May 8 2005

A Place to Belong

May 8, 2005 Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

As I told you just a minute ago, every image in the Bible of the people of God is as a group. We are saved individually, but we are always saved into this body, into this group. Other images are a building, that we are put in brick by brick. But the main image is this living breathing body of Christ. The idea of being a member of Christ’s body is a Christian idea. We have today many kinds of memberships, don’t we…memberships of clubs, memberships of Wal-Mart, memberships of getting points for airlines. But being a member, originally, is a Christian idea. Many people question that today, is membership really a Christian idea, that we should be members of the church. It’s absolutely true. This idea of membership began in the church because of the idea of being a member of the body. That’s what it meant.

So many today are choosing not to have a family and that’s okay. But, the problem with having a family is that it requires something of us. Because sometimes people want to live their lives without that responsibility, and I’m not judging that choice, but as Christians we don’t have that luxury. We’re meant to be a part of one another. We’re meant to belong. Because we were formed not only for fellowship for God’s family, originally we were formed for fellowship with God. It’s a part of His nature, who He is. We’re told that God is a trinity in the Scriptures. And it’s hard to understand for us, to understand this concept, because we’re saying that God is one being and yet three persons who we name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we don’t understand all that but the wonderful thing about it is that God, even if we were not around, God would not be lonely because He has fellowship within the God-head. But God has said that He wants more fellowship and He has made us for that. And He’s made us for that with Him, but also with one another. But this is where the rubber meets the road for Christians.

You see, you and I were called to belong, not just believe. And that’s the issue I see in the world today among Christians, especially – and maybe it’s because I’m an American – but I see especially it in the American church. Often the emphasis is to believe in Jesus Christ; that’s true, absolutely, you’ll hear it from me. But it doesn’t just end there. You see, we’re not…as I said last week, being a Christian is not just having fire insurance. We don’t just believe so that we will escape hell and just move on about our lives. Being a Christian is much more than about our personal well-being. And that’s the emphasis today, so often. I really hate to criticize other preachers, and I actually like him in a lot of ways, but a new book has appeared by Joel Olsteen, and I know that because I receive occasionally, as a pastor, books to look at and sell for them. I watched Joel preach and he really is pretty good at what he does but his message seems so very shallow sometimes because it is all about your fulfillment. It’s all about how your life can be better and all those things are good as far as they go, they really are. But it’s not just about that. You see God is so much more interested in our character than He is in our comfort. I know that’s hard to hear. God is more interested in your character than He is in your comfort. And I’m not saying God is mean. God’s not mean. But you see, God has a bigger view of life than we do. We’re just trying to get through life as comfortably as possible and as long as possible. God has a bigger view than that. God’s purpose for you is bigger than that. It is to take you and me into eternity. And this life has a lot to do with shaping our character. It has a lot to do with beginning that eternal life. And again, I’m not saying this life is not important…it is vitally important. What we do here is very important. But God’s view is quite a bit bigger. And so very often God brings challenges into our life just to create character.

He also brings the church into our life to create character. And that’s where a lot of people object right here because truthfully church life is not always easy. Believe me, I know. I, as a pastor, know more than most people about the church. And it is a wonderful, wonderful group of people but it can also be a terrible place because in the church you have all the things that are about people magnified sometimes. I was just talking to a man…I spent this week traveling, I had a couple days of Army and then I went to Atlanta to see my youngest niece graduate from Oglethorpe University. I was sitting on the airplane with a man and I was getting to Atlanta really late and I was going to have to take the subway all the way up to North Atlanta to find my folks and he said, “I’ll take you up there.” So he graciously gave me a ride and as we were traveling up, he was telling me about his experience in church and it wasn’t pretty. And so often that happens to people. There are groups of people and churches who are what people call ‘toxic.’ They are just as dysfunctional as they can be. And I always say when people ask “How can the church act that way? They are so full of hypocrites, they are this, that, and the other.” And I say, “Well, what do you expect when you get a bunch of sinners together?” There are churches that are much worse than others and sometimes we need to leave a church and go to another church.

But I would just simply ask you, how many people here have a dysfunctional family? I’m not asking you to raise your hand because all of you should, actually. You see, all families on a scale of one to ten, we all have our moments, don’t we? I just spent some time with mine and you know, we just sit around and look at each other and we are all, including myself, somewhat dysfunctional. We all hurt each other, we all do wrong things, we all need to forgive, we all need to move on and we love each other anyway. And that’s what the church is all about. When I was preaching for this church, what they do to you, they take you to another church and you preach for the committee. You are off-site but in a church setting. The pastor of that particular church in St. Paul was a man from North Carolina and he also gone to Duke and we had some connections there. And I kind of looked at him and said, “From one southerner to another, what are the people like in Minnesota?” And he looked at me and said something that I already knew, but he just reminded me of something, he said, “Folks are folks.” It’s so true. Many of you have traveled all over the world. I have had some privileges of being in a lot of different places and I have found that color of skin might be quite different, our eyes might be different, clothes might be different, cultures are certainly different, but no matter where you go in the world, folks are folks, good and bad. We have the same kind of things, the same kinds of desires, everyone is a sinner in need of grace, and yet we are all created in the image of God as well. There is no perfect place, no perfect place whatsoever. It’s kind of like a man once said, “As soon as I find a perfect church, I’ll join it.” His friend said, “Well, there are three reasons why that will never happen. First of all, a perfect church would never accept you or me. Secondly, you and I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a perfect church. And thirdly, as soon as you and I joined it, it would no longer be perfect.”

I love what Paul says, he says – and again, this is Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase – “As living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace it is important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God.” You know, that’s so important. We forget it all the time. Whenever anyone says, “Oh those churches are full of hypocrites,” it’s almost like they are saying, “I’m better than they are. I don’t want to be among those kinds of people.” Well, it’s because we are misinterpreting. You know when we go out into the world we should not be saying or implying that we are members of the church and therefore we are better than others. It’s not that way at all. It’s because we are sinners saved by grace…one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread, all those images. It’s about grace and learning about grace as part of the church. God is here to teach us character but He is also here to give us so many wonderful things.

Now I realize in some sense this is an ideal, but it is something we strive for. In a church is where we find this thing called koinonia – biblical fellowship. It’s not just having dinner together, although that is often what it is. It’s not just having coffee between services. It’s not just joining the softball team, though there is nothing wrong with any of that at all. It’s getting to know people, warts and all, and learning how to love them. I have a relative and this relative was a very difficult person. This relative was very close to me and I remember praying to God, asking Him how to deal with this person. I didn’t really hear a voice but it kind of came to me, it said “You need to learn how to love somebody who is not very loveable because that is what I do for you.” And that’s a lot of what being in a family is all about, isn’t it…this idea of fellowship. And we strive for and we don’t always get there, we strive for this koinonia. But it’s also a group of people where we can truly find mercy, at least it should be. All of us on a scale of one to ten, some are better than others, but we are all in need of mercy. We are all in need of having people who love us, warts and all, because that is a very powerful thing when you know somebody knows you and still loves you. The church is also a place to find help when we really are in need…when we’ve gotten that phone call that tells us that the cancer we have isn’t curable, when we’ve had a grandson or a son or a daughter die or run off, when we just can’t cope. Church is meant to be a place like that. It’s also meant to be a place where we do find maturity. None of us will find maturity unless we are in relationships. I really believe that. It’s okay to go off by yourself, it’s okay to pray, some people are called to be hermits or monks or that sort of thing, but in most cases we only find maturity in relationships because relationships are messy. And learning how to love those who are not loveable is part of being a Christian.

Being a member of the church is, I think, God’s greatest privilege. To be a part of His family and, in some sense, it’s even more privileged than being a part of our regular families. And here is the reason, it’s because this family lasts forever. My family on my mother’s side was from Memphis, Tennessee and my great, great, great – I’m not sure how many greats it was back – owned a plantation in Memphis. And that plantation actually encompassed a good deal of what is now downtown Memphis. Now that doesn’t make me anybody, believe me, because it is all gone. I kind of wonder what happened. They obviously sold it all off, it has all disappeared. The land, the money – if there was any – the only thing that I have left in Memphis is 35 grave plots in a cemetery. He obviously expected to have a big family. And oh yes, there are two streets; one is named after my grandfather and the other, right next to it, is named after my grandmother. I have some pride in that, I didn’t know them. But that inheritance has disappeared. That inheritance, all that they were – and I don’t have any people left on my mother’s side, there are just a few of us – it has all disappeared…but not with God’s family. No matter what happens in this life, we may have cousins galore and big families or we may have just a few, we may have a heritage of this place or that place and that’s okay. But all those things disappear in the end, but not with God. No eye has seen, no tongue confessed, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. God’s family lasts forever. And that is what we are called to be…a fellowship, koinonia, together, a body of Christ. I want to encourage you for you to be more committed to this body. Don’t be just a spectator. Be involved, in whatever way God has called you to be. We are all different parts of Christ’s body, we all have different gifts. But we share in the same fellowship, one faith, one communion, and one Lord. Let us pray.