Texts: Luke 12: 22-31; Acts 2:42-47

I absolutely love going to Montreat or on mission trips with groups of teenagers and leaders. Without a doubt, these times are highlights of my life and ministry, and this past trip at the end of July was incredible because of the awe that came over all of us as we experienced the many wonders and signs[1] of God's creative and healing presence.

I think on these types of trips, which many of you have had, we probably get a chance to live the closest to the description of New Testament communities of the early church. We study scripture together, we cook and break bread together, share our resources—money (I forgot mine or I left my money in the van),  shampoo, hair dryers, and sometimes someone recognizes their t-shirt on someone else. There is joy and laughter as people go bananas[2], and there is also inevitable conflict. But we also share emotionally and spiritually; we share our insights, our wisdom and our support for each other becoming a Christ-centered community.

This particularly trip put a group of high-schoolers and adults leaders together who didn't know each other all that well. It was an amazing journey into living and working together, a journey into compromise and understanding, in worshipping and studying scripture together, listening to keynoters, and a journey into steadfast pray. As I said, it was amazing.

But if I'm honest, on every trip I've ever been on there's a moment or two when I think about escaping. Like on Thursday afternoon when I was driving from the girl's cabin to Anderson Hall to pick up some kids and I thought, if I turn right, instead of left, I could have a fine time shopping in the town of Black Mountain, or I could just bypass Black Mountain and soon be driving free on the highway. Of course, then the tensions would only be worse and I'd also lose my job. But if I escaped and avoided the mess and conflict that comes with living in community, I'd also miss out on the miracles and the growth I witnessed in others and in myself as I/we were pushed out of our comfort zones and found ourselves on our knees so to speak in prayer for guidance and in praise. If I opted out or chose to escape the messiness of community, I would have missed out on an encounter with the Holy One within community and seeing how the transformative power of Christ changes people into a new creation. 

I go on these trips knowing they're going to get a bit messy. But I also know that my faith, as well as others, will get a boost. On these trips, the only way forward is through prayer and a dependence on the Holy Spirit; then seeing and experiencing God working through us as a community is life changing and transformative.

There's also the reality of coming home, coming off the mountain top experience, and entering everyday life again. Yet I/we come home having knowing Christ's presence is real, and that gives us the ability and courage to move forward in deep faith in everyday life and in the deep waters we will encounter, knowing God's presence is there ready to guide and sustain us.

It isn't easy, but it's worth it. That is—living in Christian community—purposely seeking to experience God, to follow the ways of Christ, and be transformed into a new reality. We are called to do this not only on special trips and retreats, which are important to growing in our faith, but also in our everyday life together.

Scripture makes it clear that we are to purposely continue in our discipleship and seek Christ in all that we do. Now the book of Acts gives us a pretty utopian view of a Christian community, which could be considered a mountain top experience, when the church is still on fire from the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In fact, New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson points out that the author of Acts, who many believe to be the apostle Luke, forms part of his idealized description of the early church from Hellenistic writings such as Plato's Critias, "which pictures the early days of Athens as a time when ‘none of its members possessed any private property, but they regarded all they had as the common property of all.'"[3] In fact, many ancient philosophical schools viewed the sharing of possessions as the perfect fulfillment of the ideal friendship. People in the early church would have recognized this as a foundational story which incorporated Hellenistic philosophy and the writing of Hellenistic Jews such as Philo. By using this formula Luke brings home the point that the gift of the Holy Spirit brought about "a community which realized the highest aspirations of human longing: unity, peace, joy, and the praise of God."[4]

Yes, we're given an idyllic picture, but these verses give us something to work towards as a church and community of Christ. We read these verses in our devotions on Thursday evening in Montreat as we talked about the tough work of community and how we are called to keep moving forward together in discipleship. These pivotal verses in Acts call us to devote ourselves, or better understood in the original Greek to persevere, to persist in specific practices of faith so that we continue to be transformed in Christ as individuals and as a community, and so we can offer Christ's transforming love to others.  These verses are here to guide us as Christians in how to live our lives together.

We read that they shared everything they had and they devoted themselves (persisted) to teaching and fellowship, to worship and acts of caring. And growth came to them from the movement of the Holy Spirit amongst them. It all sounds so wonderful, though as you go farther into the book of Acts you soon learn that the going gets tough. Disputes happen, there are tensions between various people, friendships break up, the church experiences conflict, but we also read about reconciliation. Still...we know that these fractions and disputes between Christians continued throughout history and still do today, to the point where some have thrown in the towel in disgust and given up on Christianity all together.

Perhaps some of you heard on NPR or read Leonard Pitt's Saturday editorial in the Richmond Times that author Anne Rice, has given up on Christianity. She is best known for writing the hugely popular Vampire Chronicles. 10 years ago she turned away from atheism and back to the Catholic Church in which she was raised. Anne Rice took her faith very seriously and proceeded to write two critically acclaimed books in a series titled: Christ the Lord; the first, Out of Egypt and then, The Road to Cana. But in a surprising announcement this week, Anne Rice declared that she is keeping the faith, but losing her religion. She wrote, "I remain committed to Christ as always, but not to being ‘Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."[5]

Rice's position is that Christ didn't fail her, Christianity, her religion did. Wow! Leonard Pitts in the Richmond Times Dispatch on Saturday challenges that Christianity's response to those seeking a relationship with a higher power, or something beyond themselves will determine its future. This is serious stuff that should grab our attention.

Yet we worship a God who created us to be in community and calls us to live as such. So what do we do?       

I think it's fair to say that we recognize humanity yearns for relationships with others. People seek to be part of something, that's the way we're created. People seek fellowship with one another through rotary and alumni clubs, sports teams, and professional groups, even in groups of anarchists. But the Christian community is called to be different; we are called to follow the way of Christ. But it isn't easy! And too often the church starts to look more like their secular counterparts, or we look even worse because we claim to follow Christ.

Bob Sabbath who was part of the original Washington DC based Sojourner's Community and is still connected with them explains that for him to have inner transformation and to see social transformation, he needs to be part of a Christian community. In order to deepen his connection with God, he finds it through the door of other people, often through people who aren't just like himself. His words echo a biblical perspective, and as Presbyterians we claim God is most present when we worship together and grow together.[6]

However, communities at some point or another get messy, and churches don't like messes. One of the reasons Sabbath sees so little deep and lasting community in the church is that when hard stuff comes up, if there's not enough connection between people, it's so easy to avoid those people or to bail out all together. But when churches are able to struggle with their messes, and to surround these struggles with study, prayer, and worship, that's when transformation and miracles occur![7] Connection with others means talking, really listening—not listening to just insert your point of view, and then risking being vulnerable with one another. It means agreeing to disagree, discerning when to push and when to let go, it means living into compromise and at times stubbornly and confidently moving forward as a community for God's mercy and justice. Kent Ira Groff gives another perspective claiming Christianity counters our individualistic society and that this individualistic love without an intentional community is powerless to create a loving person or peaceful world. [8]

To form a Christian community means intentionally working toward the ideal set for us in Acts 2. It means devoting ourselves to studying, teaching, to fellowship, worship, and acts of caring, to following Jesus Christ. We are called to work towards discipleship and in doing so we are transformed into a new creation and in turn bring God's reign to a visible presence here on earth.

I'd like to end though with what I see as one of our biggest challenges of Christian community within our form of the Presbyterian Church, the PCUSA. As our natural outpouring of love, our relationships with each other and with God attracts others—what happens? What happens when someone named Alejandra or Alejandro[9] shows up, or people living in the community or in housing areas downtown show up? What happens when more young adults and students come? Do we create a community that invites people in to become just like us and to assimilate into what we see ourselves as, or can we learn and grow from others and each other? Can we trust God's moving and transformative spirit to mold us into a new creation? The story in Acts holds on to the OT narrative and God's promise and covenant through Israel, but it also points the church toward something new. Will we, will the PCUSA, will Second Presbyterian allow this to happen? Is our message and the essence of our Christianity community important enough for us to share it as Christ calls us to, and if so, are we willing to be transformed so that others may know the love of Christ?

It isn't easy, it won't be easy, but it's worth it.

May it be so, Amen!

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[1] Acts 2: 43

[2] Running inside joke on the trip.

[3] Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Acts of the Apostles- Sacra Pagina Series, (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1992) 62

[4] Ibid

[5] Pitts, Leonard, "Keeping Faith, but Losing Religion," Richmond Times Dispatch, Sat., Aug 7, 2010

[6] Barger, Amy "Community That Transforms," Sojourners Magazine, July 2010

[7] Ibid

[8] Bruce G. Epperly and Katherine Gould Epperly, Tending to the Holy, (Alban Institute, Herndon, 2009) ix

[9] Reference to a Lady Gaga song the youth sang to on the trip.