King Duncan
An Arab prince once owned a beautiful horse--a horse that was the envy of all. One man in particular tried to buy the horse, but the prince refused to set a price. One day the prince was riding across the desert. He saw the body of a man lying in the path, apparently exhausted. The prince dismounted and put the unfortunate traveler on his horse. Immediately the traveler revived, straightened up, and rode off. It was the very man who had tried so often to buy the prince’s horse. Now he had obtained the horse without paying anything.
“Wait!” cried the prince. “Please tell no one how you got that horse.”
“Why?” laughed the thief. “Are you afraid they will laugh at you?”
“No,” said the prince. “I am afraid it might hinder someone else from offering help to some other traveler whose need is genuine.” (1) The eternal dilemma. We see someone in need. But we are afraid that we will be taken advantage of if we try to help. Or we’re afraid that they are somehow undeserving.
Two college students are riding a subway in New York City. A homeless man approaches them asking for money. One of the college students adamantly rejects the man in disgust. The other whips out his wallet, pulls out a couple of dollars and gladly hands them over to the homeless man with a smile. The homeless man thanks him kindly and then continues on to the other passengers. The first student is outraged by his friend’s act of generosity. “What on earth did you do that for?” he shouts. “You know he’s only going to use it for booze.”
And the second student replies, “And we weren’t?”
We’ve all been there. A needy person intrudes himself or herself into our lives. Even when the need is legitimate, we may be taken aback. We may turn away.
And then we come to this passage from the book of Acts, and we read about the early church, and we read these words, “There were no needy persons among them.” And we think, great! They didn’t have to worry about anybody bugging them for help. “There were no needy persons among them.”
Then we read why there were no needy people among them:
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”
Oh. There were no needy people because they shared everything in common. No one claimed any of his possessions as his own.
I wonder what would happen if we made that a condition of church membership today? Everyone sell your house, your car, your boat, whatever you own and bring the proceeds here and let’s divvy them up. Some of us who don’t own much would come out all right. Those of you who own a lot would be a little reluctant, I suspect. The early Christians were a radical sect. No doubt about it. They simply didn’t worry about material blessings. They were living so powerfully in the light of two events, the resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that all they lived for was the impending return of Christ. Later, when it became evident that Christ’s return was not going to be as quick as they assumed, the church lost a bit of that early urgency and fervor. Still, I think these words are instructive, “There were no needy people among them.”
I. The Gospel Is for Needy People.
The Gospel is for needy people. Let’s make no mistake about it. Christ came for needy people. “Those who are well have no need for a physician,” he said on one occasion (Matthew 9:12). And, of course, it is true. Why would Christ come into the world and then suffer and die, if we did not need him to do so. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” St. Paul would say later (Romans 3:23). This is to say that all of us are needy people. The only people for whom there is no hope are those who refuse to recognize that they are needy. Christianity at its best has always understood that this is our task, to reach out to the needy.
There is a fascinating story about a Moravian missionary in the early 1700s named Leonard Dober. Dober felt God’s call to minister to slaves in the Virgin Islands. His plan when he set out for the Islands at the tender age of eighteen was to sell himself into slavery so he could reach these people who had so little. His friends, even his Christian friends, couldn’t believe it. They sought to dissuade him and they criticized him soundly. But he believed quite sincerely that if he traveled to the Virgin Islands as an ambassador of state, he would have been treated so differently by the residents there that his message would be compromised. He wanted to serve Christ, and he was willing to do whatever it took to be Christ’s vessel--even sell himself into slavery.
Dober arrived in the Virgin Islands in the late 1730s, but he did not become a plantation slave. Instead he became a servant in the governor’s house. Soon he resigned his position, however, as he was concerned that even this position, as a servant, was still so superior to that of the slaves that it was detrimental to reaching them for Christ. So he chose to live in a small mud hut where he could work one-on-one with the slaves. In three years his ministry grew to include 13,000 new converts. (2)
II. Christ Calls Us to Minister to the Needy.
That’s when we have been at our best, when we have recognized that Christ calls us to minister to the needy. We follow in the footsteps of those early believers in our Lord. There were no needy among them not because early Christians were drawn from the upper classes. Nothing could be further from the case. There were no needy among them because they took care of the poor and distressed and raised them from their disadvantaged situation.
Joseph M. Stowell in his book, The Trouble with Jesus, makes a powerful case for the early church’s passion for those at the bottom of society. He points out that mercy and pity were considered defects of character, not virtues, two thousand years ago in Rome. The Romans had rationalized away any sense of obligation for the needy in their society.
“Christianity turned this notion on its head. Whereas, for the most part, the poor were formerly thought of as victims of cruel destiny, Christians were told that to look closely at the poor was to see the face of God.
“Their care for the needy is legendary. They would often fast, not for their own gain or spiritual advantage, as we so often do, but rather to take the money they would have spent on groceries and give it to the poor. The early church father Hermas wrote, ‘On the day when you fast, take only bread and wine. Calculate the amount of feed you would have taken on other days, put aside the money you would have spent on it and give it to the widow, the orphan or the poor.’ Origen of Alexandria said: ‘Let the poor man be provided with good from the self-denial of him who fasts.’
“Early bishops in the church were required to eat one meal each day with the poor. Babies that were deformed, unwanted, or of the wrong sex were often discarded on the dung heaps outside city gates. It was the Christians who went to the dump to gather the unwanted babies. They nourished and reared them in their own homes.” (3)
This is our tradition. This is where we came from. Wherever and whatever we can do for the needy, that is our mission and our ministry. For Christ came to seek and to save the lost. We cannot turn a blind eye to those who are in need, for to ignore them is to turn our back on Christ.
III. Everyone is Needy in Some Way.
Having said this, however, we need to recognize that people are needy in all kinds of ways. The social situation has changed radically since the days of the early church. Today there are programs to lift the needy out of their desperate circumstances. These programs have many gaps, and there are some people whose poverty is an extension of other more challenging needs such as addictions and mental illness, so we still have an important ministry to the down and out. However, you and I do not come into contact very often with people who are truly needy from a financial standpoint. We have families who are struggling. We have senior citizens who are frightened about whether they have enough to maintain them in their last years, and we have a few people trying to get out from under a mountain of debt. But few of us can be classified as truly needy.
But neediness comes in many forms, and we have many other needs that may be just as pressing. There are marriages that are strained, parents concerned about their teenager, people who are lonely and who are hurting in a multitude of ways. There are people that we see every Sunday who on the outside look like they have it all together, but, if you could walk a mile in their moccasins, as the old expression goes, you would discover that you would not trade places with them for the world. There’s much we need to do as a congregation before we can say that there are no needy people among us. All of us are needy in one way or another. We ought to think of the church as a large and ongoing support group where people who are hurting in whatever way can find love, acceptance and a kind and encouraging word.
In late July 2002, nine men were trapped 240 feet underground in a cramped, partially flooded chamber at the Quecreek coal mine in Somerset, PA. Three days later all nine men were rescued. Reporters called it a “miracle.”
According to news reports these men “decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group.” The 55-degree (Fahrenheit) water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia, so “when one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned.”
“Everybody had strong moments,” miner Harry B. Mayhugh told reporters after being released from Somerset Hospital. “But any certain time maybe one guy got down, and then the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up, and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That’s the only way it could have been,” this miner reported. They knew what they needed to do to survive; they needed to support one another. (4)
I have had people say to me, “Pastor, I wouldn’t have made it through this difficult time in my life without the church.” And that’s what a church ought to be. Whenever anyone is in need, whether that need is grief over the loss of a loved one, depression after a prolonged season of illness, a profound loneliness, or help getting though a family or marital problem or whatever that need might be, the church is called to surround the hurting person with love and support.
This is both our heritage and this is the commandment which Christ gave us. “Love one another,” he said, “As I have loved you” (John 13:31). Christ died for needy people, people like you and me. It didn’t matter that we didn’t deserve it. He did it out of love. And he calls us to look for needy people, too, and to pass on that love.
Some of you are familiar with Nordstrom Department store. Nordstrom’s is legendary in business circles as a leader in customer service, and this excellence is reflected in their rising profits.
Betsy Sanders, an executive with Nordstrom department stores, tells of a meeting that occurred one time between executives of Nordstrom and J. C. Penney. J. C. Penney’s executives were eager to learn Nordstrom’s secrets for success. Imagine their surprise when a Nordstrom executive pointed them to a business book written over 100 years before by . . . guess who? J. C. Penney himself. Nordstrom had taken Penney’s recipe for success and followed it faithfully. The J. C. Penney executives surely did some serious soul-searching after that meeting, because it couldn’t have been clearer that they had not been living up to their founder’s beliefs. (5)
When you think about our founder’s beliefs and whether we have lived up to them, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. We care about needy people because Christ once cared for us when we were needy. And our task is to find other needy souls and to show them the love of Jesus Christ. This is what our founder intended for us to be.
An Arab prince once owned a beautiful horse--a horse that was the envy of all. One man in particular tried to buy the horse, but the prince refused to set a price. One day the prince was riding across the desert. He saw the body of a man lying in the path, apparently exhausted. The prince dismounted and put the unfortunate traveler on his horse. Immediately the traveler revived, straightened up, and rode off. It was the very man who had tried so often to buy the prince’s horse. Now he had obtained the horse without paying anything.
“Wait!” cried the prince. “Please tell no one how you got that horse.”
“Why?” laughed the thief. “Are you afraid they will laugh at you?”
“No,” said the prince. “I am afraid it might hinder someone else from offering help to some other traveler whose need is genuine.” (1) The eternal dilemma. We see someone in need. But we are afraid that we will be taken advantage of if we try to help. Or we’re afraid that they are somehow undeserving.
Two college students are riding a subway in New York City. A homeless man approaches them asking for money. One of the college students adamantly rejects the man in disgust. The other whips out his wallet, pulls out a couple of dollars and gladly hands them over to the homeless man with a smile. The homeless man thanks him kindly and then continues on to the other passengers. The first student is outraged by his friend’s act of generosity. “What on earth did you do that for?” he shouts. “You know he’s only going to use it for booze.”
And the second student replies, “And we weren’t?”
We’ve all been there. A needy person intrudes himself or herself into our lives. Even when the need is legitimate, we may be taken aback. We may turn away.
And then we come to this passage from the book of Acts, and we read about the early church, and we read these words, “There were no needy persons among them.” And we think, great! They didn’t have to worry about anybody bugging them for help. “There were no needy persons among them.”
Then we read why there were no needy people among them:
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”
Oh. There were no needy people because they shared everything in common. No one claimed any of his possessions as his own.
I wonder what would happen if we made that a condition of church membership today? Everyone sell your house, your car, your boat, whatever you own and bring the proceeds here and let’s divvy them up. Some of us who don’t own much would come out all right. Those of you who own a lot would be a little reluctant, I suspect. The early Christians were a radical sect. No doubt about it. They simply didn’t worry about material blessings. They were living so powerfully in the light of two events, the resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that all they lived for was the impending return of Christ. Later, when it became evident that Christ’s return was not going to be as quick as they assumed, the church lost a bit of that early urgency and fervor. Still, I think these words are instructive, “There were no needy people among them.”
I. The Gospel Is for Needy People.
The Gospel is for needy people. Let’s make no mistake about it. Christ came for needy people. “Those who are well have no need for a physician,” he said on one occasion (Matthew 9:12). And, of course, it is true. Why would Christ come into the world and then suffer and die, if we did not need him to do so. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” St. Paul would say later (Romans 3:23). This is to say that all of us are needy people. The only people for whom there is no hope are those who refuse to recognize that they are needy. Christianity at its best has always understood that this is our task, to reach out to the needy.
There is a fascinating story about a Moravian missionary in the early 1700s named Leonard Dober. Dober felt God’s call to minister to slaves in the Virgin Islands. His plan when he set out for the Islands at the tender age of eighteen was to sell himself into slavery so he could reach these people who had so little. His friends, even his Christian friends, couldn’t believe it. They sought to dissuade him and they criticized him soundly. But he believed quite sincerely that if he traveled to the Virgin Islands as an ambassador of state, he would have been treated so differently by the residents there that his message would be compromised. He wanted to serve Christ, and he was willing to do whatever it took to be Christ’s vessel--even sell himself into slavery.
Dober arrived in the Virgin Islands in the late 1730s, but he did not become a plantation slave. Instead he became a servant in the governor’s house. Soon he resigned his position, however, as he was concerned that even this position, as a servant, was still so superior to that of the slaves that it was detrimental to reaching them for Christ. So he chose to live in a small mud hut where he could work one-on-one with the slaves. In three years his ministry grew to include 13,000 new converts. (2)
II. Christ Calls Us to Minister to the Needy.
That’s when we have been at our best, when we have recognized that Christ calls us to minister to the needy. We follow in the footsteps of those early believers in our Lord. There were no needy among them not because early Christians were drawn from the upper classes. Nothing could be further from the case. There were no needy among them because they took care of the poor and distressed and raised them from their disadvantaged situation.
Joseph M. Stowell in his book, The Trouble with Jesus, makes a powerful case for the early church’s passion for those at the bottom of society. He points out that mercy and pity were considered defects of character, not virtues, two thousand years ago in Rome. The Romans had rationalized away any sense of obligation for the needy in their society.
“Christianity turned this notion on its head. Whereas, for the most part, the poor were formerly thought of as victims of cruel destiny, Christians were told that to look closely at the poor was to see the face of God.
“Their care for the needy is legendary. They would often fast, not for their own gain or spiritual advantage, as we so often do, but rather to take the money they would have spent on groceries and give it to the poor. The early church father Hermas wrote, ‘On the day when you fast, take only bread and wine. Calculate the amount of feed you would have taken on other days, put aside the money you would have spent on it and give it to the widow, the orphan or the poor.’ Origen of Alexandria said: ‘Let the poor man be provided with good from the self-denial of him who fasts.’
“Early bishops in the church were required to eat one meal each day with the poor. Babies that were deformed, unwanted, or of the wrong sex were often discarded on the dung heaps outside city gates. It was the Christians who went to the dump to gather the unwanted babies. They nourished and reared them in their own homes.” (3)
This is our tradition. This is where we came from. Wherever and whatever we can do for the needy, that is our mission and our ministry. For Christ came to seek and to save the lost. We cannot turn a blind eye to those who are in need, for to ignore them is to turn our back on Christ.
III. Everyone is Needy in Some Way.
Having said this, however, we need to recognize that people are needy in all kinds of ways. The social situation has changed radically since the days of the early church. Today there are programs to lift the needy out of their desperate circumstances. These programs have many gaps, and there are some people whose poverty is an extension of other more challenging needs such as addictions and mental illness, so we still have an important ministry to the down and out. However, you and I do not come into contact very often with people who are truly needy from a financial standpoint. We have families who are struggling. We have senior citizens who are frightened about whether they have enough to maintain them in their last years, and we have a few people trying to get out from under a mountain of debt. But few of us can be classified as truly needy.
But neediness comes in many forms, and we have many other needs that may be just as pressing. There are marriages that are strained, parents concerned about their teenager, people who are lonely and who are hurting in a multitude of ways. There are people that we see every Sunday who on the outside look like they have it all together, but, if you could walk a mile in their moccasins, as the old expression goes, you would discover that you would not trade places with them for the world. There’s much we need to do as a congregation before we can say that there are no needy people among us. All of us are needy in one way or another. We ought to think of the church as a large and ongoing support group where people who are hurting in whatever way can find love, acceptance and a kind and encouraging word.
In late July 2002, nine men were trapped 240 feet underground in a cramped, partially flooded chamber at the Quecreek coal mine in Somerset, PA. Three days later all nine men were rescued. Reporters called it a “miracle.”
According to news reports these men “decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group.” The 55-degree (Fahrenheit) water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia, so “when one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned.”
“Everybody had strong moments,” miner Harry B. Mayhugh told reporters after being released from Somerset Hospital. “But any certain time maybe one guy got down, and then the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up, and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That’s the only way it could have been,” this miner reported. They knew what they needed to do to survive; they needed to support one another. (4)
I have had people say to me, “Pastor, I wouldn’t have made it through this difficult time in my life without the church.” And that’s what a church ought to be. Whenever anyone is in need, whether that need is grief over the loss of a loved one, depression after a prolonged season of illness, a profound loneliness, or help getting though a family or marital problem or whatever that need might be, the church is called to surround the hurting person with love and support.
This is both our heritage and this is the commandment which Christ gave us. “Love one another,” he said, “As I have loved you” (John 13:31). Christ died for needy people, people like you and me. It didn’t matter that we didn’t deserve it. He did it out of love. And he calls us to look for needy people, too, and to pass on that love.
Some of you are familiar with Nordstrom Department store. Nordstrom’s is legendary in business circles as a leader in customer service, and this excellence is reflected in their rising profits.
Betsy Sanders, an executive with Nordstrom department stores, tells of a meeting that occurred one time between executives of Nordstrom and J. C. Penney. J. C. Penney’s executives were eager to learn Nordstrom’s secrets for success. Imagine their surprise when a Nordstrom executive pointed them to a business book written over 100 years before by . . . guess who? J. C. Penney himself. Nordstrom had taken Penney’s recipe for success and followed it faithfully. The J. C. Penney executives surely did some serious soul-searching after that meeting, because it couldn’t have been clearer that they had not been living up to their founder’s beliefs. (5)
When you think about our founder’s beliefs and whether we have lived up to them, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. We care about needy people because Christ once cared for us when we were needy. And our task is to find other needy souls and to show them the love of Jesus Christ. This is what our founder intended for us to be.
