Learning To Love #church 05
When Jesus established his Church, he wanted it to be an extraordinary community, as I noted in an earlier post.
He wanted people to come and visit this community and see how we love one another like he loves. Then they’d say, “Wow! What an extraordinary community! I want to be part of that community!”
We took a look at Colossians 3:11-17 to get a snapshot of what this community can look like.
I want to keep casting this vision, so here it is again:
Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:11-17
What an amazing picture of a community that loves, serves, extends grace, forgives, worships together, encourages one another, and gives thanks to God for it all. I want to be a part of that community!
But for so many people, they have unlovely experiences with Jesus’ Church. They come visit a local church community, and they experience the same infighting, power-plays, politics, and hidden agendas that they experience everywhere else in the world. They read blogs where self-proclaimed watchdogs publicly smear and shame fellow followers of Jesus in front of the whole world. They see church communities blowing up as the leaders stage rebellions and takeovers instead of working through their differences in a godly way. These people walk away from Jesus’ Church saying, “There’s nothing different about that community, and if I want THAT kind of drama, I’ll just go to Thanksgiving with my dysfunctional family this year!”
This is not the extraordinary community Jesus envisioned.
If Jesus’ Church is supposed to be the place where God’s love is experienced, then what’s going on here?
The challenge is that we have some unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a local church community. We often expect biblical perfection, but what we really have is a misunderstanding about what it means to be the Church.
Instead of telling everyone that we’re an incredibly loving church, what if we told people what is really going on:
Jesus’ Church is where we’re LEARNING how to love.
When we first come to Jesus, we don’t know how to love - not like HE loves. God’s love is so much more than how you love music or fantasy football or even the love you have for your mother or your favorite grandparent. This is love like God loves: an unconditional, unmerited, sacrificial, inclusive, and PERFECT love. That’s the kind of love God wants his Church to show.
That’s no small task.
We don’t know how to love like that and so we have to learn.
How would it change people’s expectations if we just acknowledged that any given congregation on any given Sunday is a community of people who are, at best, learning how to love.
The good news is that:
Jesus is teaching his Church how to love like he loves.
When we come to Jesus, he starts to teach us how to love like he loves. All of us who’ve chosen to follow Jesus, we’re currently in the grade school of God’s love. We’re learning to love others like Jesus loves, and this takes time.
He teaches us as we read the gospels in the Bible. We see how he treated people on the margins- prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, Samaritans, and sinners. We see his heart for these people, and as we try to love the way he did in our own everyday lives, we start to learn how to love.
Your local church community becomes a sandbox for practicing Jesus’ love. Invariably, someone is going to hurt your feelings in your church community. There will be misunderstandings, and the people in your community will have disagreements. Paul’s distillation of the life of Christian love in Colossians 3 gives us some ideas of how to handle all of these things. Compassion, kindness, humility, forgiveness, and peace are all things that can be practiced in a local church community.
You may not get it right, but hopefully your church community helps you ask for and receive forgiveness, get back up, brush yourself off, and try again. Jesus’ Church is supposed to be the safest place on earth to learn how to love.
When a church community gets this, they’ll start to figure out how to love well together. That community may even become known for being a place that loves well.
The challenge is that no church community ever reaches the blackbelt level of Jesus’ love.
Why is this?
Because new people are joining all the time! Even if a church community reaches a zen master level of Jesus’ love, the moment a new person joins that community, the balance shifts. Because, the new people will not have the same experience of Jesus’ love as the people who’ve been there all along. This means the old-timers have to really love well - not just people who love like they do, but those who don’t.
One of the best questions I in my dozens of job interviews recently was, “How do you love people who don’t love well?” THAT is great question for folks who’ve been at this Jesus life a long time.
Everyone in Jesus’ Church is in process.
Everyone in your church community is in process. They’re all at different levels and experiences of receiving and extending God’s love. This means at any time when you visit any church community, you may encounter the person who demonstrates God’s love the most, or you might encounter the person who demonstrates God’s love the least in that community.
We all start at different places in relation to God’s love. If you think of Jesus as the bright, white-hot center of a church community, then we’re all positioned around him at different distances. Some are closer to Jesus, some are farther away. We start out at different spots and we’re all moving: some are moving toward Jesus, while others are moving away from him. This is just the way Jesus’ Church is. Any church community you encounter will be a mixed bag of people who are in process, at different points along the way on their journey with Jesus.
We have not learned how to love.
We’re all learning to love.
What would happen if church communities could adopt this posture of humility and just admit the mixed bag of experiences you might have on any given Sunday. I’m sure your community is doing it’s best, but if they act like they’ve got it all figured out, that pride will cost them. The first time a greeter is rude, the first time someone is judgy in their prayer, the first time someone spouts off about their political views - it will be clear to everyone that that community still has a lot to learn about Jesus’ love.
What has been your experience with finding Jesus’ love being practiced in your local church community?
How do you practice Jesus’ love in your church community?
What forgiveness, patience, grace, or confession do you need to make in your church community now that would enable you to practice Jesus’ love?
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