A reading from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2, verses 41
through 47. So those who accepted his
message were baptized, and that day about 3000 people were added
to them. They devoted themselves to the
apostles teaching, to the fellowship, and to the breaking
of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with ore,
and many wonders and signs were being performed through the
apostles. Now all the believers were
together and held all things in common.
They sold their possessions and property, and distributed the
proceeds to all as any had need. Every day they devoted
themselves to meeting together in the temple and broke bread
from house to house. They ate their food with joyful
and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all
the people. Every day the Lord added to
their number those who were being saved, the word of the
Lord. Let's pray together Lord, what a
holy and good thing it is when you come to visit your people,
as the Word is opened and preached, as ears are open to
listen, to receive, to ponder and to respond in faith at every
step. We need the help of Your Holy
Spirit, so a light upon our minds, our hearts, our words,
our actions, so that we might be the Church today that carries
the torch that was lit on the day of Pentecost.
We pray this in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen. Please be seated.
Hey, good morning, friends. Want to do something this week
to take a moment to speak about something that's heavy on a lot
of people's hearts this week. Just days ago, a man named
Charlie Kirk, who was a political activist and the
leader of an organization called Turning Point USA, was gunned
down on a college campus. And this was just a, it was a
shocking act of violence, but it didn't happen in isolation.
In the recent months and years, we've actually seen a troubling
rise in politically motivated attacks.
There was a fire set at the Pennsylvania governor's
residence, Josh Shapiro, while his family was sleeping
upstairs. Thankfully, they did not die
from that, but that was the intent.
Earlier, two young Israeli embassy embassy workers were
shot and killed in our nation's capital, Washington, DC Not too
long ago, public officials in Minnesota were targeted in their
homes. Some were killed and some barely
escaped. And last year, we did see two
attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump during
the election cycle. Each one of these is is
grievous. We could actually list more
types of violence in our country and more types of gun violence
in our country, not the least of which is violence against
children in schools, which is heinous.
This week's murder feels like a raising of the temperature in
our country in a terrible way. And it just feels like the
darkness is trying to pull people in to a cycle of hatred
and revenge. And so we have to ask, as God's
people, what do we do? How do we respond?
And that's why I want to speak to you briefly first, is that we
grieve. And that is something that all
Christians do in every, every generation, is that we grieve
the loss of innocent life. We grieve the image of God being
treated violently. Charlie Kirk was made in God's
image, and his death matters to God.
Second, we remember who we are as followers of Jesus.
We do not belong to the Kingdom of this world with its cycles of
fear and retaliation and dominance and anger.
We don't belong to that cycle, and we will not participate in
that cycle through the cross. Jesus has, as Saint Paul said,
torn down the dividing wall of hostility.
Hear the good news in that phrase.
He tore down the dividing wall of hostility and he made peace
possible with God and with one another.
Thirdly, we bear witness. We show a different way because
God is perfectly just. We don't need to take vengeance
into our own hands because Jesus forgave his enemies.
We can forgive our enemies because Jesus rose from the
dead. We can be courageous and
hopeful, and we can leave behind the burdens of cynicism and
despair. So I just want to acknowledge
this is a sobering time in our country, but it's also an
opportunity for us to be a spiritual beacon that shines
with gospel light. And so I want to call all of us
to reject hatred. I want all of us to reject
cynicism. During prayers of the people, we
will pray for our nation. We will pray for our leaders.
And we will continue these prayers in the week, won't we?
We will continue to pray, and we'll pray even for our enemies,
and we'll pray for our country. And let's friends walk the road
of the King of Peace, pointing to him who laid down his life to
reconcile a divided and violent world to himself.
Come, Lord Jesus, bring your peace.
Lord, we pray for your peace even now to descend upon us,
your people. Let it descend.
Lord, we give you our hatred, violence, despair, anything that
doesn't belong in our hearts. We pray that you would bring
joy, hope, vision that belongs to the Kingdom to come in Jesus
name, Amen. All right, well, let's continue
on in our Sacred Spaces series. In the book of Acts, Acts
chapter 2, verses 41 through 47, we're looking at the church.
Karen Mains and her husband David lived on the West side of
Chicago during and after the race riots of the 1960s and the
1970s, and they helped start a church community on the West
side, like the near West Side called Circle Church.
Circle Church. This church was beautifully
diverse and alive and growing. Circle Church helped people put
down roots in the city when so many were fleeing for the
suburbs and beyond. And it became this sacred space
in the city which drew people closer to God and closer to one
another. There was really beautiful,
otherworldly reconciliation happening.
There was community that was forming.
There were lives were changing. But for Karen, who helped lead
this community, there was a growing tension inside of her.
She and her husband did lots of hospitality, and she didn't
particularly enjoy, like, the housekeeping tasks.
You know, that, like, wasn't her favorite thing to do.
But she started to feel like, man, all I'm doing is, like,
cleaning up after people. And there came a point where,
you know, like, after all that, like trying to provide a clean
and comfortable space for community to take place, she
just couldn't take it anymore. And one day, her house was a
wreck. And she was like, I don't feel
like it. Someone rang the doorbell.
It was someone from her church. And she had a decision to make.
Am I going to open the door and show hospitality right now or
not? And so she reached for the
handle. She opened the door.
And she was like, I'm not going to apologize for nothing.
And she just like opened the door, loved, loved her fellow
congregant as best she could and showed her hospitality, opened
her home, opened her heart. And a friend kind of looks
around. It's like, oh, I thought you
were perfect. Now I think we can be friends.
And that's when the real community began to form for
Karen and her community. So here we are, one generation
later. Some of us are like Karen.
We have been opening our lives and spending ourselves to form a
church that flourishes right here in Chicago.
And some of us feel totally spent from that.
It's exhausting sometimes. But others of us are like that
woman ringing the doorbell, hoping for an open door, hoping
for a welcome, longing for that rich, close community.
And the closer we get to to one another friends, the more the
ideal facade and of hopes and dreams for a community will will
fade away. All the hopes and dreams that we
could get it perfect and get it right and do it just right.
The the closer we get to one another, the more we can be
friends and the more we can let the illusion of what we thought
community to be to pass away. The Church is a sacred space
between the ideal community we long for and the messy community
that we have. And so as we explore together in
Acts 2, we're going to see Saint Luke paint a picture of the
early church. And it's sort of, as you read
it, it's like, wow, what a beautiful mosaic, as beautiful
as these windows, you know? But the closer we get to the
mosaic, the more that we see it's made-up of all these broken
shards and pieces of glass and things unformed and rough,
little patches of cement between them.
We realized that like it's messy and broken and Jesus has put it
together. He's the only thing putting
hang. It's the only thing hanging this
mosaic together. But I hope that this can give us
hope for the community that we have, the mess that we're in and
the beauty that Jesus is creating in our midst.
Let's look at the first reality of the early church.
The first reality of the early church is that it was filled
with unformed converts. You see that in your Bibles or
in your bulletins on page 9, Acts 241.
Those who accepted his message, Peter's message, were baptized
and that day about 3000 people were added to them.
Do you know how many unformed converts that?
I mean? Like, OK, the early church was
about 120 people. Did you know that here we are
about the same size? This was the early church size.
Now imagine 3000 people being added to our midst.
That's 25 times growth. OK, That would break anybody's
brain. That would break any community.
It would be so disruptive. In his book You Found Me, Don
Everts tells the story of Russell, who became a Christian
as a college student through the loving witness and example of
Christian friends. Russell described his first few
weeks as a Christian like a desert experience.
Here's a quote from Russell, the new convert.
I was the ugliest person lashing out at people.
I had all this hatred and jealousy in me and it was all
coming out. Past moments of being excluded
were coming out and needed to be dealt with.
I didn't really know how to pray.
I would lash out at God. I was calling friends constantly
with questions like, why am I feeling this way?
Or Are you sure that God is for real?
Is this just an emotional experience?
And that first year was a really tender and confusing year for
Russell. Now, as Everett's noted, people
in Russell's position had had a lot to wrestle with their first
year of faith. Questions like these.
How do I live now? How do I relate with my
boyfriend or girlfriend now? Do I keep cheating on tests?
My grandma thinks I'm in a cult. Like this is what you have to go
through in your first year as a Christian.
Sometimes we forget this. So converts, the 3000 converts
have tons of questions about their life.
Now. This is a big moment of getting
baptized. Could the Messiah really die a
cruel death on a Roman cross? Can I trust and follow that
Messiah and bear a cross myself? That was mind blowing and and
really tough to digest for 1st century Jews from Asia Minor.
What does this mean for the temple?
What does this mean for sacrifices?
Does my grandpa think I'm in a cult?
They did, by the way, and they rejected them.
Or you also go, who are all these strange people that I'm
supposed to call brother and sister?
Do I have to forgive my enemies? Do I have to part with my money?
Imagine 3000 blinkered men and women like asking these
questions. And so how did the church
respond to all the unformed converts?
Here's what they did. They invited these unformed
converts to become devoted disciples.
The unformed converts were then invited to become devoted
disciples. Verse 42.
They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to the
fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.
They devoted themselves. This group of people, this
massive group of early converts, became a family through common
devoted practices. And this is how a family is
formed. You know this, it's one day at a
time, doing uncomfortable things together.
We do family dinner together. We have a common culture
together. We do family outings together.
Now, at some point that changes. But for a while, if you want to
form a family culture, you do common practices.
And it's no different for the early church.
They had a they learned a common story.
They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching.
It's story time and this one is Israel's story.
You can see Peter and you can see other apostles opening up
the book of Isaiah, opening up the book of Genesis being like,
here's how this points to your new king.
Here's Israel's true story. Here's how all of your hopes and
dreams find their resolution in Jesus.
Story time. Day after day, they devoted
themselves to it. They lived a common life.
The word fellowship, Koinonia, It was not a cliche for them.
It was, it was a way of living where they were needed and known
and loved and challenged. Your stuff came up and was
exposed and then you were encouraged and your life was
opened up. Your home was opened up.
It was a, it was a, it was a lot of life on life, life.
It was a common life. They lived it.
They shared a common table. Of course, they devoted
themselves to the breaking of bread.
This seems to be both an early practice of the Eucharist.
But as people are getting together in homes, you, you know
you're going to eat. You know this, they're there.
It's lots of eating. It's spiritual food and it's
physical food and it's everything.
They're breaking bread. And like good Anglicans, they
prayed a common prayer, right? They heard a common story, lived
a common life, shared a common table, prayed a common prayer.
Some of it was probably liturgical, like the Lord's
Prayer or some of the early Jewish prayers passed down to
them, seen through Jesus. But also, we see in the book of
Acts, they're praying for needs that arise, like Peter's in
prison. Let's pray together.
Or, you know, we need to be bold and sharing our faith.
Let's pray for that together. They did a lot of spontaneous
prayer, liturgical prayer, all of the above.
And so guess what? It wasn't natural, It wasn't
comfortable, it wasn't ideal. It probably didn't feel good,
but it was formative. They were becoming a new family,
and that's how they stayed together.
And all of it, friends, they didn't.
You don't see them congratulating themselves for
their expansive growth or their ancient practices.
They weren't patting themselves on the back for getting it
right. They were in awe and devotion of
someone else. Verse 43 says they were filled
with awe and many wonders and signs are being performed
through the apostles. And the subtext here is that God
is visiting them. The living God is in their midst
as they're devoting themselves to Jesus through these 4
practices. He is drawing near to them like
we've seen in every other sacred space.
The garden, the mountain, the altar, the Tabernacle, the
temple. God is drawing near to them as
they draw near to him. He's the treasure.
Now here's one thing that happened.
These signs and wonders were not just entertainment value.
Many people walked into the early church and they had
physical ailments and they were asking for prayer and they were
getting delivered many, many others.
This is hard for us in our Western culture, but they had a
they were battling spiritual darkness.
They had spiritual darkness that had come to harass them and
oppress them or or their families.
And a lot of times what would happen, according to there's a
book called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, where a
historian describes this, people's battle with darkness
would come to light in the midst of the worship service.
And the name of Jesus would overcome that darkness and
people would see it and they would be like, wow, Jesus is
more powerful than all the powers of this age.
Maybe I should follow him. Lots and lots of people were
converted that way. And so signs and wonders were
were intersecting with raw human need.
And God was in their midst and they were filled with awe and
wonder and it was binding them together.
You know, one cry I've heard recently in our community is for
more discipleship, more common practices that we can devote
ourselves to as we navigate urban life in Chicago.
Whether you've been a for a Christian for a long time or a
recent convert, guys, I just want to name it.
It's not easy. It's not easy, is it?
It's not easy to follow Jesus in this city.
It's not easy to to have a a spiritual family in this city.
Now, in the next year, we want to see more and more
discipleship happening, especially in the next
generation. I think that's going to include
more classes, maybe even a confirmation process at some
point, which is a mixture of theological, biblical, and
personal discipleship. Lord willing, I'd love to see
like more and more people say I want to be a disciple of Jesus.
I want to join in the common practices of the ancient church
and and be made new like Jesus and be made into a family.
And I'll speak into more of this in our at our family meeting
annual celebration today. So even as these unformed
converts become devoted disciples, there was an issue
that rose to the surface and it's a sensitive topic even to
this day. And that was that there were
unequal resources. There were unequal resources in
the community. Do you notice how people who
have similar resources tend to cluster together kind of happens
And it part of its human nature, like attracts like, and we're
drawn to people who understand our life and our world and
people who understand our limits, etcetera.
But on a large scale, like if you, if you don't confront that
and do something different, it it gets out of hand and all of a
sudden you're cut off from cultures, you're cut off from
life experiences, you're cut off from the enrichment of sharing
life with people who live differently than you and have a
different experience of the world.
Then in our own city. This is a huge problem.
Chicago is is segregated by culture, by economics,
especially by class, by education levels, by ethnic
groups. And it's hurting everybody, it's
hurting every single group for us to be as segregated as we
are. In fact, in 2017, a study was
published by the Urban Institute and they, they found, they
looked at what would happen to Chicago in very practical terms
if Chicago's like integration levels set, like if, if the
segregation levels went down on all these different measures,
economics and culture and, and race and everything.
If that went down just to match the median levels of the United
States, if Chicago got just less segregated, what would happen?
And they found, this is going to be hard to believe, but this is
what they found. 4.4 billion would be gained in additional
income in our in our city and region.
There would be a 30% lower homicide rate just if people
mixed more. And there would be an additional
83,000 more people in our region with with bachelor's degrees
that don't have one. Now, isn't that crazy?
But it's real. You and I know this, that when
we interact with someone who's not like us, who's not from our
culture, who's not from our background, who's doesn't share
our life experience, if we can find a way to connect, is a life
changing, enriching, beautiful experience.
Now the early church gathered people with different resource
levels and the book of Acts doesn't lie about this.
So you see people who are like Barnabas and Lydia, they're land
owners. They can sell land and give it
like most people couldn't do that.
Lydia had a very lucrative business with high level
clientele. They could host larger groups of
Christians in their homes. Not everyone could do that.
Others, like the widows and the servants or the rescue babies
from the early church were marginalized and scraping by and
barely existing. And then some, like probably
most, were working class trace people and merchants and
farmers. And so what's even more
complicated is that they're coming from different parts of
the Roman Empire, different parts of Asia Minor, different
customs, different values, different ways of thinking.
Yet when they came together in Jesus, their unequal resources
became by grace, willing sacrifices, willing sacrifices.
And everyone's got something. They can sacrifice, even if it's
their pride. Everyone's got something, even
if it's just their time or their attention.
Verse 44 and 45 describes this. Now all the believers were
together and held all things in common.
They sold their possessions and property and distributed the
proceeds to all as any had need. So look, some had a need, It's
right there in the text. And they willingly, like, let
that need be known. Some had a resource and they
willingly sacrificed their comfort, their status, their
freedom to give that resource so that a need could be met.
And that's a beautiful exchange right there, isn't it?
Others are opening their homes and sharing their tables.
All of them are sharing their time and their days and their
weeks to to, to hang out together.
You know this in the city, that's a big sacrifice to hang
out together. We talked about this last week.
Some of this is awkward. Some of this is hard.
And just like the woman who said to Karen Mains, look, now that I
see you're not perfect, we can be friends.
And the riches that follow are so much better than the riches
that we give up or so much more than what pride could keep.
After last week's message where I did talk about from
Deuteronomy 12, the sacrifices of worship, I got an e-mail from
a leader in our community. She's a mom.
She's an ESL teacher for refugees making life work in the
city, and here's what she she wrote to me when we moved here
six years ago. I was really concerned about
living in a busy urban city with no family, knowing that my
husband would be traveling a lot for work this summer.
I had been dreading being a single parent during one of his
eight day work trips. But thanks to our Emmanuel
community, it was actually a really encouraging week.
One family had me and the kids over for a game night, a second
family had us down to Lawndale for chili and outside play time,
and I got together with a third family for lunch and trading
child care. She says this.
It meant so much to know that all these people with crazy
schedules were willing to make so much space for me and the
kids during the time when I typically feel vulnerable, tired
and lonely. As you hear that story, can you
hear the notes of sacrifice? Can you can you think about the
people who opened up their home, open their door, their schedule,
their meals to to be there for a single mom for a week?
Can you imagine yourself receiving that kind of grace or
being the one to offer it? And here's one of the paradoxes
of Christian community. Don't miss this.
The more we give of ourselves, the more we gain.
Then that's just true. Yes, it's a sacrifice.
There's something more beautiful that we gain in the process.
It doesn't matter what we're bringing to this, to the altar.
It doesn't matter what sacrifices we're bringing.
Maybe it's a need, maybe it's a contribution.
Maybe it's friendship or, or or the freedom that we're giving
up, or personal space or plate of cheese and crackers.
This is exactly where God meets us to form the new family of
Jesus. It's these, it's these willing
sacrifices. You know, there's no, there was
no law from on high to make this happen.
Thou shalt shall thy possessions and give everything you have.
It was willing. The Spirit had fallen.
The Spirit was moving in people, the Spirit was creating a
community. It was willing, it was free, it
was joyful. What if we became known as a
community where there was willing sacrifices that overcame
unequal resources? You know, Circle Church was
known for that in their day. But one generation later, what
if we took that torch along with all the other gospel churches in
Chicago, and carried it in our day?
There was unformed converts, but they became devoted disciples.
There was unequal resources then that became willing sacrifices,
and then finally there was an unfinished task.
An unfinished task despite friends, the explosive growth of
the early church. They were a tiny percentage of
the population. Most people had never heard of
King Jesus. Most people had never been
invited to receive his forgiveness or share at his
table. They hadn't gone to Judea, they
hadn't gone to Samaria, they hadn't gone to the ends of the
earth, they hadn't grown in love or maturity.
Yet there would be some disputes about who would care for the
widows. And there were in chapter 5,
there were people pretending, pretending to sell all they had,
Ananias and Sapphira, and they were lying to the Holy Spirit
and everybody. It this was a mess.
It was unfinished. The discipleship was unfinished.
The maturity levels were unfinished.
Their mission was unfinished. Mostly.
It was mostly not done right. Yet even still, there's this
joyful overflow, the joyful overflow way before the missions
done. Verse 46 Every day, every day
they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple
and broke bread from house to house.
They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, otherwise
translated generous hearts, joyful and generous hearts,
praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.
Let's just let our imaginations rest on the eating the food with
joyful and generous hearts. This joyful feasting was their
path forward to the mission. That was their way to get it
done, eating food with joyful and generous hearts.
There was a radiance to their gathering.
They're praising God. They have favor with people
outside of the early church. They're they're like joining in
with the other people of God in the scriptures where like when
you feast, you're celebrating that the Lord God has won a
great victory. That's the the best kind of
feasts in the Bible are when God has won a victory and you're
savoring it and you're enjoying it.
And they feasted as if the victory was already won.
But you know what? You and I, we eat at our desks
as if we're already behind. Most days we're shoveling
nutrition in our mouth on our way somewhere because we're
we're behind. There's no time to feast, but
the way into that Kingdom of God, the way into the
completion, the fulfilment of all things, is through feasting.
Robert Capon was an Anglican priest and chef, and he wrote a
theological cookbook called The Supper of the Lamb, and in that
book he notes this quote. Food does not exist merely for
the sake of its nutritional value.
To break real bread is to break the loveless hold of hell upon
the world, and by just that much, to set the secular free.
A picture of those early believers going house to house,
breaking bread, joyful and generous hearts, giving thanks
to God, Eucharistically celebrating all His mighty
deeds. Can you picture the early?
Can you picture Circle Church 50-60 years ago on the West side
of Chicago? West Side's been burned out
after Martin Luther King has been assassinated.
But there they are. They're feasting from house to
house, even as the fate of the city was unknown, even as
neighbors were deciding, should I get out of the city or stay in
the city? The gospel, the victory could be
celebrated right there, right then, with Italian beef
sandwiches and cheesecake and old Style and whatever they had
and the children playing in the backyard, children that may one
day, you know, be a part of another church plant in Chicago.
Most of our work is unfinished at a manual.
The story is still unfolding yet, guys.
In my last count, we have 10 different city groups with
tables for a common life that are opening up this fall to pray
in some cases, to eat together for a common devotion and an
uncommon joy. Yeah.
Isn't that what everyone longs for, to celebrate together, to
have joy together in an uncommon way?
Isn't that why we're taking our feedbags along with us and,
like, just eating on the way? Because we're trying to get to
the time when the victory is won and and we can celebrate.
We long for unity and joy and encouragement and hope and a
sense that we're not alone. So it's no surprise that this
early fledgling group kept growing.
Verse 47, the second-half of it says this.
Every day. The Lord added to their number
those who are being saved. They were unformed converts with
unequal resources and an unfinished task.
Yet in that mess of perfection, friends, was real friendship and
the real presence of Jesus and a sacred space where people from
all walks of life could encounter the living God.
Now look, in conclusion, OK, I know it's hot in here.
Every sacred space we've looked at is more or less a relic, and
we just encounter it. We encounter it through the
Lord. But this sacred space is a real
place you can go, and it's called the local church.
And in the mess of the local church where everything's
unfinished, that's where we encountered the living God.
We can't do it as individuals. Don't believe that lie.
We experienced some of God as individuals.
But you know, the real stuff that needs to come up for us,
for us to be transformed into God's image and the real
community that we're made for that is in the church and that
is available to us. This can be our story.
We, we are the Mosaic guys. We're a bunch of broken and
unformed pieces brought together through Jesus and brought
together through the Spirit, just so you know, around a
table, around the word of God and the prayers and the mission,
filled with gratitude and joy and awe at the presence of God
in our midst. Friends, the church is where God
shapes us. Not because we're perfect,
because Jesus is present. So let us, friends, now be that
mosaic and be that family, in the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, Amen.