Song: How do we Heal? | Order your copy of When Did We See You? |

Friends,

As I focus on recovery from surgery, today's post is from my book When Did We See You? A Lenten Exploration of Poverty & Wealth (pages 92-93, Upper Room Books, 20260.

This book is designed around Lent but works as a six week study at any time.

-Liz

Sharing with Others

Charitable organizations collect material goods from those with excess and distribute them to those in need. Donors give out of their surplus or buy what is needed, then the organization passes it along.

It’s a tidy little system.

Early Christian communities practiced something different: they simply ate together. The people who could afford food or who grew food brought food and sat together with those who brought nothing. They embodied the idea of spiritual poverty, trusting that God would provide through the community. When everyone is sharing dinner with each other every night, the Kingdom of God becomes plainly visible. It’s right here! That sense of community and sharing must have been just as important as the food.

Sharing, unlike charity, emerges from solidarity with those who are poor. We share with people we know. I once visited a church in Brighton, Massachusetts. This church didn’t just have a meal program, but an entire church supper that was open to and attended by people throughout the community. Church members and community members volunteered together, cooked together, and then ate together.

This is the way Jesus showed us. Jesus and his disciples lived as a community. They traveled together and shared a common purse. The early church described in Acts 2 continued this practice, sustained by patrons who provided funds for the gathered community:

All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.—Acts 2:44-47

While this lifestyle sounds unbelievable by modern American standards, Reta Halteman Finger’s book Of Widows and Meals reveals that it was common for first century subsistence workers to share resources among family and friends. The radical element here is the creation of a fictional family that crosses class boundaries.

As Finger writes, “An ordinary meal eaten with people of different social positions is in reality not an ordinary meal.”* The tie binding together this community is not blood, but the Holy Spirit. In response to the Spirit, the people recognized that what they own belongs to God and is meant to be shared equitably by God’s people.

They became each other’s family, gathering at the temple and in homes:

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.—Acts 4:32-35

The church potluck remains our closest approximation of this first-century practice. Can we imagine expanding this model to address the material needs of our much broader, wider spiritual family, the body of Christ? To truly replicate the early church we would need to find a way to include a vast array of people crossing all social boundaries.

As Paul declares in Galatians 3:28, our spiritual family should transcend divisions of race, class, and gender.

*Reta Halteman Finger, Of Widows and Meal: Communal Meals in the Book of Acts (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), 277 and 230, italics original.

Can you make your potluck a place of deep sharing? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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Order When Did We See You? from Upper Room Books.

The Sufferers song How do we Heal? (6:26) "Alton, Phillando, Trayvon, Tamir / We love you, we miss you, we wish you were here / Shalina, Sandra, Breonna, Corinne We say your names 'til we get to see you again... Say their names.

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