All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need
Acts 2 44-45
This is almost the same as we read in Acts 4 (verse 32 says),
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
We can talk about being together as God’s people, whether physically in a building, or just in general across the world - but, are we together (heart) and together (mind)?
22 years ago, me and Lisa my wife, took a team of young people and some of our youth team to Tanzania. We had a slightly crazy summer that year as we had just led the youth work at the New Wine summer festival for two weeks - but, Tanzania was remarkable - we partnered with Scripture Union and stayed at one of their centres. The team that hosted us were amazing - and two things stood out from our time there :
We led a kids camp, and as part of that we wanted to create space for the children and young people that came to pray for each other. They just did it, we weren’t introducing prayer or bringing anything - they taught us about prayer as we humbly watched a field full of clumps of children and young people standing there laying hands on each other and praying. There was such a sense of being together in the presence of God.
We also went to a remarkable church, what stayed with us was what they did as part of their worship, they gathered outside the building and people had brought anything and everything - chickens, wheelbarrows, eggs, veg, clothes - and people just stepped forward and took what they needed.
This is Kingdom living. It’s not mentioned in Acts to be some kind of idealised dream (ahh, if only) - it’s highlighted because, this is what the Kingdom of God is supposed to look like.
This new community, rooted in the teaching of Jesus and sustained by the Holy Spirit put in to action those things that God’s people had always been called to - provide support to those most in need.
It is found in God’s instructions to his people in the book of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus - it is found throughout the prophets as they call God’s people BACK to Him - because they have gone astray - it is the kind of living that doesn’t miss anyone out or leave anyone behind.
In 1969 a revival started in Buenos Aires which spread throughout the world a pastor there, Juan Carlos, joined an interdenominational group of pastors in a movement that resulted in significant cooperation and unity between the different Christian denominations. . . . on one occasion, Roman Catholics were praying on one side of a street, Protestants on the other - God spoke to both prayer meetings to ‘go outside’. They did and met each other on the street!
Juan Carlos spoke a few years later at an international gathering of church leaders and said that what we need is ‘mashed potato love.’
It is not until they’re boiled, mashed, and mixed all together that they really become one. And that is what God wants for us. No superstar standing up and saying, ‘Look at what a big potato I am,’ but all of us mixed and blended together, one in Jesus Christ
In 1975 he wrote the book ‘Disciple’ which reflected on the move of God, and one of the things he spoke about was the impact on his preaching - the church knew the right things, they knew what they believed. What he wasn’t convinced of was whether they were living it.
John Westerhoff, a writer and theologian, says this,
beliefs are taught, faith is lived
Being together in heart and mind stirs us to action. We can have right belief, believing all the right things - and it make no difference at all to how we live - to live life as a disciple, we need both right belief and we need to live that in our day to day lives.
So, in Disciple, Ortiz recounts how he decided to preach on love - and he would continue to preach the same sermon until the church became more loving. He says he was three weeks in, preaching the same sermon three times, before anyone said anything . . . ‘haven’t you preached something similar?’ - yeah, last week!
Can you imagine that? How many weeks would go by before we would notice the sermon is the same?
In the book of James it says this,
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it - not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it - they will be blessed in what they do
James 1: 23-25
James goes on to say, ‘Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this : to look after orphans and widows in their distress . . . ‘
The verses I began with can lead us to focus on what we think is hard or impossible - pooling everything we have? Nobody considers their own stuff their own? I don’t think that is the most remarkable thing here - it is their togetherness. Their undivided heart, their unity. That leads to what theyare then able to do for those in their community.
In the church I grew up up in there was a poster on the wall in our church kitchen, it had a group of people sat round a large table and had the words underneath, ‘God so loved the world that he didn’t send a committee.’
In Jesus’ great prayer in John 17 he prays the same thing for both his disciples then, and then for all believers,
that all of them may be one Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me
No big potatoes, all one. I think Jesus prays for this unity because it would be the most difficult thing for us to do.
Do we know those around us who are Christians well enough to say, we are together - heart and mind? What does that togetherness stir in us? Do we see the need - in our churches, as well as in the community? How might God be asking me to live this out more fully?