WE| community is a messy process

I hate awkward situations. I make it worse, probably, being so awkward. Have you ever tried to take two groups of friends and have them hang out together? It almost always makes things awkward. I hate that I always try to do just that. I also hate when you’ve been “placed” in a new group of people who are more than comfortable with everyone currently around.

“Hello I’m the new guy.”
That could easily be translated into, “I’m waiting for someone to stop staring at me like I just walked off a circus wagon.”

Hello, instant target for stares and conversation. At least that’s what it feels like. There are also those other times you just want to go home.

For instance I wanted to try and get involved with Axis. I was thinking it might be a good idea to get involved with a community for people in my own age group. I went after church to this thing called the 247 Lounge where all the Axis folk gather and drink coffee. Now, I normally don’t go out after church after having been awake since 4AM but it was time to make an effort.

When I got there I was late. Not only was I late to the event that day; I was late to joining Axis period. I stood in a room of conversations, silent, and awkwardly drinking my cup of liquid.

Painful to say the least…

I began thinking to myself, “if I really start looking sad and awkward enough I’ll eventually get noticed, and someone will, out of pity, come introduce them self to me.”

Community is messy.

That’s just me though.

Let’s think about the community that Jesus, the guy who knows you better than you know you, who was teaching scripture to geezers 3 times his age at 12 years old. What kind of community did He get himself into?

Prostitutes.

Dept-collecting thieves.

Public enemies.

The poor.

These people are hanging out with the holiest-of-holy, the sinless man, the guy reading their minds, and walks on water.

If you have a bible turn to Luke 19. This is one of my favorite stories of Jesus just busting on the scene to create some great community.

How horribly awkward… It’s sitcom worthy.

On a more serious note…

Community cannot only be awkward. It can be risky.

Risky is messy.

We typically try to avoid risk.

It’s just one more way that community gets the big fat red MESSY stamp but community has this connotation around it that kind of glows gold. It screams safety and big bear hugs.
Why is this so not the truth?

Sure community can be safe and filled with hugs and laughs, but the truth is that there is a muddy trench that you have to crawl through to get there. Those BFF’s don’t come cheap. You need to make sure that they fit the material, right? No, you usually aren’t interviewing for open best friend positions. Best friends kind of just grow, but then what makes a best friend? What lets us get to laughs, bear hugs, and safety? I want to tell you about my friends a little. First I am incredibly blessed to have them in my life. No matter what junk or amazing-ness I am going through, they are there to listen in an instant. I have one friend who lives in Mary Land. He drives 13 hours by him self to Illinois just to celebrate Christmas with us. I have this other friend Tyler. He’s a marine. When he would call home we would all gather at one persons house just to pass the phone around. We would go out of our way even if it meant miles to make it.

Good community should just work, just like best friends. BFF’s are themselves a kind of community.

But there is this truth that sticks to the back of community like gum on your shoe.

People are risky.

We tell them our secrets. We let them into our lives. They are welcome in our house, our room. They eat our food. They get to share in our excitements and in our tears.

When we let people that close to us. It’s risky.

Sharing with our small groups wouldn’t be so hard if we weren’t afraid of giving people a glimpse inside of who we really are.

Guys telling a girl that you like them wouldn’t be so embarrassing, it wouldn’t give you that queasy feeling in your stomach if we didn’t have to lower our guard so much.

We put it all out there. (it’s a big enchilada…)

Our pride. Our secrets.

Our trust. Our faults.

That’s risk.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “breaking down walls?” When you break down the walls in a relationship, in community, you begin to trust that other person or group of people. You trust them with your belongings. You trust them with your confessions.

You break down walls when you begin trusting your community with those things that are personal.

So, what’s personal to you?

Would you share it with me, with us?

What about your facebook friends?

If you aren’t comfortable with me being in your personal life you’re not going to do anything of the sort. At least not willingly.

When that wall comes down, we call that trust.

Trust does not happen overnight. It takes time, and more often than not it’s going to be messy. Like it or not there are people who are going to be betray or test your trust. They are going to mess up and spill the beans.

Can anyone say gossip?

This hurts.

Sometimes to a point that there’s no way you would go back to that so-called friend. Sometimes it’s a kick in the mouth. When community becomes infected with things like betrayal and lies, it can hurt. It can hurt so bad that it’s heart breaking.

You know what happens when your heart breaks?

You cry.

Here’s the irony though.

When you’re crying your community, be it one person or ten, will be there to catch your tears.

Have you ever torn down a wall before? Let me tell you it’s messy.

There is this one other thing that I want to talk about. It’s called reconciliation. Who’s heard of this word before? It’s a typical church kind of word. Reconciliation is all about community. It’s about healing and restoring relationships.

Community. Reconciliation.

When relationships have conflict, they break like a chain breaks. They need to be restored. The links need to be fixed. That’s reconciliation

It’s the entire story of Jesus. It’s the entire story of the Bible. In Genesis we let go of our relationship, our community with God. In Exodus God watches his people, the Israelites, become enslaved and oppressed in Egypt. God hears their cry. (God hears the cry of the oppressed)

So He frees His people. He watched them fall away and become enslaved under Egypt, but God wants to reconcile them, so that they can enter into community with Him once more. Then God shows up as a voice at a mountain called Sinai.

He shows up and actually speaks to all them, and in a more global sense, to all of us. The Exodus is about reconciliation.

And reconciliation is about community, the community that God called humans to enter into originally. That is with Him and All.

Then we fall away again. We forget about the relationship that God reconciled with us. The enslaved thing happens all over again in Babylon. This place called Babylon is the new Egypt. And it’s in Babylon that God hears the cry of the oppressed once more. But this time the reconciliation is going to be different.

This time God is coming to us. He’s done sending Moses to lead an Exodus.

Jesus shows up. Jesus, who is all God and all human, comes with this new thing. You see, before reconciliation was for the Israelites. Jesus shows up and turns the table. He tells us that this new thing is for everyone, the whole world.

The original idea. Him and all living in community.

As a Christian, as a living testament to Jesus we are supposed to take this reconciliation to where?

All.

And this takes us back to Genesis. God says that it is not good for man to be alone.

We can start with those that are around us.

Taking the risk. Breaking down the walls. Fighting the Awkwardness.

There is all this mess. What on earth makes us think that community is so worth the effort? Is it worth it? I’ll answer that for you.

It is.

Trusting, growing, taking the time, gossip, betrayal, awkwardness, fights, chaos, reconciliation; it’s all worth it. There is so much that we benefit from when we enter into really good community. I’m not just telling you. God showed us. God created us so that we would need each other. It is the original plan.

We need people in our lives that are going to be there when we want to celebrate that incredible goal we scored for our team.

We need people in our lives that are going to catch our tears when we just had our heart broken.

Sometimes those people need to kick us back in the God-direction when we have lost our way.

And we need to be in peoples’ lives when a big bear hug makes all the difference in a day.

We need to be in peoples’ lives when they can’t do it on their own. Jesus calls us to be there for the less fortunate. We are called to be servants to the poor and friends to the lonely.

A friend of mine put it like this, “It’s how we learn to love like Jesus, being in messy community but demonstrating love through the mess.”

this is a lesson that I wrote and taught last night to our jr. high and high school ministry.