Warren Sentinel Weekly Pulpit
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:44-47, TNIV)
In writing about Christians and the Church in “Teaching a Stone to Talk,” author Annie Dillard writes, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews."
Ms. Dillard prophetically and poetically reminds Christians that we are called not to complacency, but to compassionate action; not to comfort and security, but to trusting God for our provision as we seek to help meet the needs of others; and not to caution, but to boldly living out the gospel (good news) that we claim to hold so dear.
As the leaves begin to turn to their brilliant autumn colors we face the possibility that we may suffer the scourge of a potentially deadly flu pandemic. I wonder what the response of Christian churches and of individual Christians will be. I wonder what my own response will be.
Will I be complacent? Will I seek to preserve my own comfort and security? Will I choose caution over boldly living out the very gospel I preach weekly and seek to live out daily? Or will I trust God with my very life as I seek to minister to those who may fall ill? Will I place my own well-being (and that of those dearest to me) above the Christian calling to love our neighbors as we love ourselves?
The Rule of St. Benedict states that the “Care of the sick must rank above and before all else, so that they may truly be served as Christ, for he said: 'I was sick and you visited me' (Matt 25:36), and, 'What you did for one of these least brothers you did for me' (Matt 25:40).”
The Church in its infancy understood this rule even before it was penned by St. Benedict. The early Church was not complacent, comfortable, or cautious. And though the early church was just as unfamiliar with crash helmets as it was with pews, it understood that to live out the gospel was a dangerous and risky thing that it was called to do.
Today's churches exist, at least in part, due to the legacy of these early crash-helmet-Christians. What sort of legacy will we pass on to the Church of tomorrow? What sort of difference will we make in the world around us today?
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