Choosing Community Over Isolation

Choosing Community Over Isolation
We continue this week in our Lenten series, I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church. There is still an opportunity to sign up for the class or to purchase a book. Please see me after the service if you are interested in either option. As we continue in this series, I would invite you to keep an open mind and an ear towards what God is speaking. Each week there are two options that we will be looking at. Rev Nixon calls these choices our critical choices, six clear choices that will greatly amplify the impact of our lives and our churches. Last week, our choice was between life and death…Life is the obvious choice to make and we had an opportunity to during the service to make that choice publicly. The choice to choose life over death is one that we each have to do personally first in order to share that life with others…The choice to choose life is the first choice to make…The choice that we make as individuals must also be choices that we make as a church…
The next critical choice that we have to make is choosing community over isolation…Now this is another one that seems like it would be an easy choice to make…Because as much as one might need some “alone time” or time away, it’s that important to be with people…Even as God created human beings, God said, “It’s not good for one to be alone.” Community is something that we as human beings crave and do almost instinctively…We weren’t created to be isolated…We were created for community to be together…
So, if we as human beings are meant to be in community with one another…What does that make the Church? Well, the church is a gathered body of believers…The church itself is meant to be a community…In the reading from Acts, we have an idea of what the early Christian church looked like…Believers met in one another’s homes…They spent time in the temple, then they spent just as much time in one another’s homes, breaking bread…Not only did they worship together in the temple, but they also spent just as much time together outside of the temple, breaking bread together in one another’s homes…Church wasn’t just something that they did on Saturday, but it was a way of life…They weren’t just in community with one other in worship, but they were in intentional Christian community for their entire beings…
Now, those who gathered to form the early Christian church didn’t get together simply because they had something in common…They liked the same kinds of foods or talked about politics together…They gathered together because what they had in common through their Lord, Jesus Christ…Through the recognition that they were all one through Christ Jesus, they formed their communities that were open to all.
As much as community is something that seems like it’s the logical choice to make and something that typically most people would choose and would want…Even for those of us who choose community over isolation…It’s easy to slip sometimes…
I went to a movie once, and the theater sat 200 people easily…And for most of the previews, I was the only one in the theater…Until another couple came in and looked around the theater for a place to sit…In this 200 seat theater where I was the only other person in…And where did they choose to sit?? That’s right…They sat right next to me. Out of 199 other seats to choose, they chose to sit right next to me…Oh, I was so irritated! I had decided to choose isolation instead of community…
Now you may be thinking…Well, I can understand that—that’s a movie…What does that have to do with church?? Well, we’re not just Christians in worship on Sunday mornings…
I visited a church once where there were at least 200 other seats in the sanctuary…And as people came in to worship, and sat down…No one sat next to me…How is it that someone would sit next to me in a movie theater, but not in a church? Have you ever had that experience?
There was a story that was passed around the Internet awhile ago about a man who was telling his brother about a group that he had found in the town that he had just moved into…He said that people were so welcoming and friendly and when he walked in, someone offered him a seat right next them…Everyone wanted to know who he was and how he was doing…There was one person who was so easy to talk to and he ended up telling them about all of his pain and told them some of the things that he had done wrong in his life and that he was sorry about…The group of people and himself did some laughing and a little bit of singing together…Before he left, they gave him the schedule of what was going on when they would be there again and that they couldn’t wait to see him again. “Wow! That’s great!” said the man’s brother. “What church did you go to?” The man looked puzzled for a minute and said, “Who said anything about a church? I was talking about the neighborhood bar.” How do we choose community over isolation?

Have you ever had the opportunity to be on the other end of the experience? That you were the one who saw someone sitting alone and you joined them? Maybe it was a stranger…Maybe it was someone that you knew…Did you choose community or isolation?
I read an article recently where a priest talked about the American idea of individualism…And how that can unintentionally lead into isolationism…That as we try so hard to be our own person and so hard to emphasize who we are as individuals we can forget that we’re also a part of a community.
It’s up to all of us to choose community…Now, there are some people who aren’t as comfortable talking to someone new…There are certainly people who are introverted and aren’t as comfortable talking to someone new…Which would be an easy excuse to make and an easy way to choose isolation instead of community…There are many ways to choose community…
The decision to choose life is an easy step into choosing community…Why would someone choose life and then keep it to themselves? Yep, I choose life! Now, I’m not going to tell anyone about it…I’m going to keep it to myself…You know, I seem to remember that there’s a song about that…A song that maybe we learned in Sunday School…Oh, it’s in our hymnal too…This Little Light of Mine…
Choosing Community Over Isolation…Community just isn’t about the people that we know and the people that we like…Community is larger than that…All people are included in community…Jesus didn’t say, “love people as long as they look like you…smell like you…talk like you…think like you…” Actually Jesus said, whatever you do to these, you do to me…Are we welcoming Jesus into community with us?
Choosing community over isolation…It’s an important choice to make…God wants us to be in community…How are we going to do that? The first step is to make the choice…To choose community…To choose to be in fellowship with others…