If you were alive in the mid-1950s or have read a little US
history, the name Joe McCarthy has a ring to it that isn’t altogether pleasant.
In his mind, no stone should be left unturned because there was a communist
under every rock. President Eisenhower was even in his sights.
Today, looking back at that era, most historians would
suggest that the real problem in the mid-1950s was not communist infiltration
of the State Department, but the reprehensible behavior of Sen. McCarthy and
his abuse of the US Constitution. “McCarthyism” is not a sought after title
these days – and rightly so.
The real danger was not from some outside infiltrators who
were going to destroy the US and make it bow down to the USSR, the real danger
was McCarthy and people like him. In the name of “loving America and what she
stands for” he pointed his nasty finger at people who weren’t dangerous to the
US or anyone else. Never once did he “prove” anyone to be a “card-carrying
communist.” The real enemy was within, not without.
How many times has a story like that been told in human
history?
One of those kinds of stories shows up in Acts, Luke’s
account of life in the early church. From the Day of Pentecost in Acts forward,
it seems like the church was thriving. Luke mentions numbers like 3000 and 2000
(likely only counting men) as becoming a part of the body of Christ. They were
not only growing, but modeling what it means to be Jesus to the world. They had
all things in common, shared in ways that are remarkable, and there were no
needy people among them.
All of this is happening in spite of the fact that the
Jewish opponents of the church seem determined to stop this new movement among
Jews. Peter and John, clearly the leading apostles at the time, spend the night
in jail are brought before the Sanhedrin the next morning and told “don’t talk
about Jesus.” Of course they refused, and the church just keeps growing.
It is only when an internal
not external issue arises that
something challenges life as Luke describes it in Acts 2-4. A couple named
Ananias and Sapphira apparently want the same sort of recognition that Barnabas
had been given at the end of chapter four. They, in separate moments, both lied
to the Holy Spirit and God by telling Peter things about their gift that
weren’t true. Again, in separate moments, they both die – on the spot as it
were.
In what surely is the greatest understatement in Acts, Luke
says “great fear came upon the church.” Even more importantly, Luke will never
again describe the church with phrases like “being of the same mind,” “having
all things in common,” and there being “no needy people” among them. We don’t
read anymore of people selling their possessions and giving it to the church –
which is why, or course, there were “no needy people” among them.
It wasn’t the external attacks of the Jewish opponents of
the Jesus story that were the problem, it was the internal behavior of some who
claimed to be believers. Internal, not external, issues created this kind of
watershed moment in which the way the church functioned as the “earliest, early
church” would never be repeated again.
You don’t have to listen very long in our cultural context
to hear concerns about the external
attacks on the church in our age, often generated by no less than Satan
himself. It might be in the form of abortion, same-sex marriage, global warming
nonsense, homosexuality in general, persecution of Christians in the Middle
East, and the list goes on in endless fashion. I don’t want to sound like I
somehow think Satan isn’t involved in some of the evil in our world, but
really? It’s all his fault? I thought “nothing can separate us from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus, . . .” including “powers and principalities.”
But have you noticed how much easier it is to be opposed to
same-sex marriage than it is to work to make your own heterosexual marriage a
model of Christlikeness? Or how easy it is to be anti-abortion than it is to
offer to take care of an unwed mother and help her raise that yet unborn child
in Christ? It’s a whole lot easier to say global worming concerns are nonsense
than it is to think about reducing your carbon footprint.
In other words, as long as I can point fingers at someone or
something else, it doesn’t take a whole lot to follow Jesus. Yet the Ananias
and Sapphira story makes it abundantly clear that it is the internal issues within the body of
Christ that pose the greatest challenges to our ability to advance the kingdom.
Peter reminds us that Satan is a stalker. (1 Peter 5:8) But
that is one line in an epistle with 105 verses in modern English translations,
most of which are directed at our own internal
behavior as children of God. It is much easier to point your finger at Satan,
but much more productive to create kingdom outposts where everyone knows and
accepts that we are called to be Jesus to the world.
We have all probably heard and/or said that little piece of
spiritual advice – “if you’re too busy to pray, you’re too busy.” I heard a
version of it as an excuse just this morning!
Does Satan actually make me think I’m too busy to pray, to serve, to
worship, to confess, to acknowledge Jesus as Lord? Or is that an internal
problem?
When our churches and ministries are characterized by that
sort of internal thinking, we’re probably the last thing on Satan’s mind. He
has bigger, and more dangerous, fish to fry!
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