Do we really intend community?

Poatina Morning Tea Devotion given yesterday

Getting past Hate

Today, starting a new series on Ephesians 4. I’ve found that God often seems to bring me to chapter of the Bible and keep me there. This was the first. It’s a very rich chapter. You could almost teach the whole of our Foundations Course from Eph 4.

You can imagine Paul being in gaol and he’s writing to these guys. There are things he’s responsible for but can’t do anything about because he’s in gaol. He’s saying, I can’t get to you but this is the stuff I want you to focus on.

“I want you to get out there and walk – better yet run – on the road God has called you to travel”.

I love the picture that there is a road that God has called me to travel. The fundamental question is do you know the road he’s called you to travel? It’s obviously important to him – he doesn’t want the Ephesians sitting on their hands; or strolling off down some path.

There are two alternatives to getting moving. These are to stay safe where you are, or to head off along other paths. Have there been times in your life when you’ve headed off on other paths? Perhaps it has seemed good at the time, but it never leads to happiness or fulfilment.

And what I’m interested in is in our training we talk about the narrative and story and finding your story.

II Cor 5 17, says “ if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new is here!

A new creation isn’t a finished product it’s a blueprint for your life. Yet you can get hung up on that – “Am I writing my story?” can lead to being a bit self focussed. It sounds good, but you can end up being full of yourself. I find it interesting that Paul couples following the road God has for you with,

“Mark you do it with humility and discipline”.

Humility’s not about being a worm! It’s about being honest with yourself and others. Having an accurate picture of yourself before God. And Discipline? How do you go at discipline? For me, it equals getting out of bed early. I hate it, I’m not a morning person. These the my edges. I don’t know what yours are. For a long time it was having a quiet time…it’s nice now to get to a point where it’s kind of normal. But there are still plenty of others.
Even with the discipline of prayer. My mind wanders all over the place. Just trying to keep focussed on one thing is an issue. I start praying for my kids then thinking of what I’m going to do today. And for me prayer takes work. So it seems that humility and discipline are tied up with following your story.

Then Paul uses a segue – he says:

Do it with humility and discipline, not in fits and starts.

Fits and starts sounds a bit like me sometimes.

He goes on:

“But steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love. Alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.”

Intellectually we all know that we are different but it’s a different thing to actually give people the space to be different…I am still on a journey with that. My wife was given to me to help me appreciate that people are different. It’s a different thing to really know that people are different, and for that to be ok. Sometimes I find myself wanting to tidy up the world to get people to do things like me.

“Mending fences”…I came across a couple of quotes from Martin Luther King. Here in Poatina, we call ourselves an intentional community because intend to have community. It doesn’t always happen, and being with people who are different causes pain…have you noticed that? And the closer you are to people the more likely you are to be hurt.

The safe way is not to talk to anybody. That way, you won’t get hurt but you won’t live in community. The more profound the hurt you experience in community, the more likely you are to hate rather than love. It’s easy to hate people. It’s really easy to pray for Muslims if you don’t know any, but it’s different if you live with them. Praises, from Nigeria, was here in 2006 – he had friends and relatives hacked to death by Muslims. He said, then, I don’t know if you want to love them.”

We watched Invictis on Friday night – Josh wanting to play Rugby League. The Captain takes the team to Robbin Island – and says,” I don’t know how you come out of here and love people”. The reason community is hard work is because we do damage each other – with the best will in the world, and sometimes not with the best will in the world.

Martin Luther King said,

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

We intend to have community but what it means is that sometimes you have to face the fact that you don’t like someone and at that point you have two choices: either finding a rationale as to why you are right or facing the fact that pain is being caused and that the pain is not that person. What does it mean to have a heart full of love?

We’ve been through a painful couple of years, and we’ve had painful lives…it’d be nice to find a way to justify your position and find out you’re right and everyone is wrong. But I have the sense that when Jesus said love your enemies he wasn’t just saying love them when they’re right. “Love your enemies” – there’s no condition on it.

This is how Paul starts his journey – find your story and mend fences. You’re going to need fellowship and it’s jolly hard work. Those are the first 4 verses of Eph 4, so it’s a challenging chapter. Are there relationships you need to look at? Fences you need to mend? We might say we are intentional community but unless we intend to work on the relationships that are the most difficult we’re not much of a community.