The Gift of Generosity - Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-37

      

What are some of the signs that Jesus and his Spirit are transforming your life and the life of Bethel?

One of the signs that the Holy Spirit is at work in people’s hearts and the life of the church is when the gift of generosity begins to grow in new and unexpected ways. Jesus talked a lot about money, warning us how easily money and wealth can become the source of our comfort and peace, becoming a god to us. Paul warns in his first letter to Timothy that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. When followers of Jesus practice the gift of generosity, Luke recognizes that God gets the praise for the impact of the Holy Spirit on the hearts and lives of those early followers of Jesus.

After Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit into individual believers of Jesus in a new and special way, these new believers in Jesus made their faith in Jesus the core of their lives. As Luke tells us, they devoted themselves to learning as much as they could from the apostles’ teaching, they structured their time around fellowship together, being together and growing closer together as a community, growing closer to each other through breaking bread together, which included eating with each other and celebrating the Lord’s Supper together, and they prayed and praised God constantly. This helped them to get to know each other better and in deeper more personal ways, leading to deeper caring for each other. The more you know someone, the more you start to care for them. Through Luke’s eyes, we begin to see how the church, the body of Jesus, is given as a gift for the life of the world as it brings new and deeper ways of living together.

We see in chapter 4 the impact of the Holy Spirit play out in the church as the followers of Jesus become more other-centered, more one in heart and mind. This description of the church follows right after Peter and John are dragged in front of the Sanhedrin and told to stop teaching and peaching in the name of Jesus. Luke writes, “Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” They then go back to the believers and pray, and “after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

The Holy Spirit is at work in powerful ways and we see its impact as the new community of believers grows closer together; we see heart change happening as several wealthier members are led by the Spirit to great generosity and sell parcels of land in order to provide for those who were struggling. God’s generous character is pouring into his people, shaping them more into his image. In a sermon by Bishop Barron, he writes, “From the time of Marx, Feuerbach and Freud, we’ve heard the critique that religion is a wish-fulfilling fantasy, a game of “pie in the sky when you die.” The readings for this second Sunday of Easter give the lie to this criticism, for they show how those who were convinced of Jesus’ resurrection were also deeply committed to a more just society.”

There was no dependence on governments to provide for those who were struggling in your community, the church took personal responsibility for taking care of the poor, the widows, orphans, and others. This echo’s God’s charge to Israel in Deuteronomy 15:7–11, “If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

Jesus is generous in his gifts of grace, forgiveness, and acceptance, flowing them out generously, especially to those on the fringes: the have-nots, the rejected and unwanted, the unseen and uncared about. Our generosity with the financial resources that God has given us is one of the ways we imitate Jesus’ generosity to us. Generosity sees the world in terms of “us” instead of “them and us.” The early church was so impacted by the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, that “no one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” They embraced the truth that we don’t really own anything, we’re simply stewards of whatever God has given us, called to manage and develop its potential so that it can be used for the purposes and will of God and the kingdom of heaven.

Professor Troy Troftgruben comments on the generosity found in the early church and the idea of having communal possessions, writing, “Luke’s depiction of communal unity and sharing would certainly have appealed to prevalent virtues in antiquity — whether the principles of historic Israel: “There will be no one in need among you,” Deuteronomy 15, Greek ideals of friendship: “Among friends everything is common,” Aristotle, Eth. nic. 9.8, ideal philosophical communities: e.g., Iamblichus, in the Life of Pythagoras, 30.167, or the practices of hospitality: e.g., Pliny describes one’s possessions as belonging equally to one’s guest, Ep. 1.4.3, …. And so, given ancient virtues and Christian convictions, Luke’s audiences likely found the idealism of Acts 4:32-35 more appropriate than surprising…. the community’s generosity itself becomes a tangible “sign” that authenticates its message of Jesus.”

Several early church Fathers believed this description of the early church should be the model of the church and expanded on; including St John of Chrysostom and Augustine. Augustine wrote, “The believers, it says, had one soul and one heart (Acts 4:32). There were many souls, but their faith made them one. There were so many thousands of souls; they loved one another, and the many became one. They were on fire with the love of God, and from being a multitude they achieved a beautiful unity. If love made so many souls one soul, what love must there be in God, where there is no diversity but total equality?”

St John proposed that everyone should sell everything they had and place it in one pool of resources from which everyone would draw from it whatever they needed, creating a more just community. Several church communities over the centuries, influenced by the early church practices, by the principles of the Year of Jubilee given to Israel, and by a desire to withdraw from the regular world set up commune-like communities where no one owned anything, everything was shared equally in a spirit of generosity. For many reasons, these communities never became the norm, yet following Jesus does create a different kind of community with values and ways of living that seem odd, and even suspicious to those outside the community, while also creating a longing in their hearts for a place of deep belonging and living where they’re known, accepted, and cared for. These communities the early church Fathers described were not so much about money, but about living well in community together in a spirit of generosity and justice where people aren’t forgotten or discarded because they don’t measure up. The church is more hospital than country club, a community where we encounter the Great Physician and find healing and hope.

The Holy Spirit guides us and shapes us into the image of God, both individually and as a church family, and this speaks to the core of who people are, speaking to the community found within God himself and how it’s lived out in each of us and the church. Generosity and sacrifice walk hand in hand, Jesus’ generosity in forgiveness, as seen in his journey to the cross, death, and resurrection, was a sacrifice given so that we can receive salvation from our sin, from our past brokenness and hurts. We’re shown Jesus’ generosity again in the pouring out his Spirit into our hearts bringing new life and hope.

Is the Holy Spirit working in your heart, creating a desire to be more generous towards others as a reflection of Jesus’ generosity to you? Jesus taught us to give so that our right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Jesus uses hyperbole, or exaggeration here, to encourage generosity. Wise people keep track of their generosity to help them recognize ways to be more generous; this also helps them to recognize when the need may be more about offering a generosity of time to help teach others how to save and to be generous, or to when it’s time to be generous with your skills and talents to walk alongside someone in need, or when it’s time to be generous with grace, forgiveness, compassion, and love.

With the Spirit’s help, we learn generosity and to encourage each other in how to be more generous, helping us show the world who God, Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is, and the kind of God we love and follow.