Know Each Other and Be Known

Last week we talked about the Great Connection. The Great Connection has two dimensions that run two ways, vertical and horizontal. Jesus teaches us the two greatest commandments are:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and

Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Matthew 22.37-39

The second commandment is dependent on the first. But if you miss the second you don’t really have the first. In the first letter of John it says,

“If you say you love God but don’t love your brother, you are a liar and the love of God isn’t really in you.”

This is the second part of the Connection and we’re going to focus on that second part this whole month as we explore how we can “Know Our Community.” We are going hear a different testimony each from folks in our community and what specific things they see in the course of their vocations. But before we get to that I want us to focus on knowing each other here, this group of believers that we call a faith community.

Are we community? Do we know each other? Back in the ‘80’s and 90’s a popular vision statement for some churches was this:

To know Jesus and make him known

What I am proposing is more like, Know Jesus, Know Each Other, Make Him Known. Without that middle part, the first and last parts probably don’t happen very effectively.
In fact we do have a new mission statement that we unveiled last week. Here it is:

Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ and create community.

Are we community? Do we know each other? I know we believe we are a friendly church, right. But Rick Warren put it well – “People are just looking for a friendly church. They’re looking for a church where they can make friends.”

1. To have community we must learn to know others and make friends.

How do you make friends? You learn a person’s name. You look for the “you too?!” moments when to your delight you discover shared interests. Then you ask more questions and learn more about them. You invite them to spend more time with you. I realize this can’t forced and it can’t be faked. We certainly have barriers to community. We are like little self-contained pods in our homes. We only venture out when we have to – to eat, to shop, to work. And then the rest of the time we watch our television and play with our toys. Toys and television are not usually very conducive to relationships. . But if we would try for community, there will be rewards. Mostly, we don’t try enough.
Look at the New Testament Church. They had obstacles to community as well. It cost something to be a Christian. It cost you family relationships. It was dangerous. That’s why the church went underground in many places. But what didn’t suffer was their togetherness. They had each other and they knew it. Maybe each other was all they had.

“Day by day they spent much time in the temple together, they broke bread in each other’s homes and ate their food with glad and sincere hearts.” Acts 2.46


That word sincere has an interesting origin. It is Latin and the second part, cere means “wax.” In Rome when they sold marble and other kinds of statues, sometimes the seller would try to hide cracks and imperfections in the statues by filling them in with wax. If a potential buyer caught this would lower the value of the statue. So sellers would advertise their statues as sin cere, without wax. What you see is what you get.

The early believers were without wax with each other; they were sincere.
Are we without wax here today? Is what you see what you get?

2. To make community we must be willing to be known.

Community is a two-way street. If you want friends you have to make a persistent effort to be known by people. It’s a curious thing, but sometimes, in anger someone will say, “You don’t know me, you only think you know me!” They say it like they’re proud of that, that they have remained unknown. They wear it like a badge of honor and use it to ward off anyone who might come to close.

Remember, isolation produces decay and death. This is the sickness of our modern and postmodern society. In the words of Robert Putnam, we are a society “bowling alone.” Putnam and others suggest that having healthy relationships increases the quality and length of your life. In fact, by joining a group, Putnam says, you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half. So our new slogan for small groups is gonna be:

Join a group or die.

We need face to face contact with people. And I’m sorry, but email and facebook and texting just isn’t the same. A couple weeks ago I mentioned that a friend of my friend, Jay, died. Myself and Jay’s other close friends were there at the funeral to support and console him, as we should. At the meal afterwards I reveled in the company that was keeping me that day. I realized that here are some of my best friends. Jay, Jim, Trevor know me. They don’t put me down for my faults and they don’t spend much time praising me for accomplishments. The love me for who I am.

I confess things to my friends that I can be set free from sin and weakness. I remember going through a difficult period a few years ago and I told my friend Matt about it. I was worried that he would think less of me when I told him everything. He looked at me and thanked me for trusting him and confiding in him. I felt loved.

“You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.”
Psalm 90.8

Making friends and loving people means risk. You have to get vulnerable. Get busy loving or get busy dying. You know, that’ the alternative.

Remember the words Jesus uses in the Last Day when he divides the people like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats – the cold truth to those who go away to punishment is:

Depart from me, I never knew you.

3. To have community is to reach out to people different than you.

Making friends often means finding someone who has a lot of the same interests and views. But if community is only people who think, act, and look like me, then it’s not really community, not Kingdom community. Remember how the Holy Spirit gives a variety of gifts to a variety of people. Variety and diversity are good. They make for a healthy church. It may be the person who is very different from you that needs your interest and friendship the most.

Jesus had harsh words for the Pharisees because they treated everyone like they were different, meaning inferior. The Pharisees made it hard for everyone else to follow God. When called upon to help, the Pharisees “wouldn’t lift a finger.”

We know better. We exist to serve those not yet part of us. Now, what are you willing to do to know each other and be known?

The Great Connection

Remember that the Pharisees and other interested parties are trying to trap Jesus. They figure since he’s a new Rabbi, he will stumble over a difficult question and condemn himself. Well, this trickery isn’t so well for the Pharisees. They have one last question, after which, as you will see, they give up. Jesus is too good. They’ll have think of another way to stop him.

But the last question they have is, “What is the greatest commandment?”

Before we get to that, let us start with, “What is a commandment?” period.
We understand that it’s something you are supposed to do. Sometimes I notice when I give a commandment to my sons, there seems to be some kind filter or microchip in their brains that automatically translates my “commands” into something else. I hear myself giving commands, but they hear me making suggestions.

And so they look at me like, “thanks for the suggestion dad.” Parents if you’ve ever seen this on your child’s face, that’s what that look means – thanks for the suggestion.

But remember the original question. For a Jew in those times, anything God tells us His Word is a command, especially anything in the first five books of the Bible called the Torah. Torah means “the Way.” They believed the best way to live was how the Torah said to live. Any command (mitzvah) must be obeyed.

Therefore, the question posed of Jesus by the Pharisees was sort of a trick question, beside the point. But here is how Jesus answers:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Jesus implies that if you follow these two commandments you’ll be okay with everything else. These two commandments point to connections. If it weren’t already the name of a cheesy tv dating show, I would call the Love Connection. We’ll call them the Great Connection. We have a vertical connection with God and we have a horizontal connection with other people. Both are crucial and remember, the second is “like unto” or dependent upon the first – love God.

Loving God is never a solitary activity. Even when you are a lone in prayer you are connected through Spirit with the Body of Christ, the Church. Ephesians 3.17 says,

“(may you be strengthened in your inner being) that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”

Folks, love is not a feeling; it’s not a thought. Love is relationship. And in a sense, all of life is relationship. Relationship brings growth and healing. Isolation brings decay and death. There are continual studies being done on the Happiness Factor in peoples lives. You know what the number One indicator for happiness in our lives is? It’s not money, it’s jobs, it’s not education, it’s not power. It is relationship. The more and better quality of our relationships the happier we are likely to be.

If you are a socially isolated individual you are two to five times more likely to die before the average life span. In fact, the relationship factor trumps other factors like general health, whether a person drinks or smokes or comes with a difficult family history. Winston Churchill was a classic example of this. He was a great politician and statemen and knew so many people and by most accounts had a great marriage and many friends. He was also drinker and cigar smoker and loved to eat. He was once asked if he ever exercised, to which he replied:

“The most exercise I get is being a pall bearer at the funerals of my friends who died while exercising.”

To be in relationship with others is literally life-giving and life-receiving. It is a Torah command, “the way to live.”

Proverbs 18.1 goes so far as to say, “The one who lives alone is self-indulgent, showing contempt for the common good.”

Before I get angry emails from many of you who live by yourselves, I think we rightly understand this verse in the context of having meaningful friendships and being connected to our community. We may live by ourselves, but none of us can afford to live alone.

St. Paul says that “he who does not love abides in death.”

Now the Great Connection is not always easy, otherwise everyone would do it and do it easily. To live in community is to live in conflict. Here is a simple picture of this truth. And as you watch, you might think about the classic brother tale of Cain and Abel. This is called “Charlie Bit Me – Again.”

View clip.

This is the human story. Even brothers hurt each other. We all get our feelings hurt. And then we choose to Attack or Withdrawal. Just yesterday I got my feelings hurt at a football game. I felt like I was attacked. And I had a choice to attack back or withdraw. I withdrew. When we are in relationship, connected in community, there is a third way, and that is to engage in love.

Love is not just a feeling or an idea. Love is a force. It is much more powerful than we understand or imagine. To say Love is a force is to say that God is a force, because God is Love. When we love God and we love each other we feed the roots that make us grow.


“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. “ Romans 8.38-39


Over the next month or so we will continue to focus on the Great Connection that we have with God and each other. We will look at the quality of our community together as a church and how we can be connected to our community beyond these walls.

We’ve adopted a new mission statement that reflects this focus for our church:

Our mission is to make disciples for Jesus and create community.

What is going on in our lives right now? How many friends do we have? What is the quality of our connections? Have we invited them to love God with us?

I think back to when we first moved to Duncansville. The boys were much younger and did not know many other kids. Seth wanted to get a neighborhood football team together, with Seth as head coach of course. At the time, Seth only had two other players signed on for his team, his new buddy Ryan, who lived up the street, and Michael his younger brother. I remember overhearing this conversation on our back porch as the three of them made their plans.

Seth: Okay, we’ve got me, you, and Michael. Ryan, you need to get some of your friends to play on our team.

Ryan: I don’t have any other friends.

Michael: (Looking up at Ryan intently) Ryan, God is your friend. God is your friend,
Ryan.

Seth: (Interrupting his brother) Yeah, that’s great, God is your friend. But we need
more football players.


Life is relationships. The two great commandments point to this. And when we’re missing one of these commands, we’re missing both.

On the Eve of Election

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re gonna have a political election soon. There seems to be more passion, at least expressed in media coverage, advertisements, and partisan rhetoric, than I can remember in recent presidential contests. Maybe, with the economy the way it is, people feel there is more at stake even if there is not actually so. Some of you eagerly discuss your positions and your candidate with anyone who will listen, some of you speak guardedly, and others of you can’t wait until November 5 when things will presumably get back to normal.

I find myself somewhere toward the latter of those sentiments. As you may know, I have made it a point in my ministry not to tell others who to vote for, nor to tell you who I am voting for. This reticence on my part is not because preachers and/or religious folk shouldn’t speak their minds. We should. More on that in a few minutes. No, I don’t often talk specifics for two reasons: First of all, I want you all to think for yourselves. Think for yourself and don’t depend on the pastor to tell you who the “real Christian candidate” is. Think for yourself and don’t react against someone else’s position, mine or your neighbors, simply because you don’t like the guy. And secondly, I don’t talk politics because I have bigger fish to fry.

Don’t get me wrong – politics is important.

Politics is the activity of free persons deliberating the question of how they ought to order their life together in relation to the good. Aristotle

So at its heart, politics is akin to ethics. It is about making moral choices for the community. We often disagree over the choices and the right way to order ourselves. But disagreement does not excuse us from the ongoing task, even though there is a part of me that wishes it did.

We live in an earthly kingdom which is informed by the will of God. I say informed. This earthly kingdom is obviously not yet the Kingdom of God that He has in mind. But Scripture points to the goodness of a political order.

“Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar?,” they asked Jesus. They asked maybe for the benefit of those who obviously thought it was not right to give their money to a corrupt foreign oppressor. Others among them thought that if Jesus is Messiah he will overthrow this power in revolution. At the very least, he will tell us to keep our money.

Whose head is this and whose title? Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.

Of course, everything is God’s, as Jesus implies, but the right ordering of this earthly kingdom is through the means of government. The apostle Paul spells this out in more detail to the believers in Rome. These Christians lived in perhaps greater danger of persecution and divided allegiance as believers in the seat of power that was Rome.
But here is what the apostle tells them:

Let every person be subject to governing authorities, for there is no authority except God. . . one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. . . the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them – taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Romans 13.1,5-7

In other words, the authorities are in authority because God allows them to be. When you honor your government you honor God.

Does this mean government is beyond criticism? By no means. Submission in a just society does not mean you cannot criticize and you cannot protest. What it means is that at the end of the day, when all voices have been heard, a right ordering is attempted and all voices, both powerful and meek, agree not to tear the building down upon themselves. A healthy debate and dialogue is essential to this right ordering.

The Scriptures counsel us to a healthy skepticism when it comes to politics.

“Put not your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; and on that very day their plans die with them.” Psalm 146. 3-4

We are reminded that our true hope lies not in these temporary kingdoms, whether they are called capitalist or communist, west or east, superpower or developing power, conservative, liberal or progressive. All these powers will fail. Our true hope lies in a more lasting kingdom.

Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder and cast their cords from us.’

He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision.


Happy are they, says the Psalmist, who take refuge in the Lord.

So what of politics? Stay engaged and make your voice heard. Politics needs you, Christian, more than you need politics. In fact, there is a growing opinion these days that people ought to leave their religion out of any kind of public discussion. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, wrote an article for Newsweek in which he not only mocks the Assembly of God faith of Sarah Palin but suggests that anyone who believes in their religion a little too strongly is unhinged and dangerous, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to others.

People like Harris -atheists, agnostics, and secularists- say that believers ought to leave their religion behind when it comes to politics and any other sort of public discussion, education, sports, you name it. But as Stephen Carter has noted, as a believer, to leave your religion at home is to leave the best part of yourself behind. As we understand ourselves, to not allow our faith to inform public debate is to eliminate our voices from the public discussion. Which, I suppose, suits people like Sam Harris just fine.

One of the driving beliefs of the twentieth century among the academics was that religion would eventually fade away completely. The more prosperous and educated the world became, the less people would believe in God. This belief has now been thoroughly discredited. The people of the world are becoming more religious, not less. But that does not prevent people like Harris from insisting on tolerance for everything and everyone except religious believers. He wishes we would just go away.

Democrats, no matter what you may think of Sarah Palin, when Harris mocks her faith, he is doing you no favors. Likewise, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity may be voices you listen to, but don’t listen uncritically. Jesus will be claimed by no party. He wasn’t in Judea. He won’t be in our time.

It’s up to us to elevate the discussion and point to the issues that matter. The Word that we gather around is the Word of the King. Christians understand themselves to be engaged in the politics of the right ordering of human life together. We should strive to be a zone of truth in a world of political polarities. Politics is also the quest for power and Christians rebuke that by pointing to the One whom all powers must eventually obey.

After this fever of election season is over, I am confident most of us will settle down and remember more important things. We will stop reading the conservative/liberal labels into every little thing. Thank goodness, the most important things we each have to say cannot be fitted into easy political labels. Beginning with, for example, “I love you.” Those who insist on knowing whether that is a liberal or a conservative statement are, after a while, not likely to hear it very often.

When it comes to politics, the poet T.S. Eliot has a wise thought:

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”


So what did I teach you today? Maybe not much. I certainly haven’t answered the question of whom to vote for. I will tell you this. The other night my son asked me who I was voting for. And I will tell you what I told him:

“I’m voting for you, son. I’m voting for you.”