Sermon: Biblical friendship values

Sermon for Riddells Creek and Mount Macedon

The second Sunday of Easter; April 15, 2012

Acts of the Apostles 4:32-35

In an Easter opinion piece in the Herald-Sun Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier, after talking about migrants and asylum seekers, the Occupy Movement and politicians, wrote: ‘I invite Australia’s business and parliamentary leaders to reflect on how wealth shared equitably can be used for the betterment of the whole community, and to improve the lives and opportunities of all Australians.’ Of course, the Archbishop was criticized for this. In an opinion piece in The Age Peter Costello responded: ‘When the church speaks of its unique message – the life, death and resurrection of Christ – it draws on centuries of Christian thought and theology. I doubt Christendom has done nearly as much work on the taxation of mining profits and modern banking policies.’ Mr. Costello is probably right. I imagine that most of Christendom didn’t spend much time thinking about the best way to share the wealth; when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire the church became very wealthy and Christians began to use allegorical readings of Biblical passages like ‘Go sell everything you have and give the money to the poor’ rather than considering them literally. But as today’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us, the early church was in fact very serious about wealth being shared equitably.