Themecast

Does it really feel good to have oil run down your beard?

I wouldn’t know, but I’ll take the bible’s word for it. J I do know that being in community, being in unity with others feels great! This is where we can cue the theme song from Cheers…

Steve did a great job starting us on this journey last week, looking at how the many “one another” passages in the bible highlight the importance of community. This journey will take us through community and beyond, along what hopefully is familiar ground. This fall, we’ll look at the themes found in our vision statement. Some might ask, “Why do that again?”

Our trip to India cemented something that God’s been re-teaching me for awhile.

Life with God is not overly complicated. We often get ourselves into trouble when we try to make it too complex.

Our church’s vision statement is a helpful focus, a good reminder of what’s most important about our life with God, about who we want to be as a church community.

So we’ll talk about community for the next few weeks, recognizing that it isn’t the only thing important about following Jesus. It’s most important in the way it fits together with the other lines of our vision statement.

Each week, we’ll touch on the themes from one of the lines of our vision statement by looking at a different place in the bible. Besides Psalm 133, which we just read, we’ll also look later today at Ephesians 4:1-16.

God created us in such a way that we want to belong.

One of the hurdles we all face is the way we consciously and subconsciously expect “the church” to meet our community needs. “The church” should be doing something to make sure I’m connecting, that I belong. At Newberg Friends, we’re a big enough group that it’s easy to expect that community should be done for us.

But when we think about it, we all know relationships don’t work that way. They can’t be programmed, planned, forced, created, or manufactured for somebody else.

Relationships, friendships, and community all take effort. What sets the church of Jesus Christ apart from the rest of humanity is the fact that our relationships are centered around our Creator God, with Jesus as the head.

As a team of pastors, we often talk and pray and wrestle with difficult dynamics.

How do new people make connections here? How do we help teach and disciple each other and grow deeper? How do we help those who are ill or struggling feel cared for?

It won’t work just to plan events and programs in order to “manufacture” community; but without spaces–both emotional and physical spaces–without spaces for relationships to develop, community can’t occur. It can be a catch-22.

So I have a pretty simple goal for today: if more of us take responsibility to BE healthy community for each other, it makes this a whole lot easier. Rather than wait for someone to create for us the perfect community where everyone knows our name, we can try to build a relationship with someone else.

Sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it?

When he was asked how to decide who your neighbor is, he instead told a story about how to be a good neighbor.

So in our time of open worship, knowing that all of us long for the good and pleasant experience of living with others in unity…let’s ask God to help us be good neighbors for each other.

OPEN WORSHIP

I’m thinking this morning of Dharwad, India.

Here’s the deal: I know the stereotype of what happens to pastors who go overseas on a trip. We go and have this amazing, life changing, eye-opening experience, but the vast majority of YOU didn’t go.

I didn’t really want to be the guy who can only talk about the trip until you’re all sick of hearing about it. So, before I left, I planned this series where we’ll look at our vision statement. I intentionally planned to NOT preach about the trip to India, knowing that on September 30, a Sunday night, our whole team will be sharing our experience with you. We’ll share the amazing things that we saw God doing, and we’ll ask if you agree with us that a connection with the people in Dharwad is something God has for us at Newberg Friends.

I intentionally planned to talk about community today. But here’s the thing: my community, my picture of the body of Christ, has gotten a whole lot bigger. All those songs we sing… “He’s got the whole world, in his hands…” “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world…” All those songs we sing that I believed with all my heart before I left; those songs now have faces and smiles and laughter attached to them.

I can’t talk and think about community at this time in my life without thinking of Dharwad.

It was such an abnormal and yet completely natural experience. Relationships and community usually take time. I’m not really a “love at first sight” person; Elaine and I had months of being friends, then more months of being very very very good friends, until we finally realized that we were MORE than friends.

But in four days I fell in love with Arun and Radha and Saveetri and Grace. God gave the gift of belonging, of community, with Shobha and Melissa and Joseph and Ruth and Shoti.

So I’ve been trying to make sense of this new experience, trying to see if there are pieces of our beautiful experience that might help us, here, grow AS a community. How did it happen?

It happened because Jesus is the center of our connection.

Arun and Shobha Massey simply shine with Jesus’ love. They sold everything they had in 1995 and ended up in Dharwad, following God’s call to bring Jesus’ love in tangible ways to women called Devadasi, who dedicate their lives as prostitutes for a goddess.

Jesus’ love flows through them in the form of clothes and food and educational supplies. It flows through them to pastors who build relationships with people in tiny villages. These people spend their lives trying not to be cursed and crushed by the vindictive gods they believe are all around, and Jesus’ love flows through these pastors who tell about a good God who loved us so much he became a person and died for us. Jesus’ love flows through the Masseys to 67 girls who they have brought into their home, many of whom were born as children of prostitutes without hope in the world, and who now are loved and cared for and “know the plans God has for them, plans to prosper and not harm, plans to give a hope and a future.”

Jesus is so powerfully, redemptively alive in these girls! You can see him, feel him, touch him, smell him in their community, their community that is so wide open at the feet of Jesus that we couldn’t help but fall into its warm embrace.

Jesus is the head of their community, just like Jesus is the head of ours.

And because they have been so transformed by the love of Jesus as it has come through other people, because they are so thankful and want others to know this transforming love, too, their community drew us in and melted us.

They have received gratefully from Jesus, and rather than hoard, they want to share. Arun and Shobha, and even the children, have found their place, their niche of service to Christ. They are all part of creating an ever-expanding community.

Their community comes from Christ. As I describe what I saw there, see if you hear any familiar echoes…

As Arun and Shobha listened to Christ and obeyed, God’s Spirit has brought deep change in their hearts and in the lives of these girls. As they serve and listen and change and live out the love of Christ in the state of Karnataka, a growing community of Jesus followers is being created in villages all around Dharwad.

When Jesus is changing lives, when those lives are thankful and powerfully transformed…it creates a wonderfully inviting community.

And that’s why we left part of our hearts there.

Is it so crazy to think that God wants to do that in us here in Newberg? That as we listen to Christ, as the Spirit changes us, as we live out the love we receive from Jesus…is it so crazy to think that OUR community might capture the hearts of those who meet US?

I don’t think it’s crazy at all. And not just because I saw it in Dharwad…because I also read it in Ephesians. Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 4.

READ 1-3

BE community for each other. Don’t wait for others to do it for you. Be humble and gentle and loving.

READ 4-6.

Because even though you often forget it, even though we so often stay in our own little circle in our own little world, God isn’t just at our little tea party.

We’re all together: Dharwad and Newberg and Kigali and Warsaw and Panama City. It’s one body around one Lord Jesus Christ. No room for cliques, no room for pride, no room for having blinders on. This is GOD’S party and GOD’S family and GOD’S journey, and we all have the same hope because of Jesus Christ.

We belong to each other!!

READ 7, 11-13

Arun and Shobha aren’t unique. Just like every one of us, God has given them gifts, gifts that when they are used together, build up a strong, unified, mature group of people centered around Jesus Christ.

THIS is what God is doing. THIS is why he gives to us. THIS is how community truly happens, how we find true belonging: because God gives good, never-ending gifts to you and me, gifts that we are to use lavishly on each other.

READ 14-16

Community won’t come through programs or plans or manufacturing. It happens organically as Jesus links us to himself and to each other, as each of us takes responsibility to do our part.

This is what unity looks like!

This Ephesians picture, the Dharwad picture, the oil running down the beard picture are what we were created for.

Seeing the Joyful Children’s home, seeing remote villages where kids chased our cars and where faithful workers go to a village where they are the only Christians…it’s all made me incredibly grateful for the power of the love of God!

Jesus DOES matter! He matters in my life and in yours, and in the lives of countless billions around the world. Our gratefulness, our celebration for what Jesus has done, our obedience to God all work together to create an openness for community. That’s the hope.

The nitty gritty is there, too.

Offering forgiveness, being humble, bearing with one another in love…calling someone to ask how they are doing, making the lunch or coffee date, coaching your kid’s team…leading a listening life group, spending time with children at Kid’s Club or in Sunday school…

All of the nitty-gritty, willingness to obey is there, too.

But it’s all in response to what God is doing. It’s all celebrating what Christ has done.

Being in Dharwad renewed the simplicity and passion of ministry for me. May Jesus empower you, also, to extend his love and open our community to others…so that we all find our belonging in the one body of Christ.