They laid it at the apostles’ feet
Sermon on Low Sunday at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Llandudno in the Ministry Area of Bro Tudno
The Ministry Area’s order of service with the lections, including a poem in addition to the First Reading and the Holy Gospel, can be found here.
They laid it at the apostles’ feet. (Acts 4:35)
One of the traditional names for this Sunday, the Second Sunday of Eastertide, is (in Latin) Dominica in albis depositis — “the Sunday of laying down the white.”
The name comes from the days of the Early Church. Those who had spent Lent preparing for their Baptism at the Easter Vigil had, on that evening, been clothed in white — a sign of the dawn of their new birth with the living Christ in the waters of Baptism. And those white robes would be worn by the newly-baptized for the whole of Easter week — a week spent celebrating that dawn, that new birth. And this Sunday, the Second of Eastertide, marked the end of that time of celebration — on this day, those white robes were put away, were laid down.
After dawn, after new birth, after Resurrection, those things aren’t, of course, laid down, they’re not put away. Life is lived with them, in them. But, in another way, after an immediate moment of sacramental grace, life always does return to normal. Or, rather, dawn and new birth and Resurrection have to be integrated into daily living, they have to become the eternal stuff of the day-to-day. Like Thomas, we have to struggle to see, to make sense of dawn and new birth and Resurrection when daily life and doubts, when other values and pressures, when self-sufficiency and isolation, assail us.
When the Early Church wants to talk about what that’s like — what it means to live, day-to-day, clothed with dawn and new birth and Resurrection — it reaches first for the language of the body. We were all baptised into one body (cf. 1 Corinthians 12), says Paul — together, we form the whole body, fitted and joined together, every ligament making its own contribution (cf. Ephesians 4). Humanity has been united, fitted and joined together, by the flesh of Christ (cf. Ephesians 2), as the Body of Christ. “Who am I now? Whose am I now?” — Thomas seems to ask, in his Easter confusion, dazed by the dawn, and new birth, and Resurrection. And Jesus shows him his flesh, his body — his hands and his side. This is who you are now. Clothed in the robe of dawn and new birth, you are, we are, here and now, day to day, the living, resurrected Body of Christ. And hear Thomas’s relief, his liberation: “My Lord and my God.”
They laid it at the apostles’ feet.
At each of our eight Sunday morning services from Easter Day until the Day of Pentecost (at the end of Eastertide), we will listen to a reading from the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles.
The book of the Acts of the Apostles sits there in the New Testament between the four Gospels that precede it and the 21 books of letters that follow. Acts sits there between, on the one hand, Jesus’s Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection, a life in Galilee thrusting towards Jerusalem, and, on the other hand, the life of the Church scattered throughout the Mediterranean and the Near East. Acts bridges those two revelations.
And the passages we hear during these eight weeks reveal to us the apostles and disciples, the earliest people of Early Church, becoming the Church after the dawn and new birth of Christ’s Resurrection. We follow them, up close, being fitted and joined together to become the day to day, living, resurrected Body of Christ.
Today, we hear of their care for one another, and for the neediest in their midst. We read:
“Those who believed were of one heart and soul, and… there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (Acts 4).
They, the many of them, laid their offering at the apostles’ feet. That’s not a turn of phrase, nor is it a literal description. It’s a way of saying that here, in the light of dawn and new birth, the ancient gestures of gathering and sacrificial giving are taking place at the fleshly altars of the bodies of the witnesses of the Resurrection. At the apostles’ feet the Church gathers — and more than gathers, is bound together, one soul of many souls, one heart of many hearts, one body of many bodies. And at the apostles’ feet the Church lays down its earthly wealth — and, more than that, establishes a community of equity, participating in creation’s abundance. At the apostles’ feet, love binds — it knits together the ligaments of the Body; and at the apostles’ feet, the soul finds that peace that comes when we emulate a God who never withholds.
They laid it at the apostles’ feet.
Laying things down. It’s not a bad description of the Christian life. We all have a tendency to hoard, to possess, to fortify ourselves. Some of us do it with money and assets, others of us with intelligence, others with status, others of us again with our fears and insecurities.
And against that, of a better way, God speaks. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11). “Low at his feet lay thy burden of carefulness.” We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it (cf. 1 Timothy 6). Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return (cf. Genesis 3). “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Romans 12).
Against our tendency to hoard, to possess, to fortify ourselves, against our self-sufficiency and isolation, God lays down his own Body and creates the common — the place where, together, we give of ourselves to one another.
Laying things down. It’s not a bad description of the Christian life, nor of a Christian death. For, ultimately, for dukes and princes, as for you and me, our end is our laying down in God’s new creation; “changed from glory into glory, / till in heav’n we take our place, / till we cast [even] our crowns before thee, / lost in wonder, love and praise.”
