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Forming community

Matt 18: 15 – 22

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday afternoon, 04 Jun, 2006 (Combined Churches service)

IN JUNE 1990, as Editor of The Australian Baptist magazine, I produced a Pentecost issue. I suggested, based on a rough poll, that 10% of Baptist pastors had Charismatic leanings.

Three Fundamentalist Baptist churches threatened to leave the State Union of Churches. The passage we have read would have been a good guide to how this crisis should have been handled.

What do we pray?

The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship, the community, of the Holy Spirit be with us all?

We need that Fellowship of the Holy Spirit!

Every denomination, and every church, has its problems. The passage in Matt 18 which we just read points a way forward for us.

This passage is not just a way to sort out difficult church members. When this church was going through its own bad period, I began to understand that this passage is about community and not simply about fixing a problem.

Let’s focus on two verses.

The first is verse 17:

¹⁷ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

The second is verse 20:

²⁰ For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

Verse 17 says that discipline matters affect the entire church and ultimately have to be dealt with on a whole–of–church basis if they can’t be resolved face–to–face. And verse 20 specifies that a gathering of as few as two Christians has the authority of Jesus, because Jesus himself is with them.

I believe that the critical issue for the entire Christian church today is to find community, both within our various congregations and between them. I believe it can be done, and it is my constant prayer that it will happen soon. If there is one thing we pray for every Sunday and every Wednesday night in our services and our prayer times, it is for revival in our churches.

God plans for us to find community, and I urge us all to place seeking community among our highest priorities. Revival is the creation of true community centred on Jesus the Lord.

How good and pleasant it is, when brothers live together in unity,

says the Psalmist.

We Baptists began with a passion for community at a time when State Churches were either politicised or filled with people just being nice to each other. We said that community demands intentionality. Not in those words, of course. But that is what lies behind our emphasis on baptism of believers. You don’t just happen to be a member in a local fellowship. You have to join. You are not born a Baptist.

You know that I am not boasting or saying that we Baptists are better than anyone else.

And I can be honest and say that we modern Baptists are not experts at living what we profess.

But the goals have been set, and we do wrong to neglect them.

So let’s define community. There’s a slack idea that community is an alternative word for society. If I am in community with you, that means that what is essential to your life — your self–concept, your goals — that vis the same as what is essential to my life, my goals and my self–concept. And it means that we know it and that we work together to achieve those things.

Do we create community by merely spending time together in the one place? You can work day after day in a factory or offce and barely know the person two benches away. We are all Marrickville L G A residents, but does that makes a true community of us?

What about sharing a confession or a creed? Over the centuries, churches which were virtually at war with one another recited the same creed and followed the same liturgy every Sunday. So are common rituals the key to community?

Let’s go beyond all these superficialities. Let’s realise that, much as we desire community, we rarely achieve it, because we do not make it our goal.

But life is full of examples of how it works.

Were you glued to the TV, following the efforts to rescue those two miners trapped in the Beaconsfield gold mine?

What we were watching was community.

All those people, for a period of two weeks, had a greater goal than mere enjoyment of life. They were focused. Their life’s mission for the time being was to rescue those miners. That is why we love watching rescues: it is partly because we love seeing that community is possible.

We sing in choirs, not only because we like to make music, but because, for the duration, that choir is a community, focused on making music.

God’s plan is that his people should be an eternal community, focused on giving him glory through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The psychiatrist, M Scott Peck, suggests that community is formed through four steps.

First, there is pseudo–community, a false sense of community, based on being nice to each other.

Next comes the pain of chaos. The masks begin to fall; the structures and forms which once restricted us begin to crumble.

Third is brokenness. We give up our old ways, we abandon our small ambitions, we yield to one another.

The outcome, if we go all that way, is true community.

It is exactly the process that the old–time revivalists discovered when revivals took place. Whether you are thinking of a St Francis or a Savonarola, whether you are considering John Wesley or maybe the Catholic Pentecostal movement at Ann Arbour University in the late 1970s, it was always the same.

The revivalist came to where the believers were nice to each other, and respectable, but the church was dead.

As the revivalist preached, even the leading people in the church became enraged. Conflict flared in the church and sometimes even violence against the revivalist.

Then, suddenly, a great sadness, a repentant and God–fearing attitude, would break out. Strong men were found weeping with sorrow at the wrong they had done. People confessed sins long forgotten. The congregation was welded together into a unit of sinners saved by grace.

Can it happen? I have seen it happen.

Our passage today is about that kind of process. It is about dealing with the falsity, dealing with the conflicts, and coming to where Christ is clearly revealed among his people.

When we — God’s people — are confronted with our sin, when we truly repent and come together under the headship of Christ our Lord, then Jesus is manifested in the midst of his people. Two or three or more gathered in his name become a locus of his presence.

Some years ago, Elaine Downing spoke to me about her vision of the Christians in Marrickville becoming one in response to Jesus’ prayer, “That they may be one...”

I said, “Talk to your priest about that vision!” I was glad at how Fr Aiden, Fr Tom and others have stood by her in aiming for that goal. The church needs unity of heart.

I had an experience once.

I was on holidays from the church, but we were delayed in leaving for the South Coast. So I was actually around for the first Sunday after Christmas.

I decided to attend the Uniting Church.

As I stood on the step talking to Russell Davis, — the minister there at the time — a young Muslim woman I know walked past. She was so surprised to see the Baptist pastor at the Uniting Church that she couldn’t take her eyes off me. She wasn’t watching where she was going, and nearly fell over on a rough patch of the footbath.

When God’s people truly come together in love — not necessarily in the same organisation, but definitely in the love of God manifested through Jesus — then the world will fall on its collective face in shock and awe at what Jesus has done!

It is vital that we deal with dividing issues.

Once we had some people at one of our monthly lunches, and soon both turned to slagging Catholics. I had to rebuke them.

If they had continued, I would have had to bring in other leaders of the church so that we could talk it through together. And, if that had failed to work, I would have needed to involve the whole church and ask them to leave. Don’t bad mouth other Christians in this church!

Sometimes, if we want that unity of the Spirit, we will have to exercise discipline among our own people to stem any slander or verbal abuse or even the shunning of those we don’t entirely agree with.

At the same time, we will need to confront and deal with those issues that arise between us from time to time.

Many different church groups are consulting with each other to determine exactly where we agree and where we don’t agree, and to decide where we can work together and where we can’t.

Some people say that that is disloyalty to the gospel.

I say that it is disloyalty to the gospel not to work through the issues. Jesus told us to go to our brother and declare the problem, and try to sort it out. To refuse an invitation to do exactly that is to refuse to obey the Lord who gave the command. It is that simple.

Psalm 133, which I referred to earlier, says,

^{PS 133:1} How good and pleasant it is

when brothers live together in unity!

^{PS 133:2} It is like precious oil poured on the head,

running down on the beard,

running down on Aaron’s beard,

down upon the collar of his robes.

Oil in the Bible is a symbol of the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

When we deal with the relational issues, when we come to a degree of unity, we are like Jesus, our great High Priest, anointed with the oil of the Spirit, ready to do all God’s work.

By his Spirit, we discover that Christ truly is in our midst.

And great glory comes to the triune God.

Let’s seek community through Christ and pay the price!

And may the splendour of God blaze out from the people of God, as from a lamp set on a hill!

Amen.

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)