Pressures Christians face: Connected or Community

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy, it is being unwanted, unloved and uncared for… There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love.” Mother Teresa’s words are still true today aren’t they? She saw a deep longing for love, for friendship, for community, for welcome. I’d love to know what she’d make of today’s social media world.

Facebook was 11 in February, half of the world’s online population use it at least once a month, 65% of those access it daily. Why? Because it offers connection; a way to catch up with friends who live elsewhere, a way to touch and be touched by the lives of others, a safe controllable cost free connection. But, just like any other virtual relationship, it’s limited in what it can offer. I’m not knocking Facebook or any other social media app. They’re great tools provided we use them for what they were designed for, they make connections but they can’t create community. Partly because you filter how other people perceive you by offering only what you want to share, when you want to share it.

The rise of social media highlights the same need Mother Teresa identified. A longing for connection, for friendship, for community but it can’t meet that need. Here’s a facebook post from someone expressing that.

For all social medias language of friends, followers, circles, connections it can only go so far. It highlights a longing but can’t meet it. And it’s not just a problem for those who use technology. 20% of adults, in a UK survey, admitted to feeling lonely at any time, 20% also said they didn’t have a friend they could discuss a personal problem with. 1 in 5 adults. That shouldn’t surprise us because the Bible tells us we were made for community, for friendship rather than connectedness but also why we struggle with that same thing. We long for it but also fear it, but God provides hope for our longing.

The battle for Community not just Connectedness

Turn to Genesis 1, first chapter of the first book in the Bible. There we see that we’re made in God’s image(27). Part of that is being made to relate to others, to know and be known, that’s part of what makes us human. Just like God who is Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit knowing, loving, delighting in and enjoying one another, we’re made to be in community. Genesis 2 zooms in on Day 6 of creation and we see this even more clearly. The one “not good” in the whole of creation wasn’t slugs, spiders or rats, it was that man was alone. None of the animals can fulfil that desire for community. So God makes Eve because man is designed to be in community. And notice community is the focus because Adam and Eve are to reproduce, to fill the earth, to populate it, to grow community. This picture is much bigger than a couple, much bigger than marriage. Marriage is an important picture in the bible but it’s not the answer to loneliness. God’s vision is of a community that knows God and knows one another.

In Genesis 3 we see that twisted at the fall, what was a perfect society is now a broken ruin. When Adam and Eve rebel against God, when they question his character and love and reject his word as good sin enters creation. The catastrophic consequences of sin cascade down through every relationship. Man’s relationship with God is destroyed, his relationship with the world is damaged, and sin now makes community, friendship and intimacy hard. It makes relationships a minefield. (16)Now instead of unhindered intimacy, openness and trust there’s suspicion and competition, fear of rejection and a hiding of parts of self from others.

But God’s plan is still to gather people it’s still community. Sin scatters but God gathers. Even though sin means we both long for community and fear it God works to overcome that. God’s promises to Abraham of people, place, protection and plan see that expressed. God’s plan begins with an individual but it’s goal is community, a people gathered in right relationship with him and one another. But the story of the Old Testament is of gathering frustrated by sin. God’s law is designed to guard and protect his people gathered in community but sin continues to undermine that and to scatter.

If there was one person who could go it alone it was Jesus. Yet what’s one of the first things Jesus does? Gather a new community around himself, a new people who form the foundations of the church. And in Acts as the church is scattered, it is by God’s sovereign design, in order to create lots of little communities of God’s grace. As individuals and families carry the gospel to new towns and share it with others we see new communities of grace formed. The MO of the gospel is to create community. Overcoming sins scattering effects and gathering people as they trust Jesus. Community is woven into the DNA of the gospel, as man is reconciled to God he’s reconciled to his fellow man and community grows.

And God’s ultimate plan is community, people gathered together. It’s glimpsed in Revelation 7:4-10(p.1171). People from every ethnicity, tribe and language gathered and united by Jesus enjoying relationship with God and one another.

Our longing for community, for friendship, to know and be known is God given. We all share it in common. The loneliness in the world is a gospel opportunity for us to grasp as we help people make sense of their longing but also of their fear of rejection, of sins twisting of that desire. The Bible tells us loneliness is painful because it’s not what we were made for. And God in Jesus has and will do away with loneliness one day. He creates a new community with his new people who know Jesus now and will do for eternity.

But we also need to recognise the reality of sins impact on our desire for friendship and community. It means that, at times, we’ll find ourselves wanting to hide away parts of ourselves, only revealing what we think others will like or respect. It means we’ll want friendship to be easy and feel like giving up when it is hard.

I wonder if one of the unique ways sin has affected us as Christians has been for us to think of marriage wrongly. Marriage is not the antidote to loneliness, marriage doesn’t replace friendship. Our spouse should be our best friend, yes, but not our only friend. We mustn’t withdraw from friendship when we get married or have a family.

As those who have been redeemed by Jesus, we’re reconciled not just with God but with our church family. That’s the theological reality but we need to put it into practice. Community doesn’t just happen it requires deliberate investment of time, energy, and self. The church is a unique community in the world. The worlds version of community is based on clustering around shared interests, likes and dislikes; wealth, race, class, hobbies. God’s community is different it’s very different people gathered together in Jesus. Doing life together not just clustered when their interests meet, but even when they don’t. It isn’t a consumer connection but a committed community.

But how do we do that when we’re so very different? What stops it combusting?

Christ is our Peace (Ephesians 2v14-18)

The first century world was as divided as ours. Multiple faiths, races and languages, a huge wealth gap, class divides, gender stereotypes all alive and well and constantly dividing society. The danger was believers carrying those everyday divisions into the church. One of the biggest divides was between Jew and Gentile. This division was so extreme that if a Jewish man married a Gentile woman his family would hold a funeral for him. The Jews were a people of immense privilege when it came to God; temple, Torah, sacrifice, covenant, history. And the Gentiles weren’t. The danger as the gospel spread from Jerusalem through Samaria and Judea and to the ends of the earth was carrying that over into the church. Either by having a Gentile church and separate Jewish church or having a two tier church, where the Jew was smugly superior and the Gentile the late coming inferior with a chip on their shoulder. A church full of tensions over law, circumcision, food offered to idols, bacon and so on. The potential for friction was high.

In Ephesians Paul writes spelling out the unique call of the church to be a community of peace, totally different from the city around it. Notice that word “peace” appears 4 times in these verses. (11-12)This divide between Jew and Gentile is overcome “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” But how? (14-18)explain.

Jesus is our peace because he’s deconstructed the things that divide and built something new in their place. (14)Christ has destroyed the barrier between Jew and Gentile. In the temple in Jerusalem there was an inscription on the outer courtyard wall of the temple warning Gentiles that they were responsible for their own death if they passed it into the inner courts where Jews alone could go. Paul may or may not have that wall in mind, but it serves as a good illustration of the change Jesus brings. He has taken the barrier down that separates Jew and Gentile in coming to God. He has “destroyed the barrier”.

The second thing Jesus deconstructs is the hostility the law created with its commands and regulation separating Israel from the nations around it. It led Jews to see Gentiles as unclean, and the Gentile to see the Jew as superior. It created hostility. But Jesus has set it aside, how? By fulfilling it. Neither Jew nor Gentile is reconciled to God by law, sacrifice, or access to the temple. The only way to be reconciled with God was by faith in Jesus fulfilment of the law and his sacrificial death in the believers place whether that believer was Jew or Gentile.

In it’s place Jesus creates a new humanity, the two have been made one(14, 15). The same gospel reconciles both to God by the cross, where he ended the hostility. Jesus brings and preaches that same peace to both(17), and both Jew and Gentile now enjoy access to the Father through the Spirit Jesus poured out on his people. Jesus deconstructs the barriers and constructs a new creation – the church saved by his death on the cross, reconciled to God and one another and full of the Spirit.

This is a total identity change. They aren’t Jewish Christians and Gentiles Christians in uneasy partnership, they’re a new people in Christ. When we trust Jesus every barrier is destroyed. We are in Christ. What unites the church, what creates this distinctive community is that the cross destroys the divisions and makes us one.

Think of the church as like an engine. What happens to your car if you forget to put oil in the engine? Friction, heat, damage and destruction as the different pieces rub against one another. It needs oil to lubricate the parts as they move against one another. In the church friction is a very real possibility if we forget the grace of God to us, grace is the oil that enables us to function. We must constantly remember that it’s at the cross by faith we’re reconciled to God and united to one another. Undeservedly forgiven and loved.

Turn to Ephesians 4v1-6. Sin means that there is the potential for old divisions to resurface in the church. We’re all in God’s sight made just-as-if-I’d never sinned, but we’re still being changed as we listen to the Spirit and fight sin so that we live out that reality. But there will be times when we see and cause friction in church. Paul exhorts the church practically that just as grace creates this new community so grace applied enables us to keep living as that gospel community. Divisions and hurts are a real possibility but we must apply grace, what will that look like? “Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bear with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”

None of us is perfect, we all experience each others imperfections but grace enables us to love as we’ve been loved and forgive as we’re forgiven, and grace saves us from becoming puffed up and arrogant. Grace allows us to open up, to be authentically us, because we know we’ll be met by grace. Grace allows us to confess our sin because we know we’ll receive mercy and forgiveness. Grace allows us listen as people speak the truth in love to us because we trust they have prayed long and hard before speaking to us and have our best at heart, even if they express it clumsily. It means we don’t expect perfection in others but long for progress. We persevere, we work hard to listen then to understand, we invest in one another, we commit to one another. And when we get it wrong we ask for forgiveness from others.

We’re a church from different backgrounds, we make different assumptions, think about things differently. Grace means we won’t assume we know best, but we’ll listen and love and respect others point of view. It means we’ll want to commit to being with one another even if it’s doing something we don’t necessarily love doing. We’ll want to make the most of time together, be it Sunday morning, lunches, gospel group, or picnics at the park. It means we’ll be looking round and caring for one another and seeking ways to live out our oneness, being intentional about getting to those we don’t know already. It means we value and love everyone equally.

It means we’ll put people and community before technology and connectedness. Turn off the phone, get off Facebook or twitter when we’re with others, because we commit to real community not a shallow connectedness.

It means when we share the gospel we’ll want our friends to see the wonder of the church, what the gospel can do, the community it creates which we’re made for. Because whilst they won’t see a perfect community they will see a grace filled one.

Society pressures us time wise, it seek to shape us ideal wise. But for God’s people the call is to community, that must shape our priorities because we know it’s what we were made for and redeemed to enjoy.

Pressures Christian's face: distraction or deliberate

Distracted or deliberate

I’ve got a challenge for you. Here’s a vase and some rocks, pebbles and sand. Get things right and everything just fits below the brim of the pot. How would you get them all into the pot? But there’s a twist one of the rocks is so big it won’t fit past the pinch point of the vase.

You have to build everything around the big rock put the other rocks in below, then pebbles fit into the spaces and finally you pour the sand in to fill any remaining gaps.

Life’s like the jar. It’s finite, there’s only so much space to do things. There’s only 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week. But life often feels like that jar doesn’t it, it can feel as if it’s impossible to fit everything in. You start the day with your to do list and sometimes end the day with an even longer one.

Our lives are high pressured because they’re crammed full. Life is busy to bursting point, hectic and harried. There’s work, there’s taking so and so to drums or piano or football practice, there’s cooking, cleaning, DIY. There’s friends you really want to catch up with, there’s Sunday school to prepare, the MOT is due, there are insurance quotes to shop for, there’s family to speak to, exercise to fit in, uniform to buy and sleep to squeeze in somewhere.

And even as we do all those things we’re surrounded by other things which compete for our attention. Adverts shout at us, designed to capture and hold our attention and show us lifestyles to aspire to. Then there’s the R2D2 whistle as a text message arrives, then the ping of a Facebook notification. Did you know that a study has shown that just by doing this – puts phone down on table – our attention starts to wander. We start thinking about other things. We live in a world that’s full, busy but also distracting. A world that’s always giving us new things to pursue, new ways to do, new goals to have, a world with multiple distractions at any given moment.

Where it’s not just the good things that distract us from the best things, but a hundred and one other things. And in the midst of the chatter and clutter of busyness we feel like we’re drowning. Never achieving, never getting nearer the end of the to do list, missing out on the things we should do because of things we have to do.

This morning is an opportunity to stop and think. To stop and hear what Jesus has to say about busyness and distraction. To hear what he says the big rocks are that we should be putting in place in our lives and why it will change everything.

Jesus knew about busyness. Life was simpler in some ways but far harder in others. Imagine your week without any labour saving devices in your home, imagine the pressure of subsistence living. Imagine your week with only your feet as a mode of transportation. Jesus has been at Capernaum and now he’s in Bethany only two miles from Jerusalem, a walk of 83 miles. And Jesus maximises his journey time, ministering as he goes and his days are full. Just look at ch10; Jesus sends the 72 out on mission ahead of him before he visits every town(1-16), then he debriefs them(17-24), then he’s answering the crowds questions(25-37) calling them to love God with all their being and love their neighbour. In ch11 he’s casting out a demon and engaging in repeated clashes with the Pharisees. Life for Jesus and the disciples is full and busy.

It’s against that background, that maelstrom of ministry that Luke records this incident. In the midst of ministry Jesus teaches his disciples about the most important things – listening to him and prayer. Busyness is dangerous, ministry can be harmful because we can lose sight of what really matters.

The danger of distraction

(38)Begins with a seemingly peaceful homely scene. Martha has opened her home to Jesus and the disciples and is preparing a meal for 15, a great example of loving your neighbour. But as we listen we hear the noises of baking bread and chopping vegetables getting louder. Soon things are being banged down. And (40)you can picture Martha can’t you? Slightly dishevelled, flustered, red in the face, exasperation writ large on her features. “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me?”

It’s not unreasonable is it? There are 13 extra mouths to feed. We’ve felt like that haven’t we? Her concern is for a good thing – hospitality, loving and providing for others. But Luke clues us into the problem (40)“But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.” Martha is distracted, she’s drawn away from the most important thing by something of less importance. Her gaze and attention is deflected from Jesus by the preparations.

Distraction is dangerous for the disciple. Things will crowd or creep in and keep us from Jesus. For Martha it’s her kitchen to do list, what is it for us? What distracts me from spending time listening to Jesus?

It’s dangerous because long-term distraction chokes off fruitfulness. In the parable of the sower 3 soils appear to accept the word of God, but only one produces fruit. The third soil looks promising but its fruit is choked off by the worries, pleasures and riches of life. Other things distract it and gradually draw it away. Or Demas one of Paul’s fellow ministers who deserts the gospel because “he loved this world”, distracted and drawn away.

Distraction from Jesus is dangerous, potentially deadly. And notice here that it’s a good thing that distracts Martha. It’s not Facebook, twitter, a glossy magazine or Candy Crush Saga. It’s serving others. Ministry can be a dangerous distraction if it cuts us off from Jesus. In Acts 6 it’s what the Apostles face, the distraction of the need to wait on tables – a good thing. Distraction is a danger God’s people repeatedly face in the Bible. So we need to ask what distracts me from listening to Jesus? What good things are distracting me from Jesus?

A Disciples Decision

Distraction is a great parenting tool isn’t it? Your young child starts towards the DVD player at a friends house, and you know that unchecked all sorts of things will be inserted in the DVD slot – toffee, drool, plastic coins, Lego. So what do you do? You distract them with something else, a teddy, a toy, your already drooled on phone. You pick them up and move them, or show them something in the garden or the toys over here. But with some children that just doesn’t work. Some children are like a heat seeking missile locked on to that DVD player, ignoring all the chaff and flares you put in their way. They won’t be distracted, they know what they want, they’re deliberate, decided and determined.

Mary is a bit like that here. While Martha hustles and bustles in the kitchen Mary is where? (39)“sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.” It’s as if nothing else matters, everything else can wait this is what is needful. Mary isn’t unaware of the preparations that need doing, she’s not one of these hopelessly impractical people who don’t see a job needs doing unless you point it out to them. She has decided the preparations can wait, this matters more. She has deliberately adopted the posture of a disciple, she’s listening to her Lord. (42b)and Jesus commends her “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Do you see the lesson for the disciples and us here? In the midst of ministry, of serving others, of living life for Jesus, we must set aside time to tune out the distractions of even good things and tune into Jesus. Do you remember the old wireless radio’s which had a knob you turned to find a radio station and you’d go through loads of just background noise as you did so until you tuned into the station, then you had to ever so carefully move it so you were perfectly attuned. And every so often you had to retune it slightly because it had just got slightly out of frequency. Mary is tuning out everything else and tuning into Jesus.

We need to ask ourselves are we doing that? Are we tuning out the distractions and taking time to listen to Jesus words and to pray? Mary doesn’t drift into this she deliberate decides, it’s a choice, she’s chosen this over that. Choosing the vital over the important, the better over the good. Think back to the jar, this is that big rock that everything else has to fit around.

Am I deliberately choosing or am I distracted? Notice that’s the issue. Martha wants to spend time with Jesus but this has to be done first. Are we deliberately choosing to listen to Jesus?

You might be saying but how do you do that? Every time we read the Bible God speaks to us. Read the Bible. Don’t try to read too much. It’s helpful to read the whole bible through but it’s better to take just a few verses and really think them through. Maybe even memorise a verse a week. Why not slowly work through a passage a week. This week I’m going to blog exactly that, take one passage and ask a question of it each day. Maybe it’ll help you to follow.

Maybe you find reading hard. Go to Biblegateway.com and it will read a passage to you. We’re not lone rangers as disciples either, studying the Bible with others is one of the best ways to do it, why not study something together, come to gospel group, or meet for coffee one day during the week.

Whenever we come to passage like this I’m sure you, like me, feel that you’ve got your priorities out of sync again. Again you’ve let other things distract you from what Jesus says matters. Or maybe you haven’t decided to follow Jesus yet and your thinking it’s just another to do, I’m busy enough already, how does that help me? As we finish I want us to see Jesus gracious invitation to new life,

Jesus invites us to know him

Jesus response to Martha’s frustration, anxiety and distraction isn’t a lecture. It’s not ‘I’m not angry I’m just disappointed.’ Jesus doesn’t use guilt, instead he offers a gracious invitation, (41)“Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Do you see Jesus gracious invitation? He shows Martha her distractedness and her real need and invites her to come sit with Mary. Jesus doesn’t belittle her concerns and service he calls her to something better. Martha put down the bread and plates and knives, come sit and know me. It won’t be taken from Mary but you can have it too.

As we think about where we’ve been distracted, by good things, by ministry, by less important things, Jesus extends that same invitation to us. He longs for us to know him and choose his presence. He isn’t aloof and distant, we don’t have to do certain things to earn his presence, he came looking for us, seeking us, so we know him. In Revelation Jesus writes to the church at Laodicea who’ve drifted and become distracted to such an extent that Jesus pictures himself outside the church. But what is he doing there?

Listen “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me.”

Do you see Jesus staggering grace? Jesus longs for his people to know him, when we drift or become distracted, in love he calls us back to repent and is waiting, ready and willing to know us and share himself with us.

That’s amazing. But what is more amazing is that as we listen to him, as we get to know him we find that our pressures change as our priorities are reshaped. Spending time with Jesus help us order life rightly. Right priorities in life flow out of time spent with Jesus, listening to his word. As we spend time with Jesus he reminds me that I won’t find satisfaction in my work thereby liberating me from workaholism, yet he also calls me to do whatever I do as serving him therefore giving great value to my work whether that’s being a mum, a bin man, a surgeon or crunching numbers. It reminds me that my day and my experience of it will mirror the brokenness of the world yet also give me glimpses of the glory of God in his creation, and cause me to live in hope as I long for his return. It will reorient me so that I prize people made in his image and am aware of opportunities to love rather than jobs to do. It will remind me that I am loved, forgiven, redeemed, and now am in Christ full of the Spirit seeking to plant my footsteps where he leads. It will lead me to serve others for God’s glory not man’s approval and yet ensure that it doesn’t distract me from listening to Jesus. It will do all that and more.

Do you see the danger? Do you see the choice? More importantly do you see the Saviour lovingly wanting and calling you to a better way? Why would you not want to know the freedom that is ours in him?

(41)“Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few are needed – or indeed only one. Do you hear Jesus invitation to you this morning?