8-23-09 What Makes A Community Great?

 (This sermon was given while we were worshipping in a local park in the community)

What does great community look like?  What are the distinguishing factors that would make this community, or the community that you come from, great? What distinguishes great community from a mediocre community? Do great communities happen accidentally or does there have to be intention?

Are we called to live as isolated islands – separate from one another, shallow, and selfish? Or are we called to be a community that works together while showing compassion, kindness, patience, and more than anything else, love toward one another? Who are we as a community? Where are we going? Is our community going to get better or worse? These are a number of the questions that we are asking today.

“Community” is made up of two words, Common and Unity. Common means that we live in the same place, but unity means that we are we are doing things together. It means that we are going in the same direction. It means that we are unified or a team, or a whole – not part, not separate, not individuals, but community. People living together in a common place, doing things together as a team; working in a unified way. That’s what community is.

Are we? Are we really a community? Are we people living together in a common place, doing things together in a unified way, or has the speed of life and a lack of vision isolated and separated us so much that we have become, not a community, but a bunch of individuals living in a common place?

I’d like to suggest the basic ingredient of a great community is Love! Love!

Sometimes this book (Bible) can be a bit confusing. It was written between 2 and 4000 years ago, and so not everything makes sense to us when we read it, but one day someone asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was and he responded that in all this book the greatest commandment was this:

To Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then it’s as though he could not stop himself there, and he went on to say, and a second that is like it is this, love your neighbor as yourself, and he finishes his statement with, there is no commandment greater than these.

In case you’re a bit confused about what this book is about, it’s about love. I know, I know, the church has sometimes done an awful job of making that known and displaying that truth in community, but just because people screw up, just because churches screw up, doesn’t mean that God has screwed up. God is still the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He is still calling us today to love well – to love him with all that we are and to love our neighbor – those people that we find ourselves next to, as much as we love our self.

So what does this have to do with being a great community? I need you to imagine something with me. I want us to imagine what it would look like if every person in this community began to love God with all there heart, soul, mind, and strength – they began to love God with all that they are – AND they began to love there neighbor – those people that they find themselves next to – as much as they love themselves – What would that look like? Wouldn’t that be a great community? Wouldn’t that be a great place to settle down and get married? Wouldn’t that be a great place to raise kids? Wouldn’t that be a great place where kids could run wild and be kids and yet everyone in the community was looking out for everyone else’s kids. Wouldn’t that be a great place for kid’s to go to school? Wouldn’t that be a great community?

What I’m not saying is that everybody would be perfect. No, in a great community everybody is still messed up, there are still addictions and deep pain. There is still cancer and deep emotional pain. There are still people like me who are perfectionistic and anal. There are still people like my daughter who thrive in a world that’s a mess and who drive perfectionistic people like me crazy. Everybody would still be messed up, but kindness and encouragement would rule. Patience and joy would be more of the norm.

Love is when we begin to see the people next door not as strangers, but as human beings who deeply need to be loved. That’s who we are aren’t we? We are people who want to and need to be loved.

In the beginning, before Adam and Eve sinned, there was great community. Heaven was on the earth and it was really, really good. At the end of the story, in Revelation, God restores heaven to earth and it’s really, really good.

In the middle of the story, Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray and Jesus taught them to pray this way. Our Father, who is in heaven, holy is your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus taught us to pray for up there to come down here, for heaven to come to earth. And if he taught us to pray for that, then that is his will. God calls us to make a difference, and in our own small way bring up there down here. Every time we unconditionally love someone we bring a bit of heaven to earth. Every time we hold the door for someone and every time we say a kind word of encouragement to someone, every time we wash someone’s windshield for free, every time we give someone a gift – no strings attached, every time we serve one another in love, we bring up there down here and we begin to create a good community – we create essentially a new community.

Love is not selfish. Love is not selfish, or proud, or rude; Love is patient and it is kind; Love is a giving away of self. Love is about serving one another, not because of what we get out it, but because of what we can give. Love looks for ways to serve others. Love looks for ways to make itself known. Love does not stay within us, but instead it seeks to go out from us.

1 John 4 says that God is love. It is the clearest most concise definition of who God is in the scriptures. God is love, and he came down from heaven in the person of Jesus and Jesus put on flesh and blood and he moved into the neighborhood. And then after modeling and teaching about love, he displayed the greatest action of love the world has ever seen.

He was willing to die for you and me, so that we could have life, so that we could be filled with his love. He died so that you and I could live. He died so that we could have life.

Great Community – common unity – People living together in a common place, doing life together in a unified way is only possible with God at the center. Apart from God we all become selfish. Apart from God we forget what love is.

Loving God with all that you are, and loving those around you as much as you love yourself, those are the ingredients for a really great community – essentially a new community.