Acts 2:42-47
"The Happiest of All"
Most of us want a better way of living and working, but most of us don't know what a better way of living and working is.
Since tens of thousands of books have been and continue to be written on these issues; there can be no doubt that many, many--way too many of us are not happy or are simply dissatisfied.
Let's face it, we live in a world which has an unhealthy preoccupation with making money, and this is soul-destroying for everyone involved.
Because when making money is the dominant value of a human being, this leads to behaviors that end up destroying who we are and what we were created for.
Any expert on the human psyche will tell us that focusing on others rather than ourselves is what makes us happy.
Preoccupation with self makes us miserable.
A recent survey by Forbes magazine posted an article on "How to be Happy at Work."
Along with that article they named what they called "The Top Ten Happiest Jobs."
Can you guess the number one happiest job in the world?
Clergy--that is Pastors, Preachers.
And the reason they give for this is that "the least worldly [people] are reported to be the happiest of all."
That's not what our culture would have us think...
hmm...
Can you guess the second "Happiest Job?"
Fire Fighters.
The reason given for this is because the job is about "helping people."
Someone who replied to this article online wrote: "Funny...my husband is a firefighter and practically skips to work, and I'm a Marketing Associate, on the path to be a Marketing Manager...I don't nearly have the job satisfaction as he and his crew do."
Another person wrote, "As a pastor I totally agree and was glad to see clergy ranked #1.
But the article also confirms what we often tell people in our church--happiness is giving your life away."
Another of the top ten "Happiest Jobs" is Special Education Teachers.
See what these jobs have in common?
They are about giving yourself for the betterment of others...
...they aren't the highest paying jobs in the material sense, but they are in the most important sense.
I won't name the "top ten most unhappy jobs", but most all are well-paid.
Of course, nothing is perfect.
The work of a Pastor, firefighter or Special education teacher is hard, but it is satisfying.
And that is what matters.
As we look at our Scripture Lesson for this morning we see a picture of a happy bunch of folks.
You'd think they had just won the lottery or something.
But that couldn't be farther from the truth.
For one thing, instead of collecting winnings and becoming rich; they were giving their money and property away or at least sharing what they had with others.
Money and material possessions had become fairly inconsequential to them.
Greed had been transformed into a deep desire to share.
Selfish desires had been transformed into a desire for community, and simplicity.
Last week we celebrated Pentecost, that is, the birth of the Church of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles; Peter stood up and gave the first Christian sermon--and about three thousand people were saved on that first day!!!
Today, in our Scripture Lesson, we see the Church doing what they began to do on a daily basis after this.
This is our first glimpse of the lifestyle of the first Christian Church.
And what a happy bunch!!!
And the "ministers" of the church were all the members.
All of them were looking out for the needs of others.
All of them were demonstrating "God's goodness to everyone."
All of them were "united and shared everything."
The rich gladly sold property and shared the proceeds with the needy.
They "shared meals" with one another.
They prayed together.
They learned together.
It says they "devoted themselves" to learning.
They "shared everything."
"Every day, they met together...and ate in their homes."
"They shared food with gladness and simplicity."
"They praised God."
They had gone from 120 members in Acts 1:15 to about 3,000--in a day.
And the outside world was watching.
They were watching their behavior.
They took note of their radical economic transformation--it was "other worldly."
"God [was] perform [ing] many wonders and signs through the apostles."
All the new Christians were demonstrating "God's goodness to everyone."
A new world...a new kingdom was taking form.
Historians from that time wrote that the people were saying, "Look how the Christians love each other!!! I want to know more about that. I want to be part of that!!!"
"Look how happy they are."
"I want to be happy too."
And we are told that "The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved."
Is that not what we need right here and right now???!!!
If there is anything that people need--it is salvation!!!
If there is anything this world needs--it's revival!!!
This passage from Acts gives us a picture of our roots.
We are "spiritually related" to these folks.
We are members of the same Church!!!
And out in the world--not much has changed from that day to this.
Out in the world, people are unhappy.
People are misguided.
Our "enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour."
And people are being "devoured" right and left as they are seeking and searching for happiness in money, status, sex, drugs, material things such as big homes, manicured yards, big bank accounts...bigger and bigger barns!!!
But they are finding that these things or even the pursuit of these things does not provide them with what they truly need.
People need the Lord.
Jesus is the Only Answer!!!
Community in Christ is the Only Way.
Losing our lives in serving others--nothing else satisfies.
And if we are going to be "happy" and do our jobs as ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ--we too must demonstrate God's goodness to everyone!!!
And we do this by "learning," studying, becoming devoted to the Word of God together.
We do this by sharing meals and praying together.
We do this by being united and sharing what we have with one another.
We do this by giving to the poor, selling what we do not need and distributing money to those who do not have.
We do this by meeting together daily, eating in one another's homes with gladness and simplicity.
We do this by praising God together with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
When it gets right down to it, Christianity is about relationships.
First, it is about the relationship between us and God through faith in Jesus Christ.
It moves from there to our relationships with other members of our church.
And from the church it moves out into our relationships with other people in the world.
I recently read that last year there were thousands of books written on "how" to be happy, whereas a decade or so ago there were maybe a couple dozen such books.
During the same time, Church attendance has dropped significantly and we have become more of an isolated and materialistic society.
Do you suppose there is a connection?
In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putman notes the following statistics of American life over the past 25 years.
Attending club meetings is down by 58%.
Family dinners are down by 33%.
Having friends over is down by 45%.
That's sad.
Eugene Peterson writes, "Love cannot exist in isolation--away from others love bloats into pride.
Grace cannot be received privately--cut off from others it is perverted into greed.
Hope cannot develop in solitude--separated from the community it goes to seed in the form of fantasies.
No gift, no virtue can develop and remain healthy apart from the community of faith."
Peterson concludes:
'Outside the church there is no salvation' and this is not some arrogant statement but spiritual common sense, confirmed in everyday experience."
Brothers and sisters we need one another.
We need to be together and we need to be together a lot!!!
We need to study the Bible together, eat together, worship together, enjoy one another's company, share what we have together and love and thus witness to a lost and broken world together.
That is the way God has created us to live and function, and that is the only way we can be happy.
Look at the words which are used to describe the actions of the Church in just 5 verses of Scripture from Acts Chapter 2.
We've got the word "community" right up front.
"Their--t-h-e-i-r" is in there several times.
Not me and mine.
"Share and shared" is used several times.
We've got the word "everyone."
The phrase "all the believers" is used.
The word "united" describes them.
It says, "Everyday they met together..."
And "The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved."
An author shares the following story: "When [my sister] was about seven, her best friend got lost one day.
The little girl ran up and down the streets of the big town where they lived, but she couldn't find a single landmark.
She was very frightened.
Finally a policeman stopped to help her.
He put her in the passenger seat of his car, and they drove around until she finally saw her church.
She pointed it out to the policeman, and then she told him firmly, 'You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here."
The author finishes with this:
"And that is why I have stayed so close to my church--because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people at my church, and hear their voices, I can always find...home."
Is this Church your home?
Are these people your brothers and sisters, mothers, fathers?
Where would you be without this church?
What would life be like?
God heals and transforms lives through the community of the Church.
This is how it has been arranged.
This is how it works.
And if we aren't part of it...we can't be happy.
Christians are to live as a family.
And when you live together as a family under one roof, you don't see this chair, this table, this carton of milk, this loaf of bread as "mine."
The breadwinners in the household don't see the money they bring in as "theirs" rather it belongs to the whole household.
That's part of what it means to be a family.
We are family.
We are brothers and sisters.
When the first disciples were going around with Jesus, they had a common purse; various people contributed to it out of their resources; they lived as a single family.
They even squabbled with each other from time to time.
Remember James and John arguing about who would be first in God's Kingdom?
The early Church had a way of ordering their life, and a word which we have often taken to refer to feelings inside us but which, for them, was mainly about what they did with their possessions as part of this big, extended family.
The word is "love," agape in Greek.
In 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul writes to the Church: "You don't need us to write to you about loving your brothers and sisters because God has already taught you to love each other...
...Now we encourage you, brothers and sisters to do more."
And this challenge remains for us.
I would aim to guess that at least 70 percent of the folks in this neighborhood do not have a church family.
I would also aim to guess that we are surrounded by a lot of unhappy, unsatisfied people.
As Christ's followers we are called to love--more, and to give ourselves tirelessly.
And when we behave this way, we sometimes find, to our surprise, that we have a new spring in our step.
There is an attractiveness, an energy about a life in which we stop clinging to everything we can get and start sharing it, giving it away, celebrating God's generosity by being generous ourselves!!!
And that attractiveness is one of the things that draws other people in.
It's time we thought seriously about Acts 2:42-47.
It's time we get down on our knees and ask God what isn't happening that should be happening.
The Gospel hasn't changed.
God's power hasn't changed.
Most people want a better way of living and working, but most people don't know what that better way is.
What are we going to do about it?
