Sermon on Christian Community
The tendency of the church today is to focus on the positive and ignore the negative. We focus only on the joyful and happy, but that’s not true to reality. We all have areas in our lives where sin has captivated our hearts and minds and manifested itself in our character. However, what God envisions for his people is to bring us out in a New Exodus, delivering us from sin and its negative effects in our lives.
We read in Exodus 12 where the deliverance of Israel required a costly blood sacrifice, and then in the Gospels, Jesus redefines the Passover by saying, “I am the Passover Lamb, whose blood is shed for you.”
God is enacting a New Exodus by gathering his people – Jew and Gentile – out of this world and bringing this redeemed group of sinners into a collective community called the Church. All of those redeemed sinners have brought in their issues and defects – anger, selfishness, habitual sins – into this community of the redeemed. The people of God are a motley crew.
Not only do we come with our own personal flaws, but we also carry with us our own backgrounds of nationality, race, social class, and economic status, which lead us to misunderstand and sin against each other.
The Greek word for sin is hamartia, which literally means “to miss the mark,” like when you shoot an arrow and don’t hit the target. When we sin against each other, we miss the mark of how we should treat each other.
It’s interesting to be thinking about community when we have all been quarantined away from each other for so long. As we begin to start gathering back together, it is very likely that after 6 months apart, many of us are out of practice and have lost our social cues. We have become so used to isolation that we will have to re-learn how to be gracious to each other.
We can miss the mark by being critical of each other, backbiting, being angry or frustrated toward each other, ignoring each other’s needs, failing to communicate well, being judgmental, being verbally abusive (I’m looking at you, social media.), being sexist, being cliquish, telling jokes at each other’s expense, being irresponsible, being arrogant, snobbish, rude, and boastful. We hurt each other all the time.
It is actually remarkable that God would bring together this group of sinners in the first place, but he does it as a way to model what the heavenly community could look like. This is why the Church is called to be salt and light, a vision for how God intends for us to treat each other.
Sometimes the church is called the “beloved community,” and that reminds me of wedding vows. A bride and groom vow to love each other for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, until they are parted by death. This is the same love that each member of the Church is called to have for their fellow believers. Note that at the beginning of the wedding service, the officiant opens with “Dearly beloved…” He’s talking to the congregation there, as people who are called to be in covenant community with both God and each other.
The problem with trying to be happy all the time is that it’s mostly fake. Like Disney World, the “happiest place on earth,” the entire environment has to be artificially manufactured and tightly controlled in order to maintain that image. That is not real life. When the Church tries to apply this model, that is hypocrisy.
It’s actually in the sick times, the hard times, the unhappy times that we prove our genuine faith and manifest the Passover community of people who have been saved by grace. Jesus tells us to intentionally address the hard things:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
Matthew 18:15
We are pressing through the hard times in order to win each other. This is the model of brotherly love. Notice that in Matthew 18, Jesus instructs us to address an issue with our brother directly rather than talking to everyone else about it. Isn’t that the opposite of what we normally do? In today’s world, the first thing a person does when they are offended is write a nasty post on Facebook, telling the whole world about how they were wronged. This is the way of the world, not the way of faith. The result of that kind of behavior is destruction.
A popular phrase right now is “cancel culture” – withdrawing support from a company or individual that is no longer deemed worthy after a public mistake or failure. However, this is completely antithetical to the Christian faith and life. No one is “cancelled” or beyond redemption. We are to respect the dignity of every human being, even the worst of sinners.
The Bible warns us about making up our minds without knowing the whole story:
The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.
Proverbs 18:17
The problem with “cancel culture” is that it doesn’t allow both sides of the story to come out, and it doesn’t allow due process to run its course. Jesus outlined a due process for reconciliation between parties, which maintains respect and dignity while working through a grievance. Yes, sometimes people are stubborn and hard-hearted, and it is necessary to bring in other parties to mediate. But the goal is reconciliation, not destruction.
Bringing a grievance to the attention of the entire community should be a last resort, not a first course. The aim of even the most severe interventions is to win them, not “cancel” them. No person is a lost cause in Christ.
We should never underestimate the power of grace, the power of the blood of the Passover Lamb to save. We should never underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit of the living God.
Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20). This doesn’t just apply to a worship service or Bible study; it applies to a private meeting to try to resolve conflict, too! The Holy Spirit manifests in a powerful way to transform people’s hearts and bring resolution and renewed relationship where there was conflict.
The sweetest moments in Christian fellowship are when we actually deal with the difficult challenges and problems in our communities, and we do the unnatural thing of avoiding gossip and instead seeking to work it out. Jesus shows up and glorifies his name in our midst as we contend for one another in our Christian communities. The presence of the living God binds on earth with the keys of heaven the community he has redeemed.