The Lively Lectionary New Testament is a blog by Rev. Dr. John Holbert that reflects on the Gospel text from the Revised Common Lectionary each week. It offers a 1000-1200 word post that relates the text to contemporary life.
This is a text about the ways that Christian communities ought to be constituted if they profess to be followers of Jesus. It is highly unlikely to me that every early community actually acted in the ways described in Acts 4, though it would be grand if they had so acted.
However we design our economy, for Christians, if there remain needy among us, that system has failed.
If Easter means anything in our modern world, surely it means that the new age of Jesus, the coming of his rule in life, as opposed to the usual run of the world’s unending concern with power and greed and fame and success, is what we are to be about. It is far more than my certainty of eternal life with God, but rather it is my certainty that my earthly life can now never be the same after I have been sucked into this fabulous story.
We all know that the forward momentum of our Lenten ski lift is supposed to bring us to the emotional mountain top of Easter: Resurrection Day, victory of life over death, the end of tears. But for some of us, Easter Sunday isn’t so much a mountaintop we access with effortless grace. It’s more like that piece of playground equipment we used to play on in grade school. The big round flat platform with the metal handles - lots of kids could get on and whirl around if one person would push with their foot. Other kids would try to jump on as the wheel came around, but if you missed it this time, you had to wait until it came around again to get on.
As Christians we affirm that Jesus, the Son of God, the host of this Maundy Thursday meal delivers us from bondage to sin and death, bewilderment, hopelessness, and apathy. We can be certain of his presence amid an uncertain future.
A valuable sermonic approach would be to invite listeners to make belief in (trust in) Jesus as the Revelation of God their highest allegiance in life, reflect on the sacrifices that entails, and offer a vision of its benefits and fruits.
In the Gospel of John belief is not intellectual assent, but wholehearted trust, entrusting our lives/futures to God. Faith in the gospel of John is a verb, not a noun.
“To save, find or gain one’s life is to attempt to live one’s life as if one owned it, and it is an enterprise doomed to failure because life is a gift from God."
We are empowered to be faithful to God’s calling on our lives, and sustained by God’s presence, even as we are tested in the world’s wilderness.
“Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
Something is lost. Something more important is found.
Clean hands aren’t enough. The heart must also be pure. The pure in heart are those who are spiritually pure rather than ritually or ceremonially clean. Most people get heart checkups and start watching what goes into their mouths. Jesus recommends that we check out our hearts and then start watching what comes out of them!
As we stand in the shoes of the disciples in Matthew’s account, we are to obey Jesus’ daring, ridiculous command. We are to offer our limited resources to him to bless and multiply, and take responsibility, not to hoard them for ourselves, but to distribute them to others.
The presence of forgiveness in our lives is an important criterion on which our obedience will be judged when the time comes. We are not to roll judgmentally down the road of life, but we are to stop when necessary, to take stock of our own sins and to extend the same forgiveness we have received to others.
© SMU Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence
