Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre, Bury & Whitefield service (dated 15th May 2022), introducing our new series ONE ANOTHER. You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel.
ONE OF THESE THINGS…
We are going to start with a quiz question. Below is an image of four things, but can you spot which one of these things is not like the others?
A: A Portuguese Man O’War / B: A crowd of people out shopping / C: A colony of ants / D: A colony of bees
You can send your answers on a postcard to …
Seriously, take some time to consider your answer whilst I continue to share some things.
We’re starting a new series this morning called ONE ANOTHER, where we will be exploring a small handful of the famous ‘one another’ verses that appear throughout the New Testament.[i] We will mention a few of them a little later on.
We are doing so because I want to spend some time talking about this thing called church—not in some theoretical way, but in a practical way. As I said a number of weeks ago (see CREED / CATHOLIC COMMUNION), church is not a description of a building, a meeting, or even just a group of people who happen to be in the same space—it’s supposed to be a community, a community centred around Jesus.
I’m certain we know this. And I’m certain we all understand that what defines a community as a community is a measure of our interaction, and interdependence, and relationship. For community to exist there has to be this ‘one another-ing’ quality among its individual parts.
It’s on this basis that one of the above images is not like the others.
Three of these things are communities, they one another. One of these things is not one another.
I’m not going to tell you the answer, I want you to think about it.
NOT ALONE
A number of years ago, the American pastor Francis Chan, in a book on discipleship called, Multiply, wrote this, ‘While every individual needs to obey Jesus’ call to follow, we [must realise that we] cannot follow Jesus as individuals.’[ii]
Chan hasn’t said anything controversial there. However, his words will rub some of us up. We cannot follow Jesus as individuals.
Francis Chan is not the first to say it, or the last.
Pastor and theologian, Eugene Peterson (author of the Message), makes the same point, in his book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. Prior to his death a number of years ago, Peterson wasn’t some class room academic, shut away from people; he had been a pastor for many years, rubbing shoulders with real people, in the real world, having to live with and encourage others who were also seeking to follow to Jesus.
When he first became a pastor of a local church, he had a bit of shock. He realised the differing kinds of people he was called to be church with. He realised he had to one another with people he didn’t necessarily prefer. He is an honest writer, and so he writes that, ‘I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But I soon found that my preferences were honoured by neither Scripture nor Jesus.’
Peterson continues, ‘I didn’t come to [this] conviction easily, but [there is] no getting around it: there can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community. I am not myself by myself. Community, not the highly [advertised] individualism of our culture, is the setting in which Christ is at play.’[iii]
Peterson, like Chan, is simply pointing out that if you are seeking to follow Jesus, to mature in faith, then it’s not a solo activity. You cannot be yourself by yourself. There is this delusion—and it is a modern western delusion that tempts most of us, myself included—that all the Christian life requires is me and the Holy Spirit, but, as Peterson points out; Jesus is at play in community.
It’s through our relationships with one another that Jesus is active and made visible.
Again, Peterson and Chan are not alone. A pastor and author called Richard Beck wrote an amazing book about the devil and spiritual warfare called, Reviving Old Scratch. Beck wrote the book after spending a number of years pastoring churches within prisons and churches outside of prisons. He makes the observation that;
‘Repeatedly, the Bible tells us that the church is […] where we come together to practice care and peace. The church is a laboratory of love and reconciliation, a workshop of sharing and forgiving, a testing ground of mercy and grace.
And what is vitally important about all this is how care and peace are practices being worked out face-to-face with real people. The kingdom of God is the hard, intimate, and sweaty work of simply getting along with people … where you can’t get away with loving humanity abstractly and theoretically [like you can on social media]. You have to practice care and peace with the person standing right in front of you, the person boring you and annoying you as you’re sipping bad coffee together.
Jesus didn’t leave behind a political party. Jesus gave us a group of people to get along with.
And while that might seem simple enough, if you’ve ever tried caring for and living at peace with a group of people, you know it’s one of the hardest things in the world. It’s much easier to love people in the abstract than to love actual human beings. But that’s what the church gives you: actual human beings. …This is why church is a form of spiritual warfare.’[iv]
It’s the same point again, we cannot follow Jesus as individuals.
Long before Chan, Peterson and Beck, the New Testament writers made the same point using the words ‘one another’.
Paul is one of them, and so we’re going to read Romans 12 together.
READ: ROMANS 12 (NLT)
LIVING SACRIFICES
The passage we have read is one a number of us will be familiar with, especially the first few verses, where Paul talks about being a living sacrifice and allowing God to transform you into a new person.
But what does it mean to be a living sacrifice, and what is this new person?
There are a number of ways to answer that. But if we follow what Paul says next, about not thinking too highly of yourself as an individual, not thinking that you are the centre of it all, and recognising that we are all just parts (and each of us is an important part) of this one body of people who follow Jesus, then an answer already presents itself.
Our worship of God, as Paul points out in Romans 12: 3-5, entails that we don’t delude ourselves in believing we are called to be lone rangers who can go it alone. Our worship, our life as a living sacrifice, looks like an immersion and embrace of community. Our love for God looks like loving others.
You read this passage, and you notice there is nothing unsocial within it. There’s no solo activity. Everything within it is pointing people towards interconnectedness. This is a one of another life.
What Paul describes is more akin to three of those images than one of them.
Of course, Paul has a better image for community. Paul uses this picture of a body. [v]
‘Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.’ (Rom. 12:4-5, NLT)
We all understand the image of a body because we all have one. We all know it is made up of many parts that are different from one another but that function with one another, and that need one another.
We also know, that the only way we can express ourselves within our world is through the bodies that we have.
If you didn’t have a body, I wouldn’t know you.
When I do my Dad Dancing to embarrass my sons, or when I hug Steph, or wash the pots, or drive the car, it’s because all the parts of my body interact to make it happen.
Whenever I want to engage with this world, and express something of myself into it, then it requires my skin, my bones, my muscles and sinews and arteries and veins, my cells, my brain synapses, my corrupted scouse accent, my breath and my body odour.
God uses the same tactic.
Throughout this letter called Romans, Paul talks about God’s passion for humanity and God’s desire to engage with us and dwell with us, and what God has done to express and achieve that aim.
Paul has spent chapters talking about how God’s promise to restore the world has been carried via the story of a particular body of people called Israel; and has been made manifest in the life, death and resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ; and how God is now proclaiming that message within the world through an ever-growing multi-ethnic, multicultural body of people.
By using the picture of a body to talk about this community of Jesus followers, Paul is making the same crucial point that Francis Chan, Eugene Peterson, Richard Beck, and many others have made over the centuries: Jesus has chosen community, ‘one another-ing’, as the means of his expression to the world, in the world.
Our life together is to embody what Jesus is like. It’s only through ‘one another-ing’ that we can represent Jesus.
LOST CONNECTIONS
That’s why we need to improve our fluency in ‘one another-ring’.
Because, truth be told, we are not very good at it. I’m not necessarily speaking about us at MCC, or the even the church locally, nationally, or globally. I’m talking about western society as a whole.
According to Harvard Professor, Robert Putnam, who spent decades documenting the decline of group activity in North America, a decline in all ways in which North Americans came together to do something together (like joining a sports team, a choir, church, or even meeting for dinner), our generation spends less time together than any other human generation that came before us.[vi] We have been dropping out of wider community, shutting ourselves away, and turning inward since the 1930s.
The same trend has also happened in Britain.
If your lifespan straddles a few generations, you are probably nodding. You’ve seen this unfold.
The strange thing is, Putnam’s research revealed that it’s not like we have turned inward towards our families. There has been a decline in ‘one another-ing’ there, as well. As a society, families eat together less; we watch TV together less; we walk and talk together less…
There are all sorts of reasons for this, of course, and all sorts of consequences of it. But it was in a book called Lost Connections, by a journalist called Johann Hari where I read about this trend.
If you are like me, and you wrestle with anxiety and depression, it’s a great book, as Johann Hari talks about his own depression and explores the social and cultural causes of it; a lack of meaningful community being an important factor.
As Hari considers this and what led to this lack of community, he writes this, ‘I kept noticing a self-help cliché that people say to each other all the time, and share on Facebook incessantly. We say to each other: “Nobody can help you except you.”
It made me realise: we haven’t just started doing things alone more, in every decade since the 1930’s. We have started to believe that doing things alone is the natural state of human beings, and the only way to advance. We have begun to think: I will look after myself, and everybody else should look after themselves, as individuals… [But] this is a denial of human history, and a denial of human nature.’[vii]
As far as I know, Johann Hari isn’t religious. But I’m sure he would have no problem agreeing with the sentiment of Genesis 2:18, ‘It is not good for man to be alone.’[viii]
Genesis 2 speaks to a basic human need, and so does Romans 12, and so does Jesus command to love one another. Humans were created to be in community, both with each other and with God.
ONE ANOTHERS
On some level, I think we all long to share something meaningful with others. We all long for community.
Having said that, we know community is difficult. Community can malfunction. Some communities can be toxic. There are some communities I do not wish to be a part of, and I would not encourage you to be a part of.
And so, whilst it is true that we Christians understand we are called to this ‘one another’ life, it is vital that we also grasp that the nature of this one another life matters, too.
Church is not just about any old ‘one another-ing’; as if anything goes as long as it is done together. No. It’s to be marked by love.
As Jesus said, in his command to this one-another life, ‘Love one another. Just as I have loved you, love one another. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.’ (John 13:34b-35)
When you think about it, all of the ‘one another’ verses in the New Testament are really a translation of the ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ command into some practical, concrete, daily, down-to-earth expressions.[ix]
Here’s a mere sample:
Regard one another as more important than yourselves (Php. 2:3)
Seek good for one another, and don’t repay evil for evil (1 Th. 5:15)
Be at peace with one another (Mk. 9:50)
Don’t grumble against one another (Jas. 5:9)
Live in harmony with one another (Rom. 12:16)
Don’t slander one another or complain about one another (Jas. 4:11, 5:9)
Accept one another (Rom. 15:7)
Wait for one another before beginning communion (1 Co. 11:33)
Don’t bite, devour, and consume one another (Ga. 5:15)
Don’t boastfully challenge, provoke or envy one another (Ga. 5:26)
Gently, patiently tolerate one another (Ep. 4:2)
Be kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving to one another (Ep. 4:32)
Bear with and forgive one another (Co. 3:13)
Confess sins to one another and pray for one another (Jas. 5:16)
Give preference to one another in honour (Rom. 12:10)
Serve one another (Ga. 5:13)
Build up one another (Rom. 14: 19, 1 Th. 5:11)
Don’t condemn one another (Rom. 14:13)
Now sure, Jesus and the apostles give more instructions to the church than these, and it’s also important that we read these instructions in context (which we will, as we go through some of these in the coming weeks). Even so, imagine belonging to a community like the one just described.
It is also worth noticing the ‘one anothers’ that do not occur in the New Testament:
For example, even though we are urged to teach one another (Rom. 15: 14; Col. 3:16) and edify one another in the Lord (Heb.3:13), we are not encouraged to sanctify one another—that’s the Spirit’s job. And even though we are to teach one another, we are not told to assault one another, shout over one another, interrupt one another, insult one another, dominate one another, demonise one another, and neither are we told to defeat one another.
We are encouraged to honour one another and be humble in our opinion of ourselves (Rom. 12:3, 10), but we are never encouraged to humble one another.
We are told to watch over each other and warn each other (Heb. 3:13), but we are never given permission to scrutinize one another, pressure one another, embarrass one another, corner one another, grind one another down, or run one another’s lives.
We’re prompted to carry one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), but there is no prompt to lay burdens upon one another.
Paul, as we read in Romans 12, pleads with us to offer our own self as a living sacrifice to God, but he never says that we should sacrifice one another. The writing of the New Testament does not appeal to us to shame one another or marginalize one another, or abuse one another. [x]
And yes, James invites me, I, to confess my sins, to have someone or some people to confide in who will pray for me and help me in my weaknesses and failures. However, we are most definitely never encouraged to confess one another’s sins.
How we ‘one another’ matters. So we are going to spend some time exploring some of these ‘one anothers’, because the kind of God we really believe in is displayed in how we relate to one another.[xi]
What is church? It is a community whose one-another life expresses the life of Jesus.
If it doesn’t, can it really be called church?
‘If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; if we don’t love people who we can see, how can we love God, whom we have not seen?’
1 John 4:20 (NLT)
[i] It’s one word in the Greek, Allēlōn (άλλλήων), denoting reciprocal and mutual relationship. Depending upon the Bible translation you read, it may be translated one another or each other. The word occurs around 100 times in the New Testament, and for more than half of those uses its context is regarding the quality of interaction between followers of Jesus.
[ii] Francis Chan and Mark Beuving, Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples, p. 51.
[iii] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 226
[iv] Richard Beck, Reviving Old Scratch, p. 72.
[v] Paul also uses this analogy of a body in his description of the Jesus community in 1 Corinthians (especially chapter 12), Ephesians (1:23, 2:16, 4:15-16, 5:21-33), and Colossians (1:18, 2:19, 3:15). Of course, debates abound regarding whether Paul implies more than a mere analogy when using the term body as a description of the believing community. Personally, I don’t believe we should push this analogy beyond it limits, nor beyond Paul’s uses of it.
[vi] These are a pre-COVID world stats. From what I’ve heard, I imagine the figures of a post-lockdown society follow a similar descent.
[vii] Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope, pp. 101-102
[viii] As numerous theologians, from all backgrounds, have noted in their studies of Genesis 1 and 2, the only thing in all of creation that was not good was man’s solitude. It sounds cliché, and I get that. But the discordant note of Genesis 2:18 really does need to be heard—and it needs to be heard within the symphony surrounding it. If you’re looking an insightful examination of the contrasts between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, then I would recommend the reflections of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-family-edition/bereishit/the-genesis-of-love/). Sacks notes that in Genesis 1, God creates systems, in Genesis 2, God creates relationships, and how both are essential to flourish as humans. I also love how Sacks, in his reflections, keenly demonstrates God’s humility and personal posture with the creation of relationship, thus pouring (kenosis) and modelling something of the Divine nature into the process.
Although it is not noted by Rabbi Sacks, I’ve also found it telling that God created a helper for the Adam, and didn’t force the Divine into the void as a counterpart or substitute. There’s a great deal to consider from this act in the context of the relationship between believers. The idea of ‘God and me only’ does not stand up to the intent of God within creation. As per the grand overture of scripture, God seeks to dwell with us.
[ix] You can find the ‘Love one another’ command in the following places: Jn. 13:34, 35, 15:12, 17; Rom. 12:10, 13:8; 1 Th. 3:12, 4:9; 1 Pe. 1:22, 3:8, 4:8; 1 Jn. 3:11, 18, 23, 4:7, 11, 12; 2 Jn. 5
[x] I feel it important to add that everything within these ‘one another’ instructions is about a voluntary giving of I into this community: I being a living sacrifice into the community God is building; I laying myself, not others, onto the altar of this living temple of God. These instructions are not given as a means to demand anything from another, and therefore, they do not give grounds for abuse of others. There is no excuse for abuse.
[xi] There may be a lingering question floating in the minds of some, a question I, too, have pondered: If we cannot follow Jesus as individuals, then what about an isolated human stranded upon a desert island; can they follow Jesus? Regardless of an answer, we (you and I) are obviously not stranded upon a desert island. As such, even if the answer is yes, it does not justify me (or you) from refusing to move into closer community with those around us.
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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