Out of our bondage and sorrow and night, Jesus, we come, Jesus, we come. Into Thy freedom gladness and light, Jesus, we come to thee. Out of our sickness into Thy health, out of our wanting and into Thy wealth, out of our sin and into Thy self, Jesus, we come to thee. We come and we ask You to speak. Give us ears to hear, hearts to understand, wills to obey. We pray that You would speak and we would be listening. Jesus, come, we pray. Amen.

How do you know who’s a part of your family? Well, it depends on your family, I suppose. For some, they may say that you look just like your mom, just like your dad. Perhaps you have a familial relationship which is obvious to others. And your family, you’re sitting with them now, and maybe you go and you’ll drive home and you’ll go to your house or your apartment and that will be your family. Your children, by birth, by adoption, by fostering, your children, your family. That’s what we usually think of. That’s, that’s my family. Others of you will be able to tell of kids and grandkids scattered around, or you’ll talk of family that’s already in heaven.

Some speak of a corporate sort of family. You find this language more and more often. You know, the Novant family, or I don’t know, you can tell me later, do they speak of the Bank of America family? The Chick-fil-A family? The BoJangles family? I’m thinking of chicken, I guess. [laughter] The Clemson, the Alabama, the Chapel Hill family. Your, you’re current students, you’re alumnus. Or maybe it’s a particular nation, ethnicity, or tribe and you think of that, that’s our family. You’re Scottish, you’re Latino, you’re Dutch, you ain’t much, whatever it might be.

Most often we think of belonging to a family by virtue of blood, maybe employment, common affiliation. That’s our family.

But what about the most important family in the world?

If we had time to look at what Jesus says about the family, we’d see pretty quickly that as important as mother, father, children are, Jesus relativizes that family. He says “Who are My mother and brothers and sisters? It’s those who do the will of My Father in heaven. They’re My mother and brothers and that’s my family.” Jesus relativizes. There is no doubt that what we call the nuclear family is absolutely essential, it is the building block in any civilization, and yet at the same time it is not the most important family. It is not, but definition, eternal, transcendent.

There’s a difference between orthodox evangelical Christianity and Mormonism.

No, what is the most important family? It is not the family that you have by blood, it is not the family that you may drive home with later this afternoon. It is the family of God. It is the family that has God as their heavenly Father, Jesus Christ the Son as their elder brother, and the Holy Spirit bringing us together in community. That is the most important family, and if you belong to Christ this morning, no matter how far away your family is, how estranged you may be, how tenuous it may seem right now, you belong to the most important family, the eternal family of God.

So how do we define this family? How can you tell who belongs in the family? You can’t just say, well, they have a certain skin or a certain hair or they dress a certain way. What do you have to do to get into this family? And who is welcome to join?

That’s what our text this morning is about. If you turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 11. Last week we looked at Acts chapter 10, the long story repeated several times of Peter and Cornelius and the vision, that what has been unclean is now clean, and we looked at that story from the individual level. What did this mean for Cornelius and who was he and what happened?...

O Lord, we come not simply because it says “prayer of illumination” in the bulletin and this is how sermons start, we come because we need Your help. And so we pray, come, Holy Spirit, come, heavenly dove, with all Your quickening powers, kindle a flame of sacred love in these cold hearts of ours. Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, with all your quickening powers. Come shed abroad a Savior’s love, and that shall kindle ours. Give us ears to hear. Speak, for Your servants are listening. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Several years ago I read a fascinating book called Everything is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us. And the title suggests that the book is actually a play on “everything is obvious,” that in fact, everything is not so obvious, and common sense does often fail us. The book is written by Duncan Watts, a researcher at Microsoft, and formerly a professor at Columbia. He tells the story in the book about posing a problem to one of his undergraduate classes. He said “I want you to consider two countries. In country A 12% of the population agrees to be organ donors, that when they die, their organs can be donated for science or for those who need them. 12% in country A. In country B, 99.9% of the people are organ donors.” And he said, “What accounts for this difference?” And so the class would discuss and they came up with lots of possibilities. They thought well, maybe, one country was very religious and that’s why their number was 99.9. Maybe it was some sort of religious conviction to love their neighbors, or maybe one people valued life in a different way, or maybe they had different views of the body, and maybe perhaps in country A there was a thought that it wasn’t right that the body should be used in that way after death. Or maybe one country was very well-developed and had the medical technology to use organ donation and others didn’t. Or maybe one had many accidental deaths and injuries, and so they wanted to have organ donation. Or maybe one just had very skilled doctors to do it well and they didn’t trust any other country, the doctors with chainsaws or something.

So he said, “Well, let me tell you that country A is Germany, and country B is Austria.” And this was shocking. They were thinking that maybe these countries were in vastly different parts of the globe, very different cultures, not two countries that were right next to each other. So he said, “What accounts for the difference between Germany and Austria?” And they came up with more ideas. Maybe Austria had a big media campaign to encourage organ donations and it was, it was on train stations and there was a media blitz, or maybe it’s something to do with the education system and they were instructed in it, or people started speculating “it must have something to do with the Nazis” or something or World War II. They all figured some big explanation, some variation in culture or strategy, or beliefs that led to such an extreme difference. 12% in Germany, maybe it’s different but at the time of this illustration, 12% in Germany, 99% in Austria.

All of those reasons were wrong. The real reason was amazingly simple and quite boring. In Germany, at least at the time of this illustration, you have to sign up to be an organ donor, and in Austria, everyone is automatically an organ donor unless you opt out. [laughter] Opt in, opt out.

Right now the children’s ministry team is saying can we do that for nursery? [laughter] You just have to opt out. Let us know if you’re not going to show up.

And the point of the story is that common sense sometimes fails us. It’s tempting to draw all sorts of conclusions. There must be cultural, social, spiritual differences between Germans and Austrians, but the difference was entirely bureaucratic and administrati...

Our gracious heavenly Father, we ask now for Your blessing as we come to Your Word, that I might decrease and Christ would increase, that You would give us ears to hear that we might listen attentively and learn, and that by Your grace we would be changed and transformed as Your disciples. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Our text this morning is Acts chapter 4, verses 32 through 37. We are taking these several months to hit some of the highlights in the book of Acts, and we come this morning to the end of chapter 4, beginning at verse 32.

“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving 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 were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.”

I have been here two and a quarter years and I don’t think I have properly preached a sermon on giving. Until now. When I was, oh, a young man lo these many years ago, and had my first real job out of seminary, where I had a paycheck and I think I was making $40,000 which seemed to be just as rich as kings, and we had a small, little house. It was just the two of us and it was plenty. But for the very first time, really had to think about how do we approach money. Now my parents, having grown up in the church with good Christian parents, were very adamant from a young age that we had to tithe, so back then when we got $2 for mowing the lawn, you better put 20¢ in, or when we would baby-sit and we would get paid $2 an hour, I can promise if I paid you $2 an hour to baby-sit for us you would be calling the authorities [laughter]. That’s what we got, $2. And you might make a grand total of $10 for some very long evening. You would put $1. My parents instructed us well in tithing.

But then when I had a read job, so called, and I was preaching from time to time, I really had to think through, well, what, what does this look, because when you are very poor, that is to say when you’re a college student and then a seminary student and you really have nothing, it’s easy to be quite dramatic about your stance toward money and possessions.

I forget which author said for years he thought he was very generous, and it turned out he had just been very poor. [laughter]

But what do I really think about this?

And then, when I had two years later a senior pastor job and was making even a little bit more money than that and had a house that was almost 2000 square feet and we felt with just one kid almost felt guilty for it. I took for those first two or three years in ministry, there was probably nothing that I read about or studied more and just had books and books and books, on how to think about wealth and possessions. Because I wanted to be obedient. I often felt guilty. When I look back now and think I had much less then than I have now, and I wanted to be faithful, and I wanted to be generous, and I wanted to instruct people well, and also did not want to lay down a burden that was not really there, so it was a mess of ideas.

And you can read books, Christian books, that will make you feel quite content to have whatever you have, maybe even feel particularly blessed. Lots of books, not necessarily in our tradition, that would tell you that you’re rich precisely because God is blessing you and if you just gave a little more to the church,