The Kindling

I started building fires at a pretty young age. At my dad’s house we have a fire place in one of the rooms of our house, and so almost every night that I spent with him during the winter months we would use it. It was a lot of fun for me, because we would usually go and buy firewood from somebody off the side of the road — my dad lives in a more rural area — and then we would sometimes have to split the wood with an axe.

But one thing that we had to do no matter what, was either go into the yard and collect sticks, or use a smaller axe to split larger logs into small slivers of wood. These smaller pieces of wood had more exposed surface area, and they would catch fire much more quickly than the larger logs. So we would place these pieces of wood called Kindling down at the base of the fire and apply the spark, or the fire from the match, to them first to get the fire started.

When we did this properly, even though it took a fair amount of time to collect or shave up that wood, then our fire would start fairly easily and would be given the time that it needed to heat up and catch the larger logs on fire. Then we could roast marshmallows which was what I was really interested in the fire for anyway.

The kindling is an often overlooked step when trying to first learn how to start fires. Usually because we become overly focused on the big picture, on the fire that we want to see come about that engulfs entire logs in a magnificent inferno. But every fire has to start small, and when a spark is applied to a small pile of kindling that fire is given the ability to do just that: start.

We are now in week 4 of our series “How to Start a Fire” where we are looking at the Book of Acts and how it provides us with all of the elements that were required for the early church to spread like a wildfire across the known world. And the purpose of doing this is for us, as a community to see how we are going to use these elements to spread our influence across Fort Pierce and beyond.

Today, we are of course talking about the kindling. What is it that the spark of the Holy Spirit needs in order for a community like ours to turn into a blazing fire of influence for the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Well, I could just tell you… or we could read the Bible and find out. And I like the Bible and I hope that you also like the Bible so lets read the Bible.

First Things

First things first though, we left off last week with the Holy Spirit coming and giving the disciples a ton of supernatural gifts, like speaking in languages they didn’t know. And Peter, this guy who was kind of a dunce for Jesus’s whole ministry is illuminated to give this profound message about salvation through the cross and resurrection of Christ. And the fruit of that is that the community is born, 3000 people strong.

And I don’t know about you but 3000 is a big number by my standards. I wish that I could preach 1 sermon and grow this community to 3000 people. But that’s besides the point. Peter literally walked on water with Jesus. He’s got more street cred than I do.

Now this is all happening in Jerusalem, the holy city, the center of the Jewish religious world. This is where Jesus told the disciples that their ministry would begin, and its no coincidence that this is the place where Jesus’s ministry ended. That’s the design of it all. Jesus said in Acts 1:8

Acts 1:8 NRSV

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

So here in Jerusalem, where this Jesus movement is truly beginning, Peter’s words are carrying great weight. There is a massive number of people who are buying what Peter and the apostles are selling. And Peter is on fire. He’s on like an evangelistic crusade through the city. He’s preaching to anyone and everyone who will listen. He’s healing people, and he’s getting a lot of attention. And not all of it is good.

The same religious leaders that had a problem with Jesus have a problem with this new movement that is taking place, and Peter and John are brought up on charges, but they are released begrudgingly. And their followers are emboldened and the community is strengthened by this reality.

Then Luke gives us a look at life within the community of faith in Acts 4:32-37

Acts 4:32–37 NRSV

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. There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”). He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

I love this vision of the community. How wonderfully idealistic right? Certainly it’s unrealistic by our modern conventions. Actually it really sounds like Socialism, which probably makes you really uncomfortable right? But it’s not really helpful to read this passage with our 21st century worldview glasses on.

We’ve got to avoid importing our modern understanding of economic systems into this. What the scripture is doing is that it’s teaching us a lesson about how the early church operated in the face of an ancient Roman power and wealth structure in which the masses were kept systematically poor by a ruling class of land owning wealthy citizens. There is a massive power imbalance that has no hope of equality, let alone equity in the Roman world.

Money was, as it is now, a means of holding and exerting power. Money -- when idolized, misappropriated, and mishandled — has a way of breeding greed. That was what the majority population experienced in the world of Acts. And the religious structure of Jerusalem was not immune to this reality. In fact it was often complicit in this way of life.

And what Luke, the author of Acts wants us to know about the Jesus community is that it was inherently different than that. It was radically anti-power hungry. It was countercultural to the point that wealthy land owning people would sell their rights to that land and turn all of the money over to the common good of the rest of the community — a community that was made up of high class citizens as well as dirt poor beggars, orphans, widows, and slaves.

A man named Barnabas, who was a religious elite — a levite by birth — sold what he had in order to see to the welfare of the rest of the community. While all of the rest of the world was telling the tale that in order to have influence you needed power and money, the Jesus community rejected and renounced their power in society in order to strengthen the community of faith and unleash the true power, the pentecost power, within the Jesus movement.

What we find is that the spark that came to light the fire of the church found the perfect kindling when it hit the generosity of the human heart. Generosity is the kindling that allows the fire of the church to catch and grow. Generosity is what sets the followers of Jesus apart from the rest of the Roman and even Jewish world at this time. Generosity is what became the beacon call for those around the movement to see that something different was going on here. Generosity became the guiding and defining characteristic of the early church, and it is meant to be the defining and guiding characteristic of the church today.

Island Life

I used to read this passage and think to myself — that’s really great, but that’s not feasible in our modern world. And in a way that’s just reality. Our world is much more complex than it was for these early Jesus followers. We live in an economy and a system that simply doesn’t allow us to just go and cash out our accounts and sell our property and give it all to the church. We’d be poor and homeless with a place to go for an hour on Sunday.

A lot of the things that the church used to do is now done by the government. As Americans we just couldn’t wrap our minds around a generosity quite as radical as the apostles and the early church experienced.

But I worked with a population of people, who for five years taught me that radical generosity is not a dying relic of the past.

I was the pastor of a congregation of Pacific Islanders from the Federated States of Micronesia who live in Clearwater. So they faced a lot of what we face in our American System. But one unique thing about their status in our country is that they are ineligible for a lot of the social programs and financial assistance that is avaliable to impoverished American citizens.

So they had to find other ways to make due. They struggled a lot. But they didn’t all struggle at the same time. And so when there was need, the community came together to find a solution. And the solution was always a show of radical generosity. When a family couldn’t pay their rent, the community would raise the money to cover it, or would take them into their own home until their economic situation improved. They came together as a community to make sure that every kid had school supplies. There was no “taking care of myself only” type of mentality. They were one community, and for all intents and purposes — they had all things in common.

One of my first friends in that community was a man name Enster. About a year after being there, Enster had a medical emergency and died. This was my first experience with how their culture handled death. They would hold about a weeks long “wake” where they would gather to pray and as I found out, raise money.

It was their tradition to be buried back on their native soil. This was a hugely expensive ordeal. But the community would come together and give whatever they had in order to raise the many thousands of dollars that it cost to send the body back to the Islands of Micronesia for a proper burial.

I tell you all of this to let you know that, even though Acts 4 is 2000 years in the past, that the same spirit of generosity is not that far off for us. Sometimes we just need to be invited to see it for ourselves.

A Legacy of Generosity

Earlier in Luke’s writings, he recounts a parable that Jesus told in Luke 12:15-21

Luke 12:15–21 NRSV

And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Now, I have experienced this congregation to be a very generous one. And this sermon is not a product of some lack of generosity that I perceive among you. It’s not a sermon that is called to shame you for being smart with money and for taking care of yourself and your family. In fact that’s not what Jesus’s parable is about either. Jesus’s main character isn’t in trouble for being wealthy. He’s in trouble because his motivation for acquiring and using his wealth was selfish.

This sermon is simply a reminder that what we have is not really ours. It’s a gift to us, and we are invited to live lives of radical generosity — in whatever way that honors God and builds up the kingdom.

So if you’re visiting with us today, just take that lesson with you and like turn your ears off for a few minutes. Take out your phone and look up where you’re going to get brunch or lunch. Scroll facebook or something.

But if you aren’t visiting, if this is your church home, then no mental vacation for you right now.

There are two people who embodied Generosity in the most tangible way here. Kathy Krueger gave of herself for her entire life, and she gave it to this church and to the people of God in Fort Pierce and around the world. I get reports from Cuba about sister Kathy and how deeply loved she was. Her legacy here is a legacy of generosity, and that generosity is literally within the bones of this church, as her family was largely responsible for the construction of this building.

And recently our friend Dick Lystra retired after many years on staff as our choir director and organist. Dick’s selfless and radical generosity showed in the way that he gave to the underprivileged in the Fort Pierce community, and in how he refused a salary for his years spent here.

And so because we are here at this point of the book of Acts, and because, coincidentally, we are in a moment of financial need as a church, I’ve chosen today to officially announce and invite you to generously join our campaign to purchase a new organ, which will be dedicated to the Memory and Legacy of both Kathy Krueger and Dick Lystra, as well as anyone else whom you would like to honor in your donation.

I won’t lie and tell you that the organ is cheap. But it is within our financial reach as a community. Personally Lexi and I are giving a one time as well as a recurring gift over and above our monthly tithe. The leadership of the church has all pledged to individually give towards this project. And we are doing this because we are radically invested in the future of worship here, as well as the potential that this new organ can give us to reach out to our community by opening our space up to community and school music groups.

We are doing this because we believe that the future of the church is bright, and so I invite you to prayerfully consider giving a one time and/or monthly gift over the next 15 months to help make our organ project a reality, a project that will memorialize the radical generosity of Kathy and Dick and insure that their deep love of worship continues here for generations to come.

So as you go from here today, consider how your gift can impact hearts in worship for the next generation of Jesus followers here at First Church, and then get excited for all that God is going to do here in this space through us.

If you’ve been on a little mental vacation, come on back. Because this sermon isn’t just about an organ. This sermon is about how the generosity in the hearts of Jesus’s followers laid the foundation for all that would be accomplished through them. So I pray that you will go from here today with a desire to give freely of yourself in order to see to the well-being of your neighbors. That’s the kind of love that Jesus embodied for us, and that’s the kind of love that he wishes for us to live out into our world.