Spiritual Fellowship

Spiritual Fellowship (September 18, 2005)

The Great Ends of the Church - Part 2

“ We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:3

At the end of August I spent two days in Maryland with my brother Al, his wife Lavina, and Reid. Al and Reid were here for Vacation Bible School in July and loved it. They have a sail boat and so we went out in the boat Al turned over the job of steering to me. This turned out not to be difficult because there wasn’t any wind. Nonetheless, that is when I got the idea that if the Church is a ship then the Great Ends of the church are like the rudder.

Last Sunday we began a series on the Great Ends of the Church, which are six, and the first one is the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind. Jesus himself talked about the need for priorities. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” he said. The Bible is not first and foremost about us, it is about God, about God’s creation of the world, God’s involvement in history, in his work through the chosen people of Israel in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament of God’s coming among us in Jesus Christ, dying and rising for us and the forgiveness of sins, Emmanuel, God with us, and this is the good news, to be proclaimed to all people. This is the first of the six great ends. The church can do many other things, but if it is not doing this faithfully and hopefully, that is, with hope, bringing people light and love in their lives, filling them with joy in service, not trying to earn God’s forgiveness but rejoicing in it in Christ and going out and being forgiving and loving and serving people in response – if it is not doing that, then it should close up shop.

The Great Ends are very important but they are the not the first thing mentioned in the Book of Order. They are the second. The first is on The Head of the Church. That is Jesus Christ. All that we do and all that we are points and must always point to Jesus Christ. Christ calls the Church into being and gives it its faith and life, its unity and mission, its officers and ordinances. We can never forget this. It is especially important when we come to the second great end.

The second great End is “the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.” In many ways this is the easiest of the great ends to grasp. Words such as “shelter” and “nurture” and “fellowship” come readily to our minds when we think of the church. But it is crucial to remember that this “sheltering” and “nurturing” and “spiritual fellowship” are directly built on the fellowship we have in Christ.

These past two weeks we have often seen churches on television physically sheltering people from a terrible storm of life. The president has admitted a colossal falling short by the federal government. It is said that when the governments – federal, state, and local – were confused and hesitant, churches by the hundreds of all denominations got to work, gave away food and clothing, no questions asked, provided immediate shelter in church halls, You showed up and you were helped, by churches which themselves were often heavily damaged. Even those that were destroyed found ways to help people, because of course the church is people, not buildings, and it is people helping people directly.

The wonderful writer Anne Lamott tells in Traveling Mercies about her “funky” Presbyterian church in Los Angeles.. She writes: “When I was at the end of my rope, the people at St. Andrews tied a knot in it for me and helped me hold on. The church became my home in the old meaning of home – that it’s where, when you show up, they have to let you in. They let me in. They even said, ‘You come back now.”

She goes on: “My relatives all live in the Bay Area and I adore them, but they are all as skittishly self-obsessed as I am, which I certainly mean in the nicest possible way. Let’s just say that I do not leave family gatherings with the feeling that I have just received some kind of spiritual chemotherapy. But I do when I leave St. Andrew.”

There it is: the church as “shelter, nurture, spiritual fellowship.”

I didn’t, of course, know any of this when I woke up one Sunday morning at age 12 and told my father I was going to church. And when, an hour or so later, alone, I got off the bus at the foot of the hill in Englewood and made my way to the First Presbyterian Church, and sat down in the last pew next to an elderly woman who at the end of the service introduced herself in a kindly voice by saying, “My name is Mrs. Kell. Will I see you here next Sunday?” And she did, and the Sunday after that, and after that, and after that, until I met other kids my age and sat with them, but always being sure to say hello to her. I loved my father, but the church provided a shelter for me, and then nurture, and then, as I came to know the message of the love of God in Christ Jesus, the spiritual fellowship that is at the heart of it all.

And isn’t this the way it often is, that it is the support, the nurture, the fellowship, which is different from any other kind, which then draws us to the message. Of course, there are people who come first because of the message, and then are drawn to the fellowship, but I think more often it is that sheltering, nurturing, fellowshipping, part of the church’s life which draws people in, and then leads them to see why this all exists in the first place.

One one of my favorite words in Greek is koinonia – fellowship. In the book of Acts it is part of the earliest description of the Church: “They were gathered together in the teaching of the apostles, in the fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and the prayers.” This was the earliest description of the life of the church. St. John writes “What we have seen and heard we declare to you so that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.” In the New Testament this fellowship, koinonia, is most clearly expressed in the sharing of the cup and the bread in the sacrament. “This is the communion of the body of Christ” “This is the communion of the blood of Christ”. St. Paul wrote from prison to the Philippians about a sharing, communion, in the sufferings of Christ. When the Christian suffers, as Paul was suffering in prison, he or she knows, amidst the pain, the joy of sharing things with Christ.

In a few weeks we will have our church retreat in Holmes, A few years ago we spent the weekend discussing koinonia. We have now gone to two such retreats a year. This idea of “spiritual fellowship” is at the heart of who we are as a church. The “prayer warriors” group which meets after church is another example of this koinonia.

I believe people are looking for this today. They are not satisfied with Christianity as a “spectator sport”, they want Christianity in community, which is what the church is, and it is the only kind of Christianity the New Testament knows. William Barclay has written: “The Christian koinonia is that bond which binds Christians to each other, to Christ, and to God.” “Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love, the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.”

Unfortunately, the church is not always a place of shelter and nurturing fellowship. Churches can become places of pitched battles, open warfare, and bickering about the tiniest details of church life. The wonderful actress Maggie Smith had a one woman show depicting the harried life of a rector’s wife who had to deal with the ladies of the altar guild constantly fussing about one thing or another. This is what “church” meant to those ladies, and Maggie Smith hit it on the head. When that happens, it doesn’t take a genius to see that a great idea has been perverted.

But when a true community exists it can be a beacon of light in the world, a beacon of people working and sharing their lives with one another because they share a common life in Christ. When it happens across racial lines, as it does so clearly in our church, it is a vital testimony to the unity Christ gives to the world. In our narcissistic culture, where people are so obsessed with themselves, so focused on “what’s in it for me”, so self-absorbed, the congregation intent on providing shelter, nurture, and true spiritual fellowship to people regardless of their background, their economic status, their “connections”, is a testimony to the power and love of God at work in human life lifting us above ourselves into the true realm above. It can happen, of course, only by the grace of God, and only when the church keeps fully in mind where exactly its source of strength is – the one triune God whom alone we worship and adore.