What if the biggest obstacle to a vibrant faith isn't doubt or moral failure — but simply asking the wrong questions?
This sermon explores a tension that runs through the entire history of Christianity: our tendency to fixate on the wrong goals. Whether it's the medieval church selling indulgences, modern evangelists reducing salvation to a memorized prayer, or the disciples asking Jesus in his final moments whether he was finally going to restore Israel's political kingdom — again and again, followers of Christ have missed the forest for the trees.
The problem isn't that these concerns are entirely wrong. Wondering about the afterlife isn't bad. Longing for justice and liberation from oppression isn't bad. The problem comes when any single concern crowds out the fuller, richer vision of what Jesus was actually inviting people into.
The Book of Acts offers us both a mirror and a map. The early church was far from perfect — it neglected widows, harbored deceivers, and fractured over conflict and personality clashes. But at its best, it was marked by something remarkable: a shared intensity of feeling. Not unanimous agreement, but a unity of spirit deep enough that something genuinely new could grow within it.
That kind of community — what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the "beloved community" — requires real work. It asks us to lay down our divisions, our entrenched ways of thinking, and even our cherished expectations. It's hard. Many communities never get there.
But the invitation remains: to stop staring at the sky waiting for our preferred version of the future, and instead enter the upper room — to do the difficult, hopeful work of building something together.
Notes:
- Richard Rohr describes Christian teachings on salvation as "a private evacuation plan" in The Universal Christ, pg. 48.
- The Acts community neglects the widows in Acts 6:1.
- The story of Ananias and Sapphira comes from Acts 5:1-11.
- One of the biggest divisions tha occurs in the Acts community is during Paul's second mission trip when the community is divided over the inclussion of John Mark. You can read this story in Acts 15.
- David Bentley Hart's translation of Acts 1:14 reads "These (the Apostles) devoted themselves constantly to prayer, with a shared intensity of feeling, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers." From: The New Testament: A Translation (2nd edition).
