James 24:7

Recently I read and reviewed Bishop N.T. Wright's latest book called Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense.  In the first four chapters of that book, Bishop Wright describes four common, if not universal, concerns: (1) the struggle for justice, (2) the search for meaning, (3) the yearning for deep relationship, and (4) the longing for beauty. While one would be hard-pressed to prove that those were all universal concerns, I think most folks would agree that it at least makes sense that everyone hungers for those four things. 

We all seem to have questions as to rightness and fairness, whether there is something larger than ourselves, something ultimately truthful that can claim us, whether true deep relatedness and community is possible, and whether and how we can experience beauty. 

In his book, Bishop Wright seeks to demonstrate how Christian faith answers to those yearnings.

As I drove home yesterday after worship I thought about Bishop Wright's 4 yearnings and how the very sermon I had just preached spoke to them.  I began the sermon by reading the words of Paul where he says that when we are baptized we are buried with Christ and that we rise from the death and burial of baptism  "just as Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father"  to walk in newness of life.

We rise to walk in a life marked by ressurection.

I then read a quote from Dallas Willard's new book, The Great Omission, in which he speaks of the Great Disparity- the gap between what we claim as Christians and what others observe about us: we claim to walk in this newness of life but, by most measures, live like most everybody else.  

Where is this ressurection life, this abundant life, this new creation about which the Bible speaks and  which we claim to live?

I thought it would be worthwhile to look at an example of what the ressurected life looked like and so we turned to the picture of the church drawn by Luke in Acts 2-4.  There we found a community marked by 3 characteristics: they attended to the essentials, they demonstrated gracious sharing and and they lived truthfully.

The disciples of Jesus attended to the essentials.  They gave themselves to the fellowship, the Apostles Doctrine, the breaking of bread and to prayer.

They shared with one another even if it entailed selling one's own property to do so.    The outcome of such sharing was that there was no needy person among them.

They lived truthfully with one another such that the fundamental characteristic of any community (or relationship), trust, was abundant. (The negative case of Annanias and Sapphira in Acts 5 demonstrate that hypocrisy and dishonesty are death to a community.*)

I tried to make the point that the ressurected life into which we are born is not a life marked by goose-bump inducing spiritual or emotional experiences but a life of graciousness and truthfulness.

As I drove home I thought about that early community and about what a wonderful and remarkable thing was born into the world when the church was born on Pentecost. 

The commitment to the essentials devoid of the institutional, doctrinal and theological wrangling that has become so much a part of the contemporary church, the grace-filled sharing of goods and resources and self, and the freedom from status seeking and acquisitiveness that enabled truthfulness to flourish made the first church, in its earliest days, an image of God's longing for humanity.

For a brief moment and only by the power and grace of God, the church got back to the Garden.

As I thought about that I thought about N.T. Wright's 4 hungers: the hunger for justice, meaning and purpose, relationship and beauty and realized that the earliest moment of the church fed those four hungers.

Justice was realized...there was no needy among them.

Meaning and purpose was received...each disciple and all of them together were caught up in God's new thing.

Relationship, broken by the power of sin, was restored...each shared with the other even if it entailed expense to himself or herself.

And beauty...well, just look at them reveling in the joy of community, basking in the sun of fidelity , attuned to the essentials of life in Christ.

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(* I am indebted to my friend Wye Huxford of the European Evangelistic Society for this insight...among others!  Also, I have been reading N.T. Wright's book Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship and Luke Timothy Johnson's Living Jesus:Learning the Heart of the Gospel.  Those books have been of immeasurable help in expanding my understanding of "ressurection".  I don't have any original thoughts, which is a very good thing and a confession I happily make.

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I have been AWOL from my blog because we have been moving the North River Community Church to a new location.  For those of you in the Atlanta area, we are now located at 1725 Spectrum Drive, Suite B in Lawrenceville, Ga.  Here are some directions if you are ever in the area...click rat cheer.