An Uprising of Fellowship
I want to begin with the reminder that in the life of the church, Easter is a season and not a day – there are 50 days of Easter Alleluias!
As in most of the seasons of the past year, we are pivoting toward a “next chapter” in our journey if you will.
We are, by my count, 34 weeks into our 52 week study of Brian McLaren’s book, We Make the Road by Walking.
Our journey together has taken us through the wide swath of ancient scripture that describes the family of God and how we are a part of it.
And then, in a season, we met Jesus, God in flesh.
We explored how Jesus developed a ministry, calling folks from all walks of life into an inner circle to learn and grow, witness and become, to heal and to send forth.
In Lent, we explored Jesus’ teaching from a hillside in Galilee, a teaching that laid out some fundamental understanding of how we are called to live in community with one another.
Here in the Easter season, we are exploring what it means to keep moving forward as a group of followers called to live with Jesus’ message in community, and to carry Jesus’ message to others as we grow our table of fellowship. All of this work is what it means for the body of Christ to live even as Jesus departs his earthly ministry.
We begin that journey today talking a bit about what it means to be a “fellowship.”
You know me, I love words. So I spent some time exploring the word “fellowship.”
Fellowship can be one of those insider – church words. We have our own vocabulary, often a mystery to those outside the walls of the church. And sometimes really unexamined even by the body of Christ.
We have a fellowship hall, we talk about worship and fellowship as actions and as if we all share the same understanding of what the words means.
But where did the word fellowship come from, what does it mean for us today? And what does it mean for us to live as a “fellowship?” What does it mean to grow as a fellowship?
It turns out these are all really great questions for a Sunday when we receive four young people through confirmation and membership vows.
In common usage today, fellowship tends to mean a gathering of like-minded folks, a community that shares an activity or an interest. In which case, the camera club is a fellowship. And maybe your bridge club is a fellowship.
Is that what the word means for us?
The word “fellow” has its roots in Norse and German and Old English – and it ultimately came to mean “one who lays down money in a joint enterprise.”
How often is THAT on our minds when we gather for coffee and conversation downstairs?
But I suspect that idea comes closer to what has been meant over years of usage in the church. Charles Wesley used the word in a number of hymns. I found this stanza from the hymn, “Come and let us sweetly join” thought provoking and timely for this day.
While we walk with God in light,
God our hearts doth still unite;
Dearest fellowship we prove,
Fellowship in Jesus' love.
Fellowship in Jesus’ love.
I believe that one of the vital things that happened in the wake of the resurrection was the bond built among the disciples, a bond that was birthed in a shared journey with the God-in-flesh Jesus, a bond sanctified by the Holy Spirit, a bond that carried them, together in spite of hardship and difference, forward into the world to share the good news that Christ lives, that death does not have the last word, that power is really about love.
Because let’s face it, all the cards were stacked against this ministry moving forward. The beloved leader died a horrible death, one that heightened pressure on followers to abandon the cause and their testimony. Don’t people often scatter when the center of their cause disappears? When their safety is threatened?
The story of resurrection, as it unfolded, reveals so many different experiences, as we discussed last week. And this week, in John’s gospel, we have yet another different experience among the disciples.
Some of the disciples are gathered behind a locked door when Jesus appears among them. We don’t know it quite yet, but they are not ALL there. And Jesus doesn’t just “appear.” He offers his peace in the midst of their fear, he gives them a commission to go out and share grace as he has shared in the past, and then he sanctifies them – he breathes on them, imparting the very presence of the Holy Spirit with them.
As McLaren points out in We Make the Road by Walking, this image of breathing life would have brought early listeners back to the creation of humans in Genesis – in which God breathed life into Adam and Eve. This is John’s gospel, that begins with Jesus as the Word at creation, the Word who was with God and was God, and is now breathing into this motley band of folk.
Some new life is beginning here. Even in the midst of an unmistakable change of circumstances, something new is happening. This gathered body is a new creation, a creation that, in spite of fear and trauma, has been granted peace.
And then, we have Thomas. So often Thomas is labeled for his doubt, but really…when push comes to shove, he breathlessly affirms the Lordship of Christ without having to touch the wounds. He just needs an encounter of his own. He needed Jesus’ peace just like his friends.
How often are we, in our skeptical, proof-loving, rational world convinced that easily? McLaren points out that Thomas, who missed that amazing encounter with the breath, chose to show up with the group who had already seen and believed anyway. Even in his doubt and confusion, he was with his community…willing to wait for the opportunity to touch and see.
So let’s turn back to this idea of fellowship -
McLaren points to things we might consider about “fellowship” in light of the experience of the disciples. Here is a community that has struggled, that has encountered trauma, that has some who believed at first word of resurrection, and others who needed to be convinced.
These are good, normal folks being called to continue the work of being a community.
A community of love and peace and grace and forgiveness and humility.
In spite of what they had witnessed at the cross.
Because of what they witnessed in their experience of the risen Christ.
A community called to invite others in, in spite of varying experience, doubt, or sin.
A community called to forgive rather than judge.
McLaren points to this as fellowship:
“Fellowship is a kind of belonging that isn’t based on status, achievement, or gender, but instead is based on a deep belief that everyone matters, everyone is welcome, everyone is loved, no conditions, no exceptions.”
And so back to the old roots of the word, perhaps this is a group of people who will invest the fullness of themselves, the fullness of both their trauma and their joy, the fullness of their skepticism and their faith, in the common work of expanding the understanding of God’s love through their community.
Today, we receive into our fellowship four bright young people. We don’t receive them with conditions. We don’t receive them as junior members. We receive them as fellows, who are making the same commitments each of us have most likely made – to renounce the forces of wickedness and receive the power breathed into them by God to resist evil, injustice and oppression. We receive them as members with us who will uphold the body of Christ with prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness.
We receive them into our fellowship.
The psalmist writes:
How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
May we also today consider ways our fellowship might need to be widened. Ways we might expand our understanding of kindred. Ways we might need to reach beyond ourselves and our comfort to be open to the shocking presence of Christ with us, breathing the Holy Spirit into each of us, and calling us out into the world.
May it be so.
Amen.
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