Joshua 1:1-9
Acts 2:37-47
Mark 7:31-37
As much as today is a day about community, it is really a day about what each one of us values most in community. Community is one of those things that we find both appealing and repelling. We love the benefits of being a part of a community. Yet when it doesn’t give us what we want...it can be easy to want to run away. One of the things that I hear so often about Oak Park and other towns and neighborhoods in Chicago is, “I like the sense of community here.” But at the same time, we could all probably come up with a “top 10 complaints” list about our communities off the top of our heads--too many laws, too many regulations, not enough local businesses, too much development, too little development, too high property taxes. We love the benefits community gives us: friends, neighbors, schools, nature. But that love can turn quickly to indifference and pulling away as the challenges of being in community bump up against us: responsibilities, resolving disagreements, and responding to changes. (Skinner)
The early church shared these same feelings towards being a community. The picture painted in Acts 2--a passage we studied in Koinonia Conversations this past summer--shows a church drawn together by the joy of the Spirit, unified in its heart and its soul (2:32)...excited to be the church of Jesus Christ. But it does not take long for this joyful bunch of believers to bump up against the reality of human brokenness at work in this community. No sooner than Acts describes the church community members as having everything they owned held in common and given to any who were in need, it soon describes a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira withholding sharing their proceeds from land they sold--and then lying about it to the apostles. (5:1-11) But the arc of Acts shows that these tensions were not too much to break the early church. The arc of the story of Acts is a story of the early church moving from unity, to disagreements, to escalating tension, to working through the inclusion of different kinds of people, to ultimately saying it could define itself as a church of both Greeks and Gentiles.
It is natural for us to not want to deal with tension in community, let alone in church. 10 days ago, the CEO of online social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, spoke at a conference where he announced new ways that the online communal experience would become “frictionless”. He said social “applications” would create even more sharing of information about our lives online--more than even whatever we choose to share--like what books we are currently reading, what movies we are watching, and what songs we are listening to. This shift towards even more sharing of personal information without our awareness has many concerned that personal privacy could be breached illegally, and further expansion of these “applications” may continue to grow if it is not stopped. These concerns raise the importance of a myth that we give credence to all too often, whether to online or in-person communities: that with no privacy, with enough information about each other, we can create a frictionless utopia void of personal differences. But, as interconnected as such things can make our lives, the story of early church in Acts shows us that without borders, without the opportunity for self-reflfection and mutual conversation—without the capacity to self-differentiate—a “frictionless” group will be created, but it will no longer be a community.
This is the gift of this “Marked by Christ” Sunday. We take time today to each individually continue to re-set the borders of what matters most to us as we look to God’s future for our community, to discern our sense of what is our communal identity, and to continue to get a sense of what we believe is vital to the mission and ministry of United Lutheran Church as we look forwards. We are gifted with this opportunity as the church because we’ve all been marked--we’ve been marked by Christ. God marks each and every one of us uniquely with the hands of Jesus--hands that open up our ears to hear and our mouths to proclaim his good news of new life; hands that opened the blind and the mute, and drew them into relationship with him and his community.
God has marked us so that we can give the love and power of Jesus traction in the world. The only way to traction can happen is if there is friction. Not friction in the sense of being attacked, blamed or victimized. The mark of Christ on us creates friction by defining us...as blessed, redeemed and made whole...when there are forces at work that do everything they can to define us otherwise. Despite these forces, God marks us in Christ, even though there’s more than enough layers of friction between God and us to give God the right not to mark us...as “forgiven.”
We are marked by Christ to give the power of the Spirit traction in the world. Being marked may cause differences...but Jesus stands in the midst of those differences, still keeping us connected to one another as a diverse community—even connected with those whom we may have the farthest thing from a “frictionless” relationship with, whether in the community of our family, our neighborhood, our country...or even this church.
It takes courage to be in community. There’s no doubt about that. But like the Israelites who stood together as a community at the River Jordan, with the promised land on the other side, after a long journey in the wilderness, they heard God say “I will be with you wherever you go...I will not fail you or forsake you...be strong and courageous” We too are called to be the community God has marked us to be even when there are differences with each other, and with the world...that friction can make us grow because it is Christ who holds us together and binds us together as ones marked by his cross. His love is more powerful than anything that could divide us. For once we’ve been marked by Christ, his hold on us all is forever sure. He will never let us go.
Amen.
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