Sadly, there are many people who claim to know Christ, but then turn around and claim that they don’t go to church because they do not believe in organized religion and of course my first thought is asked him if he liked it better was disorganized? When you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior. It is from that moment on whether you like or not you become a member of his church. Even if you do not officially put your name on the roster and become a member of any church you are still a member of the church. It is our faith in Christ that allows us to be called a hold of God. And by default, all who put their faith in Christ our children of God, and all become members of the same family. We can no more be a Christian and have nothing to do with the church. Then we can be a person and not be a member of a family. For the church to function in unity it must first become a community.
Psalm 133
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the LORD has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.
No child of God is an only child. But just like all families, we do not get to pick who we are going to let in to our family. I’m sure there are some of us who would’ve liked to have chosen whether our brothers or our sisters are members of our family, or perhaps we have that one weird uncle we wouldn’t want him to be part of our family, but we don’t get to make that choice. The Christian community is just like that we do not get to choose who God calls into his kingdom and like any community of diverse people, our church community is susceptible to the fact that we are not all going to get along at all times. There will be people in our Christian community that are difficult to love even hard to be around at times. The reason for this just because you become a Christian does not mean you will suddenly become accepting of all people and automatically love all people, and no one will ever annoy you. It does not mean that you will suddenly become immune your emotions and never hate, envy or become jealous of another person in the church. Becoming a Christian does not mean that will go through some sort of magical metamorphosis and suddenly become a great conversationalist that has no problem in being engaging with every word that you speak, or you will become a glowing inspiration to everyone that you meet. There is no such thing as a perfect Christian community. There will be community members that will get cranky at times and some of them are going to be annoying and some of them will try our patients and we will try theirs. Through it all, we are to remain united as one community, built upon the foundation of our love for Christ.
I can imagine sitting around a table with Jesus as one of his disciples as makes statement “A new commandment I give to you” This idea of a new commandment perks our ears and we all lean in closer so that we do not miss a word. “That you love one another”. Wait this is not new, and we have been struggling to do just that in spite of our differences. The Jesus brings down the hammer “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” As a community of believers this is the standard we must strive for. We must strive to function together even knowing there will be trouble, and there will be disagreements. We must always be aware that the world is watching, they are judging the love of Christ by how we love and function together as a community of believers. The way we do this is with love, but not an earthly love but a heavenly love. A love that is built upon the common bond we all have through Christ Jesus, a love the supersedes anything found on earth.
There is nowhere in Scripture where we are told to be alone act alone to stay alone, from the beginning. We are meant to be in community. In the book of Genesis, God states “It is not good that man should be alone.” God is relational there is a holy communion between the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit and having been made in his image we have an internal desire to be among others, to be relational. Jesus knew this when he surrounded himself with the 12, the roots of the church are based in community, as more and more people were added to the community of believers In the book of acts it says the Lord added to their number, day by day.
When we gather together to worship we do this with other people, and we all have one thing in common we are all sinners in need of a Savior, at the foot of the cross we are all on level ground. Some of us are sinners that are forgiven, having already put our faith in Christ. others are sinners seeking Christ. The inconvenient fact is that no matter who they are or why they are there, we are a community. Within that community we have but one task and this to love one another and welcome with open arms all those that are seeking. True faith had and always will have a social dynamic involved. Acts also tells us in the beginning of the church. They were together in one place, all who believed were together, and day by day they attended temple together.
“Behold, how good and pleasant when brothers dwell in unity.” Anyone who has brothers and sisters knows that this desire, to live in unity is not an easy task to fulfill. Brothers and sisters fight with each other. The modern term for this is “sibling rivalry.” The truth is that no matter what words we want to use to describe this at the core of every rivalry is a sinful nature. It is either based upon the fact that we are prideful, and we think of ourselves as better than our brothers and sisters, or perhaps were jealous of their success. Perhaps we feel mom or dad loves them more than me and that cause friction. Those of us who are in the church are not immune to these things as we live and deal with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I am remined of a phone call with my daughter as I found out she was pregnant with our newest grandson. Our granddaughter had terrible colic and as a result my daughter said she was not having any more children. So, you can imagine my surprise as I saw a gender reveal on Instagram showing she was having a boy. I called her and said, “I thought you were not going to have any more children.’ She responded, “I was not, and it is all your fault.” I asked her how it was my fault. She said that I was praying for more grandchildren and God likes me better. The wonderful thing about our church community is that God does not play favorites he loves all of us equally and we should strive to do the same. People are going to get hurt by others in the church, and often when we are hurt or discouraged by someone in the church, we have a tendency to pull away. But we can avoid these tendencies and we can avoid many of these conflicts by paying attention to what God teaches us in his word. The apostle Paul says, “Put on then, God’s chosen one, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, you must also forgive. And above all these put-on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
One of the things we need to guard against is becoming too institutionalized because this can be a threat to community. We must avoid treating each other in other people in the church as a commodity that can be used or discarded. We must avoid seeing people in terms of impersonal function within the church. When we institutionalized programs to keep people busy or to entertain people just so we can fill the church. We become less of a community. While organization and goals are a good thing. There are never to be more important than our one true purpose and that purpose is to build a personal relationship with God. And in doing so we build a personal relationship each other. And through these relationships we develop disciples and then can guide and help people grow and become more like Christ.
The Psalm says “it is like a precious oil on the head, running down the beard, on the head of errand running down on the collar of his robe.” This is a direct reference to the book of Exodus as it describes the anointing of errand as high priest. Oil is seen throughout Scripture. In the process of anointing. It has always been used in the anointing of priest and in the case seen in the Psalm is overflowing as it runs down the beard and into the robe. This is a metaphor for God’s blessing which overflows on those who is his children and in the context of the Psalm. This anointing points to each and every one of us priest. We are priest to one another and like priest, we are to provide for each other spiritual guidance, compassion, and accountability. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consist solely in what Christ has done to both of us. And what Christ has done is anoint us with his Spirit. We are set apart for service to one another. We mediate to one another the mysteries of God. We represent to one another the address of God. We are priest who speak God’s word and share Christ’s sacrifice. The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and pro-claimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in the word of his brother: his own heart is uncertain; his brothers is sure.”
The Psalm compares God’s blessing and his desire for community to the dew that falls on the mountains. Hermon is the highest mountain in the area of Jerusalem, it sits more than 9000 feet above the desert floor. And because of the altitude in the morning, there accumulates a heavy do on the ground. The dew settles the dust and refreshes the land every morning producing life-giving moisture for the plants and the animals that live on the mountain. The Christian community of our fellow brothers and sisters is much like that do, it helps hold down the dust, the dust that arises whenever a large group of people meet. And it refreshes our souls as we worship together and remind each other of the love found in Jesus Christ. In the community, in unity, our lives are a series of endless mornings with the expectation that the dew will come and refreshes.
The function properly as a church. We need this refreshing and this refreshing can only happen in the midst of the community. There is blessing in this community the Psalm says the blessing is life forevermore. The community found in the church is only partially realized here on earth. There is a great joy and blessing coming as we look at great expectation to our eternal community with Christ Jesus. We all have a desire to belong, to fit in. God gives us that opportunity to belong, belong to him, to belong to the greatest community that has or ever existed. As we become children of God. It is by his great mercy that we can be born again, free from death and, free from sin because of what Christ accomplished on the cross and through his resurrection.
