Sunday, August 26, 2012
Are you excited about the return of
students to campus? Amped up about the
start of football? We are excited with
you because we’re all in this together.
Are
you hurting from the recent death of someone you dearly loved? We are here to hold your hold your hand and
patiently walk alongside you as you begin to navigate your way through life with
that person now gone.
Maybe the questions are not for you but for the
one a few rows back. He’s afraid his job
will be canceled. He doesn’t know what
he’ll do. We – his church -wait
anxiously with him, praying, encouraging, and staying with him no matter
happens. We’re all in this
together.
Maybe the questions are not for him or you,
maybe not for the freshman away from home for the first time, maybe not for the
divorcee who a year later cannot make sense of it; maybe the questions are for me,
the nervous parent of a Kindergartner about to ride the school bus for the
first time. We’re all in this together –
the family, the body of Christ.
By “this” I mean life. We live life together. Too many people are lonely, disconnected from
others who can share burdens and walk in faith with them. The explosive popularity of Facebook shows
just how desperate for connection people are.
I know many unchurched people would think church is the last place to go
for a solution to the loneliness they feel.
Though they are adrift, they would never look to church as a safe
landing spot and a place of welcome and home.
Why? Church has become a
caricature and an institution. This
cannot be.
Church is not somewhere to go on Sundays and
somewhere to leave behind if the music didn’t include my favorite songs or the
preaching wasn’t very good. Church is
not the building where I had my wedding.
Church is not the voice from some unforeseen place sending forth moral
edicts that chasten some public acts, commend others, and condemn others. Church is family – the family of people who
put complete trust in God and give themselves fully to following Jesus through
all arenas of life. We are in this –
this life – together.
Heather last week introduced the
idea of the church as a sacrament or a sign, a visual depiction of the unseen
eternal spiritual reality of the Kingdom of God. The church is the sign of intimate union with
God and the unity of humankind. Church
is where we meet Jesus and get into friendships – lifelong friendships – with
others who love Jesus and follow him. The
church is the instrument by which the Holy Spirit will bring about this
intimacy and unity.
But as we turn to 1 Corinthians 11,
we see that while the church has a high calling, the church doesn’t always
answer that call well.
Imagine the day of worship in the Corinthian church. It’s happened on Sunday evening. There was singing, preaching, and like today,
the Lord’s Supper, along with a full meal just like today. Only that meal wasn’t served after the
worship but during. Unlike today in that
worship service, not everyone came at the same time. Wealthier church members had their servants
prepare food and wine for both the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and also
for the feast. When the wealthy were
ready, they came to church and got started.
They weren’t “in it together,” with everybody, but only with other
wealthy people.
The more impoverished church members
rose at sunrise and were quickly on the job: cutting and laying stone; digging
ditches and building roads and bridges; working endlessly in the kitchen of
some wealthy person; sweating in the fields, harvesting crops that were owned
by someone else. They would only get a
small percentage of the sale at the market.
The day consisted of exhaustion, bloodied hands and feet, sweat, and
indignities for the poor.
By the time they cleaned up and came
to church, the feast was consumed. They
were lucky if enough bread and wine remained so they could take the Lord’s
Supper before and join in the final hymn.
These poor church members would have scoffed at the “we’re all in this
together” mantra. The rich controlled
the church like they controlled everything else in life. The community was divided and in the
Corinthian Church, the divisions were painful and hostile. Is our church a place where people find
backbiting, fighting, pettiness, bickering and division? If it is, we’ll never be that “we’re in this
together” place that so many unchurched people all around us desperately need
us to be.
Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 1, “I
appeal to you brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that
all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you” (v.10). Then in chapter 11, he acknowledges that his
appeal to unity has fallen on deaf ears.
“When you come together as a church, I hear there are divisions among
you” (v.18). Paul wrote to reinforce the
unity of God’s church, but in writing He finds he has to address again the very problem he hoped to cut off.
Paul was the pre-eminent church
planter in the first century Greek-speaking world. A former Pharisee, highly educated,
passionately driven by his love for and gratitude to Jesus, Paul wanted the
church to be the institution by which human beings came to know God and came to
salvation and a life of following Jesus.
Christianity is not a solitary endeavor.
Christianity is personal, yes, but never private. It’s never “me and God.” Christianity is God among us in Jesus
Christ. Part of Jesus’ claim on our
lives is seen in the way we love, forgive, and walk with each other. We are God’s church when we are a community
of grace.
In Corinth, some members had their
own suppers and they are in plenty, while others were literally going
hungry. Their poverty was rubbed in
their faces. Paul says this brazenly
elitist approach to worship brought contempt on the church of God.
Here, we bring the food to the
kitchen, then sit and have the worship service.
No one knows who brought which dish.
No one knows if you brought seven plates of food or zero plates. Everyone is invited to the meal.
We’re all in this together. All of us are sinners who mess up big-time,
and by Jesus, all of us are forgiven. In
the bread and the cup on Jesus’ table we know that nothing comes between us as
people because Jesus has suffered for our sins and removed our sins. In Him we are new creations.
We aren’t the same as the Corinthians Church,
but we share the same call, to be a sign of the Kingdom and to be a place all can
come to meet Jesus and receive the grace of God. We exist to draw people to God. Are we doing that or are we a broken
community?
The question we face is, are we doing anything
in the way we live as a community of Christ-followers to bring division the way
the Corinthians did? We might not
corporately sin as they did, but do we sin in other ways? Does our sin bring contempt on the Kingdom of
God?
When sin runs along, unchecked, Paul
shows where it leads. Verse 32, “When we
are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned
along with the world.” The problem –
inequalities in worship – leads to contempt brought on the church.
Unchecked this sin, ironically perpetuated in
the practice of the Lord’s Supper, leads to discipline from God. Punishment.
He’s not happy with us and we feel the heat of His anger.
What does the church do when community is
overcome by infighting, jealousy, greed, and meanness of spirit? The solution is ridiculously simple but
immeasurably important when we consider how brutal life can be. People come to church broken. They need healing and love here, not an
environment that tramples them more.
Paul says in verse 33, “So then my brothers and sisters, when you come
together to eat, wait for one another.”
Thus Paul gives us two
metaphors. In one, we live life on our
own, seek our own advancement at the cost of those around us (even at the cost
of our friends in Church), and in this we have an unpleasant date with God’s
discipline. In the other, where we wait
for each other, we have “Life Together” – a true community built on Jesus.
The first metaphor is contempt for the
church. Self-seeking neglect of
neighbor, prejudice and elitism, and lack of compassion and welcome and concern
bring contempt on God’s church.
The second metaphor is the picture of waiting,
patiently, for everyone to catch up and be together. When we consider the weakest among us – and
at some point each one of us will without planning to step right into that role
of weakest – we are waiting for each other.
“Contempt” v. “wait for one another.” In one, the church fails and is judged. In the other, the church shows what God’s
kingdom is like.
Which metaphor is lived out in the
HillSong family? Are we a sign of intimacy with God and unity with God and
human beings? Do hurting people find comfort
here? Do seekers meet God? Are the lonely loved? Do lonely people come and find they are no
longer lonely? What about those with a
strong sense of God’s call. Here are
they equipped to follow God, and to they find people that will come with them
as they follow God. Are we living life
together?
I don’t know.
Are we waiting for one another? Are we upholding the weakest, receiving
grace, sharing generously, and making sure that everyone realizes his or her
potential and realizes that he or she has a seat and belongs here among us? Are we living out life for our own appetites
or for the glory of God and for the sake of love of God’s children?
In Galatians 6:2, Paul writes, “Bear
one another’s burdens.” Help each
other. Eating the bread and drinking the
cup, we are reminded that our greatest burden is sin. Sin drags us down to death, but Jesus lifts
it off us. And He does this in the
church, through the church, and with the church. Jesus will accomplish His goals of salvation
in spite of the churches that are places of division and contempt. We would rather be a church in His service,
working toward His ends.
At this table, we come together, sinners, people
from far and wide. We come in our
wounding. We come in our confusion. We come as people in desperate need. All of us come that way and we can because
Jesus invites us. We have a place
because He sets it for us.
As the time for taking Communion comes, let a
few images come to mind. First, think
about what you need most from Jesus – hope, forgiveness, comfort. Think about your greatest need that only
Jesus can meet. Next, consider that you
are surrounded by people who need Him as desperately as you do.
Finally, as you chew the bread and drink the
cup, ask Jesus to show you your role in filling the needs of the people around
you. Begin by thinking of your need,
continue remembering that you are forgiven in Christ and that you are
surrounded by needy people. And finally pray
for God to help you meet the needs of the friends around you.
If we all do that, all our needs will be met by
God working through the church. We will
truly have life together.
AMEN
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