Seeds of Justice:
To Each According to Their Needs

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost • October 27, 2019
Reading: Acts 2:42-47 (adapted from The Message)
Pastor Jeff Wells

What a vision of the kin-dom we have in the Acts community! Remember, friends, the kin-dom is not just a far away dream. We have the opportunity to live it out in partial, imperfect ways here and now. The early Christian community in Acts was organized to dismantle economic inequality. There were no rich and no poor, because anyone who had property sold it and everyone put whatever they had into a common fund out of which everyone’s physical needs were met. This was not theoretical, pie-in-the-sky religiosity. They took the theology of the common good very seriously and tried to put it into practice. They believed that this was the way Jesus had called them to live. 

This practice of Christian communalism is portrayed even more strongly in the next chapter. Let me read you a short excerpt: 

“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…. 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.”

And the community enforced what is sometimes referred to as the “common purse.” In chapter 5, we hear are told that a couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property, but they kept part of the sale price for themselves. When the apostles figured this out, they accused the couple of lying to God. Ananias and Sapphira both fell down dead.

These newly-minted Christians, living in close community with one another, sharing and caring for one another’s needs, came from all levels of the imperial caste system. Because Jesus was radically inclusive, the first communities his followers established followed his teaching and pattern. Slaves and slave masters worshipped and lived together. Rich and poor were together. So, the believers were not only following Jesus in caring for one another’s needs, they were also combatting the oppressive, stratified caste system imposed by the Roman Empire. This community existed at a time before the Christianity became the established, institutional church – a time when the way of Jesus was a revolutionary, countercultural movement. 

Early Christian communalism was undermined when Christianity became the official religion of the empire. Yet, throughout the history of Christianity, radical followers of Jesus have been inspired by the vision of the church in the Book of Acts to seek to live out those same values and principles. 

One modern example is the Bruderhof communities. They are an Anabaptist movement that originated in the chaos that followed World War I in Germany. With the rise of the Nazis, they had to flee Germany and ultimately formed communities as far away as Australia, Korea, Paraguay, the U.S., and elsewhere. They describe themselves this way:   

“While we follow the communal traditions of the early church, we believe our way of life is a compelling answer to the problems of contemporary society, with its emphasis on wealth and self and its resulting isolation, conflict, and inequality…”

“But at the Bruderhof, we believe that another way of life is possible. We’re not perfect people, but we’re willing to venture everything to build a life where there are no rich or poor. Where everyone is cared for, everyone belongs, and everyone can contribute.”

They live simply. They wear unadorned clothing, similar to the Amish. Yet, they believe strongly in taking action for peace and social justice in the world. I first encountered young members of the Bruderhof when I helped organize the legal support for an appeal of the conviction of former Black Panther member Mumia Abu Jamal. This was just a few years before I made my way back to being a follower of Jesus. I was intrigued by these young people and their commitment to love and justice. And I was inspired by the idea of fostering economic justice by living together in community for the good of all.

Another example, which I have long admired, is Koinonia Farm. Koinonia means “fellowship” in New Testament Greek. The farm was founded by Clarence and Florence Jordan. Clarence was a baptist preacher, but he had been influenced by learning about the Christian social gospel movement, especially from reading the works of Walter Rauschenbusch. Clarence Jordan was also a committed opponent of segregation and white supremacy, so he found himself unwelcome in the Southern Baptist Church. It was then, in 1942, that he and Florence and two friends decided to build a farming community founded on the model of the community in Acts. It was a small all-white community for many years, but eventually it became multiracial. For a long time, no one bothered them, but when they publicly supported racial justice and the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the KKK and others tried to destroy them with a complete boycott of their products and refusal to offer them any services. They survived and continue to thrive. 

There are urban intentional communities that live this way as well. A recent dramatic example is The Simple Way. It began as a community established in an impoverished neighborhood in Philadelphia and based on the principles of sharing and caring in the Book of Acts. They have since expanded to become a larger neighborhood organization, still focused on caring for the needs and advocating for justice for all. This shows the Acts principle can be scaled to something larger. 

I experienced a version of this myself when I lived for a year in a housing cooperative after college. All 30 residents contributed equally to the cost of our housing, food, and supplies. And we all shared equally in the tasks of cooking, cleaning, and organizing. That experience had a big impact on me.

The example of the Acts community and those that followed, laid the basis for a large movement of utopian socialist communities in the 1800 that was revived in the 1960s commune movement. All of these endeavors also inspired the creation of the Social Gospel movement and virtually every movement for peace and social justice since. This included a powerful black Social Gospel strain that inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. They recognized that efforts for economic justice cannot be separated from racial justice.

Even moreso, the seeds planted by the Acts community, ultimately inspired the vision that we could and should work to create societies that function according to the principles, “from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs.” Later moves from meeting needs through religious communities to government taking on much of the responsibility. In fact, this slogan, “from each according to their ability and to each according to their need,” originated with utopian socialists in the mid-1800s and popularized by Karl Marx in 1875.

The impulse to meet the basic needs of every human being has always been up against the illusion of scarcity and the human impulse to horde. But the reality is the resources exist in the world for every human being to have all of their basic physical needs met, for every person to live relatively comfortably, and even to have their emotional and spiritual needs met. But this cannot happen in a system based on profit and the accumulation of wealth for a few. 

The principle of pooling of resources to provide for the basic needs of every member of the community or the society is the opposite of what capitalism stands for. It is also counterposed to the rugged individualism so ingrained in U.S. culture. We need each other. For each of us to thrive, we need to rely on one another, to share with one another, to care for and love one another. This is the principle of interdependence Naomi Madaras talked about last week. 

The Acts community – putting the teachings of Jesus into practice – provided the seeds of justice not just for small radical Christian communities that followed, but for great movements for social justice that were not explicitly religious. These, in turn, have provided the seeds from which we are still harvesting good fruit today in our own community. 

Admittedly, we do not pool all of our financial resources. It is difficult to operate on the principles of the Acts community when we are so geographically spread out. Yet, we can still struggle and inspire others to struggle for a society that functions on the principle “to each according to their need.” We can seek to live in harmony with one living in community, investing more in each other’s lives. And when we give regularly to the church, to Hope for Our Neighbors in Need, and to the Ministry of Grace emergency fund, we demonstrate our desire to share and care for one another. Do we not strive to be “of one heart and soul”? As Acts 5 states? Beyond that, we yield our own self-interest to meet the needs of others. Our community spends over $100,000 each year to keep HNN going. We contribute large spaces Tuesdays and Saturdays that we could otherwise rent out. Think about that. We, a small community with pretty limited resources, makes the sacrifice every year to contribute in a big way to the needs of tens of thousands of people in need of food, hope, and love. 

So I thank God for this community. I am grateful to each one of you for your prayers, your pledges, your willingness to yield a part of your finances, your time, your emotional energy to try to loving community with one another as Jesus taught. I thank you for your commitment to this imperfect community as, together, we strive to break down all of the walls that separate people. Thank you for your commitment to a space of sharing, caring and love, as we seek to  dismantle at the levels of both community and society, the inequities that exist between people. May the seeds we continue to plant find bear fruit for us and for many others. As our opening song says, “Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way.”

Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.