Bread and Prayers

Palmdale Presbyterian Church
May 7, 2017
“Bread and Prayers”

Acts 2:42-47

Writing in the book of Acts, Luke paints a picture of church life and church growth that is the envy of many a congregation.  Study a little; eat a little; pray a little; share your stuff with each other. “And day by day the Lord added to their number....”

Hmmm.

Of course there is that one line about “...with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” “Glad,” “generous,” “goodwill.”  Sounds like a bunch of happy socialists living in a commune or perhaps a kibbutz. 

Maybe it’s not so easy after all.  Apart from the social and political and economic issues that we might want to debate, the most profound thing about the community that Luke is describing is their togetherness.  They lived in unity with one another and with the Lord.

This was a community of people who were yoked, that is to be joined, linked, or united.  In Matthew 11 when Jesus tells us to take his yoke upon us he is not talking about our taking on his burdens.  He is telling us to be united with him so that we may share our burdens with him and recognize the liberating joy of a union with him.  Being united – with Christ and with one another – is a very important aspect of genuine Christian faith.  It is a defining trait for a Christian community. 

Time and again Jesus prays for our unity.  He prays that we would be one just as he and the Father are one.  In fact in his great pastoral prayer in John 17 Jesus prays for our unity 3 times, and the reason is so that the world will believe that Christ is of God.  The unity of the church is meant to show the world that Christ was sent to us from God.  The unity of the church is at the core of the Gospel that we are called to proclaim.

Why is it then that we who would claim to follow Christ have such a hard time getting along? 

Do you remember the song “Jesus loves the little children?” I’m certain that many of you know the chorus:

“Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Black and yellow, red and white
They're all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Those colors are actually racial divisions but the intent of the song is the unity of us all in the sight of Christ.  We talk about racial distinctions, gender distinctions, national origin distinctions, economic distinctions, doctrinal divisions.  Sometimes these are just informational.  Sometimes they reflect malignancy in our souls.  We argue about hymns, about interior décor, about who has more power and influence in the congregation. 

Recently in this country we have come up with a newly defined color distinction: red and blue.  Do you live in a red state or a blue state?  Are you a “red dog Republican” or a “blue dog Democrat?”  (My mind does strange things sometimes, and whenever I hear “red dog” I immediately think of Clifford, not politics.  And “blue dog” puts me in mind of George Rodrigue, a New Orleans based artist who does some really weird things with blue dogs in his paintings.) But a lot of people take this new color divide VERY seriously.  That’s one more point of division among us – even in the church.  

I really think that we work much harder defining our divisions than working for the unity to which Christ himself calls us.  We battle so hard and passionately at those divisions even within our congregations that some Christians end up very bruised.  Like my eye, some people end up black and blue; bruised by other “Christians.” For some the pain and discomfort is so great that they depart from the congregation and sometimes never heal.  It happens to pastors too.

For us there is a certain irony in this new division between red and blue.  Do you know what happens when you merge red and blue?  You get purple.  Purple is historically a color that represents wealth and royalty.  It’s also the color of the robe that the Roman soldiers placed on Jesus as they taunted him.  In Mark 15 we read:

16 Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters^*); and they called together the whole cohort.¹⁷And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. ¹⁸And they began saluting him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ ¹⁹They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. ²⁰After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

They dressed him in purple, mocking his supposed claims to kingship.  They dressed him in purple.  That’s a color that should have a special meaning for us.  Ironically when you fuse the colors of our latest form of artificial division, red and blue, you get purple.  The soldiers used purple to mock him.  We say he is our king so purple is the color in which we should dress him respectfully, reverently. 

Sisters and brothers we need to fuse together all of the colors that separate us.  We need to move beyond all of the divisions that we have allowed into the life of our church.  We need to stop thinking that one of us has greater status and prestige within the congregation.  Do you remember what happened to Matthew 20.  The mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus demanding that her sons be promised the most favorable status in Jesus’ kingdom.  Do you remember his reply:

²⁵But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.²⁶It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, ²⁷and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; ²⁸just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

We are called to servanthood, and we are called to unity.  I understand why some of us have problems with the notion of “servanthood,” but why is “unity” such a problem?

As it is the answer to so many questions in life, the answer is simply “focus.”  I can’t tell you all the things that make “unity” so difficult for us, but I can tell you what made it so natural for that early church described in Acts 2.  The fact that they were glad and generous and had the goodwill of all the people wasn’t their rule or their goal.   It was a result of what they were focused on. 

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers [Acts 2:42].”

Everything followed from there.

“They devoted themselves….”  The focus of their lives was hearing and talking about the story of Jesus together, sharing a common meal and prayer.  It was both that simple and that difficult.  Devoting yourself to something is never simple.  I would suggest that you can start by displacing whatever energy you put into divisions – divisions of any kind – and refocus that energy on coming together and studying the story of Jesus and his followers, sharing a meal together and always keep prayer central to all that you do.

The life and sacrifice and triumph of Jesus calls us not to divisions but to unity.  That unity starts here, within our congregation.  Our response to the call of Jesus is the most important thing in our lives.  Quite literally, for Christ’s sake, forgive one another, study together, pray together and come to this table together remembering what he gives to us and what he wants for us.

Amen.