Update Your Status – Spiritual Friends (Belong)
Valley Church – July 8
Sycamore Creek Church – July 15
Cornerstone Church – July 22
Tom Arthur
Matthew 12:46-50
Peace, Friends!
What silly things we do to belong! Grandparents trying to figure out this new technology. It makes us all laugh. What is the craziest or silliest thing you’ve ever done to try to fit in and belong? Or maybe the most embarrassing now that you look back on it.
I want to warn you. What I’m about to show you may cause problems for those who are sensitive. So look away if you are sensitive. Here is a picture of me in 9th grade trying to fit in and belong:
[Picture with mullet]
Let me walk you through this horrendous fashion decision and point out the finer details that may go unnoticed to the casual observer:
- Notice the spiked part (plenty of mousse to hold that up);
- Then there’s the Vanilla Ice stripes on the side of the head (how many know what I’m talking about?);
- Penultimate is the mullet in the back…
- But ultimate is that that mullet is permed!
Yes you heard me right. I had a permed mullet in 9th grade. I don’t know why I thought this would help me fit in and belong, but I did. Now all it does is make for a good sermon illustration of impulses gone wild.
Seriously though. We do a lot of crazy stuff to try to belong. My own experience with relationships has always been a little difficult. I think that because my parents divorced when I was in elementary school, relationships have always been this kind of unstable thing. I’m always wondering, when will this person leave? When will I lose this friend? What will I say that will drive that person away? Commitment, and I’m not talking about the romantic kind here (though that certainly is part of it), is always kind of iffy. Turns out I’m not the only one.
I asked my “friends” on Facebook what keeps you from making a commitment to be in a deep/meaningful/transparent/authentic/vulnerable friendship? Here’s some of the answers I got:
- Fear that they won’t give back the same and fear that they’ll use my weaknesses or honesty against me.
- forgiveness and fear…plus a lot of them have been really harmful to me and I am not sure it’s in me to forgive them
- Trust. Trust has to be absolute. I have only experienced this a couple times. Of those times only one person has actually honored it…How can a person commit to another person when the trust that your efforts of friendship won’t be thrown aside for selfishness?
Speaking of “friends” on Facebook, how many of you have less than ten friends on Facebook? How bout 10-100? 100-500? 500-1000? Over 1000?
OK, let’s look at this question another way. How many deep/meaningful/transparent/authentic/vulnerable friendships do you really have? Anyone over 1000? 500-1000? 100-500? 10-100? Under 10? I’d guess most of us would fall in that bottom category. I won’t ask how many have zero. That would really suck.
So here’s the problem that we face: We all long for deep/real/vulnerable/friends and authentic community. It’s part of our purpose in life. But we fear making a commitment that will cause us to get hurt.
Adele, our modern relationship theologian puts it well in her song “Turning Tables.”
Close enough to start a war,
All that I have is on the floor,
God only knows what we’re fighting for,
All that I say, you always say more
I can’t keep up with your turning tables
Under your thumb, I can’t breathe,
So I won’t let you close enough to hurt me
No, I won’t ask you, you to just desert me
I can’t give you what you think you gave me
It’s time to say goodbye to turning tables, to turning tables.
Friends, we’re a mess. Thankfully Jesus speaks to this whole friendship and commitment thing. Let’s read a story about Jesus and his commitment to his friends:
Matthew 12:46-50
46 While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers [called his cell phone…] were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” 48 But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, [Send them right in! No…] “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And pointing to his [what?…biological family? No, his…] disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does [what?] the will of my Father in heaven is [who?] my brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus makes a seriously radical challenge to our idea of family/belonging. He claims that his mother and brothers aren’t what we would call his “family members” but someone else. Family is not based on biological blood; but on the blood of Jesus! Not DNA but discipleship! You’re not “accidentally” born into this community (there are no “surprise babies”), you are chosen and you respond. How do you respond? What’s the defining point? Those who do “the will of my Father in heaven.” So what does doing God’s will look like?
Let’s jump to the story of Jesus as his disciple, John tells it. Here we find Jesus describing what it means to be his disciple:
John 13:34-35
34 I give you a new commandment, that you [be fruitful and multiply? No!] love one another. Just as I have [what?] loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
So Jesus is defining what it means to follow him. He is defining what it means to be a disciple, to be part of his family, the church. The community of the church is marked by a commitment to love one another as Jesus loved us. How did Jesus love us? He died for us. His blood covers our blood and we belong. Only in a full-throttle commitment to belonging to one another like Jesus’ commitment to us will we experience real, true, deep, authentic, transparent, vulnerable spiritual friendship and life-changing and transforming community.
The very thing we are afraid of, commitment, is the very thing that deep/meaningful/transparent/authentic/vulnerable friendships requires to thrive! In fact, that’s the whole point of this sermon. It’s the ONE point of this sermon: Authentic community and friendship is dependent upon a commitment to belong. Commitment really matters. You can’t have true friendships without commitment to belong.
Research has recently been done on what effect commitment has on living together before you’re married. The researchers, psychologists at major research universities who aren’t necessarily Christian, found that the lack of a life-time commitment before moving in together leads to a higher probability of negative experiences in marriage. But a life-time commitment before moving in together leads to a higher probability of positive experience in marriage. So which one do you want? Higher probability of negative experiences or higher probability of positive experiences?
While you’re not moving into the same room together, commitment to friends and community in the church works in a similar way. If you’re always wishy washy on your commitment to your church family (“Meh…I could always go find some other church if I don’t like this one”), your lack of commitment is likely to lead to a lack of real spiritual friends in that community. But if you go in to a church family with a high level of commitment, you’re likely to have positive experiences with building spiritual friendships.
So just in case you didn’t get it the first time, here’s the main point of this message: authentic community is dependent on a commitment to belong. Ephesians 2:19 in the Living Bible paraphrase says: “You are members of God’s very own family…and you [what?] belong [where?] in God’s household with [who?] every other Christian.”
So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take a step of commitment today. Depending on where you’re at, you don’t necessarily have to jump in full body, but that wouldn’t be a bad idea. I’m trying to give you some “graded” steps here:
If you’re a guest this morning and you’re here for the first time, make a commitment to attending regularly. At the very least, give this church “three strikes.” Today might just be a bad day. So if it’s your first or second time here, come back next week.
If you’re already a regular attender, make a commitment to belong to a small group. You know that real/deep/authentic/vulnerable spiritual friendship can’t really happen on Sunday morning. There’s way too many people here. No matter how authentic your community is, it’s just impractical for a worship service to carry the weight of all the spiritual friendships in a community. That’s got to take place somewhere else. And that somewhere else is in small groups. At our church, we’ve got small groups that happen formally and informally. A lot of people organize their own small groups. Two friends who get together for coffee every week. A neighborhood group of friends who study the Bible together. Then there’s the formal groups that our church organizes. We think that small groups are essential to spiritual growth so we’re always trying to get people to join a small group. That’s where the real meat of spiritual friendship and belonging takes place.
If you’re already in a small group, then I want you to consider taking a step of commitment to membership here in this church. It’s something of a fad today to be “spiritual but not religious.” By that, I think people like to understand themselves in spiritual ways, but not get involved with “organized religion.” The church and membership in the church then gets equated with “organized religion.” I’d like to suggest another way of thinking about membership to a church: membership is a commitment to spiritual friendship. It is a commitment to life-changing and transforming community. And do you remember what it takes for true spiritual friendship? Authentic community is dependent on commitment to belonging. Is a church “organized”? Well, yes. Have you ever tried to get a group of friends together? It takes phone calls and calendaring and a venue. Then there’s usually some money involved to meet where ever you’re meeting. Friendship takes organization. So does the spiritual friendship that is the church. So if you haven’t made a commitment to belong to that spiritual friendship, take steps to do so today.
So if you’re already a member of this church, you’re not off the hook yet. Your job is to create an environment where spiritual friendships and belonging can thrive. That’s called hospitality. Who here is on the hospitality team? Raise your hand. If you’re hand isn’t in the air, you’ve got it all wrong. At my church, when I ask who’s on the hospitality team? Everyone raises their hand. Because the environment for deep/meaningful/honest/authentic/vulnerable/transparent spiritual friendship to thrive is dependent less on the person greeting people as they come in the building and more on the person that the guest sits next to when they come into the worship area.
Some people collect antiques or baseball cards, I collect good and bad hospitality experiences at churches and elsewhere. I visited a church one time where a lady told me that she had been reserving the seats we were sitting in. She came up afterwards and apologized. I visited another church that everyone except the pastor ignored me and as my wife and we were walking out the back door, the sound guy came down out of the sound booth and greeted us. He then introduced us to some other people and we stuck around for some time longer. I visited a church recently where I was the most “normal” looking person in the worship space. I had no tattoos, no body piercings, no dreadlocks, no Mohawks, no vintage clothing. I went by myself with my 19-month-old son. No one talked to us, not even the pastor (who I knew!). Then right before worship began, the guitarist came down out of the front and introduced himself to us, pointed out his wife, and his infant son in his grandmother’s arms.
Recently my wife and I went to a swing dance at a club we’d never been to. The woman at the door (about half our age) greeted us and talked to us a quite a bit. She asked us a lot of questions and found out that we were there celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary. She told us about the swing dance club and was very friendly. When we got in to the dance floor, it was clear to us that most everyone knew one another. We felt a little awkward. We didn’t know anyone and the obstacles to getting to know people seemed huge. So we sat down and watched as people began to dance. A single woman about our age came in and sat down next to us. As she was putting her dance shoes on she introduced herself to us and told us her name was Kaitlin. She got our names, asked us lots of questions, and told us about herself and her own dancing. Then she got up to dance. We danced a couple of songs but realized that it was more of a singles scene and the young crowd switched partners every song. We were starting to stick out dancing only with one another. So I talked to Sarah about “fitting in” and asked if it was OK for me to ask someone else to dance. She said that was fine. Who do you think I went to ask to dance? Kaitlin. Who do you think was the second person I asked to dance? The woman who greeted us at the door. The next? A complete stranger. Of course, Sarah got asked to dance every single dance too. Friends, don’t let the local swing dance community out-hospitalitize the church!
I’d like to show you what this kind of spiritual friendship and belonging looks like when it’s done well. A couple of months ago I got a call from a friend of mine who is a pastor inKansas City. A woman who is a member of his church had a non-Christian brother in the hospital inLansing, and he asked if I would go visit this man who had a brain tumor and was not expected to live very long. I went and visited several times. We talked about all kinds of things: family, friends, and God. After he left and went back home, I kept up with him. A week or so after his discharge, I got a call from his sister who lived in Kansas City. She left me this voicemail:
“You have been visiting with my brother up in the hospital and I just wanted to say thank you so much. And yesterday my brother said something to me that was really really powerful and wanted to pass that on to you because it is a testament to your visits and the prayers from Sycamore Creek Church. Yesterday he said to me, “Hey that Tom Arthur stopped by the day that I was leaving and I wanted you to know that I think he’s going to be my spiritual friend.” And for him to say that is powerful, because he is not a person to say things like that. Whatever you did and whatever you’ve done—you did it prayerfully—that’s the impact of what you do there. So thank you for all of you, but especially to you, for reaching out to someone who really needs that connection right now. So you’re now a part of my brother’s family. Whether you realize it or not, he sees you as a spiritual friend. Thank you. Bye.”
“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
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