In Community

Good morning, everybody. My name is Drew. I am a pastor here at Hope Heights.

Thrilled that you're here.

It feels nice.

I got up today and it was 50 and I could wear a flannel and not sweat. It's my favorite time of year.

I did—

I'm going to share a little bit about my imaginary friend in a moment, but not yet.

I did have one. I would guess all of you would guess that I probably had one. His name was Hoomie.

That's as much as I'll give you right now.

Hoomie.

Not homie, but hoomie.

It's the whole thing.

But first, I just wanted to be able to celebrate with you and think about something. Yesterday was our family's 12th Gotcha Day. And Kelly sent me this. If it weren't for Facebook, we wouldn't remember whatever happened in our lives. And so this is a post she posted the day before our girls At that point, we weren't posting like public—

any public pictures of our kids and couldn't.

And so we had Legos made so that we could post pictures of things we were doing with our Legos.

Some of you were all around at that time.

But 12 years ago, which seems unbelievable, was the day our girls moved into our house, our gotcha day at our house. And I share this because this also reminds me of in the same vein, I think, as imaginary friend—

these were real human beings that still are part of my family—

but in the same vein, there was like, there was kind of this dream of what it was like to be a parent and a dream of what it was like to have kids and to have kids in my house. It was, and I quickly learned kind of how that was sort of like my imaginary friend.

There was this scenarios I thought would always play out.

Like, a lot of gratefulness and a lot of, like, just magical moments of reading books at night and just a lot of sweetness all the time. And my imaginary friend, when I was a kid, we never had conflict and we always had fun and he always just did kind of what I was hoping he'd do because he was from my brain. And when I had kids and we were building our family, we quickly kind of Learned that we had all these expectations and these dreams for what this community could be. It's this beautiful thing, right? We we committed to one another. Our kids and us all said, "Hey, we're in this together.

Whatever happens, no matter how hard this gets, we're going to care and love for one another.

We're sticking it out." It's one of the beautiful things about being a family, but it's hard, and it was messier than I thought. And I realized what this dream was. It actually reminds me.

And reminded me at the time of a book that I've really, really been encouraged by.

This is a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Life Together. It's very short.

I'd encourage you to read this.

It's about what it looks like to be in community. But he talks about this thing in there. He talks about this dream church or dream Christianity or this wish dream that we have. And it reminded me that I think what family or community or being together with people, I have this kind of imaginary imagination that comes with that.

And I get quite disappointed in it. And then I kind of think like, well, this must not be the real thing because it's not what my dream is. And he reminds us, this is a quote from Life Together with Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer, if you don't know, lived not a long time ago, but was eventually actually killed during World War II.

He was part of resistance.

He was a pastor in Germany.

And eventually you might know him because he was part of a resistance to Nazis there, wrote a lot of things. But this is one that has really been impactful to me. Let me read it.

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream.

It's also translated from German, so I'm sure that has a cooler name in German. You can ask Nick Vannier. He knows a cooler way to say wish dream, I bet.

God's grace speedily shattered such dreams.

I like that phrase. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter.

even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. What he's talking about there is we have this dream of what community can be like, what it looks like to be in especially specifically Christian community in the church. And that doesn't get fulfilled.

It won't.

And it shatters the community because we wish it was kind of this utopian, wonderful place, which it could be actually if we were all Jesus.

But we're not all Jesus. We're actually— we know in— as we're in community, we remind each other that we're actually broken people and sinners.

And so that gets broken, and then often that just shatters the whole community. We just decide, well, let's— we're not going to keep meeting. I've experienced this many times in my life. I think this isn't as perfect. This doesn't serve me as well. There's hard people here. There's conflict here. This is messy. This was not the dream I had of, like, people were singing together and caring for one another and forgiving each other.

And so it breaks apart. Actually, I think it says shatters in here, right? It breaks apart because we have kind of a wish of what it could be and it doesn't fulfill that wish. And so we kind of could spend, if we're not careful, many, many years, even sometimes whole lives, looking for something, kind of imaginary friends of the church that never come, or just in general, I think.

Yeah.

In life.

And so this is what we want to think about today.

We're in this very short series we're doing just for a few weeks as we get the fall rolling that we're calling Jesus First.

It's a series that comes out of 1 Corinthians we're going to read here in a moment. It's a series that just reminds us that our starting point is Jesus. That he's the one who not only rescues us from when we are dead, but he also is the one who shows us and empowers us what it looks like to understand the gospel and that gospel in community together and on a mission. And so today we're moving— last week we talked about the gospel, how that's our starting place, how that's this good news of Jesus. And today we're looking, what does it look like if Jesus comes first?

If we start with him, what does community actually look like?

And I think this is part of why I get—

I have a wish of what it could be and it doesn't fulfill because my wish is not starting with Jesus. It's often just starting with what I think I need and want, and it doesn't feel always like what I need and want. Very rarely does, actually.

So reminder here, last week we talked about this, that we're going to keep this.

I love this picture of our church here at Hope Heights.

We like to say this—

Sadie already said this—

the gospel in community on mission.

This is essentially what we do, right? There's this good news we have, and we do that together, and that together is going somewhere. And so I like to think of an RV. I just love RVs. And I say that as if I'm like a connoisseur of RVs. I rarely am ever in an RV, but I think they sound cool.

They for sure would be a wish that will be disappointing if I ever get an RV.

The first day, probably, I'll be disappointed.

But we think of an RV. So there's this gospel that we all get in together, this being in Christ, and that gospel, we go somewhere together and kind of invite more people even into the RV.

RV with us in a sense. And so that's a picture of what this looks like, our community here looks like, our church looks like. And so today we're looking specifically not just at the gospel, but what does this community look like?

So that's my hope today is we'll leave here going, at least get a what is at the heart of what this community is, and then maybe a little bit of what that looks—

can look like in our lives. Maybe help shatter a little bit of our wish into a reality that actually is Very sweet, very good. I think is what I actually want, and not just a dream of what I want.

So we start here in First Corinthians. We looked at this last week.

This is where the the phrase comes from this the title of these three weeks, and this is where in First Corinthians Paul writes this letter to this church, and he's reminding them here towards the end of the letter. He's actually going to start talking about the resurrection, how it's like the the pinnacle. It's like the most important moment kind of in history that changes all of history. But he reminds us here of what's first important.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.

He received this good news that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, like Scriptures had said would happen, and that he was buried and that he was raised on the 3rd day in accordance with Scriptures. Also Scripture— God had told us this would happen, and it did. And that he appeared to Cephas and to Peter and to the 12 and to many others. It goes on and on. But the core of what the gospel is, is this Jesus buried and in a tomb and raised on the 3rd day. That he dies, he suffers for us. It's the one you've maybe heard if you've been around church over and over and over, right? Jesus died for us. He was put in a tomb. He rose.

Today he ascended into heaven.

Amen.

Seated at the right hand. One day he'll come back again to judge the living and the dead. One day we will all—

things will be made right.

But this is the real powerhouse, the real engine that drives all of the good news that we have. So this is of first importance. So from this flows, out of this good news, this gospel, flows the rest of things.

This is the first importance.

It's like a river, and from that river is where things grow and things bear fruit.

So we all get to be on the receiving end of this and we can say yes to this and it moves into our lives.

And so one of the places this gospel moves is it moves us into community.

Community doesn't become like a, hey, here's one of the things you get to do.

If there's like a Netflix screen of now you've said yes to the gospel, here's different options. Community is not an option.

It's just what happens now as we Become in.

So this river flows. And one of the passages I think that really helps us understand as we get to the heart of what community is, is in John. This is right around the same moment that Jesus is taking his disciples, they're having the Last Supper together.

Jesus is going to wash their feet at this thing.

He's going to explain to them that he's come. He's the Lamb who's going to die and rise from the dead.

This is where Judas betrays him. All these things are happening in this moment.

And he says this.

I am the bread of life. about what his hope is for, um, and really his commandment to his people. This is what I want this community to look like. He says, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another, and by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

It's actually— some consider this like another version of the Great Commission.

We've heard the Great Commission before where he says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the end of Matthew.

This in John—

John doesn't work like the other Gospels in the same way. He actually puts these things in different places even in it.

And this is one where I think we get another way of saying the Great Commission. And he goes, I call you to love one another.

And you say, oh, that's cool.

He goes, but in the way that I loved you.

And if that happens, people are going to get to see me through the way this community works.

So in this phrase, there's actually 2 things. It's actually this weekend and next week. Next week we're talking about mission and essentially just what does it look like to see people drawn into the family of God. And this is saying, what does that look like? It actually has everything to do with the way your community works. There's actually a taking notice of what's happening in your community. We see this modeled by Jesus all over the place. This model, these aren't separated. It's not, again, like, I think I'm going to get into the community part of church and then later I might graduate where I get to then be part of people who help others know this good news. It actually is when the gospel takes a hold, we just become part of community and that community itself now bears this image. We see this in many stories of Jesus. We see this story where Jesus casts out the demon in the possessed man, the man who comes out of the tomb, he's a picture of death, of brokenness, of cast out of the city. He heals a man. The man, he actually says, just don't say a whole lot yet. I still have stuff to do. And the man's first action is to run to the city and say, you would not believe the way I was just loved by this man. He rescued me. He brought me back to life, essentially, and tells many, many people of Jesus. We actually see later in Acts, they go back to the place where this man was, and there's like people They're waiting, ready to see Jesus. He can't not. People saw the love of Christ that was performed in this man, that was shown in this man, that changed this man, that set him free.

And they too got to see who Jesus was by that. We see this in the way the disciples prayed together. We see people come to faith. We're going to read this in a moment, but in Acts, just in the way their community happened, the way they cared for one another and they cared for the people around them and the way they reflected Jesus, it said their numbers grew as people observed.

We see this in the story of Zacchaeus in a different way. A man's in a tree who's an outcast, who's stealing from people, who's a tax collector, and Jesus comes to him and in his being changed by the gospel is welcomed into the family of God. And in that, he changes. He goes, I want to give back what I now no longer want to take, but I want to be generous.

And now changes his response to the community around. The people around now are given back what was taken and more, and get to see Christ's generosity through the change in this man who's now part of the family of God. We see this as Jesus interacts with the woman at the well, as she's changed. Again, another kind of outcast changed, and he welcomes her into the family, and she can't not run into the city and say, you wouldn't believe who I just met. He gave me living water, not just regular water. I have life, and people get to see the love of Christ in him.

So this model of this is really the way of life of Jesus.

And then he goes, I'm excited for you to get to do the same thing, is get to love one another like I loved you. I'm just going to read— this is just a moment in Acts of where we get to see this play out with the disciples. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers.

This is early in Acts. Acts is a story of the early church, just the starting of the church. The Holy Spirit comes on the church. The people start gathering.

They start sharing.

More churches are started all over.

It's an incredible story. Read Acts. It's really great.

Here's a moment from it. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. They would gather and worship. They'd have people teach them. They would take communion together. They'd pray together.

They're doing the same thing we're doing a long time ago.

And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.

There was this great unity.

And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as they had need. There's a generosity in there. There wasn't a holding on to things as much as giving away of things. It's as if they believed they had everything they needed. There was nothing they lacked.

Something like we just sung. I don't lack anything. I can give these things away. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes and received their food with gladness and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

This is just like a little picture.

You want to get some details.

What does that look like to love each other?

so people would know Jesus.

This is what we see in Acts. As Jesus's Spirit, as God's Spirit comes onto people, empowers them, they now do that.

And people see it and they go, I want to be part of that.

And so we see this connection between our community and mission.

But today I want us to think, so what is it that's happening in that community that is doing that?

And I want us to step even deeper into not just, okay, so we should make sure we break bread, we should pray. I think we want to create like a system.

You go, okay, if I just get these things down, if there's some teaching and there's some fellowship and there's some breaking bread and some prayers, then people will come. If we make sure we give away a certain percentage of things, then people might want to come. If we—

Okay, what kind of bread? How much does it have to be broken?

Can it be in the form of little flat things that taste like cardboard?

Does that count? Like, we're trying to figure out the systems so that we can get people here rather than, I think, the heart of what's really happening. And that's my hope today, is that we're going to take a few minutes to look at what does the love of Christ mean and what does it look like for us to reflect that?

We get it all over Scripture, but there's a part that is a great encouragement to me in the book of Philippians. A book about joy and about being encouraged by a group of people, a community of believers.

And he shares this. So I'm going to read it all and then we're just going to take a few minutes to look. This is a passage that says, I call you, I encourage you in this thing. And it's so nice because he goes, because Jesus has already done that thing. It's a nice one. We don't always get this in scripture.

This is one where in Philippians we just really get a great picture of like, I call you this because Jesus did it first. And so I wanna encourage us, and I think this is the heart of what it looks like.

And out of that might come breaking of bread and fellowship and prayer.

But what is the real heart of why? And what does it look like to be in community? So lemme, lemme read this. Philippians 2. So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind. Having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only on his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

We could just stop there.

That's often what we get. We get a— I encourage you to do this.

Let's Let's care for one another. Let's think of others above ourselves, even like Christ did. But then he actually says—

so sweet— says, let me remind you what Christ did.

And he shares essentially the gospel. Who, though he was in the form of God, though, you know, even though he was God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, And being formed in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, under earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. It's a pattern that we just heard Jesus talk about in a lot less words.

If you love each other well, like I loved you, people will know it's me. This is how I loved you, and then I will get the glory. And actually, in that process, I think you'll get exactly what you want, exactly what your imaginary friends of church look like.

The thing your heart really wants in that, which is like to be loved and connected to people and cared for and have a purpose and have an identity given to you.

Those things actually will happen. But we, I think, often come at it in a different way.

So this is my hope today. We're just going to look at these 3 things that we see happen in this, and they're connected really well. I've been really encouraged by this passage this week.

First, I just want to say the first thing we see is a oneness, gathered around one thing in one spirit. Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, Being in full accord. That's not a car. We're not all in an Accord together and of one mind. Sorry, that was a street pastor joke. Ford Accord and things. So we're of the same mind, of the same love, of the same fullness, of the same mind. We're in one thing. We picked one thing that we're all in, in our minds and our hearts and our compassion and our convictions of what we think about and we think is right and true, and also in our love and our compassion. So in our convictions and our compassions, we're the same. And where does that come from? Well, it's because we're in Christ. And where do we see that? Well, we say, through he, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. We first know— he doesn't say Jesus just came and was a person. He says he is God. We are gathered around our God, the one who created us, the one we hear actually in other parts of Scripture, Jesus who made all things and holds all things together. We gather around him.

He's the sameness for all of us, the oneness for all of us. We don't necessarily just gather around ourselves or a thing we all like to do. There's nothing wrong with that, of having a club you love to be a part of or a thing you love to be a part of.

But at our foundational core, what is gospel community? It's that we're gathered around someone outside of us, and it's Jesus.

Amen.

the one, the only one worthy of gathering around us.

It's kind of like if you're in an orchestra because I think oneness, if we're not careful, we think we all should be the same.

It's one of the reasons why my dream, my wish dream of community doesn't work is because I realize there's people who are different than me, who like different things, who are wired different than me, who are better at some things and not as good at some things. And I think, oh, we should all be the same. We should like the same amount of things.

We should even like the same, like, Christian things. Instead, oneness here isn't saying we should all be the same person. It's like an orchestra where, like, if you're all tuning to the same note— we all have different instruments, they play different, they play different times. At times, maybe you believe they might have different importance in different parts of the song.

Some are loud, some are quieter, some are bigger, some are smaller, right?

They, but together we all are tuned to the same thing.

As if we were all tuned to this different thing, it would not, it would sound really off, right? There'd be great dissonance in that. But instead we are all tuned to the same thing, and then together we play this beautiful thing. But there is a oneness in our minds and our love that comes as we're gathered around one. His name is Jesus. And so we could harmonize together and be this one together.

I'd like—

here's some more. Here's a C.S. Lewis from his book, The Four Loves. He talks a little bit about this beautiful thing that happens in this oneness. It's not just— it's different than I like gather with people who also like things I like, which is great, which is a beautiful thing God's given us. But it's not this like deep heart gospel community. And C.S.

Lewis describes it in this way: In friendship we think we have chosen our peers.

In reality, a few years' difference in dates of our births, a few miles between certain homes, the choice of one university instead of the other, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting— any of these chances might have kept us apart. But for a Christian there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ye have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another. A friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to us the beauties of others. He views us, he sees us. It's not like I did such a good job to find some great people to hang out with. He goes, God has brought you together with some people. And I'm sure many—

I mean, look around, many of us are in a small group or hang out with people we'd never ever even have run into or met. But God has brought us together, which changes how we think about the community we're in. It changes, you know, I think our perspective in like Well, this didn't work out.

I'll see if I can figure out another thing.

It actually adds this gospel perspective to it of like God who rescued me from death to life has even has even in that rescued me from my preference or my decision of community and given me people.

That doesn't mean it's easier or always wonderful, but it's it's this beautiful thing that God's given us one another.

It's it's when I I years ago.

I was sitting in small group and after small group, a guy in our group wanted to stay after as he was really struggling. You could tell he was struggling with another guy in our group.

So he's like, hey, I think I need to find a new group.

And I said, okay, what's going on? And he's like, this guy is in college and I have a master's degree.

Why are we in the same room?

And I was like, well, there's a lot there.

So unpack maybe. Like, well, you're both people. But in his mind, he was just putting categories of other things, right? He goes, I have a master's degree. I'm an engineer at a great company. I'm doing great things. And then I come after work and I sit in a living room with people who don't. I feel like we have nothing in common. And so when we're studying Scripture, it feels like there's different views and different thoughts. And there's some immaturity there. So I need to be with people who are like me. Is there like an engineers small group? And this is years ago, like if you're— there probably was actually unintentionally just because there's so many engineers. But that's not the point, right? His hope was he could find a group where we all like have the same thing and then every analogy that comes up as we read Scripture is about gears.

I don't know, whatever you talk about, whatever engineers talk about, right?

Yeah.

This is the beauty. You get to help him. He gets to give you— we actually believe there's a spirit that brings it all together and has brought us to this room in this place.

And I think you get to see the beauty in this college student in the way he gets to see beauty in you. He looks up to you and your faith, and you get to look up to him in some aspects of his faith. It's great. And he actually was like, oh, okay, okay. It's like, uh, and then said some kind of electrical engineering thing.

It's like that when the watts are different. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure. So it's like, exactly, man. So first, there's a oneness. I think we can't miss this. There's a oneness that also was not necessarily even done by us.

I'd like to think that I orchestrate most things in my life. And I think Mr. Lewis maybe has encouraged me to consider something else. The second thing we see in community that's so helpful to know is this part of Philippians. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than ourselves. This is where we see this incredible picture that we hear a lot because we're here a lot, which is good, but we could miss. God himself comes down and he empties himself By taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

He has everything.

And not like I have, not like, man, that guy has a lot of stuff and he was willing to— that person has a lot of money, but they're willing to give some of it. That's really cool. This is the Creator and God, the King of Kings, who has all things, and he's willing to lay those down so that he could come and rescue his people. He could come love his people. This emptying is a beautiful picture of what it looks like to be in Christian community. It's one of the hard things, right? It's so counter to what I live in, what I'm swimming in a lot, which is like find ways to build yourself up, to fill yourself. And instead, which sounds kind of like conceit, which, which instead is saying, what does it look like to empty ourselves? And if we do that, then we get to move towards people in humility, actually even sometimes thinking of others more significant than me. There's some beautiful traditions in the church that come from this moment that happens at the same time of the passage in John where Jesus washes his feet.

It's a perfect picture of our God who comes to earth, becomes man, gathers with his disciples, He says, I'm about to go to the cross, and then he decides to wash his disciples' feet. And in the process of that, it actually has an interesting thing that it says in John.

This is from John 13.

It says, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, rose, laid aside his garments, and began to wash their feet. It's like—

Philippians 2, right? Knowing that the Father had given him all things, he set aside his garments and washed their feet. This is the tradition that we're in. This is the love that we could do. So if we're going to love people like Jesus, we get to say, what does that look like to empty ourselves?

We see this tradition throughout church history of washing feet.

One of the ones I love, there's a tradition in monasteries that goes way, way back. But if someone were to visit a monastery, if you were traveling and you walked into a monastery, Often the tradition was the highest-ranking monk was given the task to greet the person and wash their hands and often wash their feet. And everyone together got water basin and got cloths, and they together would wash the visitor's feet as the way to welcome them into the monastery before they would feed them and give them somewhere to stay, sometimes even giving them their own beds to sleep in. That's because they said, we want to love the visitor, the outsider, as if That's Christ too. It's a great picture. A friend of ours has spent the last year in Albania, and we just got to hang out with him and hear stories. And one of the things he was shocked by there was one of the first things they had him do— he's in a training, kind of like a Bible school training thing there.

One of the things they do, they have all the students there pair up with local families, and they have to go spend like a weekend hanging out with them to get to know Albanian culture.

And he said, the first night I got to someone's house and they walked me to their guest room and they had my stuff and they're like, this is where you'll sleep. And they made me a meal and we hung out and we actually sang some songs and played like a game. And then they're like, it's time to go to bed.

So I went to the guest room to sleep. And while I was doing that, the family was making, was like putting blankets on all the couches in the living room.

And he said, he's like, oh, what is the Is this another tradition?

And they're like, no, you're sleeping in our bed, so we have to make beds on the couches. Because they didn't have a guest room. Their guest room was their room. And so he's like, no, no, I cannot. I'm like a college kid. I can't sleep on your— it's like this older couple. He's like, I can't sleep on your bed. And they go, you have to.

Like, we insist.

And so he said, I spent the weekend sleeping in their bed and they slept on couches.

and served me well. It's like a just beautiful picture of what it looks like. Again, I think we see, we see this all the time, even in here, right? We see this. All of you do this all the time. You're willing to give of yourself, empty yourself so that others could be cared for, others could know the love of Christ. I think of this many, many times.

I hear stories of just exhausted lives, whether that's exhausted parenting and you're giving so much of yourself so that someone can be loved and cared for.

Maybe it's just an exhausting day where you feel like you're giving of yourself so that you can still be careful and respectful of people around you at work. Maybe just days that you're overwhelmed and you still feel like you can give of yourself to those around you. It's really beautiful.

Historically, this is Such a picture of the church throughout all of time.

This is one of those moments in history that's, I think, really cool.

Dionysius wrote, shared about this, and it was actually written kind of in some history in the early church in North Africa.

But there's history written about the Christians in the community. So these are necessarily— this is like they're sharing what maybe even non-Christians have seen. around them from these Christians.

Most of our brother Christians showed unbound love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.

Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ. And with them departed this life serenely happy, for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.

This is an account written about what happened during plagues in North Africa.

There was a bit of an epidemic that spread through. At the same time, there was rulers that were treating people differently, persecution that was happening. And during that time, what they saw in those areas was that people were actually— people became sick, they would actually bring them out into the street because they didn't want to get the rest of the house sick, or they would just leave. And so people were leaving the towns in order to not get sick, and they were leaving their sick. And what they kept seeing was that someone would carry a sick person out into the street, and then Christians would come out of their homes and pick those people up and bring them into their homes, even though many times the Christians themselves would get sick. And the plague would kill a whole church of people. But the people began to notice these silly Christians. Why aren't they protecting themselves? Why aren't they running too? Why aren't they getting rid of the sick so they don't get infected? But instead, the historical account we get is at the time the church was seen as a place where they were emptying themselves so they could care and love for others. I think it's a beautiful picture. This is the origins of hospitals in the world. This is the origin of people caring for people Lots of things we know today that we just feel are normal in our culture— of course, there's places where people care for people, and you can bring a sick person, and there's people who have occupations just to care for people—

those came out often of people first saying yes to Jesus, and then in community going, I'm willing to give of myself and empty myself for others.

Such a cool—

this is the tradition that we're in. These are our people. Spiritual mothers and fathers were ones who are known that they would go and grab sick people, not worried about being infected as much as those people knowing the love of Christ.

I love even this: they departed their lives serenely happy. They had joy because their joy didn't come in trying to hold on to their lives. They'd already been given life.

Lastly, we see in Ephesians 2 here, not only are there a oneness and there's an emptying of ourselves, Because of seeing it in Christ, we actually can find joy in this other part.

Let each of us look not only to their own interests, but the interests of others. And in verse 8 here, we hear how did Jesus— how we see him being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. There is real suffering. There's a real cost to community.

That's I think that's the dream community that I think of that I don't don't like when there's suffering when it's hard when it hurts when it takes something from me and maybe I don't get anything back or don't seem like I get anything back but we see this in Christ he comes humbles himself and takes the the worst of suffering not just death but death on a There's a cost to the giving he had.

I think this is where our real community we see is happening. There's many stories we hear at Hope, right, of people being willing to be hurt and costing them not just money, right, but time and hearts, relationships.

It's a hard, hard thing, but there's a real suffering.

in real community that we see.

We see this is actually right before we hear these stories in North Africa.

We hear about another guy in North Africa, Tertullian, who was in Tunisian area. And same thing, similar things are happening in that place 100, 150 years before that. And the same thing happens historically.

We see people write about what's happening in the history books and they say, This is happening, this is happening, and there's this group of people who follow this guy named Jesus, and they don't know what's going on, but it's interesting. Look, they say, how they love one another even though they themselves hate each other.

This is a reference. People are talking about the difference they see in Christians and the pagan nonbelievers around them, and how ready they are to die for one another when they themselves are more ready to kill each other. Such a picture of the difference.

People took notice of those people in that time. They said, uh, there were many orphans, widows, the poor. There's references to people being shipwrecked in the area, and those people, uh, people didn't know what to do with them.

They're even seen as like, watch out, the shipwrecked people are here, are in town.

And they said the first people often to welcome them and bring them in care for them and they become part of the community where these Christians— and not necessarily looked at as like, how cool is that?

Looked at it as like, these people are nuts.

But they knew who they followed and they understood what their community was about.

There's real suffering in that.

One of the ways I think we see that is just the suffering.

I think of this often as maybe just physically, like it's hard and maybe I have to like give up my time or maybe my money or maybe even something more fun in my life or my own quiet time.

But one of the things I think that is hard that has a cost is confession.

It's one of the things that makes our communities, our gospel community, really valuable and important and unique is that it's a place we can come and say, I'm broken, I turned from God, I don't know what I'm doing, and then we can confess.

Bonhoeffer actually shares about this in Life Together. In confession, the breakthrough to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself.

Sin wants you isolated. It wants you hiding. It wants you to say, the world doesn't need to see this sin I have.

It wants to remain unknown. It withdraws him from the community.

The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship an illusion. Now he can confess his sins and in this very act find fellowship. for the first time.

So the gospel says confession actually binds us together and creates real fellowship.

And I think the world would tell us confession will get you kicked out of community. You gotta create this kind of person so that you fit in. And instead, Bonhoeffer here is reminding us that actually confessing our sins to one another Heals us, and also it brings us together. I'm sure many of you have experienced that.

It's one of the costs that come.

It's one of the emptying ourselves that come.

It's one of the pictures of oneness that happens in confession. Historically, just a cool picture.

I just recently learned about this woman, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. I wish I could say it cooler. She has this wonderful picture that's such a picture of. of Philippians 2.

Really quickly, her story is that she was born into wealth in Europe. She was actually a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. A little name drop. And she married a duke, a Russian duke, lived in wealth and status. That's her on the left, right? She had this beautiful life. Her husband was assassinated. In the process of that, she actually, long story short, becomes a nun, starts a monastery. cares well for people, has stories of her. One of the things she—

it was hard for her to go to sleep if someone was like really suffering.

And so many stories of her sleeping next to someone, like kneeling next to them in a bed as they suffered and slept so that they weren't alone in their suffering.

She literally becomes like wealthy, powerful, and says, I'm setting that aside because I want to care in this way and creates this community, eventually is actually under some persecution there and was actually killed in that process and for her faith, considered a martyr in the church.

It's just a picture of this, right? She decides, I'm going to empty myself. And in that, in her writings, finds great joy in seeing that change. The last thing then, all of this, right?

There's oneness, there's emptying of ourselves, there's an understanding that there's a cost to this. But how does this passage end? Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and earth and under earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

There's a great future glory to this. I want us to see this. There's a pattern that we see in Scripture that when we empty ourselves, when we give ourselves to Christ, when we die to ourselves, And put ourselves in Christ, there's a cost, but also the end of it is a glorious future for us. Sometimes we experience that actually right now, right here, in in emptying ourselves in confession and a cost in community. You go, wow!

This is actually these are real my real real friends, real community. This is there's great glory and and sweetness and joy and fruit of the Spirit that we see in that.

And sometimes we just get to look forward to the day when.

when this all is made right.

But the pattern we see is this pattern that we see all over Scripture where we first have to kind of go down to go up.

There's this pattern of emptying ourselves, this pattern that we see actually, if you remember, uh, in 1 Corinthians, that he was buried, that he died, and then he was buried, and then he rose from the dead.

Amen.

This is the pattern of community, I think. There's a pattern of us dying, being buried, giving of ourselves, emptying ourselves, and being raised in that community. 'Cause not only are we the ones emptying ourselves and caring, but others are doing that with us and building us up together. It's really a really beautiful thing, as Bonhoeffer had shared, as C.S. Lewis has shared. that we see in one another. It's hard, but it's good.

I made a little—

last week there's this little table of like religion and the gospel, and a few of you were like, well, that was a helpful thing for me just to see those.

So this week I was thinking the same way.

How do we see the difference in those communities?

And so to kind of summarize these together, I just want—

this is a bigger table than I anticipated, but I have been encouraged by it in my own life.

I call them clubs. Now, I'm not Clubs aren't negative. Like, I love that we're a part of things and we're connecting with people.

What a great way to love and care for people and be—

but just in general, the idea of like being a part of something that's not in Christ, a club or a group, and maybe you identify with some of this. I think our belonging in those, one of those, Tim Keller says the difference in being Christian in gospel community and not gospel community is one of them is about our usefulness and our sameness, our likes.

And one is about first being in Christ and it's grace-based.

And so how does that play out? Our belonging in those, one of them would be kind of our interests, our sameness, what you're into, what you belong to. And in Christ, it begins first, it's just that we're in Christ.

That's why a smart engineer can hang out with a college student who maybe doesn't know as much at the time, and it's still incredible.

That's why people right now are in hallways with kids, and we believe the Spirit can work in all of them together.

That an 8-year-old could speak some truth today that would encourage a 40-year-old because we're all in union.

We think about why would we show up? Well, maybe you'd show up to a group because it entertains you, because you're networked well there, maybe just because the group makes you feel good. In Christ, we show up because we get to give. And we also get to receive Christ's love.

We get to experience that with one another.

In clubs, you might be known. You have maybe a more curated version of yourself. Maybe it's more driven by approval to make sure I get to be part of this. That's where confession might be harder. But in Christ, we are already fully known by him. Our approval comes from him. We're able to do that. In conflict, we might avoid that because we don't want to cause fragility. We want to protect ourselves. And also, sometimes the group, we just like to talk about the other, right?

Our group likes to meet so that we can say, like, look at those other people.

And in Christ, we actually can engage in conflict because our identities don't come from if we have conflict. We can be held together by Christ.

There can be forgiveness and grace shown.

Ideally, right?

We'd hope.

I mean, we're still also Quite broken.

Our identity becomes maybe popularity in our group, our role, our contribution to the group, maybe just the group itself. Like, I am this thing because of the group that I'm in. And in Christ, our identity is already settled. I'm actually hanging out with you because Jesus has already given me an identity, and that anyone can come into this group.

And not that because I'm in the group, I've now reached some level and now I get to say I'm part of this group. And even sin is different, right? It can be hidden. It can exclude. It can be overlooked maybe so that we keep— so that we don't have to break up the group.

The definition of sin can be changing. What's wrong and what's right.

And what's great in Christ is that we can confess our sins. There's forgiveness. And it's not determined by me or whoever the president of the club today is. There's already a truth and a basis for what— That is. All this to say, I think the greatest thing is that we gather around a person who already is perfect and right and good, and we're not gathering together because we've all figured it out. This is, um, shown, uh, recently I read this great poem. This is a poem by Aaron Bells. I actually didn't know Aaron until I just read this poem, and it's also about AI, which is on my mind a lot, maybe all of our minds. Because I think AI is telling me to think about it all the time. I don't know how it's doing it, but AI somehow is in my brain already.

It's called Things Artificial Intelligence Can't Do.

Now listen to this, because I think this shares just the brokenness, the reality of real people. And this is what I love, is that this person, Aaron, and all of us can gather together around a Jesus and not have to gather around, around someone who's got it together. All right, let me read this.

Things Artificial Intelligence Can't Do.

It cannot stare for 25 minutes at a blank screen, write half a poem and give up, end up walking to the bus stop bench, sit strangely erect, look dead into the winter sun, and hate itself.

It cannot resent the apparent happiness of others, miss its daughter, go back in time, wish it had been a better dad.

It cannot leave church after 15 minutes even though it needed nothing more than the company of the fellowship. of the faithful, even though it needed the word of assurance, the taste of God's blood in its mouth. Drive home cold, order a pizza, feed itself, numb itself. Shut itself down and dream of love lost, of a girl refusing to speak, of all the beauty slipping into ether. Nor can it remember kissing her blue forehead in a Los Angeles funeral home. It's like just explains life. It really isn't explaining artificial intelligence. It's essentially our friend Aaron explaining— I don't really know Aaron, but explaining what life is like. This is what I love, is a real person in real time who needs fellowship, who needs community. This is what I want. I want to sit with people and go, I'm I'm not a computer. I'm not AI. I don't have it figured out. I don't have a system that works. I'm broken and you're broken. And how can we keep pulling each other in towards Jesus?

How valuable is—

how crucial is that every day of my life? This is why we have the gospel and we gather in community. We see this in lots of ways. I'm going to invite the Hirsches. They're going to come up. They're just going to share a little bit of what this has meant to them. Each week we've been trying to have a little bit of just some hope people share.

We see this all different ways here. I think your first thought might be like, well, there's small groups. That's a place, absolutely a place we want to see this. But we see this in big ways and little ways. And one of the ways we see this all the time is through this very cool technology called Meal Train that people continue to use more and more and better. It's such a simple thing, but just a way of people Bringing meals to people, organizing that. We see people giving their time. We see people becoming very uncomfortable in order to care for one another, serving one another, praying for one another. I asked someone recently, like, what have you loved about being at Hope?

And they said, some people came and cried with me when something happened. I went, oh. I thought they're going to be like, man, the services are great. The music's been great.

Our smog machine's been great.

They're like, oh, our favorite thing is that people cried with us. And I was like, amen, that is actually probably one of my favorite things.

The Hirsches are here though.

I just want them to share a little bit about their experience in this, and we want to pray here when they're done.

Good morning, everyone.

I think Evan's got you.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Angie Hirsch, and yeah, definitely experienced gospel and community this summer. For those of you that don't know me very well, this spring in May, I had— I guess you could call it like a hip reconstruction surgery. It wasn't a replacement, but I was born with hip dysplasia. And I found out about a year and a half ago that I was born with hip dysplasia. So this is one of 2 surgeries. And it did not go at all as what we expected. I ended up fracturing the surgical hip in the hospital, and what was going to be like, like a 2-month recovery is looking more like 4 to 6 months now. So, um, and we had set up a meal train in advance, and, um, so many of you volunteered to bring meals, and it was just such a blessing. Um, in the darkness and the unknown of what was to be expected, I felt very alone, very isolated. Bit of confessing. Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote, right? I, um, being so alone in my room for weeks on end, um, it was just such a blessing and a reassurance to have so many of you Hopesters, like, come to our house, bless us with a meal, pray over us in my bedroom. Like, that was just huge. It was telling me, thank you, God. Like, I'm, I'm literally not alone, but God, like, you are here. And you are helping me through this. He actually, you know, I had some other issues that evolved from using like a walker and stuff and some health issues that we were like, what do we do with this? What, you know, and through prayer, like, they went away and it was just amazing. Like, God, you helped heal my arms where it was making it hard to use the walker even. And just so these little Things were just showing me God's presence in a very isolating time of my life. So, having people come to the house, it was just like, oh my gosh, God, You are here. You are moving. I am seeing the hands and feet of Christ in real time. So, yeah, it was just such a blessing.

Yeah, a lot of what she said, I am echoing, but minus a lot of the pain, I am sure. No, from a caretaker's perspective, I didn't expect just like you're getting at with the exhaustion, with the tiredness, just anticipating any of that. And just the relief of having community like you to come and just a meal does so much with just one thing off my plate that I didn't expect. So I just thank you. And yeah, I don't know, there's—

Thank you.

so much that it just alleviated. So it's still— I think in the moment it was— it's just so much darker.

It's just—

we just talk a lot about how it's felt like 2 steps forward, 1 step back, 3 steps forward, 4 steps back. This whole process has just been just long, and we haven't thought— you know, we extended the meal train. We're like, maybe people would be willing, but just the love you've shown and just continuing to give has been just, I don't know, just something you wouldn't expect from non-believers. You just wouldn't expect it, but maybe some would do it, but I think it's just kind of like an easy, easy thing to perceive of this kind of selfless giving that we— I don't know, we just thank you for.

So thanks.

Yeah. And yeah, for me also, just one more.

Yeah.

Just like, just to you, thank you, Drew, for, you know, accompanying me in little ventures when Ange couldn't, like going to like kid carnivals and stuff. I'm like, I can't watch 2 kids. They're gonna run in 2 different directions. So I'm like, no, like, can you guys help watch one of them? So thank you.

We, um, there's a— we've been praying in our house because our kids are getting older and I don't get to go to fun kid carnivals, or my kids don't invite me to go to their things because they just go on their own.

And so, hey, would you want to come run around at a carnival?

And I'm like, ah, yes, I could do that.

So it's cool because God has used that to like—

I get to run around with your little ones, and who aren't that little actually anymore, but Yeah, it's fun to see that mutual, how God's used that. Thank you guys a lot for sharing. That was really, really meaningful.

You can give a little clap for them. We don't ever know what to do after that. Yeah.

Thank you guys. Look at that. It works. All right, I'm going to invite our worship team up. We're just going to move to a time to actually worship the good God that we have, continue to worship in singing. A few things to consider here as we move to that time.

First, same as last week, is Jesus your first importance? I think the beginning of— if you want valuable, meaningful, faithful presence in your life of other people, it's actually starting with gathering around the right person.

And then you can be confessors and broken people around them.

My second question is, what is your dream community?

Is it keeping you from gospel community?

Considering what is that in your head.

How many—

maybe have you continually had a pattern of switching and moving and not just saying, I'm going to commit to these people like family and like we're in this together?

How does— how can this work? Encourage you to consider that.

Who reminds you of the gospel?

Who needs to hear this good news? That's the question, one of the questions we ask every week.

And it's because we—

it's so important that we have people who are reminding us of the gospel and that we get to share the gospel with.

A few other ways we're going to respond: we'll sing together. We also have communion outside in the hallways.

We'd love for you to partake in that if you're a follower of Jesus.

It's an opportunity, not just an opportunity, but a commandment.

Jesus said, hey, when you get together, I want you to break bread. I want you to drink wine to remember my body broken, my blood shed. We just heard that in the poem, right? That sometimes we want to walk away from the things we need most, which is to be reminded of Jesus's sacrifice, his death, burial, and resurrection, which is of first importance.

And secondly, or thirdly, there'll be people who would love to pray for you in the back of the room. Please take them up on that.

And you can always give as a response also to the Gospel.

Let me pray for us, and we'll move into a time of singing.

Lord, thank you for your goodness, your kindness, your love towards us. Um, you're really good. Thanks for giving us these people, giving us one another. And I pray that you would work within us, give us the courage to empty ourselves, and give us the persistence in suffering. And Lord, I pray that as you are glorified, you continue to work in us so that one day we can look forward to that wonderful, glorious future when all things are made right. Amen. Amen.