Teaching Summary: What Now? (Acts) The Resurrection Community

Acts 4:32-5:16

Most of us didn’t sit down one day and decide what kind of life we wanted. We just looked around. We saw what the people next to us were buying, the truck in the driveway, the vacations they take, the camp they send their kids to, and we started moving in the same direction. Not because we chose it. Just because that’s what people around us were doing. And if that’s what everybody’s after, it must be worth having. If you live on Nantucket you know exactly what that looks like. There’s a certain kind of life here that signals you’ve made it. And you don’t have to be told what it is. You just have to look around and you start moving toward it.

But most people who get there find out it isn’t what they thought it would be. The feeling they were waiting for doesn’t materialize. And they’re left standing in the place they worked so hard to get to wondering what they missed. And it’s not just people. Churches do this too. A church looks around at the churches that seem to be doing well, the big crowds, the quality production, the social media presence, and without anybody deciding to, the church starts chasing those things. Before long the church is being shaped by something other than the Spirit of the living God. This is nothing new. It was as true for the people living in Jesus’s day as it is for us today. But everything changed after Jesus was raised from the dead. Something new began to take shape. A community began to form around a whole new way of being. Not because a group of people had figured something out that others hadn’t. But because the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead was forming them into something the world could not produce on its own. Not a new religion. A resurrection community.

Acts 4:32 gives us the portrait of that community. All the believers were one in heart and mind. Every person in that room would have recognized what Luke was describing. To be one in heart and mind was the language of Israel’s deepest devotion. The Shema was the central prayer of religious life. Every faithful Hebrew recited it morning and evening. It was the first thing parents taught their children and the last thing a person was supposed to say before they died. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Luke is not simply saying they got along well. He is saying the resurrection had produced in this community the kind of unity that God’s people had only ever directed toward God.

And then there is this. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own. The Greek word behind their own is idios, the root of our English word idiot. In the ancient world an idiot was not a fool. An idiot was a private person, someone concerned only with their own affairs. In the resurrection community, there are no idiotes. No one living only for themselves. No one treating their private resources as private. The resurrection had put an end to all of that. And the result? There were no needy persons among them. In a first-century Roman city, that sentence is almost unbelievable. Poverty was everywhere and it was permanent. The resurrection community does not just believe differently. It behaves differently.

Luke then moves from the portrait to the practice and gives us a name. Barnabas, which means son of encouragement. He sells a field, brings the money, puts it at the apostles’ feet. No announcement, no conditions, no expectation of recognition. Something had happened to Barnabas that changed his relationship to what he owned. The resurrection does that. When the Spirit of the risen Jesus takes up residence in a person, the grip loosens. What was held tightly begins to be held openly. What was protected begins to be offered. You can redistribute resources without the resurrection. Governments and organizations do it. But you cannot produce people who freely give without the Spirit of the risen Jesus. This is not a policy change. This is a heart change. And only the resurrection produces it.

Acts 5 shows us how the resurrection community gets tested. Ananias and Sapphira do exactly what Barnabas did. They sell property, bring money, put it at the apostles’ feet. The difference is they keep some of the money back and present what they bring as if it were the whole amount. Peter is not confronting them about the money. He makes that explicit. The land was theirs. The money was theirs. No one required anything of them. What Peter confronts is the lie. The lie is the gap between who they are and who they are presenting themselves to be.

The deeper diagnosis is this. Ananias and Sapphira didn’t believe that what they had was enough. Not enough to impress, not enough to earn the standing they were after, not enough to be seen the way they wanted to be seen. So they made it appear as something more. They didn’t just lie to Peter. They made a mockery of everything the Spirit was doing. Because the resurrection community is not built on impressive contributions. It is built on honest ones. Barnabas didn’t give because he was trying to impress anyone. He gave what he had and he let it be enough. That is the posture of the resurrection community. Bring what you have and let it be enough.

This has practical implications for how we show up. It means coming even when you don’t feel like you have it together, bringing where you actually are and letting that be enough. Because the people in this church family don’t need you to have it all figured out. They need you to be honest. Your honesty gives them permission to be honest too. That is how the Spirit builds a resurrection community. It means telling the truth when someone asks how you are doing. And it means giving. The New Testament is not ambiguous on generosity. It is not a suggestion for people who feel like they have enough to spare. It is a mark of resurrection community membership. The widow Jesus pointed to in the temple didn’t wait until she had enough. She gave from her poverty. And Jesus held her up as the example. Not because the amount was impressive. Because her posture was honest. She brought what she had and she let it be enough.

The word integrity comes from the Latin integer, meaning whole and undivided. A person of integrity is the same person in private that they are in public. Ananias and Sapphira were divided people. They didn’t believe what they had was enough so they made it appear as something more. And they brought that division into a community being formed by the Spirit of the risen Jesus. That division cannot survive in the resurrection community. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is not looking for performers. He is looking for people who will open themselves to personal transformation. You cannot perform your way into resurrection. You can only receive it.

What happens through the resurrection community? Acts 5:12-16 shows us. The apostles performed signs and wonders. People brought the sick into the streets hoping that even Peter’s shadow might fall on them. More and more believed and were added to their number. The resurrection community is not running a campaign. It is simply being what it is. And people in need are being pulled toward it. Not because of its programs. Because of its life. The world is full of impressive communities. What the world is desperately short of are communities that are alive. That is what we want to be. Not impressive. Alive. The same Spirit who formed that community in Acts is forming us right now, on this island. He forms resurrection communities out of people who show up honestly, bring what they have, and let it be enough.

And when we come to the Lord’s Table, we are doing exactly that. We are receiving what Jesus had to give. The body and blood of a crucified and risen Savior. This table is the resurrection community at its most honest. We don’t come because we have it together. We come because we don’t. We come with empty hands. And we let what Jesus offers be enough.