If you ask me, the attraction of a great mystery novel is that the perpetrator of the crime is right under your nose until their identity is finally revealed. It would cheat the rules of the mystery genre for the guilty party to be suddenly plopped into the story at the end. That’s simply not fair! Part of the fun is knowing that any one of the many characters you’ve encountered throughout the mystery could be guilty. And it’s all too easy to miss the signs of guilt until the revelation of the culprit has been divulged at the end of the novel.
Often, a good mystery is difficult to solve because the perpetrator can hide amid the normalcy of life. Initial efforts at identifying the guilty party result in an immature blaming of the odd duck in the story. It’s easy to blame the quiet recluse who lives in a cabin in the woods whittling figurines from soap or the character with a volatile temper. But no one would suspect the churchgoer who bakes pies to deliver to new residents on the block, would they?
There’s a mystery that I’m interested in solving, although there’s no crime or murder involved. But it’s a mystery, nonetheless. It has its origins in the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where we get a glimpse of the behavior of the earliest disciples of Jesus. We’re told that all those who believed were of one heart and soul. They held all things in common, and surprisingly, no one claimed that anything was their own. There wasn’t a needy person among them. And those who had possessions sold them, and the proceeds were used to help those in need.
This is a mystery to me because it seems so different from the Church that we know, and don’t you want to know why? Don’t you want to know how a motley group of people could be of one heart and soul? Don’t you want to know how sinful humans could behave so selflessly as not to cling to their possessions? Don’t you want to know how in a world of deep economic and social inequities there wasn’t a needy person among the earliest disciples? Don’t you want to know how the communal concern of Acts 4 was possible in a world just as disordered and lopsided as our own? This is a mystery that needs to be solved.
If we were to employ traditional mystery-solving techniques, we would, of course, look not for the most unusual behavior but for that which appears most normal. After all, the best mysteries are usually solved by paying attention to the ordinary details, and in that apparent normalcy lies the solution.
But there’s a problem because nothing in this description of the early Church seems normal. These days, it’s not easy to identify ready examples of Christian unity. The norm is to be painfully aware of the Church’s divisions. We see denominations wracked by schism, making one group of people the scapegoat for disunity. Rarely, too, do we see Christians easily parting with their possessions. It’s hard enough to give sacrificially, much less believe and profess that what we have isn’t even our own. And we all know that if there weren’t any needy persons among us, food ministries and soup kitchens would be superfluous. There would be no need for church-sponsored shelters for the unhoused. The early Church in Acts 4 is so far removed from our own reality as to seem like a pipedream, if not a fictionalized tale.
And so, in trying to solve the mystery of what is happening in Acts 4, there’s no ordinary behavior that might be hiding the real solution to this mystery. It’s as if we’ve entered an alternative universe. And yet, the vexing question remains: why does the early Church seem so different from the Church today?
Maybe the answer to this perplexing mystery doesn’t lie in decoding the witness of the early Church. Maybe it lies beneath the behavior of the Church today. Could it be that the answer to being an Acts 4 Church is right under our eyes? Could the clue to solving the mystery lie in analyzing the normalcy of Church life as we know it, not as the early Church knew it?
It’s hard to deny that the Church of our own day is struggling, even if we choose not to accept catastrophic predictions of decline. It’s true that a Church full of believers who are of one heart and mind seems like a rarity these days. It should be obvious that few of our acquaintances talk about shared possessions but rather talk quite normally about their own possessions. It's blatantly evident that too many people are in dire need around us, in our own community, in our own neighborhoods, and even in the Church. And it appears that the Church frequently fails to embody the behavior of the early disciples in Acts 4. Something is missing. So, what is it?
Here, in our own context, we see a Church trying and at least aspiring to be the Church of Acts 4. Despite her many divisions, we still profess to be saddened by them. We still pray for unity within diversity and hope to share one mind in Christ. We still strive to help those in need and long for a day when no one will lack any necessary resources. All this is true, at least in theory, but the reality is far from our hopes and dreams.
As in any good mystery, perhaps the answer is right beneath our eyes. Beneath all our modern aspirations, there seems to be a marked difference between the behavior of the early Church and the Church today, a difference that we might overlook in our quest to be an Acts 4 Church. Amid evidence of the earliest Church’s unity, altruism, and social concern, there’s a fulcrum of momentum that powers the entire enterprise. We’re told that with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. It’s seemingly simple, but too often forgotten. This is the clue we’ve been looking for. This alone can explain the shared heart and soul of those early disciples. This alone can explain the genuine selflessness of the early Church. This alone can explain the lack of needy persons in the Church’s nascent days.
The power of the resurrection is what we too often fail to trust. If there’s anything that we can learn from the early Church, it’s that the Church we long to be will not be created by our own hand but by the power of God, the One who raised Jesus from the dead. It will happen when we start doing the one thing that seemed so obvious to the first disciples but sadly seems so strange in our own day. It will happen when we give our own testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. If we want to go anywhere and do anything, this must be our starting point.
The incredible behavior of the early Church was not the product of a better equipped Church. It was simply the sign of a Church that lived as if it truly believed in the resurrection from the dead. The early Church both believed in Jesus’s resurrection and lived as if that resurrection had taken over their lives. The early disciples believed that the dead could be raised, that sinners could be forgiven, that the old could become new, that the Church would thrive not decline, and that hope was greater than despair. The resurrection from the dead was the starting point for the early Church, not an aside to justify a means. The early Church lived out of a confident generosity, and such generosity reflected back to God, if imperfectly, God’s own perfect giving of himself to us, holding nothing back but giving us infinitely of himself, his love, his mercy, and his forgiveness.
Such courageous testimony to the power of the resurrection is what will give dynamism to the malaise of the modern Church. Such bold witness to a new creation is what will turn our normal, banal waywardness into the strange and life-giving direction guided by the Gospel. And our own unashamed proclamation that we believe the unbelievable can turn this world upside down. Because we’ve died and risen with Christ, we can never be the same again. And because of this, the world should never be the same again either.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 7, 2024