Peter J.B. Carman
Offered at Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady NY
Sunday April 15, 2018
Readings: John 20:19-27
Acts 4:32-35
Acts 4:32-35
4:32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.
4:33 With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
4:34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.
4:35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
I.
Last week Lynn, my wife and the interim pastor at First Church in Albany, stood before you in this place. I was standing in her historic pulpit in Albany, at First Reformed Church of Albany. We have chosen to preach these two Sundays on the same passage from the book of Acts, each offering our own take. You get to hear two different preachers on the same story. But of course, our lives, these particular two preachers, have run side by side for quite a while.
In the days when I first met Lynn, my hair was longer, and the beard wasn’t grey. I was living in an old convent in Waterbury, Connecticut on a steep and pothole-riddled side street. The token protestant in a house full of Catholics, I was surrounded by members of the Catholic Worker movement. They had renamed the old monastic dwelling “Guadalupe House” for our lady of Guadalupe, the miraculous appearance of Mary the mother of Jesus to a Mexican peasant.
That’s where I was living when Lynn and I first met. While there, I worked in a homeless shelter, occasionally made up excellent omelets with government cheese for breakfast for the others, and hung out as much as I could with the older wiser residents, i.e. Tom and Monica Cornell, who had been part of the Catholic Worker movement since the 60s.
And what was this Catholic Worker movement they belonged to? It was and remains a surprisingly large number of dedicated Catholics—lay people—across the country, often living together, giving their all for the sake of a revolutionary vision of Christianity. Cofounded by Dorothy Day back in the 1930’s, they have for almost a century questioned basic tenets of American conventional wisdom, like the sin of private property, and like the permanent war economy. But their vision was not, and is not, simply reactive. They believe that Christ calls us to live in community and share freely; to serve the poor; to offer hospitality and live our faith through works of mercy. They believe in nonviolence and direct action. They want their Christianity full strength, no watering down.
My fellow residents there at Guadalupe House were a high school runaway, an aging alcoholic grandmother, a longtime soup kitchen worker, and a family of four. Nobody was really in charge, but Monica Cornell, mother in that family of four, filled in, against her better judgment, in the moral leadership role of some long-deceased mother superior in that convent.
Monica was an outspoken advocate of cleanliness, good food and giving our best—not half-hearted charity, not food slapped down on the counter. AND she seemed to remember almost all the things old Dorothy Day had said, in the original Catholic Worker house on the Lower East Side. “Dorothy used to say that the most important things that need doing are the ones nobody is willing to pay for.”
The only one ever to call a house meeting in my time there, Monica did so under emergency circumstances: “I don’t believe male human beings SEE dust balls” said she. “There’s one I’ve left on the stair landing for you, for a month. It just keeps growing. Does anybody ever clean?” Let’s keep our Christianity real….
II.
I bring up the circumstances under which Lynn met me to let you know that deep in my heart still I do believe that the normative vision of what it means to be a Christian is the memory we find in the book of Acts chapter 4. I still believe in the vision of a communal Christianity of that kind of sharing: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”
There lives the vision—see it? Some of us live it out, however imperfectly, together in gathered communities—not just Catholic Worker Houses, but also big old brick or stone or wood church buildings with small but lively congregations-- tending and nursing that still revolutionary vision. We right here are also committed to the vision of intentional communities of real people doing their level best to level out society, to share, to love, to create a community that embodies Christ’s commandment to love one another. Unique communities gathered by the same runaway wild spirit of God that moved Jesus and his earliest followers. And this church is one.
The earliest church knew somehow that when people shared all things in common—the pain and the joy, the food and the drink, and even the things that before they had seen as being private property--- they knew that God was there. The earliest church knew somehow that when the residents of the promised land made common cause with the resident aliens, the foreigners, God was in it somehow. They were as hard-headed as we are, but they got it, after considerable struggle and some sharp words from the apostle Paul. They got it that when women were excluded or given second best seats, or when the masters got better places than their servants—God wasn’t pleased. And those earliest Christians were even clearer about sharing wealth, generously and honestly and without prejudice.
III.
All the world remembers Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. again this spring, memories shadowed by the recollection of his death, and the fearful hatred that fueled that death. Fifty years later, most of the world only recites a speech from 1963, in which Dr. King held up the dream. By 1968 he had inconveniently refused to limit himself to the limited language of civil rights, and was attacking an unholy trinity of evils—racism, war, and poverty. In this his basis in the New Testament was unquestionable. “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,” he declared, “the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (Quoted from Where Do We Go from Here, Chaos or Community? First published 1967.) There is a clear New Testament line that goes directly from Acts Chapter 4 to this understanding of the 20th century apostle of justice, and another line just as clear that goes there from the vision of the beloved community in the letter of Paul to the Church in Corinth.
After reading this thing about sharing all our property again, even if I don’t read the bible literally, it gives me pause—it raises the questions. How do we embrace Dr. King’s critique of capitalism, in our life together? How do we recapture—or better how do we let ourselves be captured by – that spirit that fired up the early church—and created a people with transformed values and practices?
There are many strategies for pursuing what life ought to be like in the “big world house” that Dr. King insisted on. This spring Lynn and I will be part of offering hospitality in the resurrected Poor People’s Campaign right here in Albany for sixty days of direct action, starting on Mother’s Day. But as important as our actions are in the street, equally important is that you and I are going to keep on living together, work together, pray together, share together, share with anybody and everybody, in this small, yet wondrous congregation, in the heart of Schenectady New York.
We as Christ’s disciples are called to be salt and light, and our little houses are called to be models of more just and loving ways of alternative ways of living, for the big world house that has yet to find its way, fifty years later, two thousand years later.
IV.
Some here can remember this church had members and a pastor who marched in the streets of Schenectady after Dr. King’s death. We all like to reminisce, and good memory is necessary for wise action. We did some good stuff in the past. We have tried to live the vision! We also do some confessing, at least in privacy to God—all our days have not been days of glory. I can remember a fair bit of sexism and racism and some pretty patronizing moments toward poorer people in other churches I have served--- long after 1968. I admit they weren’t from right here, but um, well, we need to do some confessing.
And yet memory is not enough. We have to get real about NOW. The institutional glory days are pretty well gone. We can treat it as loss—but it is also a challenge and an opportunity, there’s a whole new freedom we can exercise if we dare. It is a challenge from God, it is an opportunity to live out our faith in whole fresh ways. And what is that going to look like today and tomorrow, that new resurrected reality? Well for one thing, it is going to involve some serious sharing—because for Christians sharing material wealth or spiritual resources—none of it is about conventional charity. It is about the profound reality—the new reality in the resurrection of Jesus Christ--that private property isn’t mine to hoard any more. Where there are needs, we share.
What does it look like to be a brand-new community in Christ, the One raised from the dead? Our little community is called to respond to where we are: local callings living out cosmic convictions and universal human values. We are invited to do this thing, this project we call our life together in Christian community, do it with joy and laughter, with humility and good humor. As followers of Jesus, mere survival is not an option. It’s about healing and loving. It’s about death—and it is about resurrection. It is about all the loveliness and all the struggles we hold… we hold in common. God holds us—in the everlasting arms we are held-- in common.
-
Offered at Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady NY
Sunday April 15, 2018
Readings: John 20:19-27
Acts 4:32-35
Acts 4:32-35
4:32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.
4:33 With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
4:34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.
4:35 They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
I.
Last week Lynn, my wife and the interim pastor at First Church in Albany, stood before you in this place. I was standing in her historic pulpit in Albany, at First Reformed Church of Albany. We have chosen to preach these two Sundays on the same passage from the book of Acts, each offering our own take. You get to hear two different preachers on the same story. But of course, our lives, these particular two preachers, have run side by side for quite a while.
In the days when I first met Lynn, my hair was longer, and the beard wasn’t grey. I was living in an old convent in Waterbury, Connecticut on a steep and pothole-riddled side street. The token protestant in a house full of Catholics, I was surrounded by members of the Catholic Worker movement. They had renamed the old monastic dwelling “Guadalupe House” for our lady of Guadalupe, the miraculous appearance of Mary the mother of Jesus to a Mexican peasant.
That’s where I was living when Lynn and I first met. While there, I worked in a homeless shelter, occasionally made up excellent omelets with government cheese for breakfast for the others, and hung out as much as I could with the older wiser residents, i.e. Tom and Monica Cornell, who had been part of the Catholic Worker movement since the 60s.
And what was this Catholic Worker movement they belonged to? It was and remains a surprisingly large number of dedicated Catholics—lay people—across the country, often living together, giving their all for the sake of a revolutionary vision of Christianity. Cofounded by Dorothy Day back in the 1930’s, they have for almost a century questioned basic tenets of American conventional wisdom, like the sin of private property, and like the permanent war economy. But their vision was not, and is not, simply reactive. They believe that Christ calls us to live in community and share freely; to serve the poor; to offer hospitality and live our faith through works of mercy. They believe in nonviolence and direct action. They want their Christianity full strength, no watering down.
My fellow residents there at Guadalupe House were a high school runaway, an aging alcoholic grandmother, a longtime soup kitchen worker, and a family of four. Nobody was really in charge, but Monica Cornell, mother in that family of four, filled in, against her better judgment, in the moral leadership role of some long-deceased mother superior in that convent.
Monica was an outspoken advocate of cleanliness, good food and giving our best—not half-hearted charity, not food slapped down on the counter. AND she seemed to remember almost all the things old Dorothy Day had said, in the original Catholic Worker house on the Lower East Side. “Dorothy used to say that the most important things that need doing are the ones nobody is willing to pay for.”
The only one ever to call a house meeting in my time there, Monica did so under emergency circumstances: “I don’t believe male human beings SEE dust balls” said she. “There’s one I’ve left on the stair landing for you, for a month. It just keeps growing. Does anybody ever clean?” Let’s keep our Christianity real….
II.
I bring up the circumstances under which Lynn met me to let you know that deep in my heart still I do believe that the normative vision of what it means to be a Christian is the memory we find in the book of Acts chapter 4. I still believe in the vision of a communal Christianity of that kind of sharing: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”
There lives the vision—see it? Some of us live it out, however imperfectly, together in gathered communities—not just Catholic Worker Houses, but also big old brick or stone or wood church buildings with small but lively congregations-- tending and nursing that still revolutionary vision. We right here are also committed to the vision of intentional communities of real people doing their level best to level out society, to share, to love, to create a community that embodies Christ’s commandment to love one another. Unique communities gathered by the same runaway wild spirit of God that moved Jesus and his earliest followers. And this church is one.
The earliest church knew somehow that when people shared all things in common—the pain and the joy, the food and the drink, and even the things that before they had seen as being private property--- they knew that God was there. The earliest church knew somehow that when the residents of the promised land made common cause with the resident aliens, the foreigners, God was in it somehow. They were as hard-headed as we are, but they got it, after considerable struggle and some sharp words from the apostle Paul. They got it that when women were excluded or given second best seats, or when the masters got better places than their servants—God wasn’t pleased. And those earliest Christians were even clearer about sharing wealth, generously and honestly and without prejudice.
III.
All the world remembers Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. again this spring, memories shadowed by the recollection of his death, and the fearful hatred that fueled that death. Fifty years later, most of the world only recites a speech from 1963, in which Dr. King held up the dream. By 1968 he had inconveniently refused to limit himself to the limited language of civil rights, and was attacking an unholy trinity of evils—racism, war, and poverty. In this his basis in the New Testament was unquestionable. “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people,” he declared, “the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” (Quoted from Where Do We Go from Here, Chaos or Community? First published 1967.) There is a clear New Testament line that goes directly from Acts Chapter 4 to this understanding of the 20th century apostle of justice, and another line just as clear that goes there from the vision of the beloved community in the letter of Paul to the Church in Corinth.
After reading this thing about sharing all our property again, even if I don’t read the bible literally, it gives me pause—it raises the questions. How do we embrace Dr. King’s critique of capitalism, in our life together? How do we recapture—or better how do we let ourselves be captured by – that spirit that fired up the early church—and created a people with transformed values and practices?
There are many strategies for pursuing what life ought to be like in the “big world house” that Dr. King insisted on. This spring Lynn and I will be part of offering hospitality in the resurrected Poor People’s Campaign right here in Albany for sixty days of direct action, starting on Mother’s Day. But as important as our actions are in the street, equally important is that you and I are going to keep on living together, work together, pray together, share together, share with anybody and everybody, in this small, yet wondrous congregation, in the heart of Schenectady New York.
We as Christ’s disciples are called to be salt and light, and our little houses are called to be models of more just and loving ways of alternative ways of living, for the big world house that has yet to find its way, fifty years later, two thousand years later.
IV.
Some here can remember this church had members and a pastor who marched in the streets of Schenectady after Dr. King’s death. We all like to reminisce, and good memory is necessary for wise action. We did some good stuff in the past. We have tried to live the vision! We also do some confessing, at least in privacy to God—all our days have not been days of glory. I can remember a fair bit of sexism and racism and some pretty patronizing moments toward poorer people in other churches I have served--- long after 1968. I admit they weren’t from right here, but um, well, we need to do some confessing.
And yet memory is not enough. We have to get real about NOW. The institutional glory days are pretty well gone. We can treat it as loss—but it is also a challenge and an opportunity, there’s a whole new freedom we can exercise if we dare. It is a challenge from God, it is an opportunity to live out our faith in whole fresh ways. And what is that going to look like today and tomorrow, that new resurrected reality? Well for one thing, it is going to involve some serious sharing—because for Christians sharing material wealth or spiritual resources—none of it is about conventional charity. It is about the profound reality—the new reality in the resurrection of Jesus Christ--that private property isn’t mine to hoard any more. Where there are needs, we share.
What does it look like to be a brand-new community in Christ, the One raised from the dead? Our little community is called to respond to where we are: local callings living out cosmic convictions and universal human values. We are invited to do this thing, this project we call our life together in Christian community, do it with joy and laughter, with humility and good humor. As followers of Jesus, mere survival is not an option. It’s about healing and loving. It’s about death—and it is about resurrection. It is about all the loveliness and all the struggles we hold… we hold in common. God holds us—in the everlasting arms we are held-- in common.
-