Text: Acts 2:42-47
Friday night is game night at my house.
For years it has been an event where friends and family gather, surrounded by food and laughter and love.
Everyone brings something to the table… even if it is just a story or a giggle or themselves.
One of the things that usually happens, however, is that before we are all ready to sit down and eat, one of the kiddos gets a little too eager and sneaks a bite from the food that is laid out.
That has probably NEVER happened at your house.
You know, the table is one of my favorite images of the Kingdom of God.
That huge table where all are welcome, and all are loved.
And the amazing thing about the Christian community born out of the ministry of Jesus is that we are like those kiddos at the dinner table.
We get to sneak a bite…
We get to catch a foretaste of the glorious banquet.
We get a preview of what awaits us.
That is what the early Christian community was doing in the book of Acts.
You know, if after worship today, you sat down and spent some time reading just straight through Acts, you’d find it reads a lot like a journal.
Luke felt called to write down what happens to the disciples after Jesus leaves them.
He carefully documents those early days of ministry, the birth of the church, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
It is his personal witness to the Kingdom of God that was taking root in the world… a Kingdom that wasn’t totally and completely and fully there yet.
But all around there were these glimpses.
These bites.
These foretastes of everything that God desired for God’s people.
As Luke begins writing in Acts, he reminds us that he has already written about the ministry of Jesus… but in case we forgot, he gives us a quick recap.
Jesus suffered for us… and died for us… and then by God’s power he showed up again!
For forty days he hung out with the apostles and taught them about the Kingdom.
It was a Kingdom they had experienced when the hungry were fed and the blind healed and the oppressed set free.
The kingdom was wherever Jesus went.
Forty days pass after the resurrection and Jesus takes them out of the city.
They all start to think – this is the moment. This is it.
Down with Rome.
Down with oppression and disease and death.
Down with anything that would destroy life.
One of them cries out – Master, is this time? Are you going to restore the kingdom now?
They are like those eager kids crowding around the dinner table…
Is it ready?
Is it now?
His answer?
Not yet.
You’ll know it when it comes.
And to drive home his point, Christ is lifted up and taken out of their sight.
He leaves us with promises.
The promise that Christ will always be with us.
The promise of the Holy Spirit.
And the promise that just as Jesus came to be with us once, in the new creation, God will come and be with us again.
As the church, we are sandwiched in between these realities.
We know the truth of Christ’s life and teaching and death and resurrection.
But at the same time, we wait for the fullness of the Kingdom.
In the meantime, we get these glimpses.
And we long for the time when everything will finally be ready.
When God will make a home among us.
When God will dwell with us.
When the heavenly banquet is set and everyone will have a place at the table.
But how do we live and wait and worship and act during these in-between times?
What are you supposed to do right now as a person of faith?
What is your day by day responsibility?
Some of us thought we knew six months ago.
We had our day to day pattern figured out with worship here at the church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday night supper and various small groups meeting throughout the week.
Every other part of our life was crammed with work and school and kids and grandkids and sports. But for a whole lot of you, church was important too.
But then, all of that was thrown out the window.
Every pattern in our lives was disrupted.
And everything we are doing today is being compared to what we did six months ago.
Including how we practice our faith during these “in-between” times.
But if we look back through history, we will find that people of faith have answered that question in many different ways.
And so maybe in these unique circumstances, instead of comparing ourselves to what was familiar, maybe we should look for other examples and figure out how to be the church in a way that is faithful to this moment.
I keep finding myself going back to those early disciples.
Back to those first Christian communities and how they lived their faith day by day.
We find their experience all throughout the book of Acts and the New Testament epistles.
And what we discover is that church wasn’t a place they went on Sundays.
Rather, being the church was how they lived their lives every day.
And most of it centered not on going to a place of worship, but creating space in their homes and in their relationships for God to dwell with them.
They clung to those promises of the Kingdom of God…
They took seriously that line of the Lord’s prayer and made room for God’s Kingdom to come on earth as it was in heaven.
And they decided to live every single day as if they were already gathered at the heavenly banquet.
Faith for that very first community centered around the table.
Not the altar in the temple, but the kitchen table, the dining room table…
That place where their family and their friends and their neighbors gathered.
Luke describes their fellowship in Acts 2:42-47.
Twice in this passage, they talk about the common meal.
About breaking bread.
About sharing food with gladness and simplicity.
Church happened every day in their homes.
And it wasn’t just those first three thousand converts.
This is the primary way that the early Christian communities survived and expanded and grew for the first decades of our tradition.
Everything is happening in our homes right now.
If you are in one of our many senior-living communities, you aren’t allowed to leave home!
You are working from home.
Many of our kiddos are going to school from home, at least part time.
We are eating at home.
And I have seen all of the photos being shared of how you have created space for these things.
You are utilizing technology to connect with people outside or chatting through windows and open doorways.
The desk area set up so you can get work done.
The nook you created for your child to focus and learn.
The way the dining room table was cleared off because you finally have people at home at the same time to eat once again.
Why not create space in our homes for church as well?
In that place that we live and breathe and work and learn and play and love and laugh…
Why shouldn’t that also be a place where we make room for God to dwell?
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a more in-depth look at these very first house/churches of the Christian tradition.
We’ll explore how they worked and what it meant for the people who hosted them.
Throughout it all, we’ll try to discover some lessons for how our faith can not just survive covid-times, but thrive.
And each morning, we are going to send out and post a devotion with a very simple activity that will help you and your family create space in your home for the Kingdom of God to be made real.
You know, faith was not complicated for these folks.
In fact it was very simple.
They had experienced the Kingdom of God and they committed themselves to live in that reality until it was fully present.
And to do so, that first community of three thousand people devoted themselves every day to four things. We read about it in Acts 2:42-47:
- The teaching of the apostles
- Sharing life together
- Breaking bread around the table
- and prayer.
You know…
If you put those in a slightly different order, it kind of sounds like the four parts of our discipleship pathway here at Immanuel.
We, too, believe that we should pray and praise and worship God… and we’ve been creating ways for you to make prayer a daily part of your life with our daily devotions.
We, too, believe that we should gather together to connect and break bread and laugh… and the caring connections groups that were sent out and our virtual coffee time on Zoom all help us to do so.
We, too, believe that we should grow in our faith by learning and studying the scripture… and you can join in one of our weekly online bible studies or small groups that are starting up.
We, too, believe that we should pool together our resources, going out in the world to serve and share what we have with those in need… and from the masks you create or the sandwiches you put together at home for CFUM or the time you spend with Joppa… these are all ways that we are pulling together to serve others.
Our church is not just surviving this pandemic… we are thriving in the midst of it.
But I also know that some of us as individuals are struggling with it all.
The Barna Institute has discovered that one in three practicing Christians – 32% – have stopped attending church virtually during the pandemic.
The novelty of virtual worship and life has worn off.
Some of the other demands on our time have picked back up.
It maybe has felt easier to check out.
I think that is why looking back on these early Christian communities is so important.
Over these next few weeks we are going to remember that it has always been easier to check out.
There have always been other demands on our lives.
But if we have the ability to taste and touch and experience the Kingdom of God right here and right now, shouldn’t we make every effort to do so?
Shouldn’t we work to create space in our day by day lives for the presence of God to be known?
Shouldn’t we tap into the joy and the life and the blessings that we discover when we join with other people of faith to break bread and to learn and to share and to pray?
In spite of the threat of persecution, these early Christians devoted themselves, every day, to grabbing a hold of that foretaste of the Kingdom.
And in these times of division and conflict and stress and fear… I think that might be exactly what we need to keep going….
We need to pull up a seat at the table…
And taste and see and know that the promises of God are real…
And they are here…
Right where you are… wherever you are.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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