Signs and Wonders in Community

The fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday—you may notice many of the readings have to do with this idea of God as shepherd. But the season after Easter is also a time that we are given snippets of the Book of Acts to wade thru.  Acts opens a window into the life of the very first Christian communities: ordinary people figuring things out as they go after the resurrection. What unfolds is not just a story of belief, but of a community being reshaped into a people who share their lives so deeply that even their ordinary life together begins to feel kind of like a miracle. And yet, there’s something about this passage from Acts that can feel both beautiful and just a little bit out of reach.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers… All who believed were together and had all things in common… they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

It’s the kind of description that sounds almost too beautiful, like a gentle painting—soft edges, warm light, everyone gathered around a table, bread being passed from hand to hand. And it is beautiful. But if we’re honest, it can also feel… a little unrealistic. Maybe even a little naïve.

Because we know what it is to live in a world where needs don’t always get met. Where people fall through the cracks. Where we’re taught—over and over again—that we’re supposed to manage on our own, take care of our own, and not rely too much on anyone else.

So it’s worth asking: what’s really happening here? Because this isn’t just a sentimental picture of community. It’s something far more disruptive than that. What’s being described here in Acts isn’t just kindness or generosity—it’s a reordering of life.

“They had all things in common… they distributed to all, as any had need.”

That’s not just about being nice to each other. That’s about a community deciding that the way resources, power, and responsibility are usually organized… no longer applies. It’s about people choosing to live as though their lives are actually bound together.

And that kind of life doesn’t just happen naturally. It runs against so many of the assumptions we carry about ownership, independence, and control.

Which might be why, right in the middle of it all, we hear:

“Awe came upon everyone.” Awe. Not just belief. Not just agreement. Awe.

When people begin to live this way,  begin to loosen our grip on what we have, begin to trust one another with real needs and real responsibility, it may feel both good and entirely disorienting. It feels like something new is breaking in.

We’re told that the apostles performed signs and wonders. I imagine the community itself was one of those wonders. A group of ordinary people, learning, imperfectly, but genuinely, how to care for one another in ways that changed the texture of their daily lives. Needs were not hidden. Care was not outsourced. Responsibility was not concentrated in a few. It was shared.

In some parts of the church, that understanding has continued to take root in intentional ways. Even here in the Diocese of Northern Michigan, there’s a deep commitment to mutual ministry—not as a fallback, not as something you do when resources are scarce, but as a theological conviction.

The belief that the Spirit is given to the whole body. That ministry belongs to the whole community. That the work of care, leadership, and discernment is not held by one or two people, but is something we participate in together.

And that vision didn’t just emerge out of necessity. It was shaped, in part, by a hope. Bishop Wes Frensdorff, whose work entitled The Dream is foundational to the function of our diocese once described it this way: “A total ministry of the whole people of God… where each person is helped to discover their gifts and is called forth to use them.”

Not a church where a few people do most of the work. Not a church where ministry is something we consume. But a church where each person’s life, each person’s presence, each person’s gifts… matter.

And when you place that alongside this passage from Acts, it becomes clear:

This kind of life might seem practical. But more so, it is radical. Because it refuses the idea that some people are the ones who give, and others are the ones who receive. It refuses the idea that there is one center of authority, one right voice, one correct way forward. Instead, it asks something much riskier. It asks us to trust that God is at work in and through one another.

These days, we might use the language of mutual aid to describe something like this. Not charity from a distance, but shared life up close. Not giving out of excess, but a practice of responding to one another’s needs as they actually arise.  Lived out, that can look like congregations raising money for the practice of buying and relieving medical debt for the community. Or meal trains not as emergency response, but as infrastructure: times where families cook in bulk together, a rotating freezer meal ministry, school lunch support in the summertime. Or childcare cooperatives, transportation networks, shared good libraries. The ideas are plentiful. And that kind of life changes the question. It’s no longer just: What do I have to offer? It becomes: How are we called to belong to one another?

And that’s where this passage stops being something we admire from a distance… and starts becoming something we’re invited into. Because it would be easy to hear all of this and think: That’s wonderful—for communities that are already doing that kind of work. To stand just outside it, appreciating it, maybe even affirming it. But the invitation of Acts doesn’t really leave room for spectators. This is not a story about what they did. It’s a glimpse of what becomes possible when a community says yes to a different way of living. And the question it places before us is not whether we can replicate it perfectly. It’s whether we are willing to participate in it at all.

Which means, in part, asking not just what we might have to give… but what we might have to let go of. Because this kind of shared life does require something of us. It may ask us to loosen our grip on material things, yes. But often, it goes deeper than that. It asks us to loosen our grip on certainty. On the need to be right. On the assumption that there is only one faithful way to do something, and that it’s the way we already understand.

It asks us to release the instinct to control outcomes, to manage everything, to hold authority tightly rather than share it. It asks us to make room for other voices. To trust wisdom that doesn’t come from us. To recognize that the Spirit may be moving in ways we didn’t anticipate, and through people we didn’t expect.

And that can be uncomfortable. Because it means we are no longer standing above or outside the life of the community, evaluating it, even critiquing it without cost to us. For the life described in Acts is not something to admire from afar. It is something to be woven into, with all the vulnerability and obligation that entails. We are within it. Dependent on it. Responsible to it.

But this is also where the awe begins. Not in perfection. Not in getting everything right. But in those moments when something shifts—when care flows in a way it didn’t before, when a need is met that might have gone unnoticed, when someone is carried who might have been left to carry things alone.

Those signs and wonders might seem small. They might not look like the kinds of miracles we expect. But I wonder if they are exactly that. The quiet miracle of a community learning, slowly, how to become a place where people truly belong.

So maybe the invitation this morning is not to build something entirely new. But to notice. To notice where this is already happening among us. To notice where we are already participating in this kind of shared life, however imperfectly. And then to take one step further in. Not just observing. Not just affirming. But participating. Offering what we have. Receiving what we need. And trusting, really trusting, that what we bring matters. That the small, particular gifts of our lives are not incidental to the life of the Church, but essential to it. That this isn’t someone else’s calling to live out. It’s ours. Together.

Because the dream of the Church—this vision of a community where each person is called forth, where each life is part of the whole—is not something that belongs to the past. It’s not something reserved for places that have figured it out better than we have. It’s something the Spirit is still inviting, still shaping, still calling into being here. Among us.

The miracle of this passage isn’t that the early church created a perfect system. It’s that ordinary people began to live as though they truly belonged to one another. And in doing so, they discovered something that felt like awe. Not distant. Not abstract. But right there, in the breaking of bread. Right there, in the sharing of what they had. Right there, in the risk, and the gift, of discovering that what each person carries… is needed. And that together, by the grace of God, it is enough. Amen.