What We Stand For

What We Stand For--April 11, 2018

"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 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.  They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need." [Acts 4:32-35]

Let me ask you a well-worn question: what do you stand for?

Want to know a good way to find out an honest answer (instead of just what we say when we think there is "right" answer someone else is looking for)?  It will be there in your choices, your actions, your priorities, your time, and your words.  

The things you spend your time on reveal what you stand for.

The things you speak up about reveal what you stand for.

The things you spend your money on reveal what you stand for.

The way you love--or don't love--reveals what you stand for.

You don't have to do a lot of intense wrestling or soul-searching to find out what you stand for; you just have to look at what you are willing to publicly spend yourself on, what you are willing to give yourself away to, without caring who knows about it, and there you'll have it.  That's the long and the short of what you and I really stand for.

Now, before we go any further, I should note something that is shouting at us from the biblical text, but which we probably miss if we are reading it in English: the resurrection is all about standing up, too.  Literally.

The Greek word that we translate with the English term, "resurrection," is a bit more visual and concrete in the original Greek of the New Testament.  It is the word "anastasis" (yes, the same root gives us the name "Anastasia," if you are fans of Russian history), and it literally means, "standing-up."  The resurrection of Jesus, in the original Greek, then, could be translated in a kind of raw and earthy way, "the standing up of Jesus."  That image, of course, helps us picture an actual dead body coming back to life and getting up from having been laid in a tomb.  And just that by itself is important, because honestly sometimes we Christians are so sloppy in our talk about what we believe about the subject that it can sound like we believe that some separate part of us called the "soul" goes up and floats on a cloud forever in heaven where we sit like ghosts in a disembodied state.  In fact, however, the New Testament writers don't talk about disembodied floating ghosts with halos.  They talk about resurrection--about standing-up--and about our embodied selves being given new life to get up and stand and walk and live.  When the New Testament writers talk about Jesus' resurrection, they do not mean that Jesus lived on in the hearts and memories of his friends--they mean that his formerly dead body came back to life, stood up, and remains alive forever, still bearing the wounds from where the Empire pounded the nails.

So at least for us who name the name of Jesus, any conversation about what we stand for has to happen with the resurrection of Christ in our minds, too.  Because before we do any "standing" for anything, it is worth checking to see whether what we think we "stand for" is anywhere close to what Jesus stands--and stood up again in resurrection--for.

Let me pause again here to entertain a concern that may be bubbling up in your mind.  I can sense it percolating.  "What does JESUS' resurrection have to do with the question of what WE stand for?  Because if it's just this business about the Greek word for resurrection, that seems a really loose connection!"  I can anticipate the critique, "Look, either of these are fine topics for a Wednesday morning's devotion, but really, these are two separate issues.  Either talk about (1) Jesus' resurrection, OR (2) what we Christians are supposed to stand up for (you can imagine people getting out their own personal lists of political and cultural hobby-horses at that moment and preparing to climb up on their soapboxes to have that discussion), but the two aren't really related."  And I know, I know, these may seem like they are unrelated topics, Jesus' resurrection and the question of what we stand for, except... well, except that here in Acts, Luke the narrator entangles them together and won't let us pull them apart.

Here in Acts 4, Luke gives us another snapshot, one among many in the whole family album called the book of Acts, of life in the early church.  And here's what's curious to me: for the first followers of Jesus, the announcement of the resurrection and the sharing of bread with those in need were inescapably intertwined.  What starts out as a description of the sharing of possessions in community then becomes a description of the apostles' "testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus" and then comes back around the sharing of possessions so that no one was in need or hungry in the early Christian community.  Luke ties these together like a knot, so that you can't even just cut off the verse before or the verse after and avoid the way  the sharing of resurrection and the sharing of resources went together.  To our ears, these might seem like unrelated notions, but to Luke and the early church, being a Christian meant both standing up to share the news of the resurrection and standing up for the needs of the hungry and the needy in your midst.

And this brings us back to where we started our conversation today: what you spend yourself on will reveal what you stand for.  You can have a religious bumper sticker on your car, be a member of a local civic club, and forward all the respectable religious memes that come your way on Facebook, but what you actually spend your time, your love, your money, and your reputation on is really what you stand for.  That means, it turns out, that there are plenty of folks in the world who want people to think they stand for "righteousness" and "goodness" and "morality" but in actuality they are just as self-centered, fearful, and bitter as the next person... and it means, too, that there are plenty of folks in the world who don't have a single religious bumper sticker or cross jewelry, but whose actions and energy are spent on things that actually matter more to Jesus.  What you actually spend your life, your love, your time, and your treasures on is what you stand for.

And in the early church, you couldn't separate the news of Jesus' standing-up (resurrection) from the actual practice of taking care of one another.  They spent their time, their attention, their resources, and their love on two things: (1) sharing the Good News of the resurrected Lord Jesus, and (2) providing for one another's needs.  That's how you knew where they stood and what they stood for--it was what they actually spent themselves on.  

So, here's the thing.  Here we are, two thousand years after the description Luke gives here in Acts, and we have just come through celebrating the anniversary of Jesus' resurrection that we call Easter.  Now the lilies are starting to droop, the chocolate bunnies are down to their cotton-ball tails, and the last of the colored cellophane Easter basket grass is on deep discount at the Dollar General.   What are we about now, ten days after Easter Sunday?  What do we stand for?  It is all too easy for us to slide back into our old self-centeredness and say, "Me--I'm looking out for me and my needs... by the way, have you seen my new religious bumper sticker?"  But the witness of the early church says that being Easter people also means being compassionate people who share the sufferings of others, who share their resources, and who share a common life.  In other words, to hear Luke tell it, you can't really be pro-Easter without also giving yourself away for the sake of others in the beloved community.  We don't get to say, "Christ is risen--alleluia!" in one moment and then protest, "Why should I have to give up my time or my money or my reputation to help those people out?" Jesus himself does not permit one without the other. To stand up for the risen Jesus is also to stand up for his commitment that we love one another, wash one another's feet, and share our daily bread.  

Let's decide now, then, for the day ahead--what will we stand for?  Who will we stand for? Because the Gospel announces that Jesus thought you--and a whole world full of us--were worth being lifted up on the cross for, being laid down in the grave for, and then standing up in resurrection for, too.

Lord Jesus, because you have stood up in resurrection for us, let us stand up for the people whom you love, all around us today.