The Perfect Bond

       Jerusalem ’s Church of the Holy Sepulchure is built over the cave where Jesus was buried.  That’s what ancient tradition tells us.  But three years ago this church became the scene of ugly fighting between the monks who run it.  The conflict began when a Coptic monk sitting on the rooftop decided to move his chair into the shade. 

       Ethiopian and Coptic monks have been arguing over the rooftop of the Church of the Holy Sepulchure for centuries. The Sharks and the Jets have nothing on these guys.  In 1752 the Turkish Sultan decided to make peace.  He issued an edict declaring which part of the church belongs to which Christian group.  The Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Copts, and Ethiopians all got their turf.  But conflict over the church remains.

       The Ethiopians had controlled the rooftop.  But they lost control to the Copts when they were hit by a disease epidemic in the 19^th century.  Then in 1970 the Ethiopians regained control when the Coptic monks were absent for a short period.  They have been squatting there ever since, with at least one Ethiopian monk always remaining on the roof to assert their rights.  In response a Coptic monk also lives on the roof to maintain the claim of the Copts.

       In July 2002, the Coptic monk moved his chair into the shade.  Harsh words led to pushes.  Pushes led to shoves until an all out brawl was underway.  This   included throwing chairs and iron bars.  At the end of the fight, 11 of the monks were injured.  One monk lay unconscious in hospital.  Another had a broken arm.

       We don’t have those kind of turf issues in our church – except for a couple of crotchety old guys who think certain chairs in certain rows are somehow “theirs.”  But there are always issues.

       How do we handle conflict in the church—especially in a church where there are so many changes going on and so many decisions to be made that there are ample opportunities for people in conflict to come into contact with each other and generate  sparks?

       Ben Patterson, former pastor of the Irvine Presbyterian Church, wrote: “We Americans have been told “ad nauseum” that we live in the “now” generation.  At McDonald’s we buy fast foods and at Sears we buy microwave ovens or television sets whose weekly programs pose great human dramas, dilemmas and mysteries, all to be solved in thirty to ninety minutes—excluding commercial breaks.  To all this the media adds its weekly opinion polls, and 45 second “in-depth” analyses designed to evoke instant responses and quick decisions.

       “Behold now the local church with its garden variety mixture of sinners saved by grace, all representing different needs and points of view that must be brought into the harmony of the Spirit and the unity of the body of Christ through committees, commissions, boards, and sessions.  Real-life conflicts here, as elsewhere, are not solved by just saying, “charge it”, nor will they be solved in ninety minutes.  On the contrary,” Patterson observes, “such a mentality ensures that conflicts will not be solved, but will be intensified.  The perseverance needed to solve differences will be just another irritant in an already irritating situation.

       “Many American Christians”, Patterson continues, “respond to this situation by loving it or leaving it, shutting up or going to another church; or better yet, starting up their own church. 

         I like the story about the guy who is marooned on a desert island. When the rescuers finally arrive they discover that the castaway has managed to adapt to his environment.  He has built a small hut and also two large shelters.  The rescuers ask, “What are these buildings for?”  The man replies, “Well that’s my home, that’s my church, and that’s the church I used to go to.”

       We need a new mind set toward conflict to cure us of this fickleness. Paul calls it the mind of Christ.  What he is referring to is not an intellectual system on how to deal with conflicts or a manual for church fights.  Instead, he exhorts the church to look at what Christ did when, as Paul writes in Philippians 2: “He laid aside his rights as God’s equal, emptied himself, and lived the life of a servant in our midst.”

       Paul is saying that the next time we find ourselves squaring off in a fighter’s 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 -- a posture of love.

       In the third chapter of his Letter to the Colossians Paul writes that there are certain things that are to be parts of our lives because we are chosen by God and we are holy and beloved.  We’ve looked at many of these in the past few weeks.

        Finally, here in Colossians 3:14, Paul writes that we are to put on love. He says that this love is the perfect bond of unity that joins us to each other and keeps us joined.  Love is what enables us to stay together despite our differences.  Love is the thing that makes the things Paul has spoken of like compassion, forgiveness and humility even possible.

       Love is the key.  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 teaching 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, and, above all, love each other.  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.

       Christian community is first and foremost a gift of the Holy Spirit.  We are not talking here about a human-manufactured community but a community that is created and defined by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

       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 on 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-description) 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.

       We do not create unity in the church.  It is God’s gift.  It is our role through love 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.

       Now to live in unity does not mean to be carbon copy Christians or that we all belong to one worldwide denomination.  It means living in harmony with each other’s personality -- allowing each other to use his or her particular gifts for the glory of God and the salvation of His world.

       The gospel, as Stuart Briscoe points out in a commentary on Philippians, has the power to pull us all together into a symphony.  At a symphony you don’t hear everyone playing the same note.  What could be more ghastly than two hours of G sharp?  But neither do you hear the musicians each playing their own separate compositions.  Rather they are all scraping, banging and blowing according to the score under the direction of the conductor.  The result is not monotone but harmony.  Now what has happened to the church is that we have gone off in different directions, scraping a Baptist fiddle here, blowing a Presbyterian bugle there, banging a Lutheran drum over there—each thinking that by ourselves we are the entire symphony.  Consequently, the world fails to hear the beautiful music the gospel can produce.”

       In the face of fragmentation, Paul calls us in Ephesians to be “eager or diligent to maintain the unity of the sprit 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.  These are God’s people and therefore they are mine.

       In the light of this fact, how should we live with each other?  Paul says that it is to be with love in the bond of unity.  Peter Marshall summarized the bond of unity in this prayer: “Lord, when we are wrong, make us willing to change.  And when we are right, make us easy to live with.”

       We are called to an attitude of servant hood—a ministry of washing one another’s feet.  And it helps greatly to be careful of the temperature of the water we use!  Some come to others with icy, cold water and say, ‘here, stick your dumb, stinky feet in here!”  Their cold, forbidding attitude works against the bond of peace.  Other are so angry or so resentful of the servant’s role that it is like offering to wash another’s feet in boiling water.  The way to peace is not only take the position of a servant but to bring the kind of water, the heart attitude of love, that makes your servant hood real.

       The Apostle John wrote, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has not pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?  Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (1 Jn. 3:16-18).

       James wrote, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (2:17) James is not arguing that we have to be good in order to get into heaven…he is arguing that anyone who has truly been reborn by God’s Spirit acts differently.  Faith is not passive but active.  The Colossians showed the reality of their faith, Paul writes way back in Colossians 1, because they not only profess faith.  They reflect love for all saints.

       Christian love is unique.  It is characterized by a sense of family.  We should never refer to the church as they, it should always be we.  Our love is anchored in the fact that we are related to each other in Christ.

Christian love means seeing another person not for who they are but for who they can be by God’s Spirit.  We understand how radically God can change a life.  We never write another off as one who “will never change” because we know better.  We know what God can do because He has begun that process in us.

       Christian love is shown by a desire for the good and spiritual happiness of the other.  This is different from the way of the world.  In the world we “love others” because we think they can be good for us or because they make us happy.  I know it sounds harsh…but I still believe it is true.  I see remnants of this attitude in my own life.  We use people.  We see people in terms of what they can do for us.  We love them if they do what we want.  We discard them if they don’t.  But Christian love desires the benefit of the other person.  It is concerned with building up the other…not ourselves.

Christian love is a genuine delight from being with each other.  Christian love means we enjoy being together.  That’s why it is so delightful to come into a church and hear laughter.  Worship should not be drudgery…it is a time to do something special (exalt God) with our friends.  When a group of friends get together there is talking, laughter and joy.

       Christian love means that overlooking of faults and infirmities of others.  It’s not that we ignore these things.  But Christian love understands that we are all sinners in the process of being transformed.  So, we do not focus on the sin and failure…we focus on the progress and growth.  People who love each other dwell on the admirable and praiseworthy not the blemishes and struggles.  We “cut each other some slack.”        

       Christian love is a love that is without barrier.  Our love for each other is based in something much deeper that our economic class, gender, race, age or any other category of people.  Our love is anchored in our common experience of grace and our common destiny of Heaven.

       Obviously we realize that we are a long way from achieving this goal perfectly.  We are still prone to pettiness and competition.  But the true believer is moving toward this goal of Christ like love.  They want to love this way.  They are learning to love this way.  They delight when they love this way.

       So, look in the mirror.  Do you see this king of love growing in your life?