4th Sunday of Easter - A
Acts 2:42-47
May 15, 2011
Unrealistic Aspirations
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
“Back when I was your age.” Everyone knows the scene. And everyone knows what’s coming next. It will be a story of the way things never used to be, a story of the good old days. The story will be about tough times and hardships. And yet it will be told with a wistful look in the eyes and maybe even a catch in the throat. Grandchildren will roll their eyes. Grandpa is telling his stories. Again. For the hundredth time.
The music we grew up hearing plucks a particular heart string. I listened to the Mamas and Papas’ “California Dreamin’” over and over the first time I got my heart broken. This was in the days before there were mp3 players and earplugs. I inflicted my musical ennui on the whole family. And mostly they let me. If I hear that song again, I still feel a pull, an aching longing. Time has left a patina on my memories.
When Carol and I move, packing our belongings brings us up against our past as we pack away old photographs and yearbooks. We recall memories of an earlier time, when our dreams were new and uncompromised, when we asked a great deal of the world and had not yet been disappointed by the answers, when we could be anything we wanted to be.
It was a different era for each person, each generation. For my generation it was the sixties. Love was all you needed (especially if your parents were paying the bills). The Monkees sang, “We’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say.” Never mind that they never got around to actually saying it. The same Establishment that we despised marketed the revolution to us and it never occurred to us to see the irony or the trap. Cynicism would come later. Then, we could change the world. We were full of dreams and the energy needed to make them come true. The world looked to us for answers and let me tell you we had them.
For an earlier generation the era was the Depression and WWII. It didn’t matter if it was hard. They remember with fondness a simpler world when issues were stark. They were part of a shared enterprise on behalf of the whole world. It was up to them to stop world fascism. No challenge since has ever really measured up to that one. There are still annual reunions of WWII military units, though the number of attendees is falling at an alarming rate.
For ancient Israel of Isaiah and Jeremiah’s day it was the period of the Exodus, the time of desert wandering, when the people were utterly dependent on God and God fed them each day with manna and was there for the taking, food that took on whatever flavor you wanted it to.
For the church of the New Testament it was the time just after Pentecost and before the uprisings that brought the destruction of the Temple and the Jerusalem church, before the rift with Judaism. This is how they remembered it:
42 The members of the Church devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
We have a need to connect with the past. This is not the same thing as the need to know the past in any objective, realistic way. When historians come along they tell us things we don’t really want to know. What we really want is nostalgia. What we really want is for our fantasies of the past to remain undisturbed by inconvenient facts from historians.
So the early church is indulging in nostalgia in our text. It cherished the fantasy that it had “the goodwill of all the people” in this episode sandwiched in between the execution of Jesus and a series of endless conflicts with religious and political authorities. The church with a history of internal conflicts and arguments, cherished a fantasy that there was a time when they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” with one accord. They cherished a fantasy that there was a time when they “had all things in common.” But do we have any particular reason to believe that this communalism was ever the rule?
The commentators are pretty sure that this is not an historical recollection but a bit of nostalgic idealization. Combine that with the fact that this text smacks of socialism or worse. We have good reasons for dismissing this tale completely.
And yet. There is something here that shouldn’t be ignored. Memory is creative. It makes sense of the present by reconstructing the past. When nostalgia “remembers” it holds up something as an ideal, as something to be imitated, as a value to be cherished. The WWII generation remembers a time that required the courage to face implacable enemies, a time that called for the surrender of individual goals for the sake of the common good. These are good things; they are worthy ideals.
The children of the sixties remember a vision of freedom for all people, a vision of a planet at peace. These are good things; they are worthy ideals. If the way we remember is false history, it is nevertheless true memory. We remember the way it could have been, might have been and might be still if we chose it, worked for it, lived toward it.
What are the childhood memories of the Church? There was a time when “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” There was a time when want was unknown.
These are echoes of still earlier memories. There were memories of manna in the wilderness. They would gather the manna according to the size of their family. Those who gathered little had no lack. Those who gathered much manna had no more than they needed.
There were memories of a great crowd that had followed Jesus into the wilderness. They were hungry, but the only food they could come up with was contributed by one boy with five small barley loaves and two fish. But Jesus took that meager offering, blessed the bread, broke it and gave it and the fish to the crowd of thousands and everyone had enough to eat.
The story has a challenge for us. Should there ever be real need among us? How far would we be willing to extend the limits of this common concern? Should any Christian suffer want while others have leftovers in the fridge? Should we ever be so anxious to hang on to our stuff that we close our ears to the cry of the hungry?
Imagine what our life would be if this “memory” were our vision for the life of our congregation, our community, our world. Surely it would be something like this:
Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
It really doesn’t get any better than that.
©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
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