Communally Formed (Pastor Cheryl Lavornia)

Good morning. Okay tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day. So a shout out to those of

you who are Irish or those who just wear green and eat corned beef and cabbage

or green refreshments. Either way in Rhode Island you are welcome to

participate. Actually within a Rhode Island context we are all welcome to

participate in a variety of holidays regardless of our ethnic connections. A

few years ago I did this so it was sort of like this cultural context study of

Rhode Island. Interestingly enough Rhode Islanders are among the most tolerant

people in the US. That's because Rhode Island was founded by a variety of

groups of people with a common vocation which was trade. By the 18th century New

Port had become a worldwide maritime trading center along with Boston, New

York, Philly and Charleston. On my first Camino I was deep in the heart of Spain

walking through a teeny teeny village and I met a man who was having coffee

and he said where are you from? I was like never mind. Rhode Island he goes New

Port. I was like yes he goes I've been there. So just think about our heritage.

The Narragansett tribe which were descendants from the original aboriginally

indigenous people who were here 30,000 years ago began trading with

settlers like Roger Williams. These independent minded English Puritans

and pilgrims were pioneers in the New World who formed new bonds around a shared

vocation of trade. New Port opened the doors again eventually to Portuguese

Jews and Quakers who were fleeing persecution and they established

themselves in the early until late 1600s eventually becoming the Toro

Synagogue and the Quakers Great Friends Meeting House. It was because they

shared a common vocation of trade. By 1696 due to the slave trade both enslaved

and free African crazed craftsmen arrived in New Port and then by the 1820s

Irish immigrants came and then in the 19th and the 20th century we have

various ethnic groups that includes Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Filipinos,

Cambodians, and Hispanics and many many more. This is why we are all Irish on

St. Patrick's Day and we're all Italian on St. Joseph's Day and we feel

welcomed at the Greek or the Portuguese or the Hispanic festivals held

annually. It's because we actually still see each other in terms of a common

vocation around trade but this kind of vocation has its limits. Today we are

continuing our series of revivalization it's the process of reimagining what

it means to be a compassionate Christian community and we're going to go dig

deeper into our understanding of community and how it's formed. Now

it's not as easy as dressing in a certain color or eating shared foods. It

actually takes some intentionality and a shared vocation, a new shared vocation

that goes beyond the cultural context of a place or a state but a shared

vocation that is communally formed by Jesus. So would you stand with me as

we read the Gospel of Mark chapter 3 or reading 1, 7 through 10 and 13 through 21.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

Another time Jesus went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand

was there. Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake and a large crowd

from Galilee followed. When they heard about all he was doing many people

came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idomia and the regions across the

Jordan and around Tyra and Sidon. Because of the crowd he told his

disciples to have a small boat ready for him to keep the people from crowding

him for he had healed many so that those with diseases were pushing forward

to touch him. Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him

those he wanted and they came to him. He appointed to 12 that they

might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to

authority to drive out demons. These are the 12 he appointed Simon to whom he

gave the name Peter, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. To them he gave

the name Boanderese which means son of thunder. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew,

Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon, the zealot

and Judas Ascariot who betrayed him. Then Jesus entered a house and again a crowd

gathered so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat.

When his family heard about this they went to take charge of him

for they said he is out of his mind. Lord thank you for your word this

morning. Thank you for us being able to

travel with you through this journey. Holy Spirit help us to see the places

you're inviting us into in this story.

Help us to see the places you're inviting us into

something that's new, a new vocation that you're starting to hint at here.

God allow us to travel this journey with you so you can take us on a transformational journey

not just of our mind but our hearts as well. We pray this in your name. Amen. You may be seated.

So in the Bible family or community means something different than it does here in Rhode Island.

Jesus would have understood families to include grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins,

parents, siblings, friends, servants and business partners all in the same household

to share a common household. The word that describes us is the Greek word

oikos which means house or household. Now the purpose of this oikos was for provision and

protection. The extended family this extended group of people would come together to protect

themselves from the outside world. Each oikos had the structure where there was rooms for

individual families built around a common courtyard and they used it for cooking

and for doing business. An outside wall was constructed with only one door with a big heavy

bar that could be protected against roaming bandits and thieves and it took the oikos to be able to

you know protect it. Now this extended family also provided provision. The oikos was formed

around a shared common vocation. This provided like this economic stability and provision.

Jesus's oikos was formed with this extended family around building or stone masonry and construction.

So an oikos was there also to provide a transfer of knowledge of skills of their craft

along with training so that the next generation could continue to provide for themselves.

Now in our context we've moved education and training and other means of knowledge and skills

building to outside institutions to allow children to focus on their own interests and professions.

We've also done this with protection. We think about we have a fire and a police force. Now

while our context is different it's not necessarily wrong. It's just that we need to remember

as we're entering into Jesus's context we need to sort of erase our own context as we enter his word.

Now our context is very much tied to the idea of this rugged pioneering individualism

because we think about you know the individual who forged their way across America. The immigrant

who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps or each of us being told you can be anything

you want to be when you grow up. All of that is not the context of the words we're reading today.

So before Jesus goes and picks the twelve disciples Luke tells us that Jesus returned to

Galilee in the power of the Spirit and the news about him spread through the whole

countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth where

he was brought up and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue. He as was his custom he stood

up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it he found

the place where it is written. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery for sight for the blind to set the oppressed free to proclaim the year of the Lord's

favor. Jesus began his ministry within the context of his own oikas. You can imagine him coming home

to this extended family and they all gather at the synagogue and they cannot wait

for their hometown boy to do the preaching. This is a new rabbi and they're so excited

but Jesus's family actually doesn't like his teaching. Instead of protecting him like they

should have they joined the whole town in dragging him outside to drop him off a cliff

and to stone him. The Gospel of John tells us he came to that which was his own but his own did not

receive him. Now Jesus miraculously escapes and it says Jesus then goes to Capernaum.

Now Capernaum is the home of Simon Peter and his brother Andrew. It's also the home of John

and James the sons of Zebedee. It also has another synagogue where he could teach.

So it goes on in Luke 4 to tell us he went to Capernaum, a town in Galilee and on the Sabbath

he taught the people and they were amazed at his teaching because his words had authority.

Then Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now here's some pictures here.

The first picture this is about a fourth century synagogue in Capernaum. It was built on top of

the first century synagogue that was there first where Jesus was. The next picture you can see

there's some layers that is the white layer is the actual fourth century synagogue and then the

next one you can see the black layer on the bottom is the first century synagogue and when I travel

I want to touch things so I touched it so I was imagining maybe Jesus touched it too so maybe I

touched Jesus so that's what I did. So in Capernaum Jesus began to redefine and reimagine what

it meant to be an oikas with a common vocation, a mission for the kingdom of God. Now Jesus began

to form this new community, this new family, this new oikas from another oikas. Instead of his

oikas he jumped into Peter and Andrew and James and John's oikas with a common vocation of

fishing. Archaeology has actually identified their oikas complex. It's situated one block from that

synagogue and it's along the water's edge of the Sea of Galilee. Now it consists of eight rooms

built around an open courtyard. It's really hard to see what you're looking at when you're

looking at ruins but that is actually the footprint of the complex. It had a set of

stairs that was going up to an upper room where most likely women and men at women and children

mended nets and dried fish during the day as the men slept because they went out and fished at night.

So you might have multiple families, sets of related families in this oikas all

contributing to the common vocation of fishing. Now this last picture is actually they built

a church over this so that's what the glass you're seeing this glass and it's this round circular area

and it's believed to be the first place where the church worshiped in Capernaum and there's actually

graffiti that first century graffiti that says Jesus on it and so that's where they think that

the church in Capernaum first began to worship. Now after Jesus preaches Luke tells us that

Jesus leaves the synagogue and he goes home with Simon. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from

a high fever and they asked Jesus to help her so he bent over and he rebuked the fever and it

left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them. At sunset the people brought to Jesus

all who had various kinds of sicknesses and laid his hands on each one of them. He healed them.

Moreover demons came out of many people shouting you are the son of God but he rebuked them

and would not allow them to speak because they knew he was the Messiah. At daybreak Jesus went

out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was they

tried to keep him from leaving them but he said I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of

God to other towns also because that is why I was sent and he kept on preaching in the synagogues

of Judea. So now you see this picture of Jesus bringing his own vocation the vocation he got from

reading those words in Isaiah to bring the good news. He brings this vocation into this new

oikas this community of people that would be communally formed now into a new Jesus-shaped

community leaving their vocation of stone masonry fishing whatever it was into this new oikas that

was centered around Jesus's vocation of spreading the good news and you can see this as Jesus

demonstrates it. He walks into Simon Peter's house and the first thing he does is he heals

his mother-in-law and then they share a meal and then that door that it's usually barred that they

keep the outside world out was flung open and the blind came in the demon possessed came in the

prisoner came in so he could lay hands on them and freeze and free them. This is the very definition

of Jesus's vocation for himself and this is how he began to pass on his knowledge and his

skills to train his new oikas. Later on in Luke 10 we read after this the Lord appointed 72 others

and sent them two by two ahead of them into every town a place where he was about to go.

Now here's a question how do we go from 12 to 72? I'm not good in math but I'm pretty sure if

you start with 12 you don't end up with 72 right? How did he do it? This is Jesus math so it seems to

me when we read stuff like that we are very singular of mind and we think just 12 people but

if they were coming from their own oikas wouldn't they bring some of them with them?

So now Jesus not only has the 12 now he has the 12 plus some of their households and and

forms this new oikas right? We have examples of who joined Jesus's oikas right away. Luke

19 9 says today salvation has come to this house. Jesus is talking about Zacchaeus's

oikas his household. Don't you think he might have jumped in? And then John 4.43 says the whole

household the whole oikas of the royal official believed as Jesus heals his son again more coming

in. Now we see this as a pattern because later on the church says the same thing. After Jesus's

death and resurrection the church begins to act like this new oikas. In Acts 16 15 it says then Lydia

and the members of her household her oikas were baptized and Paul goes back home with her and

eats with her and stays with her. She now is part of this new oikas. In Acts 16 34 the

jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them. He was filled with joy because he had

come to believe in God. He and his whole oikas his whole household. See Jesus used the context of

his own culture to reimagine and to revivalize what God's true intentions were for the kingdom

of God. He turned the family inside out. Later on his own mothers and brothers his mother and

brothers came to him because they thought he was out of his mind. You don't do this. Oikas's

are oikas's and they don't mix. Mark 3 31 through 35 says then Jesus's mother and brothers arrived

standing outside they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him and they told him

your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you. And Jesus replies who are my mother and

my brothers. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around them and said here are my mother

and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. And we talked a

little bit about this last week. The sheep the flock that are following Jesus's voice are known

because they do God's will. They are part of this new oikas. It's like Jesus's voice from the very

beginning with Peter and Andrew James and John is still echoing today as we think about what it means

to be a community that's formed around Jesus. Ephesians 2 19 reminds us you are no longer

foreigners and aliens but fellow citizens with God's people and members of the household

or the oikas of God. So if we want to be communally formed does that mean we need to all now move

in together? Yeah somebody just squirmed. Or do we need to start one business?

Do we need to live like the people in the Bible? Well no I don't think so. I think we need to

revivalize our understanding of what it means to be communally formed in the 21st century here

in Rhode Island. See our contexts are different. Even if you drive an hour away the contexts are

different. So we are here. What are we going to make of it here? To be communally formed as

an extended family means we see beyond the biological ties our familiar bonds and value the bonds we

have in Christ to a higher degree. This is a super hard challenge and we see this as men and women

left their oikas, their own biological oikas to follow Jesus and to literally give up their

siblings and their mother and their father to be in this new community. I mean we do this

and we do this really well because this is our context. We don't do Jesus as well. We do our

well. Think about it. We are still very independent and very self-contained. We have been

communally formed by immediate family and fences. There is an imaginary line. I don't know if you

can see it. It is imaginary but I think it's actually really there that runs from Route 138

up to the towers. If you're in South County by the way it's not even a real county. If you're

in South County you stay in South County. If you're above that you go above that.

Literally we live in Saunders Town which is part of South County and I say to Dean where are you

going to the story? He goes Wakefield. I'm like North King's Town is like two miles away. He goes

you know it just like feels like different right. So it depends on your culture and your context.

That's really silly but oh by the way when did the dunk become the ameca mutual

pavilion? That's like another thing like Rhode Islanders like nope we're still going to call it

whatever it was called the Civic Center remember Civic Center. We are okay with other cultures

and holidays as long as we meet in public settings like at a parade or in the town streets

or in the streets of our neighborhoods. We really enjoy our fences though.

If your neighbor is celebrating some holiday or some sort of party fantastic as long as it

doesn't cross over into your yard. This is so obvious that when you see like during a holiday

my neighborhood looks like little clusters of parking lots that everybody gathers around each

house and nobody even thinks about whether or not their neighbor is alone and or is eating

Thanksgiving or not. Think about it we are surprised when we see someone from our neighborhood ring

our doorbell because we are happy to meet them at the bus stop or at the edge of our property

while raking or out in a common area of apartments but when they walk into our yard ooh.

As a church I think we've been more formed by this context than the way Jesus wants

to form our community now. Priscilla's Perot Dominix says in her book Becoming a Sanctuary

instead of our church as being a city on a hill shining the light of Jesus

we spend more time advertising the Sunday service the next program or the celebrity pastor

and she goes on to define the church community like Jesus's Oikos where his protection and

provision come around a common vocation. This is a community where people are willing to suffer

together. A community where people rejoice with and for each other. A community where people

know they need each other and a community where all people are honored all gifts are recognized

and needed and where divisions hierarchies and power over are not seen. So Christ Church

how communally formed are we?

That's a heavy sort of sort of challenge as we think about when we leave here

do we know the names even of the people in our row we usually run home to our own

biological families and do our own thing. How communally formed are we as Jesus's Oikos?

One of the ways that we know whether or not we are actually living into the vocation of Jesus

is doing things like we did last week. So last week we asked you to help grant one of

our missionaries in Japan to help reach his goal of sponsoring 24 kids in Congo in the Congo

area. A whopping 16 families responded this is huge. 16 hours 24 the other two churches

you know like they don't even have to work hard now this is this is so fantastic others also expressed

an interest in increasing their giving again this is huge this is the way that we become

mission minded and communally formed around the vocation of Jesus to do the things that

Jesus did and to continue to do them in our community and outside. Examples like this show us

who we are we are being communally formed when we share in Jesus's vocation of reimagining community

and the revivalization of humanity inside the church and outside of the church. This is Jesus's

vision for us because this is Jesus to us. So I want there's some practical ways I want you to

consider this morning and it's a challenge because our Oikos our communally formed church

should be coming together around a common vocation. It doesn't mean we have one business model or

one business to do but for all intents and purposes it's our shared mission. So on March 30th

you heard announced that the leadership team is hosting two sessions one after each service

to share more about the details of how we're reimagining and reforming what it means to

be a compassionate Christian community and all are welcome. So that's one step one challenge

you could do just to show up and listen. Another thing is if you've considered yourself

part of this Oikos for a while you should be asking yourself how are you part of the

family business how are you using your spiritual gifts your talents your skills your abilities

how are you using them here are you investing in the body here are the things that maybe you're

learning from a podcast or other online sermons or other small groups or organizations

are they being reinvested into our church are you reinvesting yourself in others here

what if we start thinking about how we are all supposed to be protecting and providing for each

other so that we are passing on skills we are equipping each other and training in the

way of jesus as our common vocation then how are you inviting others to experience

jesus oikos if you begin to experience the oikos inside the church the church as an oikos is

extended family then we have to recognize others outside need jesus too how are you

going to start considering inviting others into this oikos now sometimes we think about this and

we've over complicated it you have how many relationships in your life lots co-workers neighbors

friends pickleball team basketball team whatever you do for fun whatever you do for work you

have networks of people that you have built relationships with and sometimes we think about

this oh as i have to evangelize well okay but jesus modeled this and he modeled it so easily

what did he do he went in to someone's house he shared a meal with them he invited them

into his life he showed what it meant to be on this common vocation that's all it is so

this example we can do we let's just go and share a meal tap on your neighbor's door and say hello

invite them over for a meal invite them over for something you don't have to run to invite them

over to a small group but eventually you might say come to my small group that meets in my home

because this is the jesus thing that we do then you might even invite them to church

because this is our common vocation to demonstrate the good news of jesus to the world

and this is who we're called to be as a compassionate christian community here in east

grannich