Community (2)
Notes
Transcript
We Choose To Grow Together
We Choose To Grow Together
For the first few years of my life my family and I were pretty isolated. As I said last week, my first memories are of living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, with a best friend that didn’t speak the same language, just me and my parents. And our dog Pepper, but that’s another story. I had a couple imaginary friends, but I mostly hung out with my parents. I got used to being alone and feeling different. Sometimes we would go see my cousins, who I am still very close with, in Payson. That was the closest thing to a social life I had. Once we moved into Cottonwood a whole new world opened up. I started making these things called “friends.” At about 7 years old this was my first experience with community outside my family. I realized a couple things. 1, I really was kinda weird and different. 2, these people were choosing to be my friend. No one was forcing them to hang out with me. Situations like classrooms and where we live were factors of how we met. But in the end, we both were choosing to hang out with each other. That’s also how I discovered acceptance and rejection.
Years later I look back with gratitude that I was able to learn these lessons. As I grew I started discovering the power of friends, or community. Community was there when family couldn’t be. Community helped me try new things and have great experiences. As I became an adult, (some may argue I’m still in process), I learned that part of what makes community amazing is the possibility of rejection. Let me explain.
Free will is one of the greatest gifts God has given us. Being in community means that you have chosen to be with a group of people. No one is forcing you. Those people who come over to play games with your family? No one is forcing that. The friend in the hospital that you go to visit? God isn’t forcing you. You are choosing to go because you love that person. That is why it means so much to them.
Now choice is very different from “feeling like it.” Can I be honest? There are days I don’t feel like preferring my wife above myself. I would rather do whatever I want and if she doesn’t want to come along, that’s fine. But I choose to prefer her because I chose to commit myself to her 20 years ago. You might not feel like going and seeing that friend who is going through a difficult season. What makes the gesture so powerful is that you are choosing to do it anyway.
All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.
The early church understood the importance of community, fellowship. They devoted themselves to fellowship because that is something Jesus commanded.
“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
It is impossible to to fulfill this commandment without community. You need to have people around you to love them, right? And you can’t love someone without being close to them and knowing them. Once you realize how much God loves you, you can love those around. Loving people says more about you than it does them. We are called even to love our enemies. Sometimes those “enemies” are in our community. Love is more about the giver than the receiver.
Once you choose community, you also have to choose to grow. Grow in humility, grow in patience, and grow in Jesus.
The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.
Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?
One of the beautiful things about the church is that it functions as the human body. Our bodies grow together. If something grows faster or slower, it causes big problems. But when our body grows together it functions properly.
I love how Paul uses such visual language to show how pointless comparison is. The hardest part about being in community is understanding we all bring something to the table. Maybe public speaking is not something you love doing. That is ok. Maybe you are better behind the scenes. I do know this. You chain a people person to a desk, it’s going to get ugly. Same thing goes if you put an timid, quiet person on stage. There will always be skills we have to learn in life. But as the body, we must work hard to find the right fit for each of us. Just like a thumb would make a horrible eye, someone out of gifting and personality can cause damage.
Now let me be clear, part of community is sacrificing our selves for those around us. That means there will be times that you have to fix a toilet, or share from a stage something God has spoken to you. We have to be willing to grow and stretch for the ones we love. Sometimes that means serving each other. I use to serve in the sound booth at our church. That was the hardest job for someone like me. I wanted to be around the people. And I could see all the people. But I couldn’t talk to the people.
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.
Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.
Sometimes we are a living sacrifice to God for His people. That means doing things that are uncomfortable, things you don’t like, and things you don’t think you should have to do. Nothing is above or beneath us a brothers and sisters in Christ. Like the early church, we must devote ourselves to God’s Word, His presence, and His people. If we do that, we are living out Jesus prayer for us.
Now I am departing from the world; they are staying in this world, but I am coming to you. Holy Father, you have given me your name; now protect them by the power of your name so that they will be united just as we are.
Jesus prayed that we would be unified. Do you understand that? Jesus literally prayed that we would be in community. That we would be a community that reflected the same relationship He and the Father have. Unified. One. That doesn’t mean there aren’t disagreements or arguments. If there aren’t, we don’t care enough about what God is doing. What that means is that we acknowledge there is something bigger and more important than our feelings or opinions. It is that we are the family of God on mission together. That mission is what unifies us. And that mission requires people with different gifts, talents and abilities.
We are each part of the body and have specific skills, talents and abilities.
We were never meant to live the Christian life alone. The church was established for community.