Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The word “utopia” stirs up images of the perfect place: a place of peace and harmony, of health and wealth, of prosperity and kindness. Everybody longs for a utopia. But you know, the word itself, “utopia,” is really a play on words in the old Greek. It combines the Greek word topos, which means “place,” with a prefix. In Greek we know it as ou-, and two simultaneous meanings arise out of how this word gets spelled. Sometimes in the Greek it’s eu-topia, still pronounced “utopia,” that means “a good place.” Sometimes it’s spelled ou-topia, which means “no place.” So the double meaning actually reveals the irony with the word and the idea of utopia. Utopia is defined literally as the good place that is no place. That is, it can’t be found. It can’t be ultimately achieved. It can’t be grasped in any way. That is utopia. But since the fall into sin and the guarding of Eden, where the true utopia did exist, human beings have longed for an Eden-type of existence, that is, a utopia, a good place where all is well and no one is at odds with another. It seems to be built into the human imagination, into our sort of theological and philosophical DNA, this thing called utopia.
From ancient days, wise thinkers have imagined and made proposals for the creation of a universal utopia. Plato’s Republic is one of the first and most well-known, earliest formulations — which is based upon a caste system, by the way. Plato wasn’t alone in the ancient world. The lost city of Atlantis was thought to be both a real place and also utopian. But when it comes to utopia — writings and dreams and plans — it would be hard to outdo the philosophical and literary works of any of the following centuries: the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, or 20th century. When you look at the list of publications for each one of those centuries, with some advocate calling for and designing a utopia, the sheer number of them is staggering. Modern thinkers, more than anybody else, built both more and bloodier utopian dreams than all of human history combined before them. Philosophers, psychologists, leaders, authors of various disciplines have offered ideas on what utopia should look like and how it is that human beings can create it. It’s no wonder we have a couple of generations of young people who actually believe that sinful human beings can produce a sinless society through political, social, religious, and economic evolution — and revolts when evolution fails. But no matter who tries it and how the vision of utopia is tried, it always ends badly. We have a word for that. It’s called dystopia. And dystopia is defined this way: a place or a state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, from deprivation, oppression, and terror.
So an uninformed hearing of the first lesson this morning, Acts chapter 2, verses 42–47, could and has given rise to some folks who simply misunderstand what really was happening in the first Christian congregations. When you read it, it sounds like a perfect beginning. Admittedly, it seems as though Saint Luke is presenting us with an idealized picture of the beginning of the Christian church from the day of Pentecost and following. Here, though, Luke lets us see through a small window into the life of the apostolic church. What we get to see is something more than a mere snapshot of it, but much less than a full-length movie of what the New Testament apostolic church looked like in day-to-day operation. The picture we have before us this morning in Acts 2:42–47 is not a picture of a stagnant, sleepy congregation. The church that is presented in our text describes a congregation — or congregations — that are living, active, and unified, full of people who love to come to church: a vibrant worship life, a desire to know the Scriptures and the teachings of the apostles, and people who are tremendously generous toward their brothers and sisters in Christ and their neighbors who are in need. It is a picture marked by a beautiful camaraderie that no snapshot can actually capture. Every single member is presented as both a recipient of what God gives to them in the church service — namely, the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation — and at the same time contributors and workers in the congregations to which they belong, each one serving the other, and while doing that, serving the Lord as well. Their church work days were, by our standards, full, busy, and active. These new Christians, we are told, were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
The picture presented in Acts chapter 2 seems to be absent of any problems or conflicts. Verse 43 says of every soul that they were feeling a sense of awe at the amazing signs that were being done, and the Lord was adding to the church’s number day by day those who were being saved. And all believers were together and had all things in common. Now some people were in need, but those needs seemed to be met as soon as they came to light. As soon as one member knew another member was in need, the need was met. It seemed to be a church where people shared one another’s joys and one another’s burdens. It seemed to be a congregation where they forgave each other their sins and offenses. In these congregations, everyone seems to be committed to learning the Bible, theology, church history, and worshiping in an orthodox manner — that is, worshiping in spirit and truth — and speaking kindly to and taking care of their neighbor. If there’s any problem with the text this morning, it’s that it presents a perfect picture that we know is unattainable by virtue of sin — and given our personal experiences with the churches that we belong to or have belonged to over the course of our life, it’s hard to relate to a congregation that looks like Acts chapter 2. For where sinners are found, their sin is always present too. It’s inescapable. The congregations to which we belong — we’re real. Sin is real. It’s out of control. And where sin finds its way into the church by way of our own members, in the real world it’s often hard to differentiate between the church and the world that it’s supposed to serve and witness to.
The church, you see — there’s nothing new about that. There are Christians around the world right now who are being persecuted, killed, murdered for their faith in Jesus Christ. It’s always been that way. Jesus said that they will treat the student in the same way they treated the master. That is, we aren’t going to get anything better than what he got. The church has always faced deadly opposition from her beginning. It’s why we call her the church militant. But for the church and Christians in North America, cultural, political, and legal persecution is not something we are used to. Add to this the conflicts of sin and scandals that come to the church and are in the church because sinners populate the church: problems of embezzlement, adult misconduct, gossip, misappropriation of funds, church fights, and more. Then there are our own private battles and our private problems that only we or our closest friends might know about. Then there are also the wounds that are inflicted on us from other people’s sins against us, and our struggle to forgive our trespassers as we have been forgiven. It seems that the congregations to which we have belonged bear no resemblance to the church of Acts chapter 2.
But remember: as beautiful as the scene is, the scene that Luke describes, it’s just a small window into what the apostolic church was really like. It teaches us some wonderful things about those first Christian congregations, but Luke is not suggesting that the apostolic church faced no real problems. After all, there is, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. For example, in Acts chapter 4, the hostility that characterized the religious rulers’ disposition toward Jesus himself turned against Peter and John for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They were arrested, thrown in jail, interrogated, ordered to stop preaching, and then threatened with physical harm if they continued to do so. In chapter 5, the church faced an internal scandal. Ananias and Sapphira apparently wanted their names on a nice plaque hanging on the church wall which credited them with being generous. They pretended to make big donations to the poor, but it was all for show. They lied to the church. They lied to the apostles. They ultimately lied to the Holy Spirit in an attempt to convince people of their virtue. What happened to them? They were both struck down dead for lying to the Lord. Moving on to chapter 6, more internal problems: the Greek-speaking widows complained that they were being discriminated against because they were Greeks when it came to food distribution. The Hebrew widows were served first and given the best, while the Greek widows were served last. Acts chapter 7 records Stephen’s sermon and his subsequent stoning for preaching the Gospel. I could go on throughout the whole book of Acts, but you get the point. Whatever else Luke is teaching us in Acts chapter 2, it is not that the early church was problem-free.
But for the people, both then and now, who find themselves in the real world and the real church, Luke’s description is a wonderful picture of life lived in the early church — not because the church was problem-free, but rather because they had a Good Shepherd, rather because they had a Savior who forgave them and died for their sins. All that sharing and giving and camaraderie are good things, and congregations try to develop that the world over, apart from Jesus Christ. But the real prize of the church is forgiveness of sins and eternal life. That is Christ’s whole life. The Christian church is the sheep pen, and the Christian church is the green pasture, where our Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd who gave his life for the sheep, leads his flock unto everlasting life. That’s why we pray with David the psalm, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” But the Scripture also makes it clear: eternal life is not in your distant future. It does not begin when you die and when you are buried. Eternal life began for you the moment you were joined in faith to your Savior, Jesus Christ — the moment in the waters of Baptism you were made a lamb, a sheep in Christ’s heavenly pasture, an indweller in the sheep pen, the church. Eternal life began for you in that moment that the Word claimed you by the preaching of that Word. Jesus teaches this in John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” You think of death as that thing that happens at the end of your life when you’re buried. But here, death is the moment you were baptized: your old nature is put to death, drowned in the waters of Baptism.
In the words of this morning’s Gospel reading, you are sheep now in Christ’s sheep pen, and Jesus says of the sheep and the Shepherd: “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” You are listening to the Good Shepherd’s voice now. I’m not talking about my annoying nasal voice. You’re listening to the Word of God be preached. That’s Christ’s voice. The voice of the Good Shepherd is the Word of God: heard in the liturgy, sung in the hymns, heard clearly in the readings, and hopefully clearly in a well-preached sermon — although sometimes that doesn’t work out so well. The voice of the Good Shepherd is the Word of God, and he leads you through this valley of the shadow of death, where you are to fear no evil. Thus the sermon text: “Fear not, little flock.” He leads you through the shadow of death — where? To the house of the Lord, where you dwell forever. That is, to the church eternal, the one that is without sin.
The early church was not problem-free. The first Christians knew and understood the Gospel because of the apostolic teaching. They understood they were sinners. They understood they needed a Savior. They understood that once they were saved, the Good Shepherd was there leading them: in his Word, in sacrament ministry, in preaching and teaching. They also knew that the Good Shepherd’s voice was in the doctrine of the apostles. So they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers. Those first Christians were steadfast — some translations use the word “stubbornly” — devoted to the apostles’ teaching. They didn’t offer the apostles’ doctrine as their opinion or how they felt about it. No, they were stubbornly convinced of it. None of you, I know, are stubborn. But think of a moment when you just slipped for a little bit and you wouldn’t come off your position. Period. The end. That’s how they treated the apostolic doctrine. That’s how they treated the right exposition of the Old Testament. It’s how they also ended up treating the New Testament. They were steadfastly devoted to the apostles’ teaching, because in it they heard the voice of the Good Shepherd. They were devoted to the fellowship, the koinonia. There’s a debate over that word, how inclusive it is. Some think it simply refers to the Lord’s Supper; others to the camaraderie of the congregation. In the narrow sense or in the wide sense, they were committed to the worship service. They were committed to their fellow Christians. They were committed to being there, partaking of the Lord’s Supper. They were committed to sharing their lives with those at the church. They were devoted to the prayers — that is, they were devoted both to the public prayers (the liturgy; in the ancient world the liturgy was called “the prayers”) and they were devoted to individual prayer, that is, to the activity of praying for one another and for their church. Why? Because in Exodus 19:6 they had become a kingdom of priests. Life in the Good Shepherd’s pen and pasture was a rich life of hymns, of songs, of prayer, of service to one another — a vibrant worship life. They loved going to church because they connected to the Good Shepherd’s voice, and they loved one another. We are told that they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. No one told them they had to do this. They simply did it, because that’s what family does for family.
Life in the early church, as Saint Luke describes it, might seem too good to be true. But we know Acts 2:42 isn’t the whole story. There are other parts of that history that clearly testify to the presence of the world in the church and of sin in the church. But the ongoing presence of sin also shows the church and Christians the ongoing need of their Savior, Jesus Christ. In the last line of the Gospel lesson, Jesus said this morning, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” And that abundant life began in the church — the same place for you — because in the church your sins are forgiven and you have eternal life. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.