Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, April 17, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
COMMUNISM!!! Sorry. That just burst out of me. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how any Christian can defend the kind of caustic capitalism that characterizes our international economic systems and results in the unbelievable gap between the wealth of the richest and the poorest among us. I’m not promoting communism as it’s been (disastrously) practiced thus far, nor any particular sociopolitical ideology. I’m just saying that these early Christians were so moved by love for Jesus and one another that it was no longer necessary for them to accumulate wealth for its own sake. It was instead necessary to ensure that everyone in the community had enough, and that the group as a whole could be self-sustaining. People still worked, still made money. Bread didn’t buy itself. But people looked beyond themselves, beyond their self-centered fears of not having enough, and were committed to the flourishing of their neighbors. Is this too idealistic? Or is dismissing it as such just indicate an unwillingness to look honestly at how things could be different?
How do I feel about the lives of the early Christians? Can such principles be applied in our modern context? Why or why not?
