Maggie, good morning everybody. How we doing this morning?
Good, good to see you happy beginning of February break.
I know many of us are feeling the urge for some sunshine.
A lot of people are traveling this week.
I think most most people here know me, if not I'm Josh.
Glad to see you. I'm excited about this series
that we are in together Rewired by love and I'm excited this
morning as we dive into one of my favorite texts in all of
scripture and talk about conflict.
Everybody say yay conflict. All right, well, this morning
I'm I'm so excited to be talking about this because really,
really what we're talking about this morning is how to cultivate
thick community. And I want to suggest to you
that we find in the text today a beautiful, a beautiful pattern
for rupture and repair. And we also uncover a truth that
is critically important for us, which is that that we live in a
double bind between two things that we want at the same time,
but that have a have an interesting and difficult
relationship. Because I believe that on the
one hand, all of us want deep, thick, connected, intimate
relationships of belonging, and on the other hand, all of us
want our relationships to be tension and conflict free.
Am I right? I have bad news.
Those things are mutually exclusive.
And so this morning I want to, I want to suggest to you as we
continue this series, that that much of what we want is
paradoxically on the other side of rupture and repair.
And this text points us in the direction of that.
In his book Modern Romance, comedian Aziz Ansari recounts a
painful incident that I think it's probably familiar for a lot
of us in in one way or another. He had met a girl at a party.
There was a lot of chemistry. They connected, everything felt
awesome. Got the number.
So the next day he he sends a text.
He says, hey, we had we're vibing to this music.
Last night I found out that this band is going to be in town.
Would you want to go with me? And then, of course, sits in the
uncomfortable waiting as all of us know who have sent a text
that felt vulnerable where we weren't sure what the response
was. He's compulsively checking his
phone. And then there's the sign.
The message has been read. The bubbles pop up and begin to
populate. You know how they do on the
screen? They're flashing when somebody
is typing and they flash and they flash and they go away and
then they flash and then they flash and then they go away and
then nothing. And as he starts to, he starts
to ask himself, like, did I miss something?
Maybe I said something wrong? Did I?
Did I misread the no, no, no, I'm sure everything is great.
He tries to reassure himself. She's, you know, she probably
got busy. She's probably working.
Maybe, maybe she got caught in you know what?
Probably she's trying to play it cool.
I'm sure she'll get back to me. We had chemistry.
I know time passes an hour, 2 hours, 24 hours.
And now he's in it. Like the stories have just
exploded into full on, like the paranoia, right?
Maybe the phone fall fell into a volcano.
Maybe maybe she fell into a volcano.
Wait, why am I even worried about this?
Maybe she's dead. I should be concerned about her.
What's going on? And so he does what many of us
probably would do, right? When you don't get that text, he
goes on social media to see what's happening, right?
Is she alive? Is she OK?
Is she out there in the world? And sure enough, she just posted
on Instagram. She is alive.
She has a phone and she is not responding.
What the heck? He begins to think, well, maybe,
maybe, maybe I should, maybe I should send an Instagram.
Maybe something's wrong with her text.
And then slowly starts to like sit with the realization to let
it sink in, right? He stops himself and says I'm
being ghosted. Many of you have had an
experience like this in one way or the other.
Maybe maybe it was in a dating relationship.
Of course, this is where I think the term comes from, to be
ghosted for for somebody to just evaporate into the air in this
kind of a way. But I, I, I named this story not
because it's unique, but because in many ways it's so familiar.
Like maybe in a dating context or or maybe just in a friendship
context, maybe with a Co worker who you really vibed with and
then left the office, Maybe in a group where somebody was part of
your community group. And then and then disappeared
without a word or without closing the loop.
So many of us have had this experience where we we thought
there was a connection and then all of a sudden somebody just
left without a word, without an explanation, without anything.
This was so evocative for Aziz, who is a stand up comedian, that
he he brought it into his set the next night and as he
described his experience of being ghosted, he got so much
resonance in the room that he ended up turning it into a full
blown book. He he brought in a sociologist
to help study the dynamics and you could go read it.
It's an interesting book called Modern Romance.
In the book, there was an interesting study right at the
beginning that I found fascinating, kind of mind
blowing. He cites that that he cites A
sociologist who names that close to 100 years ago, 1/3 of all
couples who were married in this in the in a particular study
that was done in the city of Philadelphia lived within five
blocks of each other. Isn't that crazy?
A 1/3 of married couples like had actually lived within five
blocks of each other. That's a wildly different world
than we live in now, isn't it? Right.
How many of us end up dating or, or, or, or or even living in the
places that we grew up? So many of us don't live close
to family. We end up moving from job to
job. We, we relocate at some point.
Many of us here in this room are transplants of 1 variety or
another. And, and, and one of the results
of this is that we so easily ended up in a space where all of
our relationships are segmented, right?
Our coworkers don't know our friends, our friends don't know
our neighbors, our neighbors don't know our family.
None of the people in our lives know each other.
And in this space of anonymity, in this space where relational
repercussions don't carry over from 1 space to another, the
thick web of relationships which held a level of accountability
for how we showed up and incentivized people to behave in
a particular way has now devolved to the point we're so
often people exit relationships without so much as, hey, I don't
see this going anywhere. It was nice meeting you.
I know some of you have been on the receiving end of this in one
context or another. And look, my point this morning
is not to argue that we need to return to some version of the
olden days, right where we had limited romantic and vocational
prospects and everybody lived on the same block.
There are specific pieces of that that appeal to me.
But I think in that all of us would look around and we'd say
more choices, more options, more relationships, more vocation is
a good thing. We like the trade-offs in many
ways. We prefer the context in which
we Live Today. But the reason I named this
dynamic for us is because I think the context in which we
live is also forming us towards a version of thin relationships,
transactional relationships, easy exits that pervades not
only social media apps and dating algorithms, but also the
ways that we then show up in community, the ways that we
relate to church and one another.
In our text today, we find Jesus and Peter in the wake of the
deepest rupture imaginable. Their relationship has been
devastatingly broken. And, and this is so significant
because Jesus and Peter come into this moment having been as
close as two people could be. Like for the last three years
they have been in lock step with each other, traveling together,
eating together, working together, sleeping in the same
places, getting up in the same routines, right?
Peter and Jesus have been as tight as you can be.
But now in the final chapter, the relationship is
horrendously, devastatingly broken by Peter's betrayal.
Peter has abandoned his friend in his most crucial moment.
And it and it wasn't just the fact that, you know, they saw
things differently or they had a misunderstanding.
No, Jesus was in a moment of crisis, a moment of his deepest
need, and Peter abandoned him. Not just abandoned, but betrayed
him. If this isn't bad enough, Jesus
had actually told Peter. He'd actually predicted that
Peter would hurt him in this way.
We go back to John chapter 13 and and Peter swears to Jesus, I
will lay down my life for you, he says.
And Jesus says really before morning you will disown me in
John 13 verse 38. And then Peter does exactly
that. Not once, but three times.
As Jesus is being LED away to his death, his best friend
swears that he had never met him, trying to cowardly save his
own skin. Three times.
And that's the end. Jesus is LED away to his death.
Now look, of course Peter is not responsible for Jesus execution,
but Peter does fail his friend. The relationship is broken about
as traumatically as you can do. Can we agree that this is a
pretty major rupture in their relationship?
And because we already know how the story turns out at the end,
I think it's so easy for us to miss how dramatic the repair
that we find in chapter 21 of John's gospel is.
See, because we know how it goes, because we know how who
Peter becomes, it's easy to just bleed all of the tension from
the story. But I mean, consider this for
just a second. If somebody betrayed you in this
kind of a way, if they let you down at this level, if you were
hurt this profoundly, how would you respond?
How would you react? What would be your go to way of
navigating the relationship? Like, we might blow them off, we
might tell them off and explode in rage.
We might go around and try to assassinate their reputation by
telling everyone that we knew all of our mutuals about who
they were and how they had shown up.
Perhaps we'd freeze them out and hold them at a distance, right,
afraid to ever let them close again after they had caused us
so much pain. In our thin relational world,
most of the time people just quietly leave.
They exit for a new relationship, a new
conversation, a new friend group, a new church community.
And I think it's worth asking. It's worth imagining.
Like how the story might have played out differently if Jesus
would have responded in the way that I and, and maybe you might
have in this situation. Like Can you imagine if, if the
rest of the gospel from this point forward and John does not
include Peter? Like there's no Pentecost where
Peter preaches and 5000 come to faith.
The Holy Spirit falls and the church is founded, or at least
it looks very different. Like there's no moment where
Cornelius comes to faith in this, this, this break between
Jew and Gentile is, is, is transformed and, and, and people
like me begin to come into the faith, people who are not a
Jewish ancestry, right? The, the Bible looks different.
The, the whole story of our faith looks different.
Peter goes on to not just engage in some like tacit, fragile,
cold, weak, kind of weird relationship that never fully
recovers. Jesus gives this dude the keys
to his Kingdom. He he becomes the rock on which
Jesus builds his church, one of the the most influential, the
most important, the most trusted and centered people in all of
Christian history. And this all happens downstream
of this rupture and repair. How many of us can say that
we've actually repaired relationships in this kind of
way? Like I don't probably not me.
And and look, my point this morning is not to, to minimize
the pain, to just kind of brush over it, to gloss over it, say
like, oh, no big deal. We should always, always get
along and get together that everybody should be cool and we
should brush our problems under the rug.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting that that
relationships, when they are broken, when trust is broken,
when when people show up selfishly or or falsely in
relationships, that we don't hurt and wound each other in in
real, profound and serious ways. Look, I get it.
I've been there. I carry those wounds.
I've given some of those wounds. When our relationships are
fractured, it hurts deeply. In fact, neuroscientists would
suggest that the the brain circuits that light up, that we
see show up on, on, on like an FM, RI scanner when we are in a
relational rupture are the same exact circuits that show up when
we experience physical pain, right?
Our bodies scream at us when we're in a relational rupture.
We say you're in danger, you're hurting, and that hurt is real.
Not only is it real, but, but our, our biology reads that as a
deep and severe threat, particularly when people who are
important or close to us, we experience a break in that
relationship. And it's fascinating book on the
the history of humankind. You've all know a Harare
explains that humans did not outlast our the lions and the
bears and, and, and we didn't get our, our spot at the top of
the food chain because we were the biggest or the strongest or
had the most bite force or the most speed or aggression, right.
We're, we're pretty weak and fragile things really.
Our superpower is in our connectedness.
It's in our ability to, to stay together, to bond with others,
to cooperate at large scale. This is this is what allows
humans to, to be at the top of the food chain.
And so there's something in our brain that goes off, a signal
that warns us when we're in relational rupture, when things
are not OK, when our our community is broken, part of our
bodies, our biology, our brains start to scream at us.
You are not safe if you are abandoned, if you are cut off,
if you are ostracized, you might die.
Now, today in our world, that's probably not the case, but it
certainly was for millennia. And our biology still believes
that our bodies still ache with the pain of relational rupture.
But despite the pain, despite how significant it is, I believe
what we see not only in this text but also in our biology is
that that we were made for repair.
Ruptures. Can be repaired and learning
that circuitry, developing those muscles to actually fix what's
broken, to restore what's been injured is absolutely
fundamental to being human. Attachment theorists talk about
it in this way. They they explain a dance
between intimacy and independence that begins to
happen from our earliest stages of childhood development.
Right at the very beginning, if you if you watch a baby and it's
mom, it stares into it's mom's eyes.
That's intimacy right then it begins to get overwhelmed.
At some point the intimacy becomes too much, too intense,
right? And so they'll be some giggles,
they'll be some looking away. That's it.
A tiny, tiny, tiny little rupture.
The nervous system regulates and, and they come back for more
intimacy. And this happens in, in bigger
and bigger loops as we go through our lives.
This, this, this dance of rupture and repair.
Or at least that's the design it's supposed to.
On Friday, my daughter and my 4 year old daughter Ava had a
couple of friends over at our house and they were super
excited. Ava had been handing out
Valentine's Day gifts to all of her friends which were were Dino
themed. And so they were going with the
state this, this, this game. They were being dinosaurs.
We all the adults were in the kitchen kind of having a
conversation. We turned to look and every
linen blanket, pillow in the house had been commandeered and
drug into the living room and and forts were being created
that apparently were were dinosaur nests where they were
all going to be sitting and and hatching their Dino eggs.
It was a lot of laundry and also super adorable.
And as they were playing, they were having this fantastic time.
Everything was great. They were all connected.
They were being independent. They were flexing their muscle
of independence from their parents.
And then, oh, man, my buddy Mike told his girls, it's time to go.
It's bedtime. And you would have thought like
a warhead had gone off, like Ava just completely lost.
She, she had been helping her friends with their nests, but
her nest was unfinished. She hadn't had the chance to
build it, to sit in it to, to care for her eggs in this
imaginary game that they were playing.
And she was distraught, unregulated, crashed out.
It took a while. Eventually, you know the friends
did in fact leave because. Life goes on.
Disappointment is real. We encounter it in our lives.
And you know, Allie and I came to her.
Allie threw a blanket over the dining room table and said this
could be your nest. I crawled under the table with
her and began to talk in silly voices and just comfort her and
ask her what was going on and distract her a little bit and
care for her. Eventually she, she came back,
she was able to regulate, she was able to be soothed.
And then before long again, she's out flexing more
independence, going out doing her thing.
And, and, and this, this dance is something that all of us do,
all of us experience, right? We started at, at infants and
then throughout our lives on a daily, we go through this cycle
of rupture and repair rupture anytime according to attachment
theory, any time where our, our nervous system gets overtaxed,
where we get over stimulated, where, where things are beyond
our window of tolerance, which kicks us into this, this fight
flight mode that you may be familiar with, right?
Where we respond in these these ways and, and we need to come
back. This is so interesting.
We need to come back to that attachment figure who functions
as a safe haven, who says, Hey, I got you, Let me help you to
regulate, let me help you to connect.
We talked about how these attachment filters are formed,
what we expect from other people back in Week 2 of this series.
We're designed to have someone to have a people who can say in
these moments to us, I see you, I care about you, you're OK,
I've got you. And of course, some of us in
childhood experienced it this and some of us did not.
Some of us developed scripts that like, I'm OK when I'm in
distress, I can connect with other people in my distress.
I can bring it into relationships.
Those relationships will hold me.
And others of us grew up with very different messages,
messages like you got to take care of this on your own.
Nobody has space for you, right? There's not room for you to
actually be distressed. Like, keep it together, man.
We grow up with different scripts.
But what neuroscience, attachment theory, and also
Scripture points us to is that repair is intended to happen not
just on our own. It's not just a matter of
journaling and breath work and affirmations, not against any of
those things, but it's actually something that's supposed to
happen in our relationships. Our distress is to be soothed
with others. From our earliest.
Moments our attachment figures help us to Co regulate to
support us to bring us back to baseline to tell us it's OK that
we're held now. Look I get adult relationships
are a lot more complicated in some ways than parent child
relationships. Not all wounds and injuries that
we experience in community are the same as my friends have to
leave now. Sometimes.
We're betrayed, hurt, lied to, cheated on, taken advantage of.
People show up with selfishness. They're inconsiderate, right?
We experience real wounds and, and, and often times that, that
repair requires a rebuilding of trust.
It requires a, an establishment of safety, right?
There's more to it than just a regulation of the nervous
system, but it's not less than that.
I will say that it actually, it often starts there.
And the reason I, I, I go into this detail to, to explain all
of this to you is, is simply this.
There's actually a purpose in this cycle there.
There's a point to rupture and repair.
It's not something that, that we can escape or avoid.
The ideal community is not one in which we never get ouches,
where we're never upset or disappointed, where nobody ever
treats us wrong, where we're never experienced a spark of, of
judgment or, or or or somebody pushing us away, somebody
disagreeing with us or holding different views.
Like the goal is not to experience ruptures.
The goal is actually to develop our competence, to return to
connection and joy over and over again with people.
When we attempt to settle for for a community, a space that
that doesn't involve ruptures, that's purely safe, that we're
we're always held where everyone always shows up perfectly.
We end up settling for communities, for relationships
where we are just always swiping on to the next, always trying to
find that perfect community where everybody shows up
perfectly, where we're always feel safe, where none of our
buttons ever get pushed. I can tell you.
That community doesn't exist. You're not going to find it.
And if you do, please don't join it.
You will mess it up because because you're a mess.
I'm a mess. We are a mess.
We are messy people. I love how CS Lewis put it.
He said it so profoundly in his book The Four Loves.
He says to love at all is to be vulnerable.
To love at all. Is to be vulnerable, he says.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly
broken. Here's the solution, he says.
If you want to keep your heart intact, give it to no one.
Not even an. Animal.
No pets. Wrap it carefully round with
hobbies and little luxuries and void all entanglements.
Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that. Casket safe, dark, motionless,
airless. It will change.
It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable,
says Louis. And friends, this is what I'm
trying to communicate to you this morning is that, look, it's
not that every relationship is deserving of repair.
It's not that everybody is safe. OK?
I could, I could get into an entire series on on conflict
here. And that's not what we're doing
today. My point is, is simpler and it's
more foundational. It's that we.
Live in a society. We live in a moment.
We live in a culture where we are being trained to live thinly
and to exit quickly, and if we follow the pattern, the prompts
of our culture, we will inevitably create and experience
only the kind of thin community where we cannot really belong,
where we cannot really change. If we.
Long to experience transformation, depth,
belonging. We have to stick around long
enough to have friction, to have disagreements, to be
uncomfortable. Sometimes it's the only way to
really get to that level of depth.
I love this story here with Jesus and Peter because I wonder
if what we see in John 21 where I want to return to and see how
they repair this relationship. But I actually wonder if what we
see in John 21 is only possible because of the history that
Jesus and Peter have built. Because.
Over and over and over again through their story, like it's
been like a whole history of ruptures and repairs.
Over and over and over. They've built a level of
tolerance of trust as Peter's stories have begun to be rewired
by how Jesus has shown up in the relationship.
Look with me, will you? Like at the very beginning of
the relationship, Luke chapter 5, what happens like Jesus meets
Peter, Peter's on the boat. He's out fishing and, and, and
Jesus performs a miracle. There's this incredible catch of
fish and Jesus calls to them from the boat.
How does Peter respond? He's overwhelmed.
He, he moves beyond his, his threshold of tolerance, right?
His window of tolerance. He's he's taken aback by this
encounter with divinity, right, being called out.
He thinks that that he's not going to be able to to perform
that getting this close, this much intimacy is scary.
And so he responds out of fear, he says, go away from me, Lord.
In Luke 5 and verse eight, I am a sinful man.
Peter Survival. Strategies are strong, like I'm
broken, we can't get that close. If we do, I will inevitably be
rejected. So stay away from me.
Jesus responds to Peter not by respecting.
This is a healthy boundary that needs to be accepted and
respected. Like Jesus gets what's?
Going on here and so instead of being like OK, no problem Peter.
If that's what you need. Right now, he says no, no, no,
Peter, don't be afraid. I'm going to make you a Fisher
of men. Jesus.
Moves towards Peter, he presses and he creates a context of
safety and invites him into intimacy.
In Matthew chapter 14, we see that Peter is with the other
disciples. They're crossing the lake of
Galilee. The same Blake.
There's a lot of rupture and repair that happens on this
lake. Guys, it's night, it's windy and
a storm kicks up. The boat is is being thrashed
about and the disciples are fearful they're going to drown.
Peter's right in the. Middle of that, and then as
they're fighting for their lives, they see a ghost that's
coming to take them to the underworld.
That's what they think the text says that they cry out in fear,
that they were terrified. Peter shrieks.
Jesus responds. He says, hey, take courage, it's
me. I am coming to you right now.
And Peter? Does there's this little
rupture, There's a repair or I don't, Maybe it's a big rupture.
And then Peter, bold as he is, moves through his anxiety and
says, hey, I want to play. Can I walk in the water too?
Can I come to you, Jesus? He steps out of the boat in
faith. He begins moving towards Jesus.
And what happens immediately out of the window?
Tolerance. Again, there's waves crashing,
there's there's wind thrashing, like I'm going to drown.
He again shifts out of connection into protection.
Right. But he cries out.
He says, Lord help me. And Jesus.
Doesn't stand back and give him a lecture on faith and
responsibility and how you should have shown up like he
does debrief things in the boat. OK, but first Jesus just reaches
out and he grabs him. He says I got you, let me let me
get you safe, let me get you stable, let me get you
regulated. And then let's talk about it not
not as a rebuke, not as a condemnation, not as a you
messed up and therefore you're gone.
But is that like, Hey, are you noticing he doesn't use this
word? But what Jesus is doing is he's
saying, Hey, are you noticing how your internal working models
here assume that you have to handle everything on your own,
that nobody's going to show up for you and support you right
now? That that you, you have to, to
be in it to take care of it, that that the things are
overwhelming. And, and so you just panic and
freeze up and he's saying, Hey, I got you.
You can trust me. Jesus doesn't reject him.
He doesn't push away. In fact, in the very next
passage in Matthew's Gospel, we see what the transfiguration.
Jesus invites him into deeper connection and restoration.
We have ruptured, we have repair. 2 chapters.
After this, Jesus predicts his suffering and death.
He says, hey, we're going to Jerusalem and they're going to
kill me. Peter freaks out, like again,
outside the window of tolerance. This is not what Peter expected.
This is not what he was hoping for.
This is not the vision of the future that he liked.
So he panics and out of his anxiety, what does he try to do?
He tries to control the situation.
No, Jesus, that will not happen to you.
And Jesus. Rebukes him sharply.
He says get behind me, Satan. Like Jesus?
I, I think, had some anxiety flaring too.
He knew that there was a temptation in in, in Peter's
offer of a different direction that part of him wanted he.
Didn't. Want to go to the cross?
So he prayed in. Golgotha, Lord, take this cup
from me. But Jesus knew who he was in his
integrity. He knew what he was called to
be. He says absolutely not.
This is where I'm going. I'm committed to it.
There's a rupture in the relationship because they're not
aligned. They want different things.
They're going in different directions.
Jesus doesn't. Reject him, but again, it brings
him close. The relationship is restored.
Rupture and repair. Rupture and repair over and over
and over. Peter, as bold as he is, as
courageous as he is, that relate to Peter so deeply, like he's
constantly putting his foot in his mouth.
He's constantly driven by anxiety and doing unhelpful
things. All through the Gospels and all
through this same story, Jesus is over and over and over again,
not condemning him, not rejecting him, but saying, hey,
I got you. Like I see what's?
Going on, there's a different way to show up here.
Come, come to me. Let me allow you.
Let me function as that safe haven for you.
Let me function as that secure base from what you can launch.
They go through this. Pattern again and again and
again, and then we get to like the worst rupture of all that
we're on the other side of here in John chapter 21.
And instead. Of rejecting Peter instead of
throwing him in the trash. Instead of saying I'm done with
you, I'll find another leader for the church.
We'll just move on I guess. I still have got 10 qualified
apostles. Jesus comes towards Peter again
and I love how he does it here in John 21 we see in verse 5 he
calls out, hey friends how about you?
Any fish like Jesus shows up at Peter's old job.
Peter is in a shame storm. He is retreating to his old life
before Jesus, believing that it's all over.
The relationship is done. I have, I have, I have
absolutely destroyed my relationship and there's no way
back. Let me just go back to my life.
And how does Jesus respond? First of all, through stuff that
looks like small talk. It's not small.
Talk. But Jesus is just signaling to
him through a fire, through a meal, through an invitation to
breakfast, through asking about the work.
He's kind of signaling to him. Hey man, I'm still here for you.
I still want. Connection with you.
And then he does. In the story something profound,
he tells them once again in verse 6, he says throw your net
on the right side of the boat. They do, and suddenly the Nets
are bursting. Now.
Some of you know your Bibles well enough, have been paying
attention long enough to catch that this is an echo of the
earlier story. The the one that we.
Just talked about that first time when Jesus met Peter.
Peter saw this miracle of the fish and retreated in shame.
Here Peter is. Retreating in shame.
And Jesus comes back and performs the same miracle.
He says, hey Peter, let's go back to the beginning.
Let's start. Over.
I'm still here, I'm still showing up.
I'm still powerful and I still love you.
I want to be restored. I want to be reconciled.
There is so much in this story and I wish, guys, I wish I could
just go through all of John 21 and unpack everything that Jesus
does here, all the symbolism and significance of the story.
But I want to stop here with this point this morning.
And it is simply this that thick community requires.
That we allow. Ourselves to hold in through
conflict, to navigate the cycle of rupture and repair.
I mean, can you, Can you imagine, can you like take a
minute and think to moments if you've had this, which maybe you
haven't? What does it feel?
Like to be in that kind of community.
What does it feel? Like to be in those kinds of
relationships, not just a room full of people who be with you,
that's been carefully curated to line up with all of your
preferences and beliefs, not just.
A place where? There's no conflict because we
don't ever really talk about what's real or what's going on.
Our disappointments, our ouches, our preferences, our longings.
But a community that is diverse and durable.
A space of relationships where you can can be known.
Where you can exhale. Where you don't have to to to
perform or pretend in order to belong.
Where your worst moment doesn't become your defining moment.
Where? Where people?
Know that you're not like. Always the best, and they still
love you and they still accept you and they still invite you
towards change and transformation again and again.
A community where where conflict is not a catastrophe because
you've. Forged a.
Bond that is strong enough to hold what's real.
A place where? Joy is not fragile because.
Repair has become normative friends this.
Is what thick community looks. Like it's an incredibly
beautiful and precious thing. And, and, and to be honest with
you, most churches don't have it.
Most people don't have it and the.
Reason that we don't have. It there's more than one thing,
but it's. Very much that there is.
A real cost to creating this kind of community we have to be.
The kind of people who. Refuse a low cost exit.
People who choose to to stay and repair over leave and replace.
This kind of community will. Cost us our comfort.
It will cost us our pride. It will cost us the illusion
that we can belong without ever being inconvenienced, without
ever having to to submit to someone else's preferences.
It will cost the habit of disappearing and withdrawing
when things become tough. But I think deep down these
this. Is the kind of community that we
want. It's certainly.
The kind of community that. We see Jesus forge in this
relationship with Peter. I believe it's.
The only kind of. Community that can really change
us at the deepest level a place. Where we are seen and known.
Where we don't just learn new information about God, but new
patterns of relating in the way of love.
Friends I want. To take a moment.
To just check in. With ourselves, with our lives,
with our relationships. What does this look like for
you? Where?
Where are your relationships? At right now, when you.
Look around when you survey. When you inventory like, have
you, have you been through conflict with the people in your
life or have things stayed superficial enough that you
haven't actually ever had to put those things out in the open?
What's your move? When you when you slip out of
your window of tolerance, like when you're distressed, when you
are not OK, you blow up. And blame it on other.
People. Right.
Do you retreat and? Avoid and isolate and step into
a place where you're committed. That I just, I have to fix it
all myself. I have to take care of it all
myself. I have to be fit for public
consumption. I can only come back and engage
those relationships when everything is sorted out.
Or have you developed the the? Skills, the competencies of
love, the ability to repair ruptures such that you
understand that like I can actually be not OK enter into
community and there find connection not.
Saying that, you can do. That with everyone.
I'm not saying that everyone is safe or you should relate to
everyone in this room in that way.
Injuries are real. Wounds are.
Real we have our our our internal working models of how
we relate to these things for good reasons and also if we were
to. Become the family of.
Jesus, a family that, as we talked about last week, already
has a home because of what Jesus has done.
We already belong. We're already.
Worthy. We're already in.
And that also. Means.
That we can press into those relationships when things aren't
working. When we're in distress.
When? There's a problem when there's a
break, when there's a rupture, that we can actually talk about
those things, engage those things, develop skills to repair
those things together, friends, I believe.
This is what it will. Take to form the kind of thick
community that transforms. Jesus restored Peter.
Because it's in his nature, because it's who he is.
But I think we all. Get this story.
In Scripture also because Jesus wanted to point us to a model,
you want to show us what this looks like to come close with
tenderness, Friends, do we move towards the other end and when
the other moves towards us, sometimes with complaint.
Sometimes letting us know that something that they.
Did didn't land for us Well are. We are, we able are.
We willing instead of getting triggered into defensiveness and
criticism and and switch tracking and it's your fault and
and just bailing out on community.
Are we willing to be in that to hold?
In that together. Long enough for it to form us,
for it to change us, for it to rewire the ways in which we show
up. Friends, we're going.
To move into a time. Of reflection and response and
this morning I just I want to I want to leave you with this
question I. Know we want thick.
Community, the kind of people in our lives that aren't just there
that we don't just know that we don't just have casual hey, how
are you? Good to see you.
How was your week conversations with but where we can be seen
and known at the deepest level. Are you allowing yourself to be
seen? In that way, even in your
dysregulation when things aren't OK, are you naming?
The things that aren't. Working.
I'm not trying to. Like go out and start.
A bunch of fights, but I kind of also AM like because it.
If we need to get. Through that in order to get to
depth, it's worth it rather than just shallowly, quietly
retreating from one another. Friends, may we be a?
Community that learns to love in the way of Jesus because like.
Jesus. We learn how to repair 70 * 7.