Life Together: Community

05/06/18 “Life Together: Community” Hebrews 10: 16-25

I graduated from a Christian college in western New York. I originally started out in college at the University of Pittsburg, but transferred for a variety of reasons. When I transferred, I thought that I wanted to go from a secular college to a Christian one, so I only looked at two colleges in that round. But what would shock me, more than I was able to wrap my mind around or admit for some time, is that when I got to a Christian college it wasn’t all that different from the secular one I left. I was yearning for a different type of life lived out by people of faith, and there was a great chasm between what I imagined in my mind and reality.

For the next five weeks together we are going to be talking about what it means to be in Christian community together. What it means to be Christian. How our lives are markedly different because of accepting the saving love of Jesus. But I also know that as we start this sermon series that there are also chasms of difference between the ideal of Christian life and how we live it sometimes. Let’s admit that as a confession before God and one another and then keep moving on towards the ideal God has laid out before us. Let us not get so caught up in the should haves and wants that we miss the gift that we have been given.

This sermon series is based off a book of Dietrich Bonhoeffer bearing the same name - Life Together. Bonhoeffer was a pastor, writer, and professor. This particular book emerged when he was running an underground seminary during World War 2 for those who didn’t agree with the state church, which was supporting Hitler. He writes in it about how we can be sustained, no matter what we face, through true Christian community. He believed that our faith life was meant to be lived out, and ended up being martyred. 

Sometimes it is a struggle to see the beauty of the gift that we have been offered in Christ which draws us into fellowship with one another. The book of Hebrews was written, not necessarily to one church in a particular location, such as Galatians of Ephesians, but rather those who came to know Christ through their Jewish faith, no matter where they may be located. 

Because that is the particular group that this author is writing to, the book is full of references to the Hebrew Scriptures, and similarly to the Gospel of Matthew, uses those references to make a case for Jesus Christ. 

Our scripture today starts with one of those references, which retells the epitome of the Jewish faith - the exodus story, where God made a new covenant with his people. This was a new beginning for the people of God, but not the end of their story. God brought them out of Egypt, made covenant with them to be their sovereign God, but they kept straying. They couldn’t wrap their minds and hearts around the love that God had for them. So they tried to make their own way. Their own gods. Their own kings and leaders to follow. But God would not give up them. God kept calling out to them through the prophets, reminding them of the covenant. Reminding them of God’s mercy and forgiveness, which was theirs if only they would turn back to God. Reminding them of the covenant that didn’t need outwards signs, because it was written on their minds and in their hearts. This was their message of hope. 

After the author of Hebrews reminds those receiving this letter of the goodness and grace of God’s covenant, he ties that to the covenant of Jesus Christ - the offering of Christ’s very self for us. That is what they are to cling to. That is what they are to find the promise of hope in. That Christ died for us and rose again.

We remember that Christ is the cornerstone of our hope every time we gather around the communion table. And we cling to the fact that Christ wash’s away our sins, every time we celebrate together a baptism. The sacraments remind us of the living hope our Savior offers. 

But for whatever reason, be in fear, be it distance, be it something else that we are not told about, the body of Christ the letter of Hebrews was addressing were no longer regularly gathering together for worship. They were starting to forget not only their covenant with God, but also the covenant we hold for each other in community. 

I have a similar concern for our church today. I fear that we are no longer meeting together. We live in a time when regular church attendance is considered twice a month - and that is for a variety of reasons. But unlike many others, I don’t blame the many reasons. Instead, I fear that as a church we have lost the force behind our compelling message. We have lost our ability to claim with all we are that Christ is our cornerstone and our hope. 

For so many years we made our Christian worship gathering what it is not. We have taken for granted being with other believers, to the point where we no longer cherished the community we had. No longer were able to articulate why coming together mattered. 

Instead, we took what Christ gave us as a gift of joy, and sometimes used it to bring others down. Or sometimes used it to keep others out. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of how Christ opened the curtain that separated the holy of holies from the rest of the temple, thus giving us all access to God, when he gave his life on the cross. But we sometimes forget what that curtain was - a barrier between the people and God. And while by the loving grace of Jesus, that curtain is no longer a barrier, sometimes as churches we have created other ones. Things like you need to look like us or dress like us to come. Or you need to keep your children quiet. Or you have to have all the right beliefs before you can enter. We have put up so many road blocks and barriers that people have forgotten why we exist in the first place - to proclaim the hope of Jesus. 

Other times we have used Christian community to deeply wound one another. I think because we forget that we are still human, we expect more from church folks, and when those expectations are not met, we are hurt. Sometimes hurt to the point where we cease gathering together in community. And while we trust that God can forgive us, we often struggle with forgiving others or trusting others again even after we say that we have forgiven them. 

That is not the gift of community, Christian community, that Christ has come to offer us, Church. It is by grace alone that we are given the gift of this community. It is by grace that we are invited. It is by grace that it will be sustained. In the words of Bonhoffer, “Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than that.”

That is what we exist for, Church. To have community through Jesus and in Jesus. It is not about judging one another. It is not about putting up barriers. It is about saying to someone, because Jesus loves me, I love you. And it is through this community that the gift of salvation is proclaimed. Everything else, the preferences, the pettiness, the bickering we can sometimes engage in - that is not what Christ died for and that is not who we are as the community of the Church. 

People, both inside and outside of the church, desire human community. Desire the love of God, that agape love that is all encompassing and beyond our wildest imaginations. Is that we are offering as this body of Christ? Or have we lost our way and made it about something else? What would Jesus say about our live in this community? Are we sharing his love and serving because of his love, or have we lost our way? Amen.