“The Spirit of Sharing”
Acts 2:42-47
A headline caught my eye last week.
It read, “31 Billionaires are Worth More than the US Treasury has in Cash.”
At the close of business on May 25th, the Treasury of the United States had just $38.8 billion dollars.
For context, 31 of our billionaires are each worth more than the federal government.
The article states, “Some of them, like fashion mogul Bernard Arnault—are worth a lot more.
Arnault, the chairman of luxury goods maker LVMH, has a net worth estimated at $193 billion.
Tesla billionaire Elon Musk is worth $185 billion and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $144 billion.
The list of billionaires worth more than Uncle Sam’s cash total includes Michael Dell, legendary investor Warren Buffett and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerburg.”
This information made me wonder how much money it would cost to end world hunger, so I researched.
I found that 1 in 10 people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger—meaning they don’t have enough food to support a normal, active lifestyle, and 828 million people experienced hunger in the year 2021—which is more than three times the size of the US population.
Current estimates are that as of this year, we need to invest around $37 billion dollars every year until 2030 in order to end both extreme and chronic hunger.
That means that just Arnolt and Musk, if they weren’t to increase their wealth in the next six years (which is extremely unlikely) could end world hunger and still have $156 billion dollars left between them.
Would you do it if you had the money to end world hunger?
Would I?
Think of what you would have accomplished with your life, with your money if you did.
Now, I’m not one to judge.
I have no idea what I would do if I were to have $185 billion dollars.
I have no idea what my goals in life would be, what my motivations would have to be to accumulate that much money or how that money might alter my priorities.
But, just imagine what you could do for others.
Imagine the pain and suffering that could be relieved.
And if you were a Christian, imagine what kind of witness you could make in the name of Jesus Christ.
Also, imagine the joy you would have in your own life.
The food pantry we have at this church has been an amazing success.
The volunteers who come every first and third Thursday of the month to unload the pallets holding thousands of pounds of food, the people who arrange the food on the table in the fellowship hall and the folks who show up regularly in the afternoon to give out the food are doing what they do in order to help others in need.
And in helping others in need, they are helping themselves.
They are bringing meaning and satisfaction to their own lives.
They are connecting with others and serving others.
And in doing so, they are connecting with God, perhaps, without even knowing it.
In Matthew Chapter 25 Jesus says that “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.
All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
To the sheep He will say, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me,” and he goes on.
And these people will say, “When did we do this?
We have no idea what you are talking about.
We’ve never even seen you before.”
And the Son of Man will say, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did it for me.”
This is the great judgment scene in the Bible.
And this is what it looks like when we fulfill the greatest commandment to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
This is what life is supposed to be about.
It is the key to everything.
It is how we serve God.
And it is what makes us happy.
It’s what makes God happy.
(pause)
As we look at our Scripture Lesson for this morning, we see a picture of a happy bunch of people.
You’d think they had just won the lottery or something.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Instead of collecting their winnings and becoming rich, they were sharing what they had with others.
(pause)
Last week we celebrated Pentecost, the birth of the Church of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit came upon the apostles; Peter stood up and gave the first sermon—and about three thousand people became part of the church 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.
It was what the Spirit led them to do.
It’s our first glimpse of the lifestyle of the first Christian Church and what a happy bunch they were.
All of them were looking out for the needs of others.
And as we are told further along in Acts Chapter 4, “All the believers were one in heart and mind.
No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
They shared meals together.
They prayed together.
They learned together.
“Every day, they met together….and ate in their homes” together.
Acts 4:33-35 tells us that this sharing, this togetherness, this helping one another, was a powerful testimony to the Resurrection the Lord Jesus.
The outside world was watching.
They were taking note of their selflessness and the love they had for others.
Historians tell us that people were saying, “Look how they love.
I want to know more about that.
I want to be a part of that.”
And the result?
“The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
These passages from Acts give us a picture of where we come from.
It gives us a glimpse of what we can be.
And that is what I’m focusing on this morning because this description of the church in Acts 2:42-47 tells us what the Holy Spirit can do.
And isn’t that exciting, especially given the despair, and violence, greed and selfish behavior that so often characterizes our human experience?
It’s been said that this Sunday’s text “describes a state of affairs that looks extremely attractive, yet utterly unrealistic or beyond our reach.”
And I agree.
It is beyond “our” reach, but it is not beyond the reach of what God is capable of doing if we are willing to allow Him to work through us.
And the reason this kind of community is often beyond our reach is that it simultaneously attracts and repels most of us.
We long for the life-giving promises of such a fellowship, but our flesh resists the demands that this kind of a community makes.
And it’s important for us to acknowledge this.
I mean, let’s be honest.
“All the believers were together and had everything in common.
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”
It looks great on paper, but have we ever tried to live this way?
And before we become too hard on ourselves, it’s important to note that, taken as a whole, the Book of Acts doesn’t hold this up as the overall church’s experience.
And take a look at Paul’s letters.
Most of them were written because people weren’t sharing or doing what God would have them do.
They weren’t loving their neighbors and taking care of the needy.
But that is no reason to dismiss Acts Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 because these chapters describe what the power of the Holy Spirit is capable of doing and Jesus Christ’s ultimate goal for His Church.
It is God’s gold standard, shall we say.
In Deuteronomy 15:4-5 God promises a land free of poverty, and that takes a visible form at least for a brief time in Acts.
So, what happens to mess things up?
We live in a Fallen World, and we allow selfishness, greed, and fear to enter the Church.
What does Paul tell us in Galatians Chapter 5?
“The entire Law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself…
…So…walk by the Spirit…
…for the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.
They are in conflict with each other…”
Right after Pentecost, the Church was fully walking by the Spirit.
By Acts Chapter 5, we come across a couple named Ananias and Sapphira who extort money from the church, and we have the first interruption of this.
And so, Acts shows us God’s ultimate desire for God’s Church, and thus what the Holy Spirit can do through the Church and the potential we have through the power of the Resurrected Christ.
And so, we have a goal.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that God’s grace doesn’t make our sanctification automatic: Jesus transforms us into His image as we follow Him down the hard path through the narrow gate into the kingdom of heaven as Jesus pushes us from self-centered to other-centered.
And so, our obedience will never make us perfect in this life.
But, as Paul said Himself, we are to “press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called [us] heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
And so, as Bonhoeffer wrote: “love God and live your life—and when you stumble, fall into the grace of Jesus Christ.”
This morning we get a picture of this happy Church in Acts Chapter 2.
They are sharing and giving their money and property so that no one is in need.
Last week I spoke about what God has is laying on my heart about building tiny homes on our property for elderly homeless persons.
I spoke to our City Manager about it this week; he thinks the city would be open to the idea.
Then, on Wednesday, I got a call from a consultant for Kingdom Partners, a group seeking to do the same thing in the city of Chattanooga, and has access to funding.
He must have heard about my vision through a friend, and he will be coming to check out our property on Friday, May 9.
This doesn’t mean this will happen.
But imagine the impact this church would make in the lives of homeless persons if we allowed the Holy Spirit to pull this off.
Imagine the powerful testimony to the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ!
The church isn’t meant to sit still.
When we do, we tend to focus on ourselves, argue about music styles, furniture, the color of the carpet and fight with one another.
This makes an awful witness and an unhappy church.
And the reason for this is it doesn’t come from walking with the Spirit, it comes from the flesh.
And we are all guilty of this.
So, no matter where the Holy Spirit is leading Red Bank United Methodist Church, whatever we are being called to do—let’s all repent of getting caught up in our own agendas and not living like the unified, Spirit-filled followers we see in Acts Chapter 2.
Our Communion Liturgy gives us the perfect opportunity…
