This message continues our new series, On Earth as in Heaven: The Church in God’s Story of Renewal. Pastor Jesse zooms out to give us a big-picture map of who the church is and why we exist—not as a place we go, but as a people caught up in God’s reconciling mission. Anchored in 2 Corinthians 5:17–21, we explore the call to live as a reconciled people who carry the message of reconciliation into the world. Rather than asking God to bless our agendas, we’re invited to make space for what He’s already doing—and to join Him in it. The church is not the kingdom, but we are a Spirit-formed community that bears witness to God’s kingdom through communion, community, and co-mission.
Scripture References
14For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility 15by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and decrees. He did this to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace 16and reconciling both of them to God in one body through the cross, by which He extinguished their hostility.
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The Word of Life
(Luke 24:36–49; John 20:19–23)
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have gazed upon and touched with our own hands—this is the Word of life. 2And this is the life that was revealed; we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.
3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write these things so that our joy may be complete.
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17Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!
18All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s trespasses against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
20Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God. 21God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
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The People of God
9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
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5Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine. 6And unto Me you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you are to speak to the Israelites.”
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A Servant People
Here Is My Servant
(Matthew 12:15–21)
1“Here is My Servant, whom I uphold,
My Chosen One, in whom My soul delights.
I will put My Spirit on Him,
and He will bring justice to the nations.
2He will not cry out or raise His voice,
nor make His voice heard in the streets.
3A bruised reed He will not break
and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish;
He will faithfully bring forth justice.
4He will not grow weak or discouraged
before He has established justice on the earth.
In His law the islands will put their hope.”
5This is what God the LORD says—
He who created the heavens
and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and its offspring,
who gives breath to the people on it
and life to those who walk in it:
6“I, the LORD, have called you
for a righteous purpose,
and I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and appoint you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light to the nations,
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43But it shall not be this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all. 45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
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The Body of Christ
The Body of Christ
12The body is a unit, though it is composed of many parts. And although its parts are many, they all form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given one Spirit to drink.
14For the body does not consist of one part, but of many. 15If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
18But in fact, God has arranged the members of the body, every one of them, according to His design. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you.” Nor can the head say to the feet, “I do not need you.” 22On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts we consider less honorable, we treat with greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with special modesty, 24whereas our presentable parts have no such need.
But God has composed the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its members should have mutual concern for one another. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
The Greater Gifts
27Now you are the body of Christ, and each of you is a member of it.
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4Just as each of us has one body with many members, and not all members have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many are one body, and each member belongs to one another.
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The Community of the Spirit
The Fellowship of Believers
(Acts 4:32–37)
42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43A sense of awe came over everyone, and the apostles performed many wonders and signs.
44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they shared with anyone who was in need.
46With one accord they continued to meet daily in the temple courts and to break bread from house to house, sharing their meals with gladness and sincerity of heart, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
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22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us walk in step with the Spirit.
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Full Transcript
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All right, let’s get our seats. And I got a question for you: Why are you here? Why are you here? What brings you to a place like this on a Sunday morning, when there is a beautiful trail that goes along the base of the mountains where you could just be enjoying the outdoors?
Why are you in this room? Why are you with these people? Why are we here?
We are in this series—we just started last week—called “The Church: On Earth as in Heaven,” the church in God’s story of renewal. And I hope that we get a little bit clearer picture of not only why we are here, but who we are as a people, as the church—what we call the church.
Who are we? What does it mean to be the church in the world? Is church just a Sunday morning meeting that we attend most weeks, or maybe some of the time, for one hour to one and a half hours? Is that what it means to be the church? Is the church a place we go, or is it something we are—or someone we are? Is it a movement we join, or is it a relationship that we are invited into? Is it an institution, or is it a movement? Is it an “it”?
What is the church? Who is the church? Why is the church?
I want to tell you—I just like to lay it all out in advance—the church is so much more than a Sunday service. The church is so much more than a meeting or a place where we receive and exchange religious goods and services. The church is something so much more than you shop for, or that you go and try to evaluate based on programs. The church is so much more than a building. The church is so much more than we typically think of it being.
This is shared life in the shared life of the living God. This is participation in the Spirit’s work to reunite heaven and earth.
This is a movement unleashed by God to bring healing to the deepest wounds experienced by humanity. This is a small people—look at yourselves—a small people, a part of a big story, to bring renewal, restoration, and reconciliation to all creation, human and non-human. This is epic.
This is the story of God moving through the world to bring heaven back to earth, to reunite the living God with the living creation, to bring us into relationship.
Scholar N.T. Wright says the church is not simply a collection of isolated individuals who happen to believe the same thing. It is the new creation people, the people in whom the living God already dwells by His Spirit, the people who are charged with being the agents of His reconciling love to the world.
Did you know that you’re part of a movement like this—to reconcile the world to God, to reconcile humanity to humanity, to be peacemakers, to restore the created universe back into relationship, communion with God?
So this week, we’re going to kind of take a 30,000-foot view of where we’re going this fall as we look at the church. This week might be a little bit more information, and maybe a little more heady, okay? But we’re going to kind of look at and scope out—zoom out—on where we are going and kind of get a broad picture of the forest, the landscape of the church in Scripture and in the story of God. And then over this fall, we’re going to dive in and look at some of the trees, look at some of the areas of the map.
My kids love fantasy novels: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, tons of other series. And usually those kinds of books have maps in them right at the beginning of the book. And I don’t read maps. I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t understand maps. My brain can’t remember or conceptualize them or whatever—there’s some kind of barrier to understanding maps or remembering them.
But my son—he will remember the map. He studies the maps. And as he enters the story, he lives in that map. He knows where he’s going. And some of you are like that—you get it, and you enter into that story, and you’re going through the forest in this area of the story, and you’re moving towards the mountains and the highlands and all of this.
So I want to kind of scope out, zoom out. This is the map at the beginning of the story of the church, before we enter fully in and understand who we are, why we are, what we are.
All right. So a quick recap of what we talked about last week. Remember, I had glasses on—I put different kinds of glasses on. And I said it matters the lens through which you look when we try to understand who we are, when we try to understand who God is, what the scriptures are—it matters, the lens through which we look. And we have to look through the lens of Jesus. Jesus is the clearest revelation of God that we have. If you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus. And most specifically, you look at Jesus on the cross. This is the perfect revelation of who God is, what God is like, the extent and the lengths to which God will go to bring us back into communion with Himself.
So, what did Jesus spend the most time talking about with His disciples, with His people? The overall theme was the kingdom—the kingdom of God. Twenty times in the Gospels, the gospel—euangelion, the good news—is linked to the arrival of the kingdom. The Kingdom of God. The gospel of the kingdom. The good news of the kingdom.
And we talked about—the kingdom has a King, right? The King is Jesus. And the King calls for us to give our whole mind, body, soul—allegiance to the King and to no other king, no other president, no other nation, no other constitution. We, as the people of God, find ourselves caught up in the movement and the arrival of the kingdom, with Jesus as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the Lamb of God who was slain, the Lion of Judah.
And we say, “I follow Jesus. I pledge allegiance to Jesus and the kingdom for which He stands, the kingdom He brought.” And so we order our lives according to the kingdom of God.
But Jesus is not like any other king, because a lot of other kings, they come in and they use control, coercion, violence, manipulation to create their kingdom. They are a demanding king. They are dictators. But this King—Jesus—creates kinship.
Jesus doesn’t just operate as a typical king. His kingship forms kinship.
This is a beautiful thing about the kingdom of God: kinship—the deepest and most intimate kind of relationship. He creates family. Family built and operating on love. A love that is revealed by Jesus—self-sacrificial, other-centered, centered love of Jesus. It’s a kinship, a deep, intimate, shared life in the shared life of God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
And then the kingdom is kinetic. Remember? It moves. It’s on the move. It’s Spirit-filled, Spirit-empowered. And wherever the Spirit goes, flourishing occurs—peace, justice, restoration, reconciliation.
And as the people of God, we find the move of the Spirit, and we join. We get on board and we ride the wave—the move of the movement of the Spirit, the movement of the kingdom to bring restoration, healing, and reconciliation. To bring life to the world.
So that’s the big picture. That’s the page the map is on, okay? As we talk about the church, the kingdom of God is the context.
Now, it’s important to know and to make this distinction: the church is not the kingdom. The church is not the kingdom. Because when we make that mistake, we get things like the Crusades, right? We’re like, okay, we are the kingdom. And wherever the church goes, we establish the kingdom on earth, and we plant our flag, and it becomes a conquest.
So the church is not the kingdom, but the church participates in the kingdom. It bears witness to the kingdom. It invites people into the kingdom.
And so that leads us to this phrase that we’ll talk about a lot, I think, in the coming months as a church, as Foothills Fellowship—this little local gathering of the Body of Christ. Over the next few months, we will be forming and getting clarity around a mission statement. But we need to remember that the church does not have a mission.
God’s mission has a church. The church doesn’t have a mission.
It’s important to clarify that, or else we confuse the church with the kingdom and the church as the primary agent. But here it is: Jesus—the Kingdom of God—has a mission, and He invites us to carry forward with His mission in the world.
So we’re participants of the kingdom. We ride the wave of that kinetic movement of the Spirit. We look at what God is doing and we join with what God is doing.
I love Eugene Peterson. I’ve probably said this before. He said: Every time you meet with a person—whether it’s a friend, your child, or a gas station attendant—
“every time you have a human encounter, you are showing up to a meeting already in progress. The meeting between that person and God. God is at work.”
How do I join what God is doing? This allows me to surrender my agenda for that person. I’ve got an agenda for you, right? I want you to know what I think about your life. I have a mission for you.
No. God has a mission. How do I join it? How do I discern what God is doing in the world? How do I discern what God is doing in my child’s life, or in my spouse’s life, or this stranger’s life? It can’t be my agenda for this person. It’s what God is doing—and God’s wisdom—in this person’s life.
And how do I ride the wave of the Spirit? How do I move and cooperate with what God is doing?
That’s what the church does. And what God is doing in the world is reconciling the world, reconciling us.
Here’s theologian Daniel Migliore. He says of us:
“While flawed and always in need of reform and renewal, the church is nonetheless the real beginning of God’s new and inclusive community of liberated creatures. You’ve been freed—freed from Satan, sin, and death. Freed from fear. Reconciled to God and to each other. And called to God’s service in the world.”
All right. So we are a reconciled people that reconcile people, right?
We are reconciled people that invite people into this reconciliation we are experiencing with God and with one another.
And we invite others into this reconciling community.
And, as it says, we are in need of reform and renewal. We are flawed. But this is an imperfect beginning of the new humanity that God is bringing to bear on the earth—a fully reconciled, restored, healed creation.
So that leads us to this next point. Again, map—so that’s one region of the map, okay? We’ve got the kingdom as the page. Here is the overall mission of God’s reconciliation.
We also need to keep in mind the Trinity, all right? Any good theology of the church will be rooted in the identity—the uniquely Christian conception of God—which is Trinity. One God, three persons. A relational being at the very core and essence of who God is: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, living in loving relationship with God’s self.
So a good question to ask that will reveal your view of God—and we don’t have time to talk about the Trinity today—but what was God doing before everything existed? Before He created the world? What was God doing?
Your answer to that question reveals a lot about what you believe about who God is.
What was God doing before anything existed?
One answer to this question is in this word: perichoresis, all right? Perichoresis, which means mutual indwelling and sharing. God—one God—exists in three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And God, before He created anything, was living in perfect loving communion with God’s self.
God is relationship. As it says in 1 John 4:8, “God is love.”
Is there love without something or someone to love?
What was God doing before He created the world? God was loving.
God is perfect, relational love. Love.
God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—this beautiful interchange of love.
So God in God’s essence is communion. Is community. And it’s shared life.
And so God has shared life—we are invited into that shared life, to experience the life of God. This is why God creates the world—not because He was lonely, not because He was deficient in some way, not because He needed someone to worship Him or to love Him. He already had all that. God has all that in Godself.
It’s merely an overflow of love—an expansion of the sharing, the shared life that God already enjoyed in Godself.
All right, I know the Trinity is kind of complicated, right?
So Augustine says it’s important to realize—again, here’s how Augustine explained this perichoresis:
“Each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all are one.”
Make sense now? Okay. Let’s go.
So this is an idea to say that three distinct persons, but all one. Every time you see Jesus, you see Father, Son in the act of Jesus. Every time you see God, you see Jesus and Spirit. Every time you see Spirit, you’re seeing God and Son. They all coexist eternally, are one and distinct. And we don’t understand it. Human words can’t get at it.
So as the church then, we are people of communion.
This is to understand, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, that the purpose for which we were created and the purpose for which Jesus came is to bring us into communion. To be in communion. To share life in the shared life of God—the shared love of God.
So: communion.
And we experience in that communion, in that shared life of God, we share life—we have community.
So He’s invited a people, a community of people, to experience community in the community of God—the communion of God.
And we are people of commission—participants with God’s mission to reconcile the world to God’s self, to bring more people into communion with Him.
So you, I think, have talked about “Up, In, and Out,” right? That’s kind of the rhythm of life of the Christian: we are up with God, in with one another, and out to the world.
I like that, but it’s a little—well, I like this a little better. That’s why I’m giving it, because it’s getting at the same thing. But one thing with “Up, In, and Out” is we can kind of segregate those things as separate activities rather than them all occurring if you kind of think of them as like concentric circles, right? Like a nesting doll.
Right? The big doll is communion. We are always sharing life in the shared life of God. We are always in an “up” relationship. We are always with God. We are always relating to the ever-present, always-at-work loving relationship of God that is always—we’re always being invited into.
And as an expression of that, we share life in that shared life. So as we’re together, we are with God. So up and in are always together. It’s communion and community happening.
That’s the second little nest. What do they call that? What did I just call that? Nesting doll!.
And then co-mission—as an expression of the love that we are experiencing with God and with one another, we are inviting others into it. And we are with God: co-mission.
We are participants and partners with God in this ministry of reconciliation and peace.
So: communion, community, co-mission—kind of like the Trinity: always and everyone, each one in all and all in each, right?
When we’re doing co-mission, we’re experiencing communion and community, right? So it’s kind of like the Trinity itself.
Let me give some scripture here. 1 John 1:1–4, I think, gets at this kind of three-tiered aspect of communion and what the good news of the gospel is. Let’s read it:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched…”
What are we talking about here? What is “it”?
Jesus. Yeah. Good—it’s always the right answer. Perfect.
“…that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched…”
So here it is: the God who was at the beginning in loving relationship—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—now we see in flesh and blood. We’ve touched Him. We’ve seen Him with our eyes. We heard. We smelled Him. He was there.
“This we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”
So this life—this communion—has shown up in space, time, and history in the flesh.
“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that…”
Right? Why? Why do we proclaim this life that has appeared?
“…so that you also may have fellowship with us.”
Right? So the purpose for sharing the life that has appeared is that we would share life together, to form community, to have fellowship.
“And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.”
So you see that? Communion, community, and co-mission.
Co-mission: they’re proclaiming in word and deed the eternal life of God made known in Jesus. That’s commission.
This is what God has invited us to be a part of.
Community: “so that you may have fellowship with us.”
Communion: “our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”
Paul says it another way in 2 Corinthians 5:17–21. I love this—it’s my favorite verse, if you couldn’t tell.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!”
All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
We are a people brought into communion with God, and then we are invited into that mission—to bring others into communion with God.
“That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.
“We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Community, community, co-mission—it’s all about being reconciled, being restored back into this loving, dynamic relationship of life that God has always intended for us.
One more quote:
“In Christ, by the power of the Spirit, all receive a new identity and enter into a reconciled and reconciling community. In this way, the church anticipates—though partially and broken—the coming reign of the triumph of God.”
Okay. Are you getting some clarity here—why we exist? What is our purpose in the world?
And so, as the church, are we to be caught up in the enemy-making, polarized kind of dynamic that we see on the news and in our culture? Are we to be caught up in all of that?
Or are we to be peacemakers? Reconcilers? Drawing people to Him?
Are we agents of peace or of division?
What is our role in the world?
We are to remind ourselves, remind humanity, of who we truly are and what we are meant for—and that is to be in relationship, loving relationship with God, which has a whole host of implications on how we live our life.
This is where we’re headed in the fall. We’re going to look at four biblical images of the church—clusters of images of what we, as the people, are. Four broad categories.
First: we are called the People of God—most specifically, the Exodus people of God. Whom God has liberated from the powers of sin, Satan, and death. That we might be a liberated people, liberating people. That we again are reconciled and reconciling. That we have been liberated and we proclaim and live the message of liberation.
We are the People of God.
Second: we are a Servant People. All throughout the Old Testament, the people of God are called the “servant” of God. In this passage—Isaiah 42—we have the servant, which becomes a prophecy of Jesus. And Jesus picks up this theme, that we are the servant.
We are to be servants of one another. Servants to the world, just as He was a servant.
The church does not exist purely for itself. It exists to fulfill the mission of God. Right? The commission.
And so this is a twofold service—we serve God, and we serve neighbor. We serve God and we serve humanity. We serve God, and that’s expressed in our worship, our prayer, our praise, our relationship with God.
And then our service to the world is expressed in our witness—in word and deed. We witness to God’s grace and God’s call for justice, and His living out of this love.
We see this in Jesus’ words—the two greatest commandments. What are they?
To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And to love your neighbor as yourself.
And when we are loving our neighbor, we are loving God. And when we love God, we have to live lives of love toward our neighbor. It is fully and completely connected.
Again, it’s that communion, community, co-mission—that’s one and the same. It is a life of love poured out to God and to others.
Then: we are called the Body of Christ.
Talked a couple of weeks ago—this is mostly Paul’s image. It gets at a couple of things.
Number one, it gets at our interdependence with one another. It challenges a little bit of our cultural value of independence and private religion. And it says we are one body. And if one part of the body hurts, the entire body hurts.
You know—you’ve gotten that one little toothache, or you get a splinter in your finger. Oh, the whole body is like, “Oh!” This little part, this little part. You stub your toe, right? Your whole body is alerted to that area of pain.
So when one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts. When one part of the body rejoices, the whole body rejoices and responds in joy.
So this is the Body of Christ. It speaks to our unity and our solidarity with one another, our empathy with one another.
But it also speaks to our place in the world.
That just like Jesus—flesh, blood, and bone—wore sandals, got dirt on His feet as He walked into villages, had nerves and flesh to touch the sick, the leper; had words and vocal cords to challenge religious oppression and authority and injustice, and to invite people in with words of love.
Right? That’s what His body did. That’s what His body is to do now.
We are the body—the physical expression of God in the world.
This is intense. This is serious. This is awe-inspiring, right? That we are the Body of Christ. We are the movement of God in the world.
And we are the Community of the Spirit.
We only have life through the life of God. Right? Community in communion, co-mission. All these things—all at once.
And so the Spirit inhabits the people of God. And we see that the Spirit—what is the fruit of the Spirit?
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.
If I list all that stuff, would you say that’s what the world needs?
♪ What the world needs now is love, sweet love… ♪
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and goodness. Yeah. Okay, sorry. This is where my daughter would roll her eyes.
We are a new creation people, empowered and enlivened, resurrected by the Spirit of God.
Right? We see in Ezekiel 37 where the Spirit of God breathes on the dead, dry valley of bones. It’s a resurrected people—moved by the Spirit of God, made alive.
And so we become then, a foretaste of the beautiful future. The restoration of Eden. The heaven on earth that the Spirit is working.
We become a foretaste, a preview of what God is doing in the world, empowered by the Spirit.
So—can you see?
That this is more than a service?
Is this more than a Wednesday night gathering? If you’re really super Christian, you know—you go to church twice a week. Oh my gosh. Two hours of your week.
No.
Is this more than a service? Is it more than a gathering? Is it more than just a set of spiritual disciplines or religious rules or practices?
It is shared life in the shared life of God, and the shared mission of God to bring all things into communion—to bring life, restoration, renewal, healing at the very individual, deepest parts of our own traumas and pains and disappointments, to the cosmic world where we have division and hate and desperate need of healing.
Right?
God is at work bringing all things back into communion.
And in communion with God, we find the healing for ourselves, for one another, for our relationships, and for all creation.
It’s a beauty. It’s privilege. It’s purpose. This is what we’re invited into.
Stanley Hauerwas says:
“The church is constituted by the story of God.”
Right? We’re a small people, part of a big story. We have been changed by the story of God. We’ve been renewed and reconciled.
And this God refuses to abandon the world, right? God refused to leave us alone. God refused to let us wander away, like that sheep who wanders away from the ninety-nine.
God went after you. God went after each one of us and brought us back into communion.
Right? And the church is that ongoing performance of that story in our lives together. God chased after us.
And in communion with God, we chase after one another. We forgive one another. We restore one another.
Even our enemies—we love our enemies. We refuse to leave anyone outside that compassion and that love and that mercy of God that flows so wide, it encompasses all of the cosmos.
We are part of that flow of God’s reconciling love moving through the world.
So to end this quickly—we’re going to talk about some barriers throughout the next several weeks. This will be incorporated into what we’re talking about.
The last part of the map, right? Maybe it’s the—well, I won’t push that metaphor too far. Never mind.
Barriers to experiencing life as the church in this way:
Why is the church mostly seen as an optional service I attend, and only if it’s got really good music and a great youth program?
How did the church become that?
How did the church become a meeting that I only go to if it serves my own personal interest—and I leave as soon as I get offended or whatever?
How did it become that?
Well, here’s how it became that.
Number one: in particular, our Western—kind of American—expression of Christianity is full of individualism. It’s full of individualism.
We just see ourselves as little individuals that have individual personal relationship with God—which is true. Remember I said: every relationship with God is personal, but it’s not individual.
You don’t relate to God as a solo person. This is a team sport. A community in communion with God and commission.
So individualism rips apart and undermines this idea—all of these pictures of God, pictures of the church that God gives us.
We have to be aware of that.
Then: privatized religion. Closely associated with individualism. But we see religion as primarily a private affair—that it’s me and my relationship with God, and it doesn’t have a bearing on others. And for sure, shouldn’t probably enter the public arena or impact the greater injustices or dynamics of the world.
It’s a private affair. And so it cuts us off from the larger struggles of life. It cuts us off from that commission piece—that proclaiming the life that God offers, that impacts how we relate to one another.
It’s become a bureaucratic institution, right? And we get frustrated by the bureaucracy—the institutionalized nature of the church—that we put up walls, and we have boards, and we have constitutions, and we have all of this. And it begins to kind of feel like it suffocates this grand, beautiful picture of the church as a worldwide movement of God’s healing and restoration.
It becomes an organization rather than a living body.
And then: nationalism. Again—that confuses. Sometimes we want to make the church our country. And we want to make the kingdom our country. And we believe in this manifest destiny thing—that it’s our job to bring the kingdom. And then that leads us into a lot of really dangerous territory that subverts the power of the church.
The national agenda becomes the kingdom agenda.
God’s mission has a church, not a nation. Because He’s bringing all nations into the kingdom.
And then—here’s the big one. Here’s a really big one.
There’s a chasm between what we proclaim and what we practice. Right?
I mean—God, love, forgiveness, mercy, understanding, justice… and then look at us. We just kill each other. We eviscerate each other. We hate each other. We exclude one another.
There is a chasm between what we proclaim—this God of love and peace and justice and mercy and joy and salvation—and what we say and what we do. It doesn’t line up.
So that subverts the church.
And right now, hardly anyone goes to church—especially after COVID—because we have seen like, “Wait a minute. This ‘church as a service,’ ‘church as an institution,’ ‘church as a place where individuals come to get their little spiritual fix’—that’s not doing it for me.”
That’s not inspirational. That’s not what I want to be a part of.
I can do that on YouTube. I can do that going to a Tony Robbins conference. Right? I can do that anywhere.
We lose sight. I can do that in my political leaders or be part of a political party—I can get purpose all these places.
Because we have lost sight of what the church really is and what we’ve been invited into:
The shared life in the shared life of God, restoring, renewing, reconciling the world to itself.
So I hope that over the next few months, we rediscover our identity as the church—the people of God sharing life in the shared life of God, a people of love, restoration, reconciliation.
Let me pray for you as we go from this place.
Jesus, we thank You that You are at work in the world. Thank You, Jesus, that we have been reconciled, that we have been restored, that we have been healed, that we have been forgiven, that we have been recipients of Your mercy and Your grace and Your love.
God, thank You that You are not just a distant God that demands worship from afar, but You invite us into Your shared life of love.
And in that life of love is our purpose, is our belonging, is our security, is our significance—is everything.
Open our eyes, as we sing this morning, to see You, to hear You, to know You, to move with Your Spirit.
I pray that we would fully embrace our identity as the people of God—the church.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.