Gathering As a Community

Today we are starting the first part of a sermon series called a liturgical people. We all have patterns in our lives, sometimes out of necessity, or for our health, or just because it helps us. We actually need patterns, science tells us that patterns help us feel stable, they give us better sleep, they help our body regulate and more. Patterns - like a liturgy form us. We as Christians, especially in the Anglican denomination, belief that liturgical patterns of gathering and faith practice are essential to how we grow in faith, because again patterns, habits, liturgies form us. Everything we do in our Sunday liturgy is maticulously designed to form us as disciples and help us to encounter Jesus.

In this first part of the series, during the summer, we will be looking some of the general ideas, then in the fall we would be looking at our service, taking individual portions and seeing how each one alone and together are important practices that are meant to shape us in the church and in our lives.

Today we start our sermon series with a simple but important question: Why do we gather together in person? I have heard this question numerous times. Even more often I have heard people say that we don’t need to come to church or bible studies. Saying things like nature is my church. Or I pray and read Scripture on my own. When we say something like this we are failing to see and understand something essential, something built into the identity of God himself and something built into our natural order. We need to purposefully make time to gather together as Christians, centred around God, not just because God commands it, which he does, but because it is the way we meet God, it is how we see the truth and it is how we grow in faith together.

Let’s start with the fact that gathering together has its source in the fundamental aspects of God. God himself is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is a community of faithful, self-giving love. This love at the centre of creation and well, everything, this love that God wants to invite us into is only possible within community. We can’t be self-giving or faithful without the other and God’s identity proves it - family and friends aren’t enough either. This speaks greatly into God’s very reason for creating us and this world. God is perfect unto himself, but a self-giving love desires to invite more people in and have more people experience that love - just like a married couple wanting children we are spurred by love to keep increasing in it. This sef-sacrificial love with reaching arms challenges us not just to belong to community, but to keep growing the breadth of community, but also to dig deeper into the rich intimacy of it.

God throughout Scripture is continually reaching out to connect to and connect his people. He reaches out to Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah and more, not just to call them to an individual relationship with him, but to become vehicles for familial, and multinational community centred around him. This is especially visible at Christmas. Jesus Christ, God himself becomes incarnate, and present to humanity. While he is still a toddler he gathers multiple nations around himself with the wisemen. As an adult he gathers large communities of followers to encounter him, to grow together and to help others meet him and grow in faith. There was the large group of women, the 12 disciples, the 70 sent out, and the great multitudes. It wasn’t just large crowds to promote his ideas, Jesus was purposefully gathering small intimate groups of followers. The Holy Spirit at Pentecost comes when the small faithful community of Christ followers are gathered together praying. What does God’s Holy Spirit do? It sends them out and empowers them to gather others into this community. And the result is that they continue to gather together both in private and in public. Gathering us into community is a part of God’s very identity and purpose and it has always been a part of our purpose too.

As such faithful Christ centred community is an essential way that we actually encounter God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Why else would the church, faithful Jesus followers be called the body of Christ? It’s not just a nice image to talk about unity and purpose, it tells us that together when we are gathered together around Jesus, even with all of our faults, we are somehow embodying Jesus in a powerful and meaningful way that people can encounter, in a way we can encounter - if we are open. I grew up in the church and have generally had a good relationship with other Christians, so I feel like I have always known Jesus - his presence and identity - even if I am still growing in that knowledge. Now in ministry, I have had the great privilege of meeting many people starting or restarting in their faith journey, especially here at St. Matthew’s. Two things stick out to me from this experience. The first thing that sticks out to me about new Christians is the almost immediate and unexplainable encounter that they experience here. They can talk about it in such a way that it is almost mystical in its grandness. It is so much more that a nice welcoming, or a dynamic sermon, a beautiful song, or a meaningful passage, even if at first they might reference these things. That is because when we are faithfully following Jesus together, people meet him; it often just takes a while for us to lay claim on who it is we have met - maybe some of you in this room are new or have been here for years and still haven’t named the powerful encounter you have here - it is Jesus Christ. The second thing that sticks out to me from people who are newly coming to faith is how they often are starting from scratch at least in knowledge, understanding and relationship. Yet, as time goes on, it becomes abundantly clear to both of us that God is not working from scratch on them, he has been purposefully working and revealing himself their whole lives and in practically all moments, the good and the bad alike. It is both community and personal work that reveals this - they and we need both to understand how God has and is working in our lives. We are called both to belong, but also to welcome people into this experience, welcome them into our experience of God’s work in our life - another reason why testimonials are so important is that they help people understand God’s story in their life.

I have already talked about welcoming as a practical reality of our gather. When we welcome someone into this community of faithful followers, we welcome people into an encounter with Jesus. There are three other really practical earthly reasons that we gather together as community - accountability, edification and service.

Now lets talk about one of, probably, the hardest aspects of community and that is mutual accountability. Let’s face it, our world today doesn’t know how to do accountability and I think many churches have lost it. Accountability in our modern context often means cancelling someone, or lawyers, ignoring the problem or person, yelling at someone and punishing them or some form of passive aggression. These can be a very minor part of godly accountability, but the core of Christian accountability is actually about mutuality, intimacy and love. Accountability is about helping one another grow as individuals and as a community. As a child of divorce I have seen how sin against God and broken relationships deteriorates the individuals, the couple, the children, their friends and people around them, and this is even taking into account how God’s amazing redemption has worked through it. Divorce may be a more obvious example of the snowball effect of sin and evil, but this reality is true in any sin and brokenness. Greed, jealousy, pride or anger can so easily have a waterfall affect of hurt and brokenness. When we hold onto something, or protect all too often these can be ways that we build walls in our community or push away people (pushing away those connected with them at the same time). We are like a web of interconnected relationships, if we break one thread, the whole may not fall apart, but it does weaken the whole, if not resulting in other threads being broken at the same time. We far too often don’t actually see what we are doing. Godly mutual accountability becomes about trying to correct to find healing together. It is not about shame or punishment, it is about growth as a community - this can only happen because we know that if we move together we will see God’s redemption work through any situation or wrong. That is why the parable of the lost sheep, when Jesus goes out and searches for the 1 or the prodigal son, when the Father runs out to meet his son, these are actually stories of accountability (even if we may not realize the change and intimacy that must result in those relationships). The sheep needs to come back and listen to be part of the fold. The younger son has to recognize that it is better to be a servant with God, then out there in the world. And notice in each that the sheep and the son are brought back into community. This is also the context behind Matthew’s pattern of accountability, we confront the person and hope for repentance and new relationship - if not we gather others in so that together we might better understand the wrong and call the person or people to repent and change. The hope is ultimately for reconciliation, unity and peace. Even if everything goes wrong and there is no repentance, the sinner becomes like a gentile to us, someone who we long to convert and bring back into the fold. This is still about healing, even if at first it doesn’t look that way. Think about it like cutting a dead or sick branch of the tree that is this person. Or pulling out the weeds. Or trimming it so that they can focus on being fruitful. Or trimming it so that it doesn’t choke out the other plants beside it. The hope with this kind of mutual accountability is that the plant will be healthier, but so will the whole garden around it.

Accountability is meant to be a kind of edification, a kind of building up, even if we don’t realize it, because accountability is about helping someone realize something in themselves that hasn’t yet been given over to God. Even love for your child, or a happy memory can be something that stands in the way of your faith and your relationship with the body of Christ. Giving it to God and repentance can be just as much about growth and hope as it is about letting go.

So now edification, edification is the acts that help to build people up in faith. The most obvious thing I think about when I hear edification is the need to complimented or commended growth in faith, a spiritual gift, an act of love or something of that sort. Similarly we also need to listen, give others responsibility and gather around those godly gifts we see in people. These actions are important aspects of edification, because we need to recognize and lift up the godly things we see in the world and one another. It is especially important because the world commends a lot of things that aren’t godly and at the very least commends them in a way that isn’t godly. Just think about a few examples, beauty, productivity, and rest are all godly things, but think about how the world promotes productivity (pause) or beauty (pause) or rest (pause) and it isn’t hard to see why we need a godly commendation - because we need what is truly good and we need help to find it. Just imagine what the world would look like if we all knew godly rest, or beauty or productivity. It would utterly transform our everyday.

Edification also comes through teaching, reading Scripture, discussing faith, telling stories, sharing, serving, presence and so much more. As these don’t just build up what is already there, but keep adding to it, like putting furtilizer on a lawn or under a plant. Just think about all the ways that someone has helped you grow or expand. Every moment, every encounter is an opportunity and should be an experience of mutual edification - that mutual edification in any moment can take on many forms. The hard part with this aspect of edification is that we have a habit of discussing and gathering around some pretty unimportant or unedifying things. Don’t get me wrong, I love movies, history, sports, and videogames. Yet, most of the time it takes a lot of work to make these about mutual edification - how can video games be about my growing in relaitonship with Jesus and helping others to do the same. If we want to participate in these things we should be thoughtful about how we make sure they are building us and others up in faith. Remember God wants to transform every aspect of our lives and make them holy. We should challenge ourselves to think about how we might join him in that work in any moment, any activity, any encounter.

This helps us understand that service is actually something that should be integrated into every encounter, but since we are talking about mutual edification, we should realize that service isn’t necessarily what we think it is, it is primarily is meant to be personal, relational and present, throwing resources at something is not our primary purpose - it is about building others up in their relationship with Jesus Christ as we grow ourselves. The old saying about the difference between giving a man a fish vs. teaching him to fish gets part of the way, but fails to acknowledge that in Jesus we grow together through the teaching, sharing and serving.

I know that was a lot, but there is so many reasons why we need to gather in person and I haven’t even covered half of it (only some of the bigger things). Just remember community is a central part of God’s identity. He invites us in to his community as he calls us to welcome others into his community too. It is in this community that people encounter God in real, profound and beautiful ways. And Christian community is an essential way that we grow, recognizing what is wrong through accountability, growing together as we experience mutual edification and learning how to serve in a way that we know love for our neighbor as we love ourselves. We all need to come together as Christians purposefully putting Jesus at our centre. AMEN

Children’s story

Encountering God (Mirror and screen blocking someone’s view)

Does it ever feel hard to get to know God or see him? (adults answer too)

Who here has ever talked to God? Or experienced God?

Who here feels like they know God personally?

Who here thinks Jesus is their friend?

I ask all these questions for two reasons:

1st - It can be difficult to get to know God - even with all of Scriptures revealing him, even with everything in creation speaking about him, even with the countless stories through history and in our time, even with the presence of God through the Holy Spirit, even with continual access to God in prayer - we can still feel a hurdle or a distance between us and God.

We can feel a distance with the people right beside us, how much more can we feel that with God, even though he is so close.

If you feel this, you are not alone - it can take time and effort

2nd - I asked these questions because there are a lot of people who have met God, who do know him personally and experience him as Father, a friend, a brother, a breath of life and abundance.

You are not alone in experiencing God and those that are growing in that experience know that there are plenty of people you can turn to to help you see, experience and know God

Today, the adults and I will be talking about why it is so important to gather around Jesus as a community. Christians gathered together are called the Body of Christ. We are a very real way that people encounter Jesus. Together we are called to be a little like a mirror where we reflect Jesus. Even if people can’t see him, they can see him through us. We do this through copying Jesus, being like him and sharing together in his generous love.

Friday Message:

This Sunday we start a new sermon series called “A Liturgical People”, which looks at the patterns of Christian life and life in general that help to shape us. The 1st part of this series in the summer looks at general aspects. In the fall we will look at the purposeful practices we find within our service that help us to grow in faith and love.

For this Sunday, we look at why we gather together around Jesus. Have you ever thought, or heard someone say something like, “I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian”. Many people believe this and yet it is failing to see some fundamental parts about who God is and who we are.

God is a community of three. Community is part of his identity. Ever since the beginning of creation he has made us to be like him, to be with him and to grow in community. This is part of our fundamental purpose. For us today we know some really practical reasons why this community is important (I won’t be able to list half of them). But I will be looking at how Christian community is where we meet God, how we help each other through sin, how we build one another up and only briefly how we grow in mutual service. Join us this Sunday when we explore our fundamental need for community centred around Jesus.