CONNECTING

CONNECTING Romans 12:9-16 With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration: the Holy Spirit; the Word of God; Stanley Grenz, Created for Community; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together Sept 22, 2002 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introductory The news reporters called it "the Miracle at Quecreek". Nine miners trapped for three days 240 feet underground in a water-filled mine shaft "decided early on they were either going to live or die as a group." The 55 degree water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia, so according to one news report "When one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person, and when another person got cold, the favor was returned." "Everybody had strong moments," miner Harry B. Mayhugh told reporters after being released from Somerset Hospital in Somerset. "But any certain time maybe one guy got down, and then the rest pulled together. And then that guy would get back up, and maybe someone else would feel a little weaker, but it was a team effort. That's the only way it could have been." Did you ever wonder why human beings can't behave in such a strong, sacrificial, selfless way without being stuck in such horrible circumstances? God says that's exactly how He intended for us to act. And He said He is building a society of people who are empowered to live like that in community with others. His new society is called the church. The qualities that make people heroes, survivors, selfless servants and comrades in crisis are found in a tidy list in the 12th chapter of Romans in your New Testament. It is there that the apostle Paul calls the Roman Christians to the life of "new community". "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality." (Romans 12:9-15, New International Version) I think it might be helpful for us to encounter this same passage through the scintillating translation by Eugene Peterson, "The Message" - "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. Don't burnout; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody." (Romans 12:9-15, The Message) Timely Truths about Christian Community As you read along and listened to these verses I am certain some of the commands leapt out at you. They certainly have touched me in this past week of study and reflection. I hope that you will take part in the discussion about these valuable exhortations this week in your cell group meetings. For the next few moments, I'd like to consider with you some of the important spiritual issues that are in and behind these commandments to the church. First, Consider the Nature of the Church, God's New Community Did you pick up the central thrust of this text? It's all about people, and it's all about relationships! I will take this opportunity to remind you that the church is not brick and mortar; it's not Bible studies and music; it's not bake sales and missions. The church is people. Specifically, the church is the community of people who have come to understand and trust that Jesus, God's Son, died in their place and rose for their salvation. They are people who have, through the sacrifice and grace of the Lord Jesus, been restored to a right relationship with God, and are currently being restored in their other relationships in the new society called the church. Because the church is not the building, nor is it the programs, but it is the people, I remind you again, you do not "go to church"-you are the church. Church doesn't happen just on Sunday mornings in certain buildings, the church is always happening, everywhere, because God's people are the church and they are in service to Him wherever they are at any time. Please affirm this truth with me by repeating, "we are the church". The original word for church was EKKLESIA, literally, "the ones called out". This refers to those who have, by virtue of their faith in and devotion to Christ, been called out of this world into the kingdom of God, to serve His purposes in this world. Because the church is the people, any time the church assembles, it is an amalgamation of these people who love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. These are interesting groups, these assemblies of believers. They are as yet imperfect, though they are committed to God's purpose of shaping and perfecting them into the image of Christ. But they are not there yet. They are "in process"-some a little farther down the road of maturity than others. My point is, when you see the church, you don't see the perfect society yet, although they will be one day. Until then the assembled church is always a motley amalgamation of imperfect beings who happen to be saved from their sins, and in process of becoming mature and Christlike. And there they are, thrown together in the church with other "in process" people who, to one degree or another, have grown in their understanding of living for Christ. God's purpose for them being brought together in His new society is that they would find companionship, direction and encouragement for their journey. So Christians meet together, in small and larger meetings, for these purposes. And they don't always get along. In fact, they sometimes really get on one another's nerves! So much so, that the New Testament exhorts us to "put up with one another", and "bear with one another's failings and weaknesses". Because our sinful natures are very much a part of our lives in this world, we do tend to find just "getting along" somewhat of a challenge sometimes. Let alone loving one another. Jealousy, bitterness, backbiting, resentments will always find their way into unguarded hearts. And besides, some of us are terribly hard to get along with! To live above with the saints we love- O that will be glory. But to live below with the saints we know- Now, that's a different story! God knows what a challenge it is for us to like each other. He knows there are those persons in your spiritual family that you find impossible to tolerate. He even knows just how intolerable everyone else thinks you are! Imagine that! Yet He has put us together, and has made it clear that He has His divine reasons. He is actually perfecting you by putting you in a stretching, growing place of learning to love an unlovely person. The church is God's family of imperfect and very real people. It's a shame how we distort that identity by our religion. We put on airs, try to look better than we are, and we come off looking like hypocrites. Our coming together is to be the genuine fellowship of genuine people who genuinely love God and genuinely admit they are not perfect, and genuinely worship the Lord and learn together from His Word. I'd like to share with you a short section from James Bryant Smith's book, Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven. Most people choose a church based on the quality of its service, but for Rich Mullins, the most important ingredient was not the dynamism of the leaders, but the devotion of the people. Eric Hauck (a close friend of Mullins) recalls being with Rich in a worship service only a few days before Rich died in a car accident. Some friends wanted to have a gathering for praising God. They encouraged everyone who had an instrument to bring it and play. Eric recalls that the music sounded awful. Even those who led the singing sang out of tune. Someone asked Eric and Rich to lead the group for the rest of the evening. Rich went up to the microphone and said, "I love to be in the church. I love to listen to people sing and play with their hearts. In my profession (contemporary Christian music) we worry about being in tune and sounding good. But this music is the music that is the most pleasing to God, because it is so real, and it comes from the hearts of the children of God." Eric concludes, "As he said this, he got choked up. It was the last time I saw Rich cry." Church was an emotional experience for Rich, not because of how exciting the worship was, but because he felt he was communing with the saints. Jimmy Abegg, a member of Rich's Ragamuffin band, said, "For Rich, even an hour in a bad church was better than not going at all." In Witnesses of a Third Way: A Fresh Look at Evangelism, Robert Neff's chapter includes this story about visiting a church service: "It was one of those mornings when the tenor didn't get out of bed on the right side. ... As I listened to his faltering voice, I looked around. People were pulling out hymnals to locate the hymn being sung by the soloist. "By the second verse, the congregation had joined the soloist in the hymn. And by the third verse, the tenor was beginning to find the range. And by the fourth verse, it was beautiful. And on the fifth verse the congregation was absolutely silent, and the tenor sang the most beautiful solo of his life. That is life in the body of Christ, enabling one another to sing the tune Christ has given us." The Church is People Sharing Meaningfully in One Another's Lives Paul says, in verse 9 - "Love must be sincere…" By that we understand that this whole relationship thing God is engineering among us cannot be superficial. That's why I deliberately chose the term "meaningful" sharing. Interestingly, right after writing that the believers should have sincere love, he adds "Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." There is a lot of evil and godless junk that goes on in this world. Frankly, as a Christian, I find that, more and more, I need other God loving people that I can meet with and dialogue about something good for a change. Is this true for you, too? I used to have a 55-gallon aquarium. As you know, an aquarium can be very beautiful, but without proper maintenance, it can get very filthy in a hurry. In larger tanks, the regular filtration system just isn't enough, so every week or so, it's time to break out the auxiliary filter and run it for a few hours. In no time, the water that was looking murky is clear and sparkling again. There is a great deal of contamination that gets on our souls just from living in a sinful world. We believers need to be with one another regularly just because seeking the Lord together in prayer, worship, Bible instruction and fellowship tends to help us filter out the evil and make our relationship with the Lord fresh again. We need a community of others with whom we can regularly meet in order to cling to things that are good, and not let evil things cling to us. Verse 10 exhorts us to "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves." This is certainly the heart of what it means to "share meaningfully in one another's lives". That word for "devoted" is very similar to our word "addicted". Are you devoted to a few other Christians in this kind of meaningful sharing? If not, I urge you to spend some quality time in your Listening Room and ask the Holy Spirit to teach you about your need for meaningful relationships with other Christians. These relationships will be marked by a distinct "relational humility". That is, as Paul puts it, I will "honor others above myself. That simply means that I will find time to be there for those other believers, even (and especially) when it means I have to give up personal preferences. One man once told me that he'd love to spend time with other Christian men, but he was a "busy man". It turns out "busy" included season tickets to baseball and hockey, involvement in a bowling league, weekly poker games and lots of hours in front of his new large screen television. Of course, we have priorities with family and jobs, but when we honestly investigate our lives, there's a whole lot of nothin' that could be replaced with edifying time with other believers with mutual kingdom benefit. Verse 13 takes it to the next level-"Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality." This is not hard to understand. If there is a brother or sister in Christ who has a genuine need, meet it! In the Acts 2 passage we studied last Sunday [webmasters note: Message Sep 15, 2002: "Flying In A Two Winged Church"] and in cells this past week, it testified to the devotedness and selflessness of the Christians in community - "Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." (Acts 2:45) Just weeks later in the life of that young, growing church in Jerusalem, Acts 4:34 tells us, "There were no needy persons among them…" Let me share a couple of thoughts concerning hospitality. I take hospitality to go beyond taking care of others in the household of the faith to reaching outside the boundaries of the church to others to serve them. Christians-the only people in the world who have received forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life as a gift-are obliged to be hospitable. Take time to be nice! Especially to strangers. I am so thankful that people who visit our Sunday Celebration and our cell group meetings during the week consistently speak highly of the friendliness of our church. We have taken steps recently to do an even better job of being hospitable with our guests on Sunday mornings. We schedule one cell group each Sunday for CARE ministry. That group comes together early before worship to pray for our visitors before they've met them. They also ask God to lead them specifically and individually to people whom He wants them to meet and befriend that morning. Then they position themselves to watch for all visitors, and they continue to pray, "Lord lead me . . . is that a new person you want me to meet and befriend? Is this my VIP this morning?" Then they meet and care for that person or family. But research has shown that people who visit a church service don't just want a friendly greeting and then a call during the week from a total stranger saying how nice it was to have them. So our CARE ministers commit themselves to make a follow-up visit on their new friends with a smile, a fresh-baked batch of cookies and answers to questions they might have about MECF. We believe in relationships, and we believe that we should seek to establish meaningful relationships. And those kinds of relationships always cost us in terms of time and energy. There is one more evidence in our text about meaningful relationships. It is at verse 15 - "Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn." This kind of empathy requires that we are enough in one another's lives that we know when a brother or sister is mourning over something, or when they are rejoicing. Martin Luther wrote these words 400 years ago: "No man should be alone when he opposes Satan. The church and the ministry of the Word were instituted for this purpose, that hands may be joined together and one may help another. If the prayer of one doesn't help, the prayer of another will." Being there for one another in the family of God is Christianity 101. Before I leave this idea of "meaningful relationships", let me tag on another encouragement. There is no way you will be able to fulfill this mandate of your faith on Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings only simply will not cut it in terms of maintaining and strengthening the bonds of Christian fellowship meaningfully. That is why we have structured this congregation in such a way as to put a high premium on small group meetings (cells). There are too many people and too little time to sustain meaningful relationships just on Sunday mornings. Get yourself linked up to a group of fellow believers in a small group and start putting Romans 12 into practice. In a fascinating article in Readers Digest some time ago a scientist explained that when the roots of trees touch, there is a substance present that reduces competition. In fact, this unknown fungus helps link roots of different trees--even of dissimilar species. A whole forest may be linked together. If one tree has access to water, another to nutrients, and a third to sunlight, the trees have the means to share with one another. Like trees in a forest, Christians in the church need and support one another. When she turned 21, Tammy Harris from Roanoke, Virginia, began searching for her biological mother. After a year, she had not succeeded. What she didn't know was that her mother, Joyce Schultz, had been trying to locate her for twenty years. According to a recent Associated Press story, there was one more thing Tammy didn't know: Her mother was one of her coworkers at the convenience store where she worked! One day Joyce overheard Tammy talking with another coworker about trying to find her mother. Soon they were comparing birth certificates. When Tammy realized that the co-worker she had known was, in fact, her mother, she fell into her arms. "We held on for the longest time," Tammy said. "It was the best day of my life." Each week we rub shoulders with people whom we may barely notice. But if they share a birth in Christ, they are our dearest relatives. How precious is the family of God! George Macleod wrote: "The Bible is all about community: from the Garden of Eden to the City at the end. " Three thousand frightening feet above the ground, Soviet sport parachutist Yuri Belenko realized he was in trouble. His main chute had malfunctioned, and his reserve chute "barber poled" around the main, rendering them both useless. Kicking his feet to slow the natural spiral caused by the noisy whipping canopies above, Belenko yelled down to fellow jumpers on the ground. His jump buddies sprang immediately into action, grabbed a packing mat, and sprinted toward the impact point. All the way down Belenko yelled and tugged furiously at the static lines in a vain attempt to clear the two tangled chutes. Below, his friends stretched the mat taught…and waited. Belenko plummeted into the canvas at bone-crushing speed, ripping the tarp from his rescuers' hands, and knocking them to the ground. When the dust cleared, Belenko lay gasping for breath and complaining of a sprained ankle. In addition to the injured leg, he suffered a few bruises. His jump buddies were there for Belenko at the moment he needed them most. This is a picture of what God wants people in the body of Christ to do for others in need. Carol, a gracious clerk in our local Christian bookstore (not our Carol, who also happens to work at the local Christian bookstore), often refers to a church as "the body." One week, many devoted members of a local "body" had come to the bookstore to buy birthday gifts for their pastor. On Saturday, that pastor, John, stopped at the store. He told Carol about the surprise party his congregation had given him the night before. Carol's heart was touched. Spontaneously, she leaned forward and exclaimed, "Oh, John, I just love your 'body'!" The customers in the store burst into laughter, leaving a startled look on John's face--and Carol's, too. Eric "The Swimmer" Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea was an unlikely hero of the Sydney Olympic Games. The 22-year-old African had only learned to swim last January, had only practiced in a 20 meter pool without lane markers, and had never raced more than 50 meters. By special invitation of the International Olympic Committee, under a special program that permits poorer countries to participate even though their athletes don't meet customary standards, he had been entered in the 100 meter men's freestyle. When the other two swimmers in his heat were disqualified because of false starts, Moussambani was forced to swim alone. Eric Moussambani was, to use the words of an Associated Press story about his race, "charmingly inept." He never put his head under the water's surface and flailed wildly to stay afloat. With ten meters left to the wall, he virtually came to a stop. Some spectators thought he might drown! Even though his time was over a minute slower than what qualified for the next level of competition, the capacity crowd at the Olympic Aquatic Center stood to their feet and cheered the swimmer on. After what seemed like an eternity, the African reached the wall and hung on for dear life. When he had caught his breath and regained his composure, the French-speaking Moussambani said through an interpreter, "I want to send hugs and kisses to the crowd. It was their cheering that kept me going."     [Back to Top]