With that in mind, let’s hear the text from the Acts of the Apostles one more time,
(just to let the scandal of it sink in …)

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. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

I wonder: do these words afflict you? Do they make you uncomfortable?
Do they unsettle you a little bit?
They certainly unsettle me.
But before I attempt to explain away this discomfort,
to provide an alibi — for me… and for all of us,
I think it’s worth sitting with this discomfort for a little while.

For discomfort is not always a bad thing.
No, I think it’s possible to see such moments of discomfort as the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to do a new thing. Often it’s in being unsettled that our imaginations are opened up to something else,
something previously unheard of — or unthinkable.

Indeed, isn’t the story that has led us to this point in the the scriptures a story of — being unsettled?
Hasn’t it been the story of Jesus unsettling just about every presumed certainty he encountered?

You see, it is precisely in becoming unsettled that this radical and passionate church that we read about in the book of Acts was able to come to birth in the first place.

Jesus’ teachings had already unsettled virtually everyone he met — including his own followers.
More than that, Jesus’ death, unsettled the rather naive optimism of the disciples. They were expecting a conquering Messiah who would lead them to redemption, not a defeated one who would leave them abandoned.
And, when Jesus rose from the dead, the world itself became unsettled — for, in Jesus, the first fruits of a brand new creation, a new kind humanity, had been born. Nothing was ever to be the same.
And then this new kind humanity began to spread, first to the Apostles and then to everyone who encountered the the divine unsettling of the Holy Spirit.

This story is unsettling, because it is a story of long series of people and systems being disrupted and —unsettled.

***
When we listen to today’s story about the earliest church, it’s hard not to recognize the difference — indeed the vast chasm — that separates the radically egalitarian and intensely passionate common life of the early church from the reality of where we sit today.

And yet, somehow, this is meant to be our founding story.
But if this is the kind of common life that is meant to be the measure and true reality of the church, then I think we are pretty far off the mark —
with our tolerance for economic inequality, without and within the church;
the inviolability of private property,
our reticence to speak passionately about the resurrection and the ways our own lives have been transformed.

But I highlight these differences not in order to lead you into despair,
or in order to advocate for a baptized Marxism.
I highlight these differences simply in the hope of — unsettling you.

Because to become unsettled is to be invited into that great tradition of Jesus and the early church. To be unsettled is to be on the right track. For it is precisely in being unsettled that the people of the world have, throughout the ages, learned to become the people of God.

***
Now, it’s quite possible that this doesn’t unsettle you.
That you already have an alibi. Or that you simply can’t bear the inconvenience of being unsettled right now.

If that’s true, then you are not alone. For this too is a tradition within the New Testament. It’s a tradition of resisting the disruptive intentions of Jesus and the unsettling tendencies of the Holy Spirit.

This tradition has at least three proponents in the New Testament. We might even call them Types. For their situations and their responses are not unique.

Perhaps you can identify with one or all of these types:
There is The Rich Young Ruler Type,
The Pontius Pilate Type,
and there is Simon Peter Type.

If you’re the Rich Young Ruler Type, then, wealth and possessions have you so settled in the world-as-it-is that it has become impossible to see the world as-it-is-coming-to-be.
When the rich man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus responds by saying: “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, … then come, follow me.” But the rich man, too settled in the world as it was, was not able to see the the new creation that Jesus was announcing — “When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions,” the Gospel of Mark tells us.

If you are the Pontius Pilate Type, then your imagination has become dulled and domesticated. You’ve become somehow deaf to the possibility of a truth that could shake our current reality into a new configuration.
When Jesus presented Pilate with the image of another Kingdom, a true Kingdom (one that did not deal in the political calculus of violence and retribution), Pilate could only summon the cynical, rhetorical question — “what is truth?”
Pilate had the massive machinery of the Roman state at his disposal, and the religious establishment in his back pocket. Pilate did not have to be unsettled.

If you are the Simon Peter Type, then you’ve allowed your image of what the church should be to limit what the Spirit is actually trying to build.
How many examples are there of Peter missing the mark? How often is Jesus re-orienting his presumptions about God and God’s Kingdom.
You see, even though Peter was not divided in his loyalty between Jesus and wealth, like the rich man; even though he was not one of empire’s footmen, like Pilate; he was still enchanted by a certain kind of idolatry — the idolatry of his own convictions about the way things should be. This is often the most difficult idolatry to be rid of — the idolatry of knowing you’re right.

So you see, there are lots of ways that one can resist the disruptive encounter with Jesus or the unsettling activity of the Holy Spirit.
You might be a Rich Young Ruler, a Pontius Pilate, or a Simon Peter.
It might be the consolations of wealth, the trappings of power, or the stubbornness of conviction that keeps you spiritually invested in the world and in the church as it is — and not as it is trying to become.
Perhaps for you —it is as it is for me — a mix of all of these things.
***
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. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

How absurd. How unrealistic. How unimaginable.
How unsettling.

I suspect that if our church was ever to resemble the church we hear about in the Acts of the Apostles —
that is, a people, utterly transfixed by a power that exceeds their intentions and even their understanding,
a people singularly attentive to what God has done in Jesus and was continuing in the Holy Spirit
and a people so committed to sharing this reality with others that they were willing to sacrifice their own comfort and privilege for the sake their brothers and sisters.
If we are ever to achieve such intensity of vision and passion,
it could only be by way of the grace of having been unsettled. Amen.