The fourth Sunday after
Easter
April 13, 2008
Acts 2:41-47
1 Peter 2
John 10:1-10
One of the most terrible and frightening aspects of political discourse over the past five years or so has been the renewed interest in the nature and practice of torture. Politicians and their advisors have made statements about the practice of torture that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Torture has been turned into a refined science, which it is possible for so-called civilized nation to practice. Studies have been conducted to determine what methods are most effective in breaking a prisoner’s spirit. The findings reveal that most people do not break down from physical deprivation or physical harm as quickly as they do from solitary confinement or from the creation of a psychologically unstable environment. Setting one prisoner against another is extremely effective, as is humiliation. For the most part, people are not sustained primarily by faith in their country or by the rightness of the cause for which they fight. They draw their greatest strength from close attachments they form in the groups to which they belong.
Now, it goes without saying that
I am against torture in any form. It is
beneath the dignity of a Christian to contemplate it; and it behooves us to
repent for those occasions on which Christians have employed torture on other
people in the past. The adherents of a
religion that was born out of the brutal torture and execution of its founder
should know better than to torture and execute others. The reason I bring up torture is to contrast
this abhorrent practice with its complete opposite: the methods used to create
a community of people united in love and loyalty to each other and to the world
outside. Luke paints a picture of such a
group when he speaks of the
Here we catch a glimpse of the first fellowship of believers. Luke does not describe their order of worship, or the ritual they used. He describes the first church by writing about what the believers did when they came together for the first time. The focus of those believers was not some super-apostle or a charismatic figurehead. They are not drawn together by some abstract doctrine. It was the message of the Apostles that brought them into fellowship with each other. When Peter stood up and proclaimed the possibility of their spiritual freedom, they had a thirst to hear more. They were looking for new horizons because the apostles proclaimed to them that they were following Jesus’ footsteps – the man who was the Firstborn of the New Creation. They were now brothers and sisters in that New Creation, and it was incumbent upon them to live lives that reflected the love that God has for his children, and the love that those children should have for each other.
Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles at a time when Christians were beginning to be tortured and persecuted. It is partly for that reason that he focuses on the strength of the fellowship that existed between the first believers. No persecution, no torture could make them yield. They held fast to the love God had for them, and the love that they had for each other.
There were no outsiders or insiders. Everyone was in the "in crowd." They were simply in Christ. They were from different nations, spoke different languages, but Jesus Christ had broken down all such superficial distinctions. They had no official name, no creed book, or organization. They were simply believers who received the message of salvation, and expressed their one-ness with Christ and with each other through the breaking of the bread. We are called to do the same; to live in communion with each other so that the risen Christ will be revealed to the world.
The Revd. Nigel Massey