One Another | We Belong to One Another

So this morning we're beginning a new sermon series called One

Another. And so it's a series about God's

invitation to community and what it means to be a people marked

by love. So today's scripture reading is

Romans 12/4 through 5. For just as each of us has one

body with many members, and these members do not all have

the same function, so in Christ we though many form one body and

each member belongs to all the others.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks Peter Guy.

Morning everybody. How we doing this morning?

Good. Good to see all of your lovely

faces glistening out there. That was intended to be a joke.

Sorry the IT is a hot one today. Appreciate you.

Ali and I just got back last night from a wedding which was

outdoor We. Made a poor decision to rent an

Airbnb without checking to make sure it had air conditioning.

So we're just acclimating at this point.

We're acclimating. Hey, if I haven't met you, my

name is Josh. I have the honor of being one of

the pastors here at Reality and it's great.

Again, I just want to say welcome.

We're so glad that you're with us today, whether you've been

here for a long time or today is just your very first time.

But as Nicole said, we are diving into a new series this

morning on the one another passages of scripture.

Some of you know about this. There is a Greek word that shows

up around 100 times throughout the text of Scripture.

The Greek word is a lay alone, which usually gets translated

something like one another. And when we when we zoom out

from all of these individual texts, we begin to get really

kind of a composite of what it looks like for us as the family

of Jesus. To live together.

And so that's what we're going to be exploring over the course

of this series. Looking at God's vision for

community as we are in a season in our in our church family this

summer of connecting, meeting some new people, getting to know

one another. Community is a a big value for

us here at Reality. I think it's one of the things

that our church does a pretty good job at.

Although like any value is sometimes there are places where

we miss it where we. Need to grow and want to to go

further in it. So we hope that this series will

be a time to to build on our strengths in that way.

Also want to say if you're not connected here, if you want to

be, if you're trying to figure out what the next set looks like

for you or just if we haven't met, come come grab me.

After the gathering I'd love to chat with you and help you find

a way to to plug in. Well this past week like many of

you, my family celebrated the 4th of July.

We went down, got out of the city, was raining at the time,

as as you may remember, and so my inlaws have a house that's a

little bit larger and we we grilled out, we hung out, We

went down to there a large basement and established an

improvised pickleball court and tried to play.

It was definitely not large enough for that, but we had a

good time and avoided injuries. Only only a few things were

broken but but this tradition of celebrating the 4th really goes

back to. Kind of America's origin story,

if you will. And of course America's origin

story is something that's contested right now.

But the story goes, as you know, back in 1776, these British

colonists who are tired of of feeling like they didn't have a

say, didn't have voice, had already thrown some tea in the

harbor. Maybe you've participated in

that at some point, but got together and they said, you know

what, We we don't think. That that others should be able

to to to infringe on on these rights that we have.

In fact we have these rights that are self-evident they're

inviolable they're given by God himself and and since the

government over in Britain isn't supporting these we're going to

set up our own. And that history of course

launched the American Revolution some of which was fought right

here in Boston but the reason I bring it up and and this whole

history around the 4th is it's so interesting I I think that.

In some ways our holidays shape our imagination.

They shape our values, the stories that we tell.

And and on this value, we literally celebrate

independence, right? Independence Day.

And this value for independence is something that really marks

us as Americans, somewhat actually, in contrast to others.

I was over in France a couple of years ago and I was really

struck by the fact. That you know, they they

Liberty, equity, Fraternity is their revolutionary slogan that

you see up all over the place, right?

It's much more communal when we think of the values of America

like freedom, liberty, independence are things that

come up again and again. And whether we're aware of it or

not, some of us obviously here are not even Americans.

But but these things shape our culture and our identity as

people who live here in this community in one way or another.

And and it's interesting because while I think independence is,

is a beautiful thing. I mean who wants to be pushed

around, told what to do, exploited.

Probably none of us, right? Agency is a really valuable and

important thing. That are kind of extreme focus

on this in some ways ends up having some shadow sides that we

bump up against particularly as followers of Jesus.

When we get to this question of what it looks like to do

community, there's a word for a society shaped by a value for

independence that that word is individualism.

As the dictionary defines it. Individualism is the principle

of being independent and self reliant.

And here we find, I think, a paradox that I want to explore

together this morning. And the paradox is very simply

this. We have this value that I think

most of us would say independence seems better than

the alternative. I would like to have

independence, autonomy, self determination, good things.

And I also want to be in community.

I want to belong to others. I want to be connected, right?

And there is there is a tension that starts to creep in between

these two things, good things that all of us want.

I don't know. Maybe a way to practically

illustrate this is, have any of you ever tried to settle on a

place to go for lunch with like 15 different people?

Right. Particularly if like, no one is

in charge, If it's unclear, like who is, who is making the

decision, right, Because there's that one person who's like, oh,

I want to eat at this place because it's like close to my

house or the tea. And then this other person is

like, yeah, but that place doesn't have gluten free options

and like, I need gluten free. The other person over here is

like super into seafood and this person hates seafood, right?

And before you know it, like you have people going to four

different directions. This person wants to go to

somewhere that's locally owned. This person wants to go to

Cheesecake Factory because of all the options.

Like it just becomes chaos, right?

And sometimes we end up in this this space where we feel this

tension between how we would prefer to express ourselves, how

we would prefer to do things if we were in charge, if we were

autonomously making decisions, and the question of like, but we

also want to be together. So how do we navigate this

paradox? I think the book of Romans

points us to some helpful information here.

Regarding this, in the book of Romans, we found a church that

is struggling to live in community across quite a lot of

difference. The church in Rome of course was

in the center of the world at the time.

Like Rome was it that all roads, as they said, led there.

And there were not only Romans who were from there, but there

were immigrants. There were people from all over

the world who had come to Rome for for fame and fortune.

And it wasn't just diverse in terms of languages and

ethnicities, but it was, it was crazy diverse in terms of class.

It was full of of slaves, but also of merchants and and former

slaves and then folks who'd been commissioned by somebody else to

go and do business and and then there were the political class,

like whatever you could. Think of was in Rome and as we

get to this book of Romans we find that actually the church

looked a lot like that. The church in Rome was super

diverse, not only across race and class, but but also in terms

of previous faith and experience.

See, when the the church in Rome started out, it was primarily

within the synagogue, it was within the Jewish community.

But you Fast forward a little bit.

We're not sure exactly when, but somewhere along the line

probably around 8049, the Emperor Claudius who was ruling

at the time got irritated with all the Jews for some reason.

And he just said get out emperors can do that apparently.

So he just said go like you're gone you have to leave the city.

And and there was this massive exodus the the Jewish folks who

had founded the church there all of a sudden were gone and and

the only people left in the church.

Were the Romans the the the non Jewish folks who who had come to

faith and participated in that church community.

And as you might imagine this was a big cultural shift right?

The the the Jewish folk and the non Jewish folk had different

backgrounds. They had different cultures.

They had different relationships to the law of Moses and all the

rituals and rules around that. So so the non Jews started to

like contextualize. They're like you know we're

going to get some of that music up in here right.

We're going to we're going to like.

We're gonna change the service times around a little bit.

We're gonna do some things, and they did some things.

We don't know what those things were, but we do know that then

eventually Claudius dies and many of these Jews who've been

forced out of Rome come back right?

They all of a sudden show back up at their place.

This was their church, and it's not the same.

Like, it's been totally, it's been totally changed.

It's it's evolved. If you have visited reality in

the past and then you got here today, like who is this guy

who's up here? You know, like the reality has

been through a lot of changes. And sometimes over time a place

just becomes it. It's like, oh, this is a

different thing. And then these people who who

had previously been crucial members, really it helped to get

this thing off the ground, are then trying to find their place

in this new expression. Like, what does this mean?

How did, how do we live together?

Across these differences, what does it mean to find rhythms

that work for for all of us? And so Paul writes this letter

to a diverse and in some ways a divided community that's

navigating A merger, something that I don't know.

We got a lot of divisions going on, but some things that are

relevant for us for sure. And he offers them, as Scott

McKnight talks about it, a lived theology.

But how to navigate really, Romans is mostly about how to

navigate privilege and power. On how to be at peace with

others who are different from us, and specifically this

morning we're in chapter 12, verses four and five, where Paul

introduces this key metaphor which really grounds the

community. Read with me here.

Picking up in verse 4, Paul writes that just as each of us

has one body with many members, and these members don't all have

the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body.

And each members belongs to all the others.

There you got it. Everybody catch that one another

series all the others, it's the same word.

Alay alone is showing up there and and Paul says that that

this, this one, another is actually something that we are.

It's not just something that we do, it's something that we are

as members of a body who belong to one another.

And I love, honestly, this is a pretty radical image that Paul

gives, but it's also, I think, such an important image for us.

It's really an image that we're going to return to throughout

this series as we look at what it means to to live in community

with one another. Because a body is, you know, a

body is not uniform, right? We are made of the same stuff,

but. And your nose.

And your big toe. Right, your elbow.

Your shoulder. These are not the same, right?

They're very, very different. They function differently.

Your kidney is not the same as your knee or your eye.

The church in in Rome was not uniform.

And Paul's message was not that the the church needed to be

uniform. But he was saying that despite

all of this difference in diversity, that somehow we've

got to find a way to function together as a body.

And in order to to invite them into a fresh imagination, he

says that that we form one body where each member belongs to all

the others. Man belong is such an

interesting word to show up here, right?

I don't know about you, but like, I want to belong.

Like, I like feeling included. You know, when Robert has a

party at his house and makes delicious food, I want to get

invited. It's like a good thing.

Manny and I were talking about that this week.

It's Okay Robert. I'm not offended.

The he's gonna invite me. I'm confident.

Especially after this. Now he has to.

So belonging is great, right? You go to your local coffee shop

and people know your name. I live in a neighborhood where I

walk down the street and always people are like, hey, what's up

Josh? Good to see you.

What's going on? Right.

Belonging is fantastic. We all want to belong.

Brené Brown says that. That a deep sense of love and

belonging is an irreducible need of all people.

We're biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually

wired to love, to be loved, and to belong.

We all want it. But while belonging sounds

great, there's kind of a flip side.

Because who wants to, like, belong to someone else like

that? Almost it.

It implies ownership, right? It implies responsibilities and

duties. It implies commitment.

Whether you are part of a family, a church, A-Team, a

civic organization, if you belong to that group, whatever

that group is, there are some things that are expected of you.

There's some there's some ways in which you're expected to show

up. There's some things that that

you have that go along with that, right?

There are commitments and duties and and who wants that?

Cuz like I want to be free. I want to I want to wait until

like after church to see how I'm feeling to decide whether or not

Anna's thing makes sense to RSVP too right?

Is like, I'm gonna like cuz it could go either way.

What if a better opportunity comes up?

Maybe maybe like keep my options open until the last second.

And I think for so many of us we feel this like particularly we

feel this if we have been in a space, which I have and I

imagine many of you have where you've experienced some

authority that was abusive or controlling, right.

Were you were you've experienced somebody who was who was really

kind of like trying to hedge you in not in allowing you to to see

your own needs met or your own desires express and it felt

like. I'm part of this thing, and it's

cramping my style. It's it's forcing me into a box

that I'm not comfortable with, right?

We we have this just almost. For some of us, it's like an

allergic reaction to feeling controlled in some way.

It's feeling like somebody you know owns us or puts demands on

us or puts pressure on us. And this is the paradox of

independence and belonging, right?

I want to be held, but not too tight.

Don't crush me. I want to be in control, but I

also want to be part of the group.

I want to eat at my favorite restaurant because I like

seafood. But like, I also want you to

come. Like everybody should go to

where I want to go, right? Tim Keller wants quipped that

everyone says they want community and friendship, but

mention accountability or commitment to people and they

run the other way. My experience sometimes that's

true. Like not not just true of like

us generally. Sometimes it's true of me,

right? We want to be independent.

Not so independent. We feel isolated and lonely, but

independent enough where we never have to do anything that

we don't prefer. And here's a paradox.

So Romans in, or Paul rather in the book of Romans here says we

who are many form one body. I think a body is an interesting

metaphor because it's a, it's a functional metaphor, you know,

like all your different body parts have to work together in

order for like. Basically anything in your life

to happen, right? Who out here is athletic?

OK? Got like 2 hands.

I appreciate you bold people. Everybody else here.

There are more athletic people out there than that.

I know. I know some of you, right?

But. But we don't, you know.

All right. I'm not athletic.

I enjoy sports. I enjoy moving my body.

I'm not an athletic person. I'm not very coordinated.

Sometimes I'm like walking and. I forgot to tell my shoulder

that we're passing through a door frame and there's just this

like moment, you know, or like stubbing the toe on something.

My my body isn't the most coordinated, but still it

generally works together, generally does the things that I

want to do. But but not all bodies.

There's like, actually this is super crazy.

Almost a century ago as researchers, researchers were

trying to cure really extreme forms of epilepsy.

There was some doctors. Particularly A1 doctor William

Van Wagonen in upstate New York around 1939, who went on some,

like crazy experimental surgery stuff.

Dr. Van Wagonen between February and May of that year opened up

10 patients skulls and cut through the corpus callosum,

which is the part of the brain connecting the left hemisphere

to the right. OK, he severed the connection

between. The two different hemispheres of

your brain in these patients who were experiencing severe

epilepsy. And it kind of worked, right.

It like it had some positive like in most of the cases

whatever was going on that was generating these epileptic

seizures, it it fix it. But it also had some weird side

effects. OK A lot of what we know about

in neuroscience today is because of these weird things where like

it's like let's disconnect the halves of the brain and and.

I I've just learned this, maybe maybe some of you already know

this, but you basically your right brain controls the left

side of your body. Your left brain controls the

right side of your body, right. And typically they work together

as as you would imagine. But in some cases after severing

this connection, people would essentially have two brain

systems that were not working together which generated

something called alien hand syndrome in which.

There was like the dominant part of your brain that was like

aware of stuff and controlling stuff.

Typically on the left side was like, you're going through life

and doing something. And then all of a sudden it's

like, hey, that hand grabbed something and it won't let go.

And the person is sitting there telling you, like, go hand and

the hand is like, Nope, I'm all good.

Like I really wanna hold on to this thing.

Or or there were even crazier instances of alien hand

syndrome. There were instances where

people would get a phone call and they, like, go to answer it

with her right hand and their left hand is like batting it out

of the way. Like, I want to get there first.

Some crazy, crazy stuff in one case.

In one really extreme case, this lady is like, she's not in

public and like, her left hand just starts like unbuttoning her

blouse. It's like, whoa, OK, the the

same lady like her left hand at one point started trying to,

like, choke her out in the middle of her sleep.

The body is disconnected, not granted.

This is, this is a really extreme and crazy example.

None of us are like this. None of us ever, you know,

accidentally say things we didn't mean to.

Or, well, some of us might do that, but most I don't.

I don't imagine that anyone here has alien hand syndrome.

But I bring this all up because I think tragically sometimes

this is how we as the Church function like we we we say we're

united and in like. Like a unity cognitive like

we're all of the same stuff, sure.

But then functionally, when it gets to it, we don't necessarily

like, operate as one, right? Sometimes that's like we just

disagree about stuff. You know, one person thinks the

worship is the most important. Somebody else thinks the

preaching is the most important. One person, you know wants to

meet over here, another person wants to meet over there, and

you get factions, and people disagree.

But other times it's stuff like, you know, we have needs, right?

There's parts of the body that are injured, right?

They're going through something, but they don't communicate to

anybody else in the body about that.

They're just like handling that by themselves in isolation,

right? Or people just kind of often

like, it's like, well, the same thing as with the restaurant.

It's like, well, this is my idea.

This is what I prefer. Let's go in that direction.

And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight you.

It's like a nervous system disorder.

But here's the thing that's so powerful to me about this

passage of scripture is that Paul, in this image of the body,

says that we belong to one another.

In other words, it's not me and you, it's it's really us.

And and just as it's, like, absolutely ridiculous and

terrifying to think about a limb of your body acting up and just

like, going rogue, like. It should be concerning to us

when like members of the body, whether it's me or anybody else

like are kind of going rope doing their own thing in without

coordination, without connection with others and friends.

As I said earlier, this is not a, this is not a guilt trip

conversation that I want to have this morning because like, look,

I get it. Most of us feel like.

Man, we got a lot going on. It is a lot to manage in my

life. Keeping up with my needs is a

lot. And then I got family members

who need stuff, right? I got like, my close couple

friends that need stuff. So, like, thinking about like,

Oh my gosh, it's it's so easy to get into this conversation.

And I think a lot of us just trip into this imagination where

we think, Oh my gosh, well, somebody else's needs.

Like, what are you, Josh? What are you talking about?

Like, do I have to? Then I'm gonna, like, call

everybody before I decide on dinner tonight.

Like, what are you saying? I'm not.

I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that I think

some of us have this instinct, this value, this default towards

independence and autonomy, which serves a purpose, right?

Like it's not bad. I'm I'm if you have that.

I'm glad that you have that. If you don't have that at all,

there's a different message on boundaries that we need to have.

Like it's a different conversation.

You should have like some independence and agency.

But when, when, as with any value, if, if we just run on

that value, if we just operate in our defaults, then I think we

we miss something. We miss what's possible.

We miss the flourishing life that Jesus actually designed for

us to have, which is not individual.

It is not individualism. It is a community that is

interdependent with one another and friends.

It's not that we're not doing this at all, but I, I, I just

wonder if there there might be some of us even today who have a

bit of a stunted imagination around what's possible, right?

Because we live in a culture in a society where like everything

is financial and transactional, right?

I don't need community like I can Grubhub that meal that I

need somebody to bring me. I can order an Uber, right?

I can hire movers. I can like, you know, like.

There is an answer for everything that you need in your

life that you might rely on somebody else for.

And so often all of us are are managing everything ourselves.

But what if we're missing something?

What if it's holding us back in some way from the good life, the

flourishing life that God actually wants for us?

I mean, what if we were a community that that showed up

and and filled up the freezer after you went through a loss or

or. Or had a death in the family.

Like what if what if we were a community where we were like, Oh

yeah, like if I've got something going on, I know that I got

people right now who can watch my kids, right?

What if we were the kind of community that would show up for

one another and and say, hey I know you're struggling to make

rent this month like, but we we got you like we can come through

for you to help you out. Like what if we were a community

that that when? A black man was killed by racist

violence. Like, we showed up for the

people who were grieving and stood together in solidarity,

like checked in on folk. You know, what if we were the

kind of community that that rallied around a family that was

bringing a foster kid into their home?

And we said, like, yeah, you are the foster parents, but like,

but like, we got you right friends.

This is, I think just even a small piece of what it means to

to. To be the kind of family that

really takes things as as like being a family.

You know, last week my daughter Eva got sick and it's sick.

It's inconvenient when your toddler gets sick, as some of

you know, because not only are you dealing with a sick kid, but

then in addition to dealing with a sick kid, that means they

can't go to daycare, which means, like, everything in your

life is now different, right? So.

You know, you're working early mornings.

I'm seeing some smiles out there, some knowing,

understanding. Yeah, like because you you got

to like the work still has to get done usually.

So like, you got to do it earlier or later and then you're

trying to run errands with a kid who is also sick and not happy

because they are sick. And it's like it's just

everything gets shifted around and it honestly, it's super

inconvenient. But when my daughter Eva gets

sick, like I just do that stuff. Because she's my daughter and

I'm her dad. And so it's not like her need

that she has to solve for herself.

Like it's it's our, it's our family's problem.

And so we show up for each other.

Or in this case, really I show up for her, but she's a kid, so

that's why. But friends like how what I'm

trying to ask you is how broad is that circle of family for us?

Like who's in who's? Needs Are you willing to be

inconvenienced by if we are a body members of one another, it

means that whatever you're going through this morning isn't

something that you have to go through alone.

It means that there's actually like a theological foundation

for you to to name like, hey, I'm not OK right now, like I

need some help. And for others to say, like, Oh

yeah, we got you. And and and for that kind of

community to exist in any kind of a healthy way, like it can't

be one person who is always doing the helping, right?

There's reciprocity. It's like it's how it is in a

body, right? Like wherever, wherever the

injury is, that's where the blood flow is going to.

And and that would be true for us too, friends, because

sometimes we have a need. And being part of a body means

that we can lean on other people to get that need met, but it

also means that other people's needs, we we're willing to allow

those needs to inconvenience us because that's not them, it's

it's us. We are members one of another

and friends I'm encouraged to say, like I honestly, I think

this is already happening in our community.

Like, there are sparks. There, stories over the rest of

the series. We're going to tell some of

those stories about ways in which this is already

manifesting. And my heart, my prayer for us

is just more right. Which in a culture, in a, in a,

in a city that like, literally is like the birth place of

freedom and all that, you know, like this isn't our default.

It's not our default and some some of us like, don't want to

support and others it's actually like harder to like be supported

because we feel like maybe that means something is wrong with us

in some way. But this is what it means to be

one another, to be part of the family, part of the body.

And over these next weeks, as we continue to dig in, I want to

continue to wrestle with what does that look like for me.

Like where are those places where I'm I'm boundarying off

others not just maybe to look good, to not feel vulnerable,

right? Or or or because I've got it.

As it. Like these are my needs and

those are your needs and so I'm going to meet all of my needs

and then if I have extra stuff then like, maybe I'll help out

with your needs. Whereas an acts like guys,

people sold their houses. To like, give to other people

who like, Can you imagine if we were a community, that there

were people who are like, yo, you know, I'm going to dip into

my IRA in order to help out the situation.

I'm going to sell that second property I have in New Hampshire

because somebody's going through it right now and I'm going to

show up for them, right? We're not there.

Maybe we won't ever get there. But friends, this series today

is an invitation for each of us to consider.

What does it look like for us to take the next step towards this

vision of really belonging to one another?

We're going to enter into a time of of musical reflection and

response. And as we do so, we've got some

carpets up here in the front. These carpets are sacred spaces

just for you to be with Jesus. You could you could be with

Jesus in your seat too. That's fine, but if something

sparked for you today. I would invite you to consider,

you know, it's not just an idea. We believe that when we when we

engage the text of scripture and listen with with ears towards

the Holy Spirit that he's speaking.

So I want to invite you as we move into this next phase of our

gathering to really consider like what does that look like?

Where are the ways that I am holding myself back, self

protecting in some way that's limiting the kind of community

that's possible in my life. What might it look like for me

to to say yes to others, to really belong to others, so that

we can be the one another kind of family that Jesus and Paul

pray?