Reflecting on Christian Community

Reflecting a lot lately on Christian community.  As I have stepped away from one community and am entering something totally different, the prayers and the thoughts reverberate and push.  And so I sit down and try to articulate.

Christian Community.

If it's real, it is always incarnational.    And I believe that a journey toward "real," or authenticity is one to which we are called in this time.   You see, I think we are not merely Church.  Or at least we should not be so.    I believe that when we travel toward "real,"  toward authenticity, we truly become the Body of Christ, returned and let loose in the world to foment justice and healing;  hope and salvation.   Folks who resonate with thoughts of the Second Coming might want to consider that this reality depends literally upon our current faithfulness.

When we are authentic Christian Community, the Body of Christ rises up in power.

We refer often to ourselves as the Body of Christ, but seldom connect the dots, but there it is.   

In this Resurrection Body, there is precious little room for our own narrow desires and agendas.  This Body has purged petty quarrels and silly arguments.  It has moved beyond the tyranny of what we want.   This Body is focused upon pouring out its life for others in the same way Christ poured his life out for us. In this Body, we are concerned with the transformation of the world as we spread God's love by example,  witness, through service and through an abundant amount of joyful laughter.   

I close this tempered rant with words from Romans 12 as offered by Eugene Petersen in "The Message."

".....The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what God does for us, not by what we are and what we do for God.     In this way we are like various parts of the human body.   Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around.  The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people.  Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body.   But as a chopped of finger or cut off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we?  So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be....."