It was not until 1993 that I purchased my first "cutting-edge Window's operated computer. Up to that time I was still using MSDOS on a reconditioned 286 with a 5 1/4 inch floopy drive. After extensive research, I decided to buy frmo a top-rated mail-order company. The best, most powerful computer you could buy at that time was a 486 Intel processor with 66 megaherz of power. When I unpacked holstein colored box, it was a sparkling tower of beauty. But that was the best I ever felt about it.
After I got it up and running, following instructions step-by-step, it never worked correctly. It took an excessively long time to boot up. No sound was heard through the speakers. The CD Rom drive didn’t know the difference between a music CD or a software CD. Things would jump around and shut down, when I attempted to type a letter. The manufacturer responded quickly and attempted to fix it. I was living in Boone at the time and there was 2 feet of snow on the ground and they sent a certified repair man from Tennessee three times to try. He finally concluded that the computer had some kind of internal conflict. All the parts checked out O.K. I had good parts. Maybe I had the best parts. It could have been a great computer, but the problem, he said, was that the parts didn’t communicate well with each other.
Sometimes churches and communities of faith can be like my 486 computer: The church of Jesus Christ has a wonderful message; that is it has all the "right" parts, but there is a problem of internal conflict within the fellowship and nothing seems to be working correctly. Christian fellowship is the major concern of the First Epistle of John, where he writes to one of the early churches: "Dear Friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who love is born of God and knows God... (But) if someone says, 'I love God' but hates another Christian, that person is a liar. For if we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, who we have not seen." (1 John 4: 17,20).
Do you see the serious implications of these words? Within 50 to 75 years after the church was born, the unity and fellowship of the church is already being tested.
Several years ago, while living in Germany, I watched an amazing news documentary. A local Lutheran minister in a certain German congregation was trading places with a local bartender. The minister would do bartending for a week. The bartender would do ministry and preach on Sunday. Somehow this strange cultural exchange began as a challenge from the local bartender who told the minister that he was able to do more ministry in a weeks time at the local bar than most churches did in a month. The challenge was accepted. After the week was over the bartender was so frustrated with church work that he wanted to rush back to the bar. The Lutheran minister resigned his church position and began his studies to become a bartender. When asked why on earth he would do such a thing, the minister responded. “It’s simple, really. I found the fellowship at the bar to be more "Christian" than the fellowship which we had at our church.”
What are we to say to this kind of slam against organized churches? Don't people say this kind of thing all the time: “I don’t go to church because the bars are just as good a place to find fellowship?” Or they say other things like“I can be just as good a Christian at home." Or recall the words of Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi about Christianity? "I could follows Jesus if it wasn’t for other Christians” How do we give an answer our Christian struggle to have genuine, caring, sustaining fellowship with one another?
One thing we must do is to agree with the critics. Yes, you heard me right: agree! We must agree because the evidence is all there: genuine Christian fellowship is hard. Before the church got good and started, they were already dealing with the problem of Christian fellowship. They were struggling with who to let in, who not to let in, how to deal with conflict and how to resolve it, and they were struggling with how to simply get along with each and love one other. The challenge of Christian fellowship has always been hard, if not impossible on human terms alone.
So we come to final question:why try it? Why take on the challenge and the struggle to ‘have fellowship’ with each other? Why not just turn out to be a skeptic of all human relation like the late french philosopher Jean Paul Sartre who had the philosophy: “l’enfer, c’est les autre!” (“Hell is other people.”)? Can we find one good reason to the contrary?
This is exactly what John's epistle gives. John gives us a word against all the human broken-ness we experience in the world and in the church. He gives us a word against our individualistic, egocentric, selfish choices which constantly alienate us from each other. John says: “We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands....(this Jesus)...the word of life. This one who is life from God was shone to us....we are telling you...so that you may have fellowship with us (John 1: 1-3). It was Jesus' kind of living and his kind of loving that makes fellowship and community possible even against all the negative odds and brokenness of our human condition.
Charles Colson, founder of Christian Prison Fellowship, tells of visiting a prison in the city of Sao Jose de Campos. It was a prison that was so unmanageable it was turned over to Christians to run over 20 years ago. He writes: “They called it Humaita, and their plan was to run it on Christian principles. The prison has only two full-time staff; the rest of the work is done by inmates. Every prisoner is assigned another inmate to whom he is accountable. In addition, every prisoner is assigned a volunteer Christian family from the outside that works with him during his term and after his release. Every prisoner joins a chapel program, or else takes a course in character formation.
‘When I visited Humaita,’ Colson continues, “I found the inmates smiling, particularly the murderer who held the keys, opened the gates, and let me in. Wherever I walked I saw men at peace. I saw clean living areas, people working industriously. The walls were decorated with biblical sayings from psalms and proverbs. Humaita has an astonishing record. Its rate of repeat offenders is 4% compared to 75% in the rest of Brazil and the U.S.
How was this possible? Colson says, “I saw the answer when my guide escorted me to the notorious punishment cell once used for torture. Today, he told me, that block houses only a single inmate. As we reached the end of a long concrete corridor and he put the key into the lock, he paused and asked, “are you sure you want to go in?” "Of course”, I replied impatiently. “I’ve been in isolation cells all over the world.” Slowly he swung open the massive door, and I saw the prisoner in that punishment cell: a crucifix, beautifully carved by the Humaita inmates---the prisoner jesus hanging on the cross. “He’s doing time for all the rest of us,” my guide said softly. (As quoted in Donald W. Mccullough’s, The Trivialization of God, Nav. Press, 1995, pp. 95-96).
Christian fellowship is possible, among the best of us and even among the worst of us because it is a fellowship that is not based on who we are, or what we can or can’t do. Chrisitian fellowship is based on what Jesus has done in his saving work of redemption and forgiveness. This is why the fellowship which John invites the church into is "...with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.” (1:3). It is a way of relating based upon God’s love expressed through Jesus Christ. Believing in and living out this kind of love, which is based upon the grace and forgiveness of God expressed through Jesus Christ and his cross, is the kind of love that not only makes human fellowship possible, it makes most anything possible.
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