Galatians 3:26-29
If you take I64 west of Shelbyville
for about 160 miles you will come to the community of New Harmony, Indiana. Have any of you been to New
Harmony? New Harmony was the site
of two attempts at a utopian society in the early 19th century.
In 1814 a group led by a man named
George Rapp settled there, and, believing that the second coming of Jesus was
immanent, sought to achieve Christian perfection in all areas of their daily
living. The community of New
Harmony was sold in 1825 to Robert Own, who also desired to establish a utopian
community, but his so-called Community of
Equality dissolved only two years later, in 1827.
John Calvin, the famous reformer of
the 16th century, sought to build a utopian society in Geneva,
Switzerland, but a man named Michael Servetus would probably have argued that
it was anything but a utopia, as Calvin had him arrested and burned at the
stake in 1553.
In the 60s, a time of great
idealism and hope, there was a movement that led to the creation of communes,
which, in their own way, were attempts at creating a utopian society. Some of which are still in existence,
such as The Farm, in Summertown, Tennessee (http://thefarmcommunity.com/index.html) and Jesus People, USA, in Chicago (http://jpusa.org/).
There
have always been, I suppose, a quest to build the perfect community, a place
where individuals and families can live in complete harmony, but it never quite
seems to work. Our own heritage as
Disciples churches has proved that somewhat. A movement that sought to unite churches together and to
heal the denominational divisions led not to unity, but to the creation of
three new and distinct groups of churches.
The word
community is quite the buzzword in
our society, perhaps because there seems to be so little of it remaining
in our society. But a genuine sense of community seems
to be lacking, doesn’t it?
Think for a moment about what comes to mind when you hear
the word community.
And what would be the marks of a Biblical community? What
does a Biblical community look like?
How does a Biblical community act?
What are the values of a Biblical community?
Building a sense of
community is one of the most important concepts that we find throughout the
Scriptures. Old Testament Israel,
for instance, was a founded upon several principles, one of which was that they
were called by God to form a community that would reflect his values.
There
are many Scripture passages that teach us about community, and the one I chose
for our text this morning is Galatians 3:26-29 –
26 For you are all sons of God through
faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For all of you who were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all
one in Christ Jesus.
29 And if you belong to Christ, then you
are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.
How
do we develop a sense of community, a sense of connectivity, in such fractious
times?
A Biblical community is not a place of
perfection.
We are a messed-up group of people. What a glorious, wonderful mess we are! But who isn’t? Find me a group of people anywhere that
isn’t full of a mixture of sinners, hypocrites, and maybe a few saints thrown
in for good measure.
Some people have the
idea that the church should be a place where people always get along, where
everyone is happy, where there are no problems, where everyone’s lives are
perfectly together. We need to pop
a hole in that balloon. I don’t
know how that idea ever got started.
We are not a gathering of the perfect, but a gathering of those who are
wounded, those who are imperfect, those who are nursing hurts and failures,
those who are beset by doubts and worries and fear, those who struggle in so
many ways.
The Scriptures
certainly prove that the gathering of God’s people is never an exercise in
perfection. In I Corinthians 11:18
Paul writes these words – I hear that
when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you. Talk
about an understatement. The
church at Corinth was a mess.
There were enough problems in that church to be evenly distributed to
many other churches and still have some left over. Why was it a mess?
Because there were people there, and that’s what happen with people! In
fact, here is an interesting point to consider – much of the writings of Paul
found their genesis in addressing problems. The only people in the Scriptures who believe they had it
all together were the scribes and the Pharisees, and they were deluded into thinking
they had it all together.
Read through the Old
Testament and you’ll find plenty of stories of people with problems, failures,
and struggles. You’ll find the
same in the New Testament. The
disciples didn’t always get along.
The disciples didn’t always reflect the kind of thinking and actions
that Jesus taught them to exhibit.
A Biblical community is one that extends
beyond normal human barriers and division.
How many of you remember the consolidation of
school systems? Do you remember
how painful it was to communities?
My home county consolidated in 1973. I remember so many of the parents talking about their fear
of violence in the schools because of the competition between the different
communities throughout the county.
They were worried that the kids from Wellsburg and Follansbee wouldn’t
get along. They worried about what
would happen when kids from Weirton were thrown into the mix. And those poor students from the little
community of Bethany – they would be overwhelmed by it all! None of this happened, of course, and
the fears seem silly now, but consolidation did change the communities a great
deal, because the loss of neighborhood schools was a loss of something that
held together a community.
When you cross a county line or enter a
different community you travel across boundaries that in various ways remind us
that as people we are separate and different from one another. Things can change a great deal in such
a short distance.
I realize I’m a bit of a broken record on this
theme of overcoming barriers and divisions, especially of late, but the more I
read the Scriptures the more this theme jumps out at me. Perhaps it’s because of the times in
which we live, but I seem this theme pervading almost all of the Scriptures.
Take some time and read the second chapter of
the book of Acts. In the first
verses of that chapter we read of the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit
was poured out on the church.
Verse six tells us that all of the people gathered together that day
heard the gospel in their own language.
If you read verses 9-13 you find there were a lot of different
nationalities gathered in that one place.
That’s a lot of languages. I was eating lunch recently at a
restaurant and found it interesting that I could hear four different languages being
spoken in that one place – there was Chinese, Spanish, English, and
Kentuckian. And Kentuckian is the
one that was hardest for me understand!
(I know, I’m from West Virginia, so what right do I have to say anything
about how people talk)
Listen to what the people ask in verse 12 – What
does this mean? It meant
that God was undoing what took place at the Tower of Babel where people were
separated by language. God was
communicating something very powerful – while human communities are defined by
boundaries, his kingdom transcends human boundaries. There may be differences of language among God’s people, but
those language differences do not divide us into separate communities.
Verse 28 of our
text this morning reminds us there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is
neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all
one in Christ Jesus.
The early church struggled to develop a sense
of community that transcended boundaries.
As people from the Gentile world began pouring into the church there
were some who were uncertain about this influx of new and different
people. Even Peter and Paul had
quite a disagreement over how to deal with these very different people (When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to
his face, because he was clearly in the wrong – Galatians 2:11). The point is this – when we begin
drawing boundaries within the kingdom of God about who should be in and who should
be out we destroy the sense of Biblical community. Biblical community exists when boundaries between people are
removed and all become one people under the name of Jesus.
God, very purposely, I believe, brings together
people across human boundaries of language and geography and outlook to
demonstrate that a Biblical community is a gathering together of people under
his name, restoring a community that has been broken and shattered since the
Fall.
A Biblical community is a faithful community.
Paul sometimes addresses his letters to the saints
in a particular place. How would
you define a saint? Most people
think of a saint as someone who is extremely righteous, perhaps the closest a
human being can get to perfection.
Did you know that’s really not the definition Paul gives of a saint? Paul
often used the word saint to designate someone who
is faithful (see Romans 1:7, I Corinthians 1:2, II Corinthians 1:2 – the people
at Corinth were certainly not saintly in the way they lived – Ephesians 1:1,
Philippians 1:1, and Colossians 1:1).
If you are a saint it doesn’t mean you are more righteous or better than
other people, but that you are faithful.
And it means someone who is so faithful they will remain so even if it
leads to the loss of their life.
Think of the saints in your life.
There have certainly been quite a few in mine.
The early church was an extremely faithful
group of people, faithful to God and faithful to one another. It is to faithfulness that God calls us
and that we are to call one another.
We live in a world where the idea of faithfulness is a dying
concept. Think of the power the
body of Christ can demonstrate by faithfulness – faithfulness to God and
faithfulness to one another.
If you read the second chapter of II
Corinthians (verses 1-11) you find Paul pouring out his heart to that
church. Evidently there was a
problem with someone there and it had caused quite a division among the people
and Paul writes passionately about the need to affirm their love for one
another. Near the end of that chapter
he writes this in verse 15 – For we are a fragrance of Christ to
God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. Paul says our faithfulness to one
another is not only an example to one another, but even more importantly, to
those who are outside of the church.
A Biblical community is a place to where
people can come home.
My hometown is Wellsburg, West Virginia. It is the second oldest town on the
Ohio River and is due west of Pittsburgh about 25 miles. I wanted to leave Wellsburg from the
time I was young. For most of my
life I have not spoken kindly about my hometown. Perched between the river bank and a mountain it was a place
covered with the soot and grime of steel mills all of my growing up years. Like many young people, I wanted to get
out of my hometown at the first opportunity. During my high school years, as the steel industry started
to collapse, Wellsburg – and the surrounding area – began a long economic
downturn that has resulted in a sad decline of the towns. Watching the town decline just made me
more certain that I wanted to leave.
In more recent years, I have come to realize that I have been too hard
on my hometown. Wellsburg is a
part of me because it is the community that helped to raise me, to influence
me, to educate me, and where a lot of people have loved me all of my life. Though I have been gone from Wellsburg
for a long time and only make it back a few days each year, there are people
there who still love me and, I’m convinced, always will. It is, and always will be, in many ways
my community.
We need a place to which we can return. For some, it is our hometown; for
others, it is the family home place.
Several years after my father passed away, my mom sold the little farm
where I grew up. I vividly
remember my final walk through the house, a walk that I somewhat regret
now. The house was empty, except
for a few tools that still remained in my dad’s garage workshop. As I walked through each room of the
house memories came rushing back to me and overwhelmed me. My bedroom, where I would play my guitar
and listen to records; the living room, where my family celebrated many
holidays; and the kitchen, where we all gathered around the table for many
meals and for late night talk and card-playing sessions when we all came home
on breaks from school. It was hard
to think that though I could continue to visit with my family, there would no
longer be the same home place to which I could return.
We need a place where we can call home, a place
to which we can return. There is,
deep within the heart and soul of each of us, a longing for a place to which we
can return. When I speak at
funerals and memorial services I often speak about the longing we have for “home,”
for that time of being reunited with those who have gone before. This is part of the longing we have
because of the God-created need for community.
Thank God for this community of believers at
First Christian Church!
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