There were no poor among them

We had a new speaker on Sunday, who shared some very interesting thoughts about property and giving. It made me think about how we share – with friends, family and others in church, but also with the people outside of those circles. For many of us, it feels like we have so much. What does God want us to do with all we earn and all we ‘own’?

 

Acts 4:34 tells us that in the early church, there were no poor among the believers. They “shared everything they had,” selling fields and property to sustain others in the group. They had a storehouse into which they invited widows and orphans to take what they needed. So important was this aspect of church life, that the storehouse building was the most significant section in early church buildings. Sunday’s speaker told us that this passage in Acts doesn’t highlight an exemplary group, as we might sometimes imagine. It describes the norm for Christian communities over the first few hundred years of Christianity – that’s pretty awe-inspiring!

 

The basis of this lifestyle was laid out for the people of Israel in Leviticus – God designed three programmes that would mean a just society in which no one had too little – or too much. These Jubilee programmes that released slaves, land and property and marked a 12-month holiday every three, seven and fifty years were intended to be taken up by the whole nation. But they were just too radical for Israel. The tragedy of the Israelites was that they didn’t put these plans into action, so couldn’t benefit from them.

 

Is it the same for us? Has God provided us with opportunities to make our society more equitable, that we just don’t take? Maybe His ways are too radical for us. Whilst we have a large amount of generosity and giving in our community, have we managed to find an atmosphere in which “no one claims that any of their possessions are their own”?

 

As a personal (and somewhat silly) example, take our new sofas. They are lovely and stripy and perfect. If someone moved in down the street and had nowhere to sit, would I be willing to give them my beloved two-piece? The answer should be easy, but I fear it would be a major trauma to let my sofas go.

 

Maybe the key is in how I see my neighbour down the road, as much as in how I see my sofas. The speaker on Sunday explored how God intended us to relate to one another as extended families. I recently read a really interesting blog by Mike Breen on the same theme that highlighted God’s design for church as extended family rather than a ‘business’. At LifeLine, I think we do quite well at recognising that God has made us a family – He has joined us together to enjoy, support and learn to live with one another. We are part of the same body, from which we can’t really separate ourselves. If a member of my blood family is in trouble, it is my instinct to help them, at any cost. And I guess that’s how we can be as church, as God makes us a family by His supernatural power.

 

We were challenged to consider what we can do that is ‘Jubilee’. Is a storehouse a solution that it relevant and workable for us today in Dagenham? Maybe it is, or maybe there is another God-given blueprint that He has laid out for us.

 

The Acts passage makes it sound so simple – and maybe it is.