Jesus is no Lone Ranger: The Importance of Community
I’ll tell you a story about how community attracted me to Jesus and how important it is.
I met a group of young men and women doing life with God, spending their summer working and doing missions when I was a new immigrant in Canada. I worked in a kitchen cabinet factory. My boss hired several of them.
I started noticing right away how they treated each other with respect, honor and love. They truly lived out before my eyes Colossians 3: 12-17 (paraphrased: put on compassion, humility and above all put on love which binds all in perfect unity. I only saw this in hindsight). They supported, encouraged, served, and loved one another like I’d never seen anyone else do before. They took what they had in common seriously and responsibly. Their zeal for community was infectious.
They proved the promise of Jesus to be true: You will know them by their love. The onlooking world will know us by how lovingly we do group life.
Not only was it attractive to see, but it also highlighted my need to be in community with Christ. From the first day of my calling, group life has been a thing I won’t live without. This need for community is innate in all of us.
Jesus did his earthly life and ministry as he did his heavenly life: in community. Can you imagine him doing all he did without his group of men and women disciples nearby? I can’t. It would be like imagining the impossible. We call it fiction.
From day one, on page one of the Bible, God created male and female and told them to have children to make up a family to support, have fellowship, to help, encourage and serve one another. Inherent to being human is to be in community.
We are truly made in God’s image when we live that image out in community. God is Father, Son, and Spirit. Theologians call this community the Trinity; the community or society of love.
The first act of obedience to Christ calling us into life with him is to get immersed and incorporated into the reality of this trinitarian community (Matthew 28:19). There is nothing solo about our baptism because it is a dual act of immersion into the community of the Trinity and its earthly representatives, the local and universal church.
Christian community is a big deal because it’s patterned after the Trinity. It’s also important for our happiness and growth. A healthy growing Christian loves community and knows its importance.
Lone Ranger Christianity is a self-delusion. It’s a way of escaping the rigors of community. Sure, it’s often messy. An unfortunate mess that causes much hurt.
Hebrews 10:24-25 highlight the importance of life together: “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
The psalmist celebrates a life done in community as a pleasant reality. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity“ (Psalm 133:1, ESV). Sounds a little like God pronouncing the community he created to be a very good thing, before Cain broke the bond that binds, doesn’t it?
One of the three disciples who was in a special friendship with Jesus said, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Another follower of Jesus wouldn’t let us do life alone because “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” (Romans 12:5). “Jesus and me” was never Jesus’s idea.
One of the hindrances to seeing the importance of community is the fact that in English the pronoun you is both singular and plural. But all the letters of the New Testament address a plural you, a community of faith doing life together. When we take all the You of the letters as a singular pronoun we lose the communal aspects of the Christian life.
How important is community to you? I hope a lot!