Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Establish Community

by Dave Wilkinson

Philippians 2:1-8, Ephesians 4:1-7

March 11, 2001

We don't all watch the same television shows. We don't all read the same books.

But every once in awhile a show comes on or a book appears that anyone who isn't living in a bubble knows at least something about. The show "Survivor" is a good example.

You at least are aware of the premise. 16 people are put into a rough environment -- an island off Asia, deep in the Australian outback, the check out line at Costco. 15 end with their torches snuffed. One walks out with a million dollars.

For the first part of the game, the contestants are divided into two teams. These teams live together, work together, and compete against the other team together.

It sounds like community. But it's not. Because it soon becomes clear that the survivors are consumed with looking out for themselves. Any spirit of cooperation exists ultimately for the benefit of the individual. "As long as I benefit, I will cooperate." A person is treated like a Ziploc bag -- valuable for use but disposable.

This is why the participants "sleep with one eye open." For each episode, one group or the other gathers for tribal council where each person places a secret ballot to send one fellow castaway home and away from eligibility to win the coveted million dollar prize.

As they speak with each other before voting, some selfishly give reasons for why the group should allow them to stay: "You need me because ," "I'm the only one who can ," "I'm worth more to this group than " As the votes are tallied, the group becomes very serious as each one, unable to trust the others, wonders if this is the day "they will send me home." They are always on the defensive.

Life on Survivor is not really about surviving the harsh living conditions as much as it is about surviving the harshness of other inhabitants. Even though the tribes work together to complete various tasks and initiatives, the celebratory high fives exchanged after achieving success are only temporary. Beneath the facade of group unity lies the gnawing feeling of alienation and aloneness.

Walt Miller, of the Center for Youth-Parent Understanding writes, "At it's roots, Survivor isn't about entertainment, it's about who we are a world full of empty and lonely people crying out for redemption. Our spirits hunger so deeply for fulfillment that we selfishly claw and scratch past others to grab the "prize" that we think will satisfy our hunger. In the end, it's only a mirage that leaves us feeling emptier and more alone than we did before.

Miller continues, "Our kids are growing up in a "Survivor" world with a selfish survival mentality. More and more are casualties of this sad and sorry world view." (The events this last week at Santana High in Santee illustrate this. No one leaves high school today without some kind of scar.) "As parents, pastors, youth workers and educators, we need to look them squarely in the eye and tell and show them that there is a better way — the way of selflessness and servanthood that God is calling them to live."

What we need, what our children they need, is a new mind set toward life. Paul calls it the mind of Christ. What Paul is talking about is not an intellectual system on how to deal with conflicts or a manual for church fights. Instead, Paul exhorts the church to look at what Christ did when "He laid aside His rights as God's equal, emptied Himself, and lived the life of a servant in our midst."

What Paul is saying is that the next time we find ourselves squaring off in a competitors stance, we should switch to a servant's posture. This is what Paul calls the mind of Christ a posture of kneeling and washing one another's feet.

I love the way Eugene Peterson translates Philippians 2:1-8 in his "The Message": "If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if His love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care — then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself He became human He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless obedient death and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion."

Survivor or servant? Which are you? And what do you want to become? How you answer that question will ultimately say a lot about our church and your role in it.

Some years back, Pepper Rodgers was in the middle of a terrible season as football coach at UCLA. It even got so bad that it upset his home life. He recalls, "My dog was my only friend. I told my wife that a man needs at least two friends and she bought me another dog."

Well God wants more for us than more dogs -- as loving and accepting as dogs can be. God wants us to live in true, Spirit-driven community with each other. This is what Jesus showed us.

Mark records that Jesus "appointed twelve, to be with Him, and He sent them out to preach." With a whole world to reach, Jesus separated twelve people and devoted much of His three year ministry to their training. They were to continue the work He had begun.

What were they learning that would equip them to carry on Jesus' work? Did they have homiletics, hermeneutics and speech courses? Philosophy of religion? Systematic theology? Anthropology? Sociology? Certainly all of these things were implicit in their hearing Jesus teach and learning of the God He came to reveal.

But most of all they were learning how to live together, how to support one another, how to submit to one another, how to serve one another, how to defer to each other, encourage each other, pray for each other, love each other, how to not try to vote each other out. After Pentecost, they suddenly became "members of one another" and as 1 Corinthians states it, were "arranged in the body as God chose." These individual disciples were drawn into a supernatural unity by the filling of the Holy Spirit.

For many Christians the issue of community is seen as an option for those who are gregariously inclined. For others it will be achieved when all see the light and return to the one true church — which is usually whatever church they happen to be a part of. For others it is a matter of common sense pragmatism -- all Christians should come together and if theology or matters of worship are stumbling blocks, then reduce these to the lowest common denominator that will obtain agreement.

But all these approaches are at complete odds with the gospel. The Bible declares that the church is a people brought together by a sheer act of grace on God's part.

As C.S. Lewis writes in an essay of Christian apologetics, "One of the great demonstrations of the truth of Christianity is the way it breaks down barriers that it takes a convert from Central Africa and teaches him to obey an enlightened universal ethic and takes a twentieth century academic prig from England (that's Lewis' self-definition) and tells him to go to a mystery and eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord. The two have little to draw them together but they are brothers. They are brought together as a gift of God's spirit".

Paul tells us that we do not create unity in the church. It is God's gift. It is our role to maintain the unity that has been given to us. That means that if we find ourselves out of fellowship with anyone or any group by our own fault, we are not called to negotiate. We are called to repent.

In the face of fragmentation, Paul calls us to be "eager or diligent to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." To be eager is to go after something happily and with great energy. To maintain something means to give it the care it needs to keep going.

Our eagerness should grow out of the fact that God has made us participants in His great project of reconciling the world to Himself. God's goal is the unification of all humankind. A fundamental way in which we can work with Him is by displaying a sample of that deep oneness that God intends everyone to know.

For me, the ability to do this grows out of the recognition that God chose me to be a part of His church. I am a part of the church not by my choice but by His. I continue in the church not at my discretion but at His insistence. For me to cut myself off from fellowship with other believers would be for me to move myself totally out of the will of God. For me to try to snuff their torch is sin. These are God's people and therefore they are mine.

One of my favorite words in the New Testament is homothumadon. Some words should never be translated, and this is one of them. If you translate them, they fall flat. Homothumadon is one of those words.

Homothumadon is usually translated "with one accord" or "of one mind." In the book of Acts, after Jesus' return to heaven, we read that the followers of Jesus were gathered waiting for the promise of the Spirit, gathered "in one mind" homothumadon. At Pentecost, they were gathered in the upper room homothumadon all of one accord. When the great Pentecost experience was just completed and the church was gathered and they were distributing food, praying daily, and breaking bread, they were again homothumadon. When Peter and John were in prison and delivered by a miracle, everyone gathered around them and prayed, homothumadon. It happened again at the Great Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. The word is used in conspicuous places in the early church as they were responding or being present to what God was doing.

"Of one mind" is too tame a translation for this word. The Greek prefix Homo means "the same" and thumas is a strong emotion. Usually it is a violent anger, except it is not used in a negative way in the Book of Acts.

What Luke is saying by his repetitive use of the word is that there was something wonderful burning within those early Christians, drawing them together of the same mind and spirit. It was something similar to the energy of anger, but not anger. Something different. This is why translation doesn't work on this word.

Now usually when we talk about unanimity or being of one mind, it's something that a committee does late at night when you're tired and you get a unanimous vote, because everyone is nodding off and the nods get counted as "yeses." That's not homothumadon. Homothumadon has got fire in it. It's the passion of a consensual, unanimous response to something God does. You don't work it up. It is always dependent on something God has just done or is about to do or you are participating in. It is not something you get out of conflict resolution or arbitration. It's fire.

I suspect that this is the kind of church we want to be a part of. But if we are going to be part of this kind of community, it also means that it will be part of us. And this means that we can't act like marbles.

As Ann Ortland writes in her book Up With Worship, "Christians can be grouped into two categories marbles and grapes. Marbles are 'single units that don't affect each other except in collision.' Grapes, on the other hand, mingle juices: each one is a 'part of the fragrance' of the church body."

The early Christians didn't bounce around like loose marbles, ricocheting in all directions. Picture them as a cluster of ripe grapes, squeezed together by persecution, bleeding and mingling into one another."

Ortland writes: "It's sad to think of how many Christians today are missing that kind of closeness. Sermons and songs, while uplifting and necessary, provide only part of a vital church encounter. We need involvement with others too. If we roll in and out of church each week without acquiring a few grape juice stains, we really haven't tasted the sweet wine of fellowship."

I read an account of a session meeting at a Presbyterian Church that demonstrates this staining in action -- and the powerful transition from marbledom to grapedom.

The Pastor asked one of the elders to lead in prayer. The elder paused for a moment in embarrassment and said, "Pastor, before I pray I need to clear something up. I have been trying to knife one of the men here in the back for a long time because of a wrong I thought he did to me. I have been his constant secret enemy, and I must ask his forgiveness before I can pray."

He stepped over and took another elder by the hand. To his surprise, the other elder said in turn, "And I want to say that I've been talking about you behind your back and saying things about you that aren't true. It was an unchristian thing to do. I want to quit trying to get revenge."

Each gripped the other's hand and then there was a long time of prayer. In this prayer, confessions were made around the circle and words of praise were spoken that had, before, died on their lips. Hearts were cleansed, and accumulated anger washed away.

At the close of the meeting, the clerk of session said to the Pastor, "There's not much to record in the minutes tonight." The Pastor replied, "Just put down, 'They loved each other! That's the most important thing we could have done!'"

That's the most important thing any of us can do.

Yes, we'll come out of life it with some juice stains. We might not get to be the last survivor. We might not get the million dollars. But we will get the very best thing God has for us here which is each other.