the exercise with someone else, like a spouse or a good friend. This sharing is essential, and a big part of what we see in this passage of Scripture – the transformed people of God sharing meals, sharing life, even sharing physical property. We’ll come back to that last one in a moment…
A “deep sense of awe” (vs. 43):
The result of the forgiveness and transformation and gratitude of the people is described in vs. 43: “a deep sense of awe came over them all”. This is what happened as they spent time together, as they shared lives and possessions, as they immersed themselves in teaching and prayer. They experienced “a deep sense of awe”. Isn’t that a powerful phrase? It grabbed me as I read it, so I did a little digging. The word interested me, so I looked into the other places Luke uses that word and discovered it is the way he describes people’s response to the incredible and powerful presence and activity of God. For example in the Christmas stories in Luke, Zechariah responds that way when he meets the angel announcing the coming birth of Zechariah’s son John (Lk 1:12), and his community responds that way when Zechariah gets his voice back and names his son (Lk. 1:65). When Jesus heals the paralyzed man lowered through the roof, the crowd responds with this (Lk. 5:26). The same word is used several more times in Acts, always in response to God who has demonstrated His awesome power in some amazing way.
I think it is possible to live with that “deep sense of awe” still today, and here is how: by choosing to dwell on what God is doing today. I had a couple of great experiences this past week in conversations with people who were just sharing their stories, and through them I could see God’s hand in their lives over many years, and that begins to fill me with “a deep sense of awe”. We aren’t generally good at looking at the positive, at focusing on what is working, on what God IS doing, largely (I believe) because our culture bombards us with the fear and the deficiencies and the supposed number of things we lack, usually because they can sell us something they claim will fix that. As Christians, however, we are commanded to “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” (Phil 4:8). The new church in Acts 2 did this in their devotion and commitment to each other, and as they shared the amazing things God was doing in and through them they were “filled with a deep sense of awe”.
Radical Gratitude (vss. 44-45):
That “deep sense of awe” leads to something I want to call “radical gratitude”. Listen to vs. 44: “all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need.”
First, what does this mean? Some have seen here a Christian “communism”, where being a member of the community meant giving up every personal possession and pooling the resources into one pile. That is not an accurate description for a number of reasons which I won’t get into here for sake of time, rather let me just suggest an alternative understanding. These renewed people were so inter-dependant, so transformed by the Holy Spirit, so full of love for one another that any need was immediately met by the generosity of others. Commentator William Neil puts it this way: “What is described here and in 4:32-5 was a voluntary sharing of possessions based on the deep sense of fellowship. Property was regarded, not as private and unalienable, but as held in trust from God to be donated to the common pool as and when there was need.” (Acts, New Century Bible Commentary, Eerdmans, p. 82).
Essentially, then, these new believers were so transformed that their relationship to material things (money, land, possessions) was less important than their relationships with each other. So anytime there was need in the community, those needs got met. It is rooted in all God has done, this “deep sense of awe”, and these transformed hearts of gratitude that were incredibly generous and eager to give to alleviate need in the community around them. Doesn’t that strike you today as fairly radical gratitude? It does for me.
There are a couple of pre-requisites in order for this kind of radical gratitude. First is that God has to have worked – let us not forget that this began with the experience of Pentecost, the mighty filling of the Holy Spirit. Second, people must be in community with one another – there must be such a connection that both the needs are known and recognized, and that there is a relationship of care and interdependence that motivates response to the need. If either is missing, little happens: if there isn’t close community, needs aren’t known about so can’t be met. Or if needs are known but there is no personal connection, needs are not met either. But when God has moved and people are in community together, this radical gratitude translates into action like Luke describes: people “sharing everything they had”. I’ve watched this happen numerous times in our congregation – needs known about, and then generously met through the provision of others. Those stories are too personal to share publicly and I would be breaking confidences to tell them, but let me just assure you that I have watched it happen – God moves, transformed hearts in community respond by making sure that needs are met.
Good Times: vs. 46-47
The last two verses of the passage describe essentially “good times” for the young church. People together, joy, needs being met, worship and sharing and praise to God, as well as a good reputation amongst everyone else and new people being impacted by the community and the message of love and forgiveness.
Conclusion:
So where does this all leave us, this Thanksgiving Sunday? With an encouragement and a challenge: gratitude is transformational; it is possible to live with “a deep sense of awe”, and the result can be radical gratitude shown through a community that reverses our cultural priority of “me first, my money”, to “others-first, God’s money which I use to ensure that needs are met.” We need more of God, so that we can be transformed by gratitude for who God is and what He has done. We need to cultivate our fixation on the good, on seeing God at work, on finding the places of life and then staying focused and invested in those so that we experience that deep sense of awe at God. And then, from all that is going on within us in response to God in us and how we see God around us, we live with a radical gratitude that makes us eager to share everything in response to needs we recognize in people we care about. This is the Kingdom of God.
Let me give the last word this morning to another commentator, Lloyd Ogilvie: “when the living Christ sets us free we are able to participate in His external purpose for His people: that they become one – one with Him and one with each other. My definition of the church is: the fellowship of those given by Christ to be to each other what He has been to them, so that together they can be to the world a demonstration of the new humanity He died and lives to make this possible. When He performs the miracle of His love in us, it is then that a character transformation begins which makes it possible for us to love unselfishly. The church as it was meant to be is made up of those people.” (Acts. The Communicator’s Commentary. Word Books, 1983, p. 74.). May we be filled by the Holy Spirit, that we might truly live as He desires and be that type of church that has a deep impact as a demonstration of a new humanity.
