The Witness: The Missing "FOR" and the Risen Life

The Missing "FOR" and the Risen Life
By Sarah Dylan Breuer
Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Lectionary Reflections for the Second Sunday of Easter (B)

Readings for the Second Sunday of Easter (B), April 23, 2006

Acts 4:32-35
Psalm 133
1 John 1:1-2:2
John 20:19-31

I absolutely LOVE our reading from Acts for this Sunday; it's one of my favorite passages in the New Testament. And perhaps it betrays that I've spent too much time around English professors (I live with one, after all) that my adoration for Acts 4:32-35 is in large part a proclamation of my love for a well-chosen conjunction, and my abiding resentment of those who left a crucial conjunction out of most of our translations of Acts 4.

It's true, and I know you'll share my rage when I tell you that Acts 4:34 is probably missing a conjunction in your congregation's English bibles.

Or maybe you won't initially. I understand.

But what if I told you that the missing conjunction was "FOR"? OK, maybe no recipe for instant empathy with me there. But let me put it this way:

The power of apostles' testimony, the experience of grace in community, even the unity of the Body of Christ has a direct and, dare I say, CAUSAL relationship with the extent to which all of those of us who call ourselves Christians share what we have with those who don't have it.

Acts, like Luke (makes sense -- it's a two-volume work by a single author), makes a very important argument about something core to the order of the world as it is -- namely money -- and the coming of the world the parts of ourselves that are both sanest and most imaginative (these things go together, I believe) anticipate as God's kingdom. And Acts 4 puts it together for us very neatly -- as is clear once we've put the missing conjunction back in. I'll do it in all caps so you can see which one is the crucial one most English bibles leave out.

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and 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, FOR 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.

So I did it in bold type as well as all caps, and who can blame me? Leave that "FOR" out, and Acts 4 sounds too much like an idealized story of how things were in the "good old days," not a recipe, but a status claim. "Things were great in the early days of the church … we had unity, and testified with power … oh, and there weren't any poor people then."

Not so. Luke-Acts repeatedly makes a direct causal connection between community of goods and unity of spirit. In other words, all of this "we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord" stuff of youth group songbooks of the 1970's and all too much rhetoric elsewhere is just so much theological muzak if we don't live out what that crucial missing (in most translations) conjunction tells us:

I had an experience of it brought on by the Instruments of Unity -- in this case, drums, bass, guitar, and vocals -- at a concert with the rock band U2.

The power of apostles' testimony, the experience of grace in community, even the unity of the Body of Christ has a direct and, dare I say, CAUSAL relationship with the extent to which all of those of us who call ourselves Christians share what we have with those who don't have it.

The whole group of those who were believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of anything, but they had all things in common. And in great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all, FOR 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 and laying it at the feet of the apostles, and it was distributed to any as had need.

Oh for the recovery of that lost and much-needed "FOR" in the church's imagination and the popular imagination! Perhaps I ought to say something more like, "in the church's imagination AS the popular imagination," as long as I'm on a tear about proper conjunctions. For in my experience, the popular imagination is aflame with this "FOR."

Not all that long ago, I had an experience of it brought on by the Instruments of Unity -- in this case, drums, bass, guitar, and vocals -- at a concert with the rock band U2. There was a spirit of celebration in a community of thousands gathered around the music, and part of what was being celebrated was, though it wasn't said in so many (actually so few!) words, that crucial conjunction from Acts 4. What an experience of God's power, of the reconciliation for which the world was made and for which it and its Creator longs, we could have IF (to use another important conjunction) we had not a needy person among us.

Jesus isn't some kind of heavenly Rapunzel, letting down those flowing straight blond locks the cheesy European and American paintings give him so we can climb up to join him in his elevated but isolated tower.

People say that could be, you know -- not crazy dreamers like me, but people with degrees in important and useful fields like economics at big and crusty institutions like Harvard and Oxford. We really could have not a needy person among us -- not through some imposition of gated so-called "community" shutting out the poor, but by seeing that every person on earth has a chance, has clean water and some education and parents as well with a chance of surviving to build communities and families of love. U2 is four guys in a rock band, any of whom would chafe to be called "prophet," but they proclaimed and we celebrated at their concert a vision for ending extreme poverty in our lifetimes. It wouldn't take us all selling all we had, but sharing a mere one percent (.7% actually, some say, but what they hay -- why not make it an even ONE?) of what the richest (and that's us -- my current regular annual income of $28,200 puts me in the top 10% of wage earners worldwide) of us have. Just one percent or less shared, and we'd know to the core of our being that about which the psalmist sang and many dreamers dream:

How good it is when sisters and brothers in the human family live together in unity! For there the LORD has ordained the blessing: life forevermore.

We miss that dimension of Jesus' message, of the prophets' message, of God's own heart all too often. So many Christians proclaim a Jesus who is all about taking people from earth up into disembodied heavens, like some kind of transporter from Star Trek. The theology of the Gospel According to John is sometimes charactured along those lines too: Jesus as some kind of E.T., come down from the heavens, recognized as the force of love by only a few and even then misunderstood by those closest to him, dying solely as a means to more efficiently "phone home" and ascend into the heavens, leaving humans amazed or ashamed, but in one way or another behind in all cases, gaping at stars they can't reach or seeing the world that gave them birth as just a pit of cruelty and death.

That's not Jesus' message, in John's or any canonical gospel. And for as much as John emphasizes Jesus' crucifixion as being "lifted up" and the world in which many call themselves enemy to those following Jesus' way, John drums into our head perhaps more than any other gospel where Jesus' heart is, FOR even as Jesus is "lifted up," even after Jesus, having been faithful to God's call, is raised and qualified to ascend to the heavens to the fellowship of the Trinity whose love was so great that a universe was made and is being redeemed and sustained, Jesus keeps coming back to those he loves.

We may close our eyes and forget to dream, but Jesus is alive, and still dreams with and for as well as through and among us.

Jesus isn't some kind of heavenly Rapunzel, letting down those flowing straight blond locks the cheesy European and American paintings give him so we can climb up to join him in his elevated but isolated tower. Jesus is engaged with the world. He is the Word who was with God in the very beginning, and whose love was present in the world's birth. He is the peasant child who knew and loved the earth he walked and all those who walk with him. He is the naked, vulnerable and tortured man nailed to immovable wood and still moved with compassion for his torturers. He has died, and he is risen, and yet he comes again, to touch doubters and healers, soldiers and peasants, persecutors and apostles -- who are sometimes the same people, after all … especially after Jesus' touch.

Jesus comes to the women at his tomb and his followers huddled in fear. He comes to those who confess him and those who grieve him, miss him, or doubt him. He comes to those who love him and those who hate him. Jesus comes and he comes and he comes to this world because he is not done with this world, no matter how many times people of this world say they are done with him, or with the way of peace and compassion he walked and walks. Jesus is not done with any of us, and never will be, until we know in our heart of hearts, experience in the deepest part of ourselves, and are bursting alongside the whole of creation to share the wealth of love and generosity for which we and the world was made.

We may grow weary, but Jesus will not grow weary of us. We may close our eyes and forget to dream, but Jesus is alive, and still dreams with and for as well as through and among us. God is redeeming the world God made and loves, and we may as well accommodate ourselves to the love that is the most basic force of the universe. The Christ has died, the Christ has risen, and the Christ WILL come again. Let us feast now with all whom Christ loves in celebration and anticipation!

The Lord is risen! Alleluia -- and thanks be to God!

Sarah Dylan Breuer is editor of The Witness. In her spare time, she maintains a website with a lectionary commentary series and a blog, and works throughout the church on issues of liturgy and faith. Dylan may be reached by email at editor@thewitness.org.