who takes our brokenness and makes us whole

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus the Messiah, who takes our brokenness and makes us whole, and from our isolation draws us together.

It’s that together part that I want to talk about today.

For all our attempts to make the Christian faith about us as individuals, the Bible says a lot more about who we are in community. Our tendency is to think about “my sin” and “my gifts” and “what Jesus has done for me”. But God often thinks about us in fellowship with one another. We read about being God’s people, God’s called-out ones, and the gathering of the saints. It’s for community that we were made and redeemed, and we grow deeper in our faith when we stretch our “togetherness” muscles just a bit.

Henri Nouwen’s reading for this day in Lent says this:

This eternal community of love is the center and source of Jesus’ spiritual life, a life of uninterrupted attentiveness to the Father in the Spirit of love. It is from this life that Jesus’ ministry grows…We will never understand the full meaning of Jesus’ richly varied ministry unless we see how the many things are rooted in the one thing: listening to the Father in the intimacy of perfect love. When we see this, we will also realize that the goal of Jesus’ ministry is nothing less than to bring us into his most intimate community.

I wonder how often we think of the life of faith in this way.

If Nouwen is right, and I think he is, and “the goal of Jesus’ ministry is nothing less than to bring us into his most intimate community”, then our gatherings are much more than social get-togethers. Our gatherings represent something important and precious and even holy—they represent our participation in the intimacy of God’s love.

Now I tend to think that a lot of us would rather just think correct thoughtsabout God, and avoid the messy and revealing challenge of intimacy with God. I’ll admit that that’s true for me most of the time. But Lent is a season of reflection and repentance and internal housecleaning, and it’s in that process that we can make room for a closer, deeper, and more meaningful connection with God and each other.

True fellowship, what the early Christian writers called koinonia, is a way of experiencing the presence of God through the love and care and help we give and receive with other people. It’s a rich life, not in money but in depth and purpose. It’s a strong life, even if it requires us to show each other our weak and broken places. It’s a risky life, but one that promises to be worth the feeling of uncertainty when we enter into it.

In the end, koinonia fellowship is a place where we meet God through the gifts of our brothers and sisters, healed and restored from their own brokenness, and now sharing their lives with us. How meaningful. How wonderful.

As we enter the home stretch of the Lenten season, take these days to look into your own heart and see where God might be gently putting you back together. And as you experience that miracle of healing, take a chance and share it with the rest of us. It is in this community that we meet God, and in which others meet God in us.

Blessings to you during this season of Lent,

Pastor John