Week 2: Strengthen The Community

Reflection

In the very beginning, God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Then sin entered the world and a great chasm opened up between them. Yet, throughout the Old Testament, we see God continuing to approach His people in different forms—as a voice, in a dream, through an angelic visitor, and even a burning bush.  After Moses leads the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt, God’s presence dwells with them in a tabernacle that they repeatedly disassemble and move with them as they wander in the desert.  Later, King Solomon oversees the building of a permanent temple in Jerusalem, a physical place where people can go to be in the presence of God.

But in those days not all people were offered equal access to God. In the temple in Jerusalem, the divide between Jews and Gentiles was dramatic. Gentile worshippers were confined to the outermost courts, which also happened to be the location of the temple marketplace. A modern equivalent would be something between a livestock auction and the New York stock exchange. Not exactly a worshipful environment.

It was into this ‘den of robbers’ that Jesus entered in the week leading up to His crucifixion.  Here we see Him cracking a whip and throwing tables, condemning the abuse of power and reminding the Jewish leaders of Isaiah 56:7, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Jesus makes it clear that God intends to reach all people. He intends to reconcile man to Himself, and to his fellow man.

After His death and resurrection, Jesus’s disciples become the new temple. Strangers and aliens become fellow-citizens, fitted together in Jesus.  We who were once separated, defined by our differences, become one in Him.

And together, we show God to the world.

It is something like a mosaic.  We are each a unique representation of the work and power of God in a human life.  On close inspection, someone viewing the mosaic can see the individual pictures, that we are each beautiful in our own way. But the clearest representation of God is seen from a distance, when all of the pictures merge into a larger image of Love.

We, as the church, are called to carry God’s love into the world. But imagine what happens when His image is tarnished with the red overtones of our anger or the blackness of our hate. Or what it does to His image when our place in the mosaic shows up blank because we choose to withdraw our participation from the church altogether.

Our unity is important. 1 Peter 2:1 warns us, “… rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” For the eyes of the world will be drawn to our flaws.  They will focus on the blank spaces, the anger, the division, and the hatred and miss the overall picture.

But unity is not our goal. Our goal is to follow Jesus—who gives us the power to live in unity. Just before He was crucified, Jesus prayed for unity among His followers: “My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity.  Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

Notice that Jesus was praying not just for the twelve disciples who were with Him, but for all who would believe in Him. Because Jesus prayed for unity among all believers—past, present, and future—Jesus prayed for us.

Which gives us hope that we can do things we could never ask or imagine.