Kononia

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 15, 2011

Text: Acts 2: 42-47

The description of the church in Acts sounds like heaven? Or a little too much! Acts is like most church histories: witness to the church full of the spirit and overcoming difficulties with great faith in God. One has said that Acts should be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit rather than the Acts of the Apostles.

“They met constantly to hear the apostles teach and to share the common life, to break bread, and to pray.” “Awe…everything in common” even selling what they had and distributing to each member as each had needs! Temple worship, breaking bread together, glad and generous hearts!”

Restoration movements. “If we can every get it right, like the NT .. But most have not tried this!

Truth is, the church had its problems: read Paul’s letters: pride, one-up-man ship, division, selfishness, greed, pettiness, for example.

Yet what Acts 2 brings up is our longing for the community where all are accepted and there is mutual caring---where there are many Good Samaritans. Just as there is a God-shaped void; and also Church shaped void.

LET’S FACE IT!

Friend used to say this every time we brought up a positive note: Let’s face it. Not be happening. People are not like this.

Move the church and build a new building: can’t be done.
Start a Mother’s Morning out while taking turns minding the kids: mothers won’t do this.

Support the local food bank each year? People have enough troubles of their own.

Fracturing of human community comes early in the Bible.

Cain kills Abel, his brother; and when God comes along asking, “Where is Abel? Abel replies: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Do I have a responsibility for the welfare of my brother?

“He aint heavy; he’s my brother.” We long for fellowship, for shared life larger than ourselves and our families.

THE DREAM THAT WILL NOT DIE

“Follow your dreams.” The image I had when I heard these words at my graduation exercise led me to think that there must be more to my future than this------single individual launching out all on my own. What about idealism grounded in community as will as personal ambition and goals?

Church people were family as much as my blood kin---in many cases, more so. I did not learn who I was and what I wanted to be and do all on my own. We did not hold all things in common, but we looked after each other.

We did not always have glad and generous hearts, but we knew that we should. We did break bread together—on first Sundays and at frequent pot-luck suppers.

We listened to preachers and teachers---some good and others awful. But we shared life around a faith in God, a love of the Lord, a sense of being responsible for each other and for the communities in which we lived. It was not Acts 2, but it was a shot at it.
The old timers used to call each other “brother” and “sister.”
Brother Steve or Brother Hall. Sister Jane or Sister Tisdale.
Paw Fawkes: exclusivist Christen fried approached a group of men chewing the fat in downtown Graford. To those who were in his church he said Brother. To my great granddad he said Mr. Fawkes!

Who are your kinfolks?

In church, our families get expanded: brother’s keeper? Yes.

Inclusion is more than a slogan: is a way of life: all ages, nations and races. “If your heart is as my heart, give me your hand.”

This is the community we long for.

My first semester in college was at Decatur Baptist College. Not much community there: preacher boys and basketball players, separate floors of a creaky dorm. The preacher boys would only come downstairs to visit with us when they wanted to save our souls.

McMurry College was different: fellowship in the Methodist Student Movement, as it was called in those days. Compulsory chapel services. “God touched my life through campus ministry.”

SMU, a common purpose: sustained fellowship over time, friendships that have lasted a life-time.

Later, at Drew University in New Jersey for a PhD in Theology: No community of support and accountability for me.

Point of all of this: I am not a self-made person, though I worked hard on my own skills and education. Faith communities of many different types were my life-line.
Being in church (community, not building) means my mind is being changed as to what belongs to me. If I am a member of this body of Christ, then I will do my part to keep the doors open. It’s not, “Somebody else will do it.” “Glad and generous hearts,” is the way it is described. The church continues by the sustained giving of resources of all its members. Not dues; no a bill. (That’s what we do when we join a club or a work-out place.) It is a privilege to be generous. It is our vote for a community of acceptance and love in the midst of a work bent on self-centeredness.

The way this works out, this koinonia, it usually and little churches within the big one. Work camps, volunteer ministries with others, bible studies, prayer groups, kitchen crews, ball teams, Sunday School classes, Disciple Bible Study.

More than ideals of church, practices: doing things together on a regular basis.
APOSTLES’ TEACHING
In community, when hearts are transformed to hearts of caring, grounded in the Scriptures: God meets us there and we are fed nourishing food. Education plus!

BREAK BREAD:

Table fellowship; originally in homes: re-discover the wisdom of the church in homes. Not incidental that groups from Methodist Churches, ours included, serve meals for the Wesley Foundation at UT.

TEMPLE WORSHIP: We can find a local church and be in it with people of all ages and stages and races and economic brackets: sinners like yourself. (Groucho Marx: I would not want to be a member of an organization that would accept me as a member.) Mostly we choose to be in fellowship with people just like us. (Everyone loves diversity so long as we do not have to be around anyone except people like ourselves.) Church----love across ages and stages. Terrible and wonderful.

PRAY:
Together: prayers of the faith: Psalms, traditional; silent and spoken. Resolve to be a beginner at prayer: remember you are speaking to God, not those you may be praying for. (LBJ: Bill Moyers: “I wasn’t speaking to you, Mr. President.)

Prayers alone:

“Pegs” to hang your prayer on:
ACTS

Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication (prayers for yourselves, your needs, and the needs of the world.

What do we need for the living of these days when it comes to church?

Personal vibrant faith in God who loves you and is with you,

A community of faith to which you belong,

And, by the power of the Spirit, dedication of your life to live for God’s Shalom:

God’s peace, as Jesus showed us.

Koinonia, shared life?
A Gift waiting to be received;
A house ready to be lived in;
A discipline laid out for us,
To take up with glad and generous hearts!