One Humanity (Ephesians 2:11-22)

Sunday, September 14, 2015

            Well … it has happened again.  This week a story was shared with me and it got me very upset.  A man in Minnesota was waiting for his kids to get out of school.  The school meets in a business park of some sort.  While he waited someone harassed him.  A nonviolent conflict ensued, police were called, and he ended being tased. 

            He had not broken any law.  He was a man waiting to pick his kids up from school and he reacted negatively as you or I would to being harassed for no reason.

            He is black.  All the officers are white.  Much of the confrontation was recorded.  I heard and watched it.  I was upset.

            This is the place where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide.  It all comes together.

            How many more times in our country must a black person be assaulted by the police who are supposed to protect us?  I read of someone who had been an American citizen for 4 decades.  She moved from Miami to Georgia and someone posted on Facebook, “make sure you bring your flag.”  The reference was to an unfortunate phrase, “Would the last America to leave Miami please bring the flag?”  The inference is that people who look like Cubans, whatever that means, are not as American as white people. 

            Then there is a video, a farce, where a white man, a jogger, sees another jogger, a woman with Asian features, in the park.  Both are stretching.  He says, “Hi,” and she responds.  Then he says, “Where are you from?  Your English is perfect.”  She says, “San Diego.  We speak English there.”  He says, “No, where are you from?  Where are your people from?”  He proceeds to ask dumber and dumber questions. 

            Then she turns the tables on him.  She asks this white guy, “Where are you from?”  He names an American city and she says, “No, where are your people from?”  He says, “Oh, well, I am just a normal American.”  But she presses him until he says, “England, I guess.”

            Aren’t we all just normal Americans?

            When I led a youth group in Arlington in the late 90’s, nearly every kid in the group was either Hispanic or Sudanese.  The Sudanese were actually born in Sudan or in refugee camps in Kenya or Egypt.  Every single one of those tan skinned Latino kids were born in Arlington, Virginia.  How much more American can you be?

            But they didn’t see it that way.  If they discussed a friend at school they might say, “She’s American.”  I’d say, “What do you mean?”  They’d say, “You know, white.  Not Spanish.”  I though not Spanish.  These kids had parents who were Costa Rican and Argentinian and Salvadorian, but some of the kids, Hispanic kids, could barely speak Spanish themselves.  Yet in their minds, a normal American is white.

            Sometimes,  I will meet a person who is Asian or Hispanic.  I will ask, “Where are you from.”  I ask the same question upon meeting someone who is white or black.  It is a way I show interest in the other person.  I want to connect.  Regardless of what they look like, I expect to hear “I am from Detroit or I am from Wilmington or I am from Georgia or I am from St. Louis.”  I see the other as American, but she responds, “I am Korean.”  She doesn’t trust that I see her as American.

            Why should she?  If she has been hit with subtle prejudice or outright racism over and over, why should she believe that this white guy will be a nice one who sees her as a beautiful human being, who wants to celebrate her uniqueness, who wants to hear her story?  Why should she believe my good intentions?  She’s been hurt too many times by people who look like me.

            In the case of the Hispanic youth group kids this is a matter of self-identity.  In the comedy video, it is how we see others.  In Miami, it is a matter of some people deciding that individuals who they think “look Cuban” and probably want to be in this country so much they fought to get here are somehow less American looking than those who had the fortune to be born here.  For the black man who was tased in Minnesota, it is a matter of extreme embarrassment in front of his kids and the unsettling reality that he cannot trust the police to be for him.  In the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the racism that plagues us as a people turned out to be deadly. 

            I said earlier, this where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide. 

            Ephesians 2 is seen against the backdrop of divided people.  Those called “the circumcision,” the Jews were distinct.  Jewish males were circumcised.  Gentiles males, all men who were not Jewish, did not get circumcised.  Jewish people lived by the Law of Moses.  Those who were not Jewish did not live by the law.  The Jews observed Sabbath.  Perhaps this distinction was the oddest to the Gentiles around them.  Why don’t the Jews work today?  Everyone else does?  What makes today so special?

            These distinctions marked the Jews as separate, holy, the people of God.  But they also marked all non-Jewish people as being not included in the people of God.  Gentiles were vile, unclean, and cut-off.  The division was as dramatic and pregnant withthe danger of violence as are the divisions between people in our country today. 

            It cannot be so for we who are “in Christ.”  Paul would not tolerate two churches – a Gentile Church and a Jewish one.  He insists that in Christ Gentiles are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Were Paul to step onto the scene today, he’d tell churches that divisions are antithetical to the Gospel.  Even if our worship styles are different, we are to be one.  Even if my grandparents persecuted your grandparents, I am to confess and repent, and you are to forgive.  We are to be one in Christ.  Even if our peers don’t seek unity and love, as followers of Christ you and are I commanded to seek unity and love in Christ. 

            In Ephesians 2, Gentiles by virtue of being Gentile are separated from God.  “Remember,” we read in verse 12, we who are Gentiles, “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  However, in Christ, by the blood of Christ, we are now brought near.  Jesus, is our peace.

            This word peace is central.  I specifically wish individuals in law enforcement would have the inner drive to seek peace and the imaginative creavity to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.  I am sure in a confrontation a policeman feels disrespected.  And if they don’t respect him, he will lose the authority he needs to do his job.  I am sure that’s how he feels.  It is hard.  There is pressure.  I am sure he feels he must show his strength in order to be respected by. 

But, the effort to project strength is resulting in policemen and policewomen doing awful things like shooting unarmed teens and tasing Dads who wait to pick their kids up from school.  I wish more people wanted peace and worked for it.  In Ephesians 2, the word peace is mentioned in verse 14, 15, and twice in 17.

            Jesus is our peace.  “In his flesh, he made both groups into one and” broke down the dividing wall of hostility.  We cannot stop others from hating or giving in to fear.  But we can offer a new story.  We can help break down the wall of hostility through prayer and acts and words of love which include a willingness to listen as others tell the stories of when they were wounded by racism.  With humble patience we listen as much as the other needs us to listen.  What better act of love is there than to value another by affirming his worth as we listen to his story?

            We have to keep faith in Jesus at the center of this because He is our peace.  Without him driving our words, any steps toward peace come up short.  I know religion is a source of division in the world, but that is bad religion, religion built on the destruction of other.  In Christ, our posture is open, humble, inviting, God-focused, Spirit-powered, and aimed at love and unity. 

            This is why Ephesians 2 is so intent on destroying circumcision as a qualifying mark.  This is why Ephesians 2 insists in verse 15 that Jesus has abolished the law.  In the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and it is true.  Everything the law intended to accomplish in creating people who worship God and live with each other in peace is accomplished in and through Christ.  So in that sense, Jesus in fact fulfills the law completely.  But when the circumcision and the law are markers that identify some people as insiders and others as outsiders, then law and circumcisions no longer serve God’s purposes.  In that sense, Jesus does away with the distinctions. 

Therefore we see in verses 15-16 that Jesus “creates in himself one new humanity in place of the two, making peace and [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  The next verses insist that Jesus proclaims peace and peace means that we all have access to God.

In Christian faith we see this in Baptism and Communion.  Baptism tells a story that ends with an invitation: I was a sinner, I died in sin, Jesus rose from death, and because I am in Him, I will rise from death; and you can too if you receive Jesus into your life and follow Him.  He came that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life as children of God.  Communion is a share meal and the only requirement for coming to the table is the willingness to acknowledge sin and our powerlessness to defeat sin.  We come to the communion table as everyone comes to it: dependent on God for everything.

Our one humanity is not homogenous and I would not want it to be.  In other letters, Paul brags about his own Jewish credentials.  He is a Jewish man, not an everyman.  In Ephesians 2, he does not want Jews to stop being Jews.  He is not in search of the generic disciple.  There is no such thing.  Our relationship with God is always particular, always personal.  There is no general Christianity.  Christianity is always the story of you, an individual, walking with Jesus, living as his disciple.  It is even inaccurate to say, “The story.”  I cannot tell “the story,” but I can tell my story.

The world becomes beautiful when we hear one another’s’ stories.  I will never say, “Well, black people and Hispanics and Asians and whites – we’re really not all that different.”  We are.  We are beautifully different, but united in Christ. 

I pastored in Arlington for 9 years and I got into a group of friendships with single people or young couples prior to having kids.   Once kids come along and grow into school age you don’t hang out with friends very often.  Everything in life is geared toward baseball practice and orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings.  By the time it is all done each day, you can’t go out to clubs or sports bars.  For one thing, you’re too tired.  For another, it would be irresponsible to leave the house with your children in bed asleep and go out for beers. 

But, years ago, I did have that life and I had my crowd.  We’d go out to eat at Dupont Circle or go to movies in Adams Morgan.  One of the guys in that crowd is married to a woman who is not Caucasian.  I say it that way deliberately because for years, I did not know her ethnicity.  And I was scared to ask.  She is very outspoken, politically far, far to the left of me, and I thought if I ask, “What are you,” fiery laser beams would come out of her eyes and pierce my skull.  So I didn’t ask.

We were part of the same circle, though.  We all even traveled to Honduras together in 2004 when one of our group married a Honduran woman.  So I was around her a lot.  I now don’t remember the conversation, but I remember her figuring out that I had no clue about her ethnicity.  She liked that I didn’t know and that she knew I was uncertain of how to ask.  After teasing me a bit, she finally told me she was Korean.  She had been adopted by a Caucasian family in Ohio.  They had 4 boys and her mother wanted a daughter badly.  So they adopted a Korean girl.

If you go deep enough with people and listen long enough, you get past the uncomfortable issues that plague our world, like the race conversation.  People will find you are safe and they can share their stories with you.  And they do because we all want to share our stories.  And when they do, then the race conversation is no longer uncomfortable.  It is beautiful.

Janessa and I were friends and so when Candy and I were getting ready to adopt, I could talk to her.  I could ask, “Now you are an adult.  What is it like, your relationship with the parents who adopted you?  What do I need to do to make sure my children will want a relationship with me when they are grown?”  And she helped me. 

Maybe it sounds like I am way off topic here.  I have been discussing unity in Christ especially among people of different races and I have wandered off on this tangent about my old crowd in DC.  But this is the point! Janessa and I remained as white man and Korean woman, but as we listened to one another and came to that safe place in friendship, we became something more.  We became brother and sister in Christ, people who listened to one another’s stories and helped each other. 

This is the other story, the alternative narrative.  Ferguson, Missouri is a reminder that there’s a lot of hate in the world.  The body of Christ has another story to tell – the story of the gospel bringing us together, making us one. 

AMEN

The Long Goodbye

 

            I recently came across two helpful images for church (in Simply Christian, N.T. Wright).  First, the church is like a river.  Recalls the scene from the last book of the Bible, Revelation, chapter 7.  John sees people from every tribe, language, race, and country coming together in the name of Jesus to worship God.  “Like a river, they all started in different places, but they have now brought their different streams into a single flow” (p.200).

            In our church people come from people from Burlington, Carrboro, Shelby, Durham, Chapel Hill, and a dozen other North Carolina cities.  We are from Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Washington state, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and other states I have not mentioned.  We come from China, Russia, Sierra Leone, Taiwan, and Korea, South Africa, Australia, and other places.  We here today are joined with those who came in years past and those who will come in the future.  We are so many rivulets, streams, and tributaries, guided by the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name.  Along with other churches, we flow together and become God’s church.

            A second image just as fitting is the tree.  We flow together and become a worshipping, praying, mission-working people, and together, we are equipped to then, branch out.  One of my favorite sights is the tree in my front yard, when it has about four neighborhood kids and two of my own up in it.  All those kids are in the tree, spread out in the branches which hold strong because they’re connected to the powerful trunk.  In church, staying connected to the trunk, we boldly head out into the world to share the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

            Sometimes our going out simply involves being on mission for Jesus right here where we live.  Jesus commissioned his disciples to go to Jerusalem (the city), all Judea and Samaria (the surrounding countries), and to the entire world to tell that forgiveness of sins and eternal life is available for all who put their trust in Him.  Our Jerusalem is Chapel Hill/Durham/Chatham/the Triangle. This is where we work, shop, go to the doctor, go out to eat.  Our kids go to school here.  We live our lives here.  The Holy Spirit calls us to our Jerusalem to be heralds – people who announce that Jesus come, the Kingdom of God is at hand, and all who want to walk with God can because of Jesus. 

We are on mission right here.  Every week, when we leave worship and time together, we receive a blessing, a benediction.  That blessing is also a commissioning.  Go from here filled and empowered so that through your time in the world, you’re ready to share the Gospel. 

            Often the sending extends beyond being the church in the triangle area, beyond our Jerusalem.  Our Judea and Samaria are the rest of North Carolina and the East seaboard.  And from there we go where the Holy Spirit sends.  We could fill a church with people who have moved away.  Some graduate and go on to work in other cities, other states, and even other countries.  Nonstudents, professionals follow opportunities or move to be closer to family. 

Some do not leave the area, but God leads them to other churches.  That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  God works in people’s lives and at times that means moving.  It doesn’t have to mean that person is angry at HillSong.  Even if they are and do leave, the Christian thing to do is to sit down in love and work through the issues of contention.  Leaving is part of the Christian life.  In Christian community we have to say “Good bye.”

I will quickly add I am not giving a “goodbye sermon” today.  I am not going anywhere, I don’t think.  This message is the final in our six-part series on community.  We belong to one another.  We are a part of one another.  In 1^st Corinthians 12, Paul imagines church as a human body.  One person is the knee cap.  Another the big toe.  And the left eyeball.  In church, when we are in Christ, we are as connected as parts of a body.  For you and me to be separated from each other, should hurt as much as it would hurt to have my knee cap sawed off, my eye gouged out, and my big toe sliced off.  That’s how intensely we are a part of each other, or should be.  That’s how God sees it and the New Testament communicates it.

            Saying goodbye then should not be a severing of community.  It is a part of the journey we take.  Saying goodbye is part of being the people of God.  And with every goodbye, we know that the entire church is gathered back together at the last judgment.  We are re-united at the resurrection when we join Christ in resurrected bodies and Heaven and Earth are eternally, perfectly joined, and we live in the presence of God for eternity. 

            The Ephesians Christians had to say “good bye.”  The city of Ephesus was located in what today is the nation of Turkey.  It is on the coast of the Aegean Sea.  Like the rest of the Mediterranean world at that time, in Ephesus there were local gods and mystery cults, a Jewish presence, and other cultural influence.  They spoke Greek and were under the governance of the Roman Empire.

            Paul arrived in Ephesus and found Jesus-followers already there.  His calling was to begin new churches and preach where the Gospel had not been previously heard.  That did not mean Paul ignored Christian works when he encountered them.  He enthusiastically joined with those early Ephesian disciples, teaching them about the Holy Spirit.  We aren’t completely sure of their beginnings but he expanded their knowledge. 

            With this small group, only about 12 in the church when he came, Paul began attending synagogue in Ephesus.  The synagogue rejected Paul’s teaching about Jesus.  So, he found a man, Tyrannus, who allowed him to use a lecture hall where he taught the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.  He would do that for 2 years.  There were questions, debates, arguments.  Pagans came.  Jews came.  Gentiles who had converted to Judaism came. 

            The Holy Spirit’s power flowed through Paul.  He healed diseases. People started bringing their sick to Paul; they would even touch a handkerchief to Paul’s skin and then hold it against the diseased friend, and that friend would be made completely well. 

Along with the physical healing, they learned of forgiveness of sin; they heard about the new life in Christ; they were invited to open their hearts and receive the Holy Spirit.

God is doing similar work among us.  We send sick people to the hospital, but sins are not forgiven at that hospital.  God works the forgiving of sins and the giving of new life in Christ through His churches.  He is doing that here.

Great things done by God bonded together those Christians we meet in Ephesus in Acts 19 & 20.  Great works of God bring us together.

Last week three young people declared their faith and were baptized.  Two others, already Christians but not previously immersed, were baptized as a reaffirmation of their devotion to Jesus and as a declaration of their desire to join with this church as members.  Next month, we will collect Christmas presents for extremely poor children around the world in the Operation Christmas Child program.  Next month one of our HillSong people, John Roberts, will go to Kenya using his skills to represent the Lord and work alongside the Christians there.  God is doing mighty works among us and through those works and through the Spirit we are united. 

After two years in Ephesus, it was time to go.  For many reasons, most importantly the prompting of the Holy Spirit, Paul was headed to Jerusalem.  And he knew he’s be saying goodbye to the Jerusalem brothers and sisters aft his time there.  He said as much.  “After I have gone there, I must see Rome” (Acts 19:21d).  It was in Rome that Paul would explore the calling to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. 

He left Ephesus, spent time in Macedonia, and then Troas.  The writer of Acts, Luke, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke, was with Paul.  After Troas, there were stops in various cities, still in Turkey, Assos, Mitylene, Samos, and Miletus.  In Miletus, Paul sent for the Ephesian leaders to come and meet him.  They had been through so much together in his two years in Ephesus; he wanted to give final words so that even though they would be parted, his teaching about Jesus would remain, and they stayed connected in heart and in their prayers. 

“Now, I know that none of you will ever see my face again” (20:25).  They wept upon hearing Paul’s words.  But he had more to say.

 “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock,” (v.28) that is, the church.  Watch over one another with diligent care. 

“Be alert” (v.31).  Some, even in the church, will entice Jesus-followers with distortions of the truth. 

Keep watch.  Be alert.  Finally, Paul commends extravagant generosity to those in need.  He says in verse 35, “I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of Jesus who said, ‘it is more blessed to give than receive.’”  There was weeping, hugging, kissing, and praying.   With that, Paul was gone.  Why the tears and deep emotions?  These were people joined together in Christ. 

That’s the call of God on HillSong Church.  Why did Heather instruct us to spend seven weeks thinking about the church as a community?  Or if you like, a family?  Look in your bulletins on the page that says, “Welcome to HillSong.”  On the left column, in the second paragraph, the title is Our Purpose.

(1)             Our purpose is to be a safe place where all people are welcomed and loved.  Jesus welcomed the diseased, the gentile, the divorced and rejected, ashamed.  He also welcomed the Pharisee and the rich who were humble enough to come.  As the body of Christ, we are called to welcome the tired, the broken, the seeking, and all who God sends to us.  We are called to be a place where they can feel safe seeking God.

(2)            Second, our purpose is to be a place where people are transformed by God.  The diseased came to Jesus and were healed.  The shamed came to Jesus and their sins were forgiven and dignity restored.  The lost came to Jesus and in him they met God and their lives took on meaning.  Come as you are to Him; but if you come to Jesus, do not expect to remain as you are.  How can someone meet God and not be made new? 

(3)            Finally, our purpose is to be a place that sends people into the world on mission.  Once we have come here and been made new in our encounter with the Lord, He’s got a mission for us.  Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and all of the world are before us and God is sending us.  This sending will involve good-byes and sometimes, long goodbyes. 

 

Long goodbyes can be hard.  I said that long goodbye to one of my grandmothers in 1994 and to one of my grandfathers in 2006.  We said that goodbye to Bob Thompson this year.  These are still a part of us and we know we will be reunited. 

I remember a long goodbye here, a few years ago.  A Chinese man came and stayed about 5 months.  The first Sunday he was energetic, and I didn’t know what to make of his enthusiasm.  His English was not good.  I could not understand most of what he said, but God has blessed us with some Chinese speakers.  So we learned he just wanted to hear the Gospel.  I don’t know how much of the content of our sermons he understood, but for five months here, he heard the Gospel.  Then we as a church laid hands on him and now he’s China, probably leading a church, maybe risking arrest to do so. 

I think of many of you students who I am coming to know and love.  I always get happy you buy houses locally. But some of you will graduate and leave this area and not come back for a long time.  And you must go because God is calling.  We can be sad and celebrate at the same time.  Farewells bring tears even as we celebrate you answering God’s call in your life.  As a church, we will lay hands you; we will weep, laugh, and pray, knowing you will go out in His name and risk much and through you, God will accomplish much for the Kingdom. 

Parting, we say to one another “Marantha!  Til Jesus comes.”  We know we will be together when he comes.  Until then, we go out in His name, rejoicing.

 

AMEN

Ecclesiastes 4 - Community

God, You, and Me (Ecclesiastes 4:7-12), January 15, 2012

I had a pronounced sense of Christian community – maybe my first experience of Christian community as I understand it – in 1994. I went to visit my college roommate who was in his second year as a missionary in Bolivia. The flight was an overnight flight. I got off the plane exhausted, but it was time for church, so we went. My Spanish was awful. I didn’t understand a thing. Yet, I knew I could trust the words the congregation spoke and sang with full emotion and commitment to God. Because of the Holy Spirit, I was connected to those around me and I was allowed me to rest in the joy of Christian community and fellowship even though the words were mostly foreign to me.

An author/pastor, one I thoroughly trust, describes Ecclesiastes as a type of introduction to the New Testament. He says, Ecclesiastes “empties us of the inner noise that we [thought was] religion and the cluttered piety we [thought was] faith. [Ecclesiastes] throws out the accumulated religious junk and banishes fraud that has paraded as faith. Placing [the] well-orchestrated ‘no!’ [of Ecclesiastes] as a preference to the New Testament provides a pastoral clearing of the air of distractions.”[i] Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, telling the story of Jesus, and the rest of the New Testament, written in an Easter age, respond to the bleak “no!” of Ecclesiastes with the victorious “yes!” of resurrection.

With Ecclesiastes setting the stage for the good news of the coming of Jesus, Ecclesiastes 4 specifically introduces the necessity of community, like welcome and acceptance I felt in Bolivia. As is the case with Ecclesiastes throughout, the table is set in a negative light. “Again I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. ‘For whom am I toiling,’ they ask. ... This is also vanity and unhappy business” (4:7-8).

I immediately thought of the movie The Bucket List. Jack Nicholson portrays a wealthy business man who has cancer. In the hospital, going through chemo, he meets Morgan Freeman’s character, a blue-collar man, a mechanic. Freeman’s character also has cancer. The two couldn’t be more different, but they share a burden. They’re dying. So, they come up with the idea of the bucket list – things to do before one kicks the bucket.

After their adventures that range from sky-diving to driving race cars, they part, each going back to his own life. The mechanic returns to his wife and kids and grandkids. They enjoy a Thanksgiving-type feast. The colors of the scenes are in soft tones –browns, tans, orange, and golden. The characters are laughing richly, and sitting in theater, I felt the warmth. The wealthy business man is in his plush apartment. In one scene he has a couple of girls, probably not 25 years-old, attracted not to him but to his extravagances. As he ponders his life, he is filled with melancholy. In the background one of the girls says, “I don’t know what’s wrong. He’s usually so much fun.” In another scene, he’s alone. The colors, depicting his penthouse at night are black, gray, and dim. They scream cold, weary. He struggles to get the packaging open on the overly expensive meal he’s purchased. He’ll eat with only the company of the expensive things he’s bought to fill his life. The packaging finally rips open and spills out Broken, he is reduced to weeping, with no one there to wipe his tears. For whom am I toiling? This is also vanity. He could shout Ecclesiastes as his own life conclusion, “This is useless, a miserable way to live” (4:8, Good News Translation).

It makes me think of the man in Jesus’ parable. This rich man stored up his holdings and then acquired so much, he had to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. Right at the moment he would retire in wealth and ease, he died and someone else came along and enjoyed all he has saved (Luke 12:20). I also think of another of Jesus’ parables, also about a rich man. In this one, the rich man is condemned to Hell, and while it’s not explicitly stated that he is damned for being rich, the implication and only feasible conclusion is the man is separated from God because he didn’t share his riches with an extremely poor man. “In your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here [with Abraham] and you are in agony” (Luke 16:24).

In these parables, Jesus is not flatly condemning wealth. He had wealthy followers, and he benefited from their opulence. And that is the point – what are riches for? What is life for? Whatever God gives – material possessions, talent, a mind for science, experiences, musical ability, a servant’s heart – it is to be shared. Life is to be lived in community, in relationship to other people. God is a relational God. This doesn’t mean everyone has to be extroverted, has to be the life of the party. There is room for all personality-types in God’s family and one is not better than the other. Boisterous Peter has his place, but so too do those in the background, the quiet ones like Andrew and Phillip. We are made for relationship. Ecclesiastes condemns the notion of the lonely miser, the rich person who keeps to herself and refuses to let people into her life. We are made for community.

Ecclesiastes 4 is comprised of “better than”statements. “Two are better than one.” The preacher goes through the reasons for his advocacy of partnership. In business, two will accomplish more and have a better chance for a better yield or prophet. In travel, they help one another if injury happens or there is an accident. Two keep one another warm – this is a practical teaching which made sense on cold desert nights where there were no heated hotel rooms to welcome the road-weary sojourner. Two have each other’s backs if bandits attack. Clearly and two are better than one, and life is better when it is shared.

My first experience of community within the Christian family was a small evangelical Bolivian church. By worshipping God and welcoming me, they invited me, a gringo into their fellowship. In the singing and the exaltation of God, I was not “other.” I was one of them. But, I am wrong in saying that was my first time receiving the invitation to community. The first time, I was visiting a church in the rural farming country of the Lower Peninsula Michigan. I had been a ministry intern there that summer, the summer between my junior and senior year of college. I learned about ministry and about farming. Then at Christmas, I went back to visit. I didn’t know those people that well, but they welcomed me like a son. They even had Christmas presents. They made sure I was fully a part of their family gathering even though I was not a relation. In their eyes, I was their son, their brother, in Christ.

That was not the first time ... I remember my baptism in 1981. I was 11 and our family was Baptist, but all our extended family was Lutheran or Methodist. Up in the baptismal pool which felt very high up in the air to me at 11 years old, I could see the entire congregation of a couple 100 people. One entire row was full of Tennants, Galvins, and Biscombs – my people! I was surrounded by my church family. And the family in which I was raised had come, leaving their Lutheran and Methodist churches for one Sunday to come be a part: God’s people together to celebrate.

I experienced the community of saints before that in 1973, and I didn’t even know it. I was three, my dad was in the army, stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, and my mom was pregnant. The pregnancy was in grave danger. It would likely be a baby that had severe problems. The army doctors told my parents an abortion might be a good idea. My parents stopped talking to army doctors and started talking to army chaplains who prayed. My brother was born healthy and is fine today. The entire drama played out with my parents, thus me, surrounded by people who follow Jesus and put their trust in Him – the community of faith.

Two are better than one ... a three-fold chord is not easily broken. AMEN, shouts Jesus!

Even before I was born ... my parents met at Wayne State University in Detroit, and where? Did they meet in a night club? Did they meet at a dance? At protest rally of some sort? They met on the lawn of the Wesley Foundation. It was the mid 60’s. They were not experimenting with drugs. They were not exploring this new idea of“free love,” which was and is sex without responsibility or concern for the consequences. They went where Christian college students gathered to be together, the Wesley Foundation. They went because two are better than one, true relationship with God in Jesus Christ can only be had in community, and the craziness of the drug culture that so many people say defines the 1960’s is vanity, empty, useless, spitting into the wind.

A lot of people did not come from a Christian background. That's OK. I've shared bits of my story. Every one’s story is unique. One story is not better than another. I simply lay this out because I am grateful that my entire understanding of life, of reality, and of God is born in community, not my own, solitary experience. If someone tries to practice Christianity alone – just me and God – “For whom he is toiling” in his religious endeavors?

If one claims he doesn’t need church to follow Jesus, how can he follow Jesus’ two great commands – to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love neighbor as the self? Our love of God is seen in our love of one another and in our worship of Him. We cannot be who God wants us to be unless we are growing together. Just me and God – it doesn’t fit the picture of faith that we see in the New Testament.

The most known of Jesus' parables, the Prodigal Son, ended with a party. The story of Zaccheus the short tax collector turning from greed to discipleship ends with a grand dinner as Zacchaeus’ house. When Jesus called Matthew to leave his very prophet tax-collecting business and embrace the hard life of discipleship, Matthew celebrated by throwing a huge party.

Ecclesiastes shows the futility of a lonely life. The gospels show the joy of life lived with others – people to laugh with, cry with, and people that celebrate good the things of God together. In our church, we try to extend the New Testament parties into our time. We enjoy fellowship dinners whenever we have communion. Our small groups are intimate, inviting, and warm. Our Sunday morning includes together time in the hallway, with coffee, sometimes treats, and always laughter.

Some Sunday morning, when everything is over, just watch this room. I usually stand at the backdoor and shake hands with people as they leave. Most of the time, people don't leave. They stick around to talk, exchange hugs, and be together. One of the ways we please God is to enjoy one another. Just me and God - that's faith Jesus doesn't recognize. Following him, we follow him into a familt that is called church.more than half the group sticks around to talk, exchange hugs – just be together. I really believe one of things we do that is most pleasing to God is that we enjoy being together. Just me and God – that’s faith Jesus wouldn’t recognize. Following Him, we follow Him into a family that is called church.

Here’s what he said, some of Jesus’ final words before the arrest and crucifixion. This is from John’s Gospel.

John 15

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

John 17

1 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed ...

13“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by[d]the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. 20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

With the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, we reject the solitarly life that shuts out others. Following Jesus' lead, we rejoice in the joy of shared life. He wasn't just punching tickets to Heaven. He was establishing a Kingdom. He is sending us to the lost, lonely, frustrated world around us. In God – Father, Son-Jesus, and Holy Spirit, we are saved, and we are called to invited others into the Kingdom, into fellowship, into the joy of Jesus; a joy only fully known when we are together. You, me and Jesus together – that works! That is the life we are called to live.

AMEN

i]Eugene Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (1980), Wm. B, Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Mi, p,188.