Real Community without Gestapo Deacons

As we grow as a congregation one of the things we have to work on is growing as a community, as a body, as a family. Paul says in Romans 12 that we who are many are “one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” We are already at a size which allows you to slip in and out without everyone noticing. You may even miss a week or two, and many of us may not realize it. And of course this doesn’t mean that we want to take attendance and send Gestapo-deacons out to check on where you were and what you were doing. But we are called to be members of one another. Paul says that there should be no schism in the body, but “members should have the same care for one another, and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.” If we are not involving ourselves in one another’s lives, if we are not acting as though we are “members of one another” then we will not be able to suffer when one us suffers, we will not be able to rejoice when one of us is honored. In the coming weeks and months and years, that is what we are working toward. We want to do that as neighborhoods and parishes, as families and friends, and broadly as a church and in community with the city we’ve been called to. This is what it means to be in Christ; you are in Christ with a pile of other people. You have been baptized into a new family, a new kingdom, a new world, and believing this means living like this is true. In your own homes, you don’t just show up for dinner and leave. Being a family, being a body, means cultivating life together, becoming members of one another so that we can rejoice together and so that we can suffer together. Some of you are already working at this and this is not meant to overlook that; well done and keep up the good work. Others of you would like more community life and aren’t sure what to do. Well here’s your encouragement to get started. Jesus invites us to his house, to his table week after week, and he sends you out into the world and says go and do likewise. You have houses, you have tables, you have food and fellowship to share. Don’t hold back; get busy. And some of you don’t practice hospitality and are not cultivating community, but God has invited you in. He saw you in all your misery, all your sin, all your failures, and he said, come in and welcome. Jesus serves you at his table, and Jesus calls you to greatness. And he says that greatness in the kingdom is serving. Greatness is serving at a table.