The Intersection of Gifts and Commitment -- FPC sermon excerpt

A woman from a poor village in Bangladesh was visiting a Christian family in Toronto. The morning after she arrived, she looked out of the kitchen window. “Who lives in that house?” she asked her Canadian hostess.

“Which house?”

“That one right there.”

“Oh, that,” said the Canadian women. “No one lives there. That's a ‘house’ for the car.”

The woman from Bangladesh was mystified. “A house for the car,” she kept saying. “A house for the car.”

Mark Buchanan, writing in Christianity Today magazine (September 6, 1999), pictures that woman looking out of his kitchen window at his garden shed. She is puzzled, saying again and again, “A house for the shovels. A house for the lawn mower.”

“We live in a culture of excess,” he concludes. “A culture of more.”

Mark Buchanan is right — we live in a culture of excess, a culture of more. We are forever upgrading our clothing, our cars, our furniture, our electronics, our kitchens, our houses. And I’m as guilty as any of you. When Nancy and I moved into our house in Fairfax, I was thrilled to finally have a home with a garage. A house for our cars.

In stark contrast to our 21st century culture of excess, we read in today’s Scripture passage about the culture of the first century Christian church. “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” (Acts 4:32). The result of this radical sharing was that “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned land 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” (vv. 34-35).

The first Christians did not participate in a culture of excess, a culture of more. Instead, they created a culture of sharing in which the needs of everyone were met.