"Live Simply, Find Joy and Be Generous!" by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Kurt Young)

    Our scripture for today in our worship celebration, Acts 4:32-35 from the Message translation for those following along via the web:

33The whole congregation of believers was united as one—one heart, one mind! They didn't even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, "That's mine; you can't have it." They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.

 34-35And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person's need.

    According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the definition of one political system, communism, is this: “a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed.” In pure theory, this sounds like a good system.

     In practice, it never really works, because human beings, for the most part, do not seem capable of being completely fair and objective. So we do not share the resources fairly. But at our best, in smaller systems and communities, we can try.

    In my lifetime, I have not seen any evidence, that a large system, like a country, or a government can really make communal living work.  But we’re not here today to talk about politics, or how to solve the global economic meltdown, or even how to deal with the United States debt and unemployment crisis. Those are big problems that affect all of us.

    They are important.   They have to be dealt with.  Clearly our country has gone too long without finding adequate ways for the people and the leaders to work together to solve our big economic problems together.

    But just for today, we’re going to take this down to the micro level. What does communal
 living, or generous living, look like in a small community like a local church called The Village?
You see way back when this Christian movement started, back at the time of those early followers of Jesus, the ones that were there right after he was resurrected into heaven, and that big Spirit of wind and power came over them, this is what church looked like, let me read it to you again:

33The whole congregation of believers was united as one—one heart, one mind! They didn't even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, "That's mine; you can't have it." They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.
 34-35And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person's need.

    You see, they trusted one another to do those things: to share, according to their need. I like to think they did not have any quarrels about it. Maybe they did – but at their best, I hope they did not. At least this is the VISION of God’s community: PEOPLE ARE GENEROUS AND THEY SHARE, according to their means and according to their need.
Sounds like a little bit of heaven on Earth, doesn’t it?   Now if we could just count on everyone to do their share of the work, and if we could believe that everyone would be taken care of in a fair and just way, wouldn’t that be heaven?

    Well, you can call me naïve if you want, but I say, we can decide to live that way. Let’s choose to live simply, find joy, and BE GENEROUS.  It’s a vision, it’s not practical. 
Everyone giving, everyone receiving according to our needs, everyone cared for.

    Here’s how we do it. In this community, here at the Village, in the context of Toledo, Ohio, with this horrible unemployment rate, and rotten economy, we just take some baby steps to live into God’s vision.   Let’s just do it anyway.

    Let’s just live simply, find joy, and BE GENEROUS.  I’m going to show you how we are already doing it. Some of you know we have a fund here called the Good Samaritan Fund. Let’s call it Good Sam, for short. It’s named after the person in the Bible who helped a stranger. The Samaritans were not the heroes of the time of Jesus.  In fact, think of a group you look down on.  We are all guilty of having someone we don’t like.  Imagine them doing wonderful things for a person in need. (who was, by the way, an enemy).

    We use our fund to help our friends here at The Village.  I’m going to ask our friend, Sam (not her real name), to come up here and she and I are going to share a bit of her story with you. 

    She is a medical transcriptionist with fibormyalgia, along with major depression, and other help problems. I am applying for disability, but it’s a long, drawn out process. I can not make enough money to pay my bills.  I’ve moved several times to try to get cheaper housing, etc.

    When the Village first opened up, I found it through the newspaper article about the Village.  I checked it out on Facebook and other places and finally came.  And I love the Village.  I found community there.  If I had not come to the Village, I would be more depressed, and maybe homeless. 

    For over five minutes, people in the congregation shared about how Sam has affected their lives, made their lives, etc.  How their lives are enriched by Sam and how having Sam makes them better people.

    This is what it means to BE church, to be community.  This is the lesson I have learned from Sam, she finds joy in giving.  She doesn’t have money, but she has time and love to give. 

    You see, we live in a world, where there is a great deal of focus on what we do not have. We talked about this last week. We focus on scarcity. Everyone out there will tell us what we don’t have and what we need in order to be beautiful and successful and popular.

    But the call to the early Christian community turns that upside down. It says, this is the way to follow Jesus – give up what you have – be generous – in sharing – and you will find joy!

    Help others – look for someone in need, and see if you have within your resources, something you can share with them. See if by living more simply, that you can supply the simple needs of someone else. In this act of self sacrifice – you will find joy.

    There are folks in this church who have given to our Good Samaritan Fund over the past year. I know Kurt and I probably gave up going out to eat so that we could give to that fund. That was not a big sacrifice for us. Another person might have given up buying some new clothes, so they could give to the fund. Maybe someone car-pooled to work to save money, and gave that money to help someone get their car fixed and get to work, or find a job. Maybe someone had a garage sale and used that money to help a single parent buy diapers.

    And if we don’t have money, we have time and other gifts.  You have other resources, then be generous with your time, to help those who could use some help right now. One of the things we could use help with at The Village right now is help with cleaning our building, and trimming the grass around the edges of the parking lot. We can’t afford to hire a custodian or a maintenance crew so we have to rely on ourselves to do this. Kristen and I cleaned the church yesterday. Kristen and Rock clean the church most of the time, but Rock is having some health issues. I didn’t mind taking a turn, but if you would like to help, we can use some more folks on the facilities team. There are many ways to be generous with your time and your resources, in order to be part of this community.

    It’s tough out there right now.  I don’t know how to fix the trillions of dollar debt that the US government has. Somebody needs to figure it out. A group of people smarter than me needs to be working hard on that problem.  I’m not seeing a lot of evidence of this happening, but it took a long time to get into this mess and it’s going to take a long time to get out of this mess.

    But I do know this. I do know what it means to follow Jesus and live in community. I see it right here, every week with all of you. We can take the baby steps we need to take, to care for one another.

    And we will get through this economic downturn, together, one day at a time. The early Christians gave us the instructions for how to do it. So I hope you will think about how you can share what you have to help others around here.  It is so easy to get overwhelmed by the big problems we are facing

    So you see, we can become overwhelmed by the big problems in the world. Or we can focus on the smaller picture for now. We can look to this community and what we are to one another. We can find our joy. We can create our joy. I think we can do it. And I think it will make all the difference. Let’s live by these words: live simply, find joy, and be Generous.

    If you need a community like this, where you can share your gifts, look hard, they are out there.  We’re at the corner of Monroe & Central in Toledo and soon in Maumee.  Come join a fellowship of believers getting each other through a dark time and waiting for that day we can dance into the light of God.