So this morning we're beginning a new sermon series called One
Another. And so it's a series about God's
invitation to community and what it means to be a people marked
by love. So today's scripture reading is
Romans 12/4 through 5. For just as each of us has one
body with many members, and these members do not all have
the same function, so in Christ we though many form one body and
each member belongs to all the others.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks Peter Guy.
Morning everybody. How we doing this morning?
Good. Good to see all of your lovely
faces glistening out there. That was intended to be a joke.
Sorry the IT is a hot one today. Appreciate you.
Ali and I just got back last night from a wedding which was
outdoor We. Made a poor decision to rent an
Airbnb without checking to make sure it had air conditioning.
So we're just acclimating at this point.
We're acclimating. Hey, if I haven't met you, my
name is Josh. I have the honor of being one of
the pastors here at Reality and it's great.
Again, I just want to say welcome.
We're so glad that you're with us today, whether you've been
here for a long time or today is just your very first time.
But as Nicole said, we are diving into a new series this
morning on the one another passages of scripture.
Some of you know about this. There is a Greek word that shows
up around 100 times throughout the text of Scripture.
The Greek word is a lay alone, which usually gets translated
something like one another. And when we when we zoom out
from all of these individual texts, we begin to get really
kind of a composite of what it looks like for us as the family
of Jesus. To live together.
And so that's what we're going to be exploring over the course
of this series. Looking at God's vision for
community as we are in a season in our in our church family this
summer of connecting, meeting some new people, getting to know
one another. Community is a a big value for
us here at Reality. I think it's one of the things
that our church does a pretty good job at.
Although like any value is sometimes there are places where
we miss it where we. Need to grow and want to to go
further in it. So we hope that this series will
be a time to to build on our strengths in that way.
Also want to say if you're not connected here, if you want to
be, if you're trying to figure out what the next set looks like
for you or just if we haven't met, come come grab me.
After the gathering I'd love to chat with you and help you find
a way to to plug in. Well this past week like many of
you, my family celebrated the 4th of July.
We went down, got out of the city, was raining at the time,
as as you may remember, and so my inlaws have a house that's a
little bit larger and we we grilled out, we hung out, We
went down to there a large basement and established an
improvised pickleball court and tried to play.
It was definitely not large enough for that, but we had a
good time and avoided injuries. Only only a few things were
broken but but this tradition of celebrating the 4th really goes
back to. Kind of America's origin story,
if you will. And of course America's origin
story is something that's contested right now.
But the story goes, as you know, back in 1776, these British
colonists who are tired of of feeling like they didn't have a
say, didn't have voice, had already thrown some tea in the
harbor. Maybe you've participated in
that at some point, but got together and they said, you know
what, We we don't think. That that others should be able
to to to infringe on on these rights that we have.
In fact we have these rights that are self-evident they're
inviolable they're given by God himself and and since the
government over in Britain isn't supporting these we're going to
set up our own. And that history of course
launched the American Revolution some of which was fought right
here in Boston but the reason I bring it up and and this whole
history around the 4th is it's so interesting I I think that.
In some ways our holidays shape our imagination.
They shape our values, the stories that we tell.
And and on this value, we literally celebrate
independence, right? Independence Day.
And this value for independence is something that really marks
us as Americans, somewhat actually, in contrast to others.
I was over in France a couple of years ago and I was really
struck by the fact. That you know, they they
Liberty, equity, Fraternity is their revolutionary slogan that
you see up all over the place, right?
It's much more communal when we think of the values of America
like freedom, liberty, independence are things that
come up again and again. And whether we're aware of it or
not, some of us obviously here are not even Americans.
But but these things shape our culture and our identity as
people who live here in this community in one way or another.
And and it's interesting because while I think independence is,
is a beautiful thing. I mean who wants to be pushed
around, told what to do, exploited.
Probably none of us, right? Agency is a really valuable and
important thing. That are kind of extreme focus
on this in some ways ends up having some shadow sides that we
bump up against particularly as followers of Jesus.
When we get to this question of what it looks like to do
community, there's a word for a society shaped by a value for
independence that that word is individualism.
As the dictionary defines it. Individualism is the principle
of being independent and self reliant.
And here we find, I think, a paradox that I want to explore
together this morning. And the paradox is very simply
this. We have this value that I think
most of us would say independence seems better than
the alternative. I would like to have
independence, autonomy, self determination, good things.
And I also want to be in community.
I want to belong to others. I want to be connected, right?
And there is there is a tension that starts to creep in between
these two things, good things that all of us want.
I don't know. Maybe a way to practically
illustrate this is, have any of you ever tried to settle on a
place to go for lunch with like 15 different people?
Right. Particularly if like, no one is
in charge, If it's unclear, like who is, who is making the
decision, right, Because there's that one person who's like, oh,
I want to eat at this place because it's like close to my
house or the tea. And then this other person is
like, yeah, but that place doesn't have gluten free options
and like, I need gluten free. The other person over here is
like super into seafood and this person hates seafood, right?
And before you know it, like you have people going to four
different directions. This person wants to go to
somewhere that's locally owned. This person wants to go to
Cheesecake Factory because of all the options.
Like it just becomes chaos, right?
And sometimes we end up in this this space where we feel this
tension between how we would prefer to express ourselves, how
we would prefer to do things if we were in charge, if we were
autonomously making decisions, and the question of like, but we
also want to be together. So how do we navigate this
paradox? I think the book of Romans
points us to some helpful information here.
Regarding this, in the book of Romans, we found a church that
is struggling to live in community across quite a lot of
difference. The church in Rome of course was
in the center of the world at the time.
Like Rome was it that all roads, as they said, led there.
And there were not only Romans who were from there, but there
were immigrants. There were people from all over
the world who had come to Rome for for fame and fortune.
And it wasn't just diverse in terms of languages and
ethnicities, but it was, it was crazy diverse in terms of class.
It was full of of slaves, but also of merchants and and former
slaves and then folks who'd been commissioned by somebody else to
go and do business and and then there were the political class,
like whatever you could. Think of was in Rome and as we
get to this book of Romans we find that actually the church
looked a lot like that. The church in Rome was super
diverse, not only across race and class, but but also in terms
of previous faith and experience.
See, when the the church in Rome started out, it was primarily
within the synagogue, it was within the Jewish community.
But you Fast forward a little bit.
We're not sure exactly when, but somewhere along the line
probably around 8049, the Emperor Claudius who was ruling
at the time got irritated with all the Jews for some reason.
And he just said get out emperors can do that apparently.
So he just said go like you're gone you have to leave the city.
And and there was this massive exodus the the Jewish folks who
had founded the church there all of a sudden were gone and and
the only people left in the church.
Were the Romans the the the non Jewish folks who who had come to
faith and participated in that church community.
And as you might imagine this was a big cultural shift right?
The the the Jewish folk and the non Jewish folk had different
backgrounds. They had different cultures.
They had different relationships to the law of Moses and all the
rituals and rules around that. So so the non Jews started to
like contextualize. They're like you know we're
going to get some of that music up in here right.
We're going to we're going to like.
We're gonna change the service times around a little bit.
We're gonna do some things, and they did some things.
We don't know what those things were, but we do know that then
eventually Claudius dies and many of these Jews who've been
forced out of Rome come back right?
They all of a sudden show back up at their place.
This was their church, and it's not the same.
Like, it's been totally, it's been totally changed.
It's it's evolved. If you have visited reality in
the past and then you got here today, like who is this guy
who's up here? You know, like the reality has
been through a lot of changes. And sometimes over time a place
just becomes it. It's like, oh, this is a
different thing. And then these people who who
had previously been crucial members, really it helped to get
this thing off the ground, are then trying to find their place
in this new expression. Like, what does this mean?
How did, how do we live together?
Across these differences, what does it mean to find rhythms
that work for for all of us? And so Paul writes this letter
to a diverse and in some ways a divided community that's
navigating A merger, something that I don't know.
We got a lot of divisions going on, but some things that are
relevant for us for sure. And he offers them, as Scott
McKnight talks about it, a lived theology.
But how to navigate really, Romans is mostly about how to
navigate privilege and power. On how to be at peace with
others who are different from us, and specifically this
morning we're in chapter 12, verses four and five, where Paul
introduces this key metaphor which really grounds the
community. Read with me here.
Picking up in verse 4, Paul writes that just as each of us
has one body with many members, and these members don't all have
the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body.
And each members belongs to all the others.
There you got it. Everybody catch that one another
series all the others, it's the same word.
Alay alone is showing up there and and Paul says that that
this, this one, another is actually something that we are.
It's not just something that we do, it's something that we are
as members of a body who belong to one another.
And I love, honestly, this is a pretty radical image that Paul
gives, but it's also, I think, such an important image for us.
It's really an image that we're going to return to throughout
this series as we look at what it means to to live in community
with one another. Because a body is, you know, a
body is not uniform, right? We are made of the same stuff,
but. And your nose.
And your big toe. Right, your elbow.
Your shoulder. These are not the same, right?
They're very, very different. They function differently.
Your kidney is not the same as your knee or your eye.
The church in in Rome was not uniform.
And Paul's message was not that the the church needed to be
uniform. But he was saying that despite
all of this difference in diversity, that somehow we've
got to find a way to function together as a body.
And in order to to invite them into a fresh imagination, he
says that that we form one body where each member belongs to all
the others. Man belong is such an
interesting word to show up here, right?
I don't know about you, but like, I want to belong.
Like, I like feeling included. You know, when Robert has a
party at his house and makes delicious food, I want to get
invited. It's like a good thing.
Manny and I were talking about that this week.
It's Okay Robert. I'm not offended.
The he's gonna invite me. I'm confident.
Especially after this. Now he has to.
So belonging is great, right? You go to your local coffee shop
and people know your name. I live in a neighborhood where I
walk down the street and always people are like, hey, what's up
Josh? Good to see you.
What's going on? Right.
Belonging is fantastic. We all want to belong.
Brené Brown says that. That a deep sense of love and
belonging is an irreducible need of all people.
We're biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually
wired to love, to be loved, and to belong.
We all want it. But while belonging sounds
great, there's kind of a flip side.
Because who wants to, like, belong to someone else like
that? Almost it.
It implies ownership, right? It implies responsibilities and
duties. It implies commitment.
Whether you are part of a family, a church, A-Team, a
civic organization, if you belong to that group, whatever
that group is, there are some things that are expected of you.
There's some there's some ways in which you're expected to show
up. There's some things that that
you have that go along with that, right?
There are commitments and duties and and who wants that?
Cuz like I want to be free. I want to I want to wait until
like after church to see how I'm feeling to decide whether or not
Anna's thing makes sense to RSVP too right?
Is like, I'm gonna like cuz it could go either way.
What if a better opportunity comes up?
Maybe maybe like keep my options open until the last second.
And I think for so many of us we feel this like particularly we
feel this if we have been in a space, which I have and I
imagine many of you have where you've experienced some
authority that was abusive or controlling, right.
Were you were you've experienced somebody who was who was really
kind of like trying to hedge you in not in allowing you to to see
your own needs met or your own desires express and it felt
like. I'm part of this thing, and it's
cramping my style. It's it's forcing me into a box
that I'm not comfortable with, right?
We we have this just almost. For some of us, it's like an
allergic reaction to feeling controlled in some way.
It's feeling like somebody you know owns us or puts demands on
us or puts pressure on us. And this is the paradox of
independence and belonging, right?
I want to be held, but not too tight.
Don't crush me. I want to be in control, but I
also want to be part of the group.
I want to eat at my favorite restaurant because I like
seafood. But like, I also want you to
come. Like everybody should go to
where I want to go, right? Tim Keller wants quipped that
everyone says they want community and friendship, but
mention accountability or commitment to people and they
run the other way. My experience sometimes that's
true. Like not not just true of like
us generally. Sometimes it's true of me,
right? We want to be independent.
Not so independent. We feel isolated and lonely, but
independent enough where we never have to do anything that
we don't prefer. And here's a paradox.
So Romans in, or Paul rather in the book of Romans here says we
who are many form one body. I think a body is an interesting
metaphor because it's a, it's a functional metaphor, you know,
like all your different body parts have to work together in
order for like. Basically anything in your life
to happen, right? Who out here is athletic?
OK? Got like 2 hands.
I appreciate you bold people. Everybody else here.
There are more athletic people out there than that.
I know. I know some of you, right?
But. But we don't, you know.
All right. I'm not athletic.
I enjoy sports. I enjoy moving my body.
I'm not an athletic person. I'm not very coordinated.
Sometimes I'm like walking and. I forgot to tell my shoulder
that we're passing through a door frame and there's just this
like moment, you know, or like stubbing the toe on something.
My my body isn't the most coordinated, but still it
generally works together, generally does the things that I
want to do. But but not all bodies.
There's like, actually this is super crazy.
Almost a century ago as researchers, researchers were
trying to cure really extreme forms of epilepsy.
There was some doctors. Particularly A1 doctor William
Van Wagonen in upstate New York around 1939, who went on some,
like crazy experimental surgery stuff.
Dr. Van Wagonen between February and May of that year opened up
10 patients skulls and cut through the corpus callosum,
which is the part of the brain connecting the left hemisphere
to the right. OK, he severed the connection
between. The two different hemispheres of
your brain in these patients who were experiencing severe
epilepsy. And it kind of worked, right.
It like it had some positive like in most of the cases
whatever was going on that was generating these epileptic
seizures, it it fix it. But it also had some weird side
effects. OK A lot of what we know about
in neuroscience today is because of these weird things where like
it's like let's disconnect the halves of the brain and and.
I I've just learned this, maybe maybe some of you already know
this, but you basically your right brain controls the left
side of your body. Your left brain controls the
right side of your body, right. And typically they work together
as as you would imagine. But in some cases after severing
this connection, people would essentially have two brain
systems that were not working together which generated
something called alien hand syndrome in which.
There was like the dominant part of your brain that was like
aware of stuff and controlling stuff.
Typically on the left side was like, you're going through life
and doing something. And then all of a sudden it's
like, hey, that hand grabbed something and it won't let go.
And the person is sitting there telling you, like, go hand and
the hand is like, Nope, I'm all good.
Like I really wanna hold on to this thing.
Or or there were even crazier instances of alien hand
syndrome. There were instances where
people would get a phone call and they, like, go to answer it
with her right hand and their left hand is like batting it out
of the way. Like, I want to get there first.
Some crazy, crazy stuff in one case.
In one really extreme case, this lady is like, she's not in
public and like, her left hand just starts like unbuttoning her
blouse. It's like, whoa, OK, the the
same lady like her left hand at one point started trying to,
like, choke her out in the middle of her sleep.
The body is disconnected, not granted.
This is, this is a really extreme and crazy example.
None of us are like this. None of us ever, you know,
accidentally say things we didn't mean to.
Or, well, some of us might do that, but most I don't.
I don't imagine that anyone here has alien hand syndrome.
But I bring this all up because I think tragically sometimes
this is how we as the Church function like we we we say we're
united and in like. Like a unity cognitive like
we're all of the same stuff, sure.
But then functionally, when it gets to it, we don't necessarily
like, operate as one, right? Sometimes that's like we just
disagree about stuff. You know, one person thinks the
worship is the most important. Somebody else thinks the
preaching is the most important. One person, you know wants to
meet over here, another person wants to meet over there, and
you get factions, and people disagree.
But other times it's stuff like, you know, we have needs, right?
There's parts of the body that are injured, right?
They're going through something, but they don't communicate to
anybody else in the body about that.
They're just like handling that by themselves in isolation,
right? Or people just kind of often
like, it's like, well, the same thing as with the restaurant.
It's like, well, this is my idea.
This is what I prefer. Let's go in that direction.
And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight you.
It's like a nervous system disorder.
But here's the thing that's so powerful to me about this
passage of scripture is that Paul, in this image of the body,
says that we belong to one another.
In other words, it's not me and you, it's it's really us.
And and just as it's, like, absolutely ridiculous and
terrifying to think about a limb of your body acting up and just
like, going rogue, like. It should be concerning to us
when like members of the body, whether it's me or anybody else
like are kind of going rope doing their own thing in without
coordination, without connection with others and friends.
As I said earlier, this is not a, this is not a guilt trip
conversation that I want to have this morning because like, look,
I get it. Most of us feel like.
Man, we got a lot going on. It is a lot to manage in my
life. Keeping up with my needs is a
lot. And then I got family members
who need stuff, right? I got like, my close couple
friends that need stuff. So, like, thinking about like,
Oh my gosh, it's it's so easy to get into this conversation.
And I think a lot of us just trip into this imagination where
we think, Oh my gosh, well, somebody else's needs.
Like, what are you, Josh? What are you talking about?
Like, do I have to? Then I'm gonna, like, call
everybody before I decide on dinner tonight.
Like, what are you saying? I'm not.
I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that I think
some of us have this instinct, this value, this default towards
independence and autonomy, which serves a purpose, right?
Like it's not bad. I'm I'm if you have that.
I'm glad that you have that. If you don't have that at all,
there's a different message on boundaries that we need to have.
Like it's a different conversation.
You should have like some independence and agency.
But when, when, as with any value, if, if we just run on
that value, if we just operate in our defaults, then I think we
we miss something. We miss what's possible.
We miss the flourishing life that Jesus actually designed for
us to have, which is not individual.
It is not individualism. It is a community that is
interdependent with one another and friends.
It's not that we're not doing this at all, but I, I, I just
wonder if there there might be some of us even today who have a
bit of a stunted imagination around what's possible, right?
Because we live in a culture in a society where like everything
is financial and transactional, right?
I don't need community like I can Grubhub that meal that I
need somebody to bring me. I can order an Uber, right?
I can hire movers. I can like, you know, like.
There is an answer for everything that you need in your
life that you might rely on somebody else for.
And so often all of us are are managing everything ourselves.
But what if we're missing something?
What if it's holding us back in some way from the good life, the
flourishing life that God actually wants for us?
I mean, what if we were a community that that showed up
and and filled up the freezer after you went through a loss or
or. Or had a death in the family.
Like what if what if we were a community where we were like, Oh
yeah, like if I've got something going on, I know that I got
people right now who can watch my kids, right?
What if we were the kind of community that would show up for
one another and and say, hey I know you're struggling to make
rent this month like, but we we got you like we can come through
for you to help you out. Like what if we were a community
that that when? A black man was killed by racist
violence. Like, we showed up for the
people who were grieving and stood together in solidarity,
like checked in on folk. You know, what if we were the
kind of community that that rallied around a family that was
bringing a foster kid into their home?
And we said, like, yeah, you are the foster parents, but like,
but like, we got you right friends.
This is, I think just even a small piece of what it means to
to. To be the kind of family that
really takes things as as like being a family.
You know, last week my daughter Eva got sick and it's sick.
It's inconvenient when your toddler gets sick, as some of
you know, because not only are you dealing with a sick kid, but
then in addition to dealing with a sick kid, that means they
can't go to daycare, which means, like, everything in your
life is now different, right? So.
You know, you're working early mornings.
I'm seeing some smiles out there, some knowing,
understanding. Yeah, like because you you got
to like the work still has to get done usually.
So like, you got to do it earlier or later and then you're
trying to run errands with a kid who is also sick and not happy
because they are sick. And it's like it's just
everything gets shifted around and it honestly, it's super
inconvenient. But when my daughter Eva gets
sick, like I just do that stuff. Because she's my daughter and
I'm her dad. And so it's not like her need
that she has to solve for herself.
Like it's it's our, it's our family's problem.
And so we show up for each other.
Or in this case, really I show up for her, but she's a kid, so
that's why. But friends like how what I'm
trying to ask you is how broad is that circle of family for us?
Like who's in who's? Needs Are you willing to be
inconvenienced by if we are a body members of one another, it
means that whatever you're going through this morning isn't
something that you have to go through alone.
It means that there's actually like a theological foundation
for you to to name like, hey, I'm not OK right now, like I
need some help. And for others to say, like, Oh
yeah, we got you. And and and for that kind of
community to exist in any kind of a healthy way, like it can't
be one person who is always doing the helping, right?
There's reciprocity. It's like it's how it is in a
body, right? Like wherever, wherever the
injury is, that's where the blood flow is going to.
And and that would be true for us too, friends, because
sometimes we have a need. And being part of a body means
that we can lean on other people to get that need met, but it
also means that other people's needs, we we're willing to allow
those needs to inconvenience us because that's not them, it's
it's us. We are members one of another
and friends I'm encouraged to say, like I honestly, I think
this is already happening in our community.
Like, there are sparks. There, stories over the rest of
the series. We're going to tell some of
those stories about ways in which this is already
manifesting. And my heart, my prayer for us
is just more right. Which in a culture, in a, in a,
in a city that like, literally is like the birth place of
freedom and all that, you know, like this isn't our default.
It's not our default and some some of us like, don't want to
support and others it's actually like harder to like be supported
because we feel like maybe that means something is wrong with us
in some way. But this is what it means to be
one another, to be part of the family, part of the body.
And over these next weeks, as we continue to dig in, I want to
continue to wrestle with what does that look like for me.
Like where are those places where I'm I'm boundarying off
others not just maybe to look good, to not feel vulnerable,
right? Or or or because I've got it.
As it. Like these are my needs and
those are your needs and so I'm going to meet all of my needs
and then if I have extra stuff then like, maybe I'll help out
with your needs. Whereas an acts like guys,
people sold their houses. To like, give to other people
who like, Can you imagine if we were a community, that there
were people who are like, yo, you know, I'm going to dip into
my IRA in order to help out the situation.
I'm going to sell that second property I have in New Hampshire
because somebody's going through it right now and I'm going to
show up for them, right? We're not there.
Maybe we won't ever get there. But friends, this series today
is an invitation for each of us to consider.
What does it look like for us to take the next step towards this
vision of really belonging to one another?
We're going to enter into a time of of musical reflection and
response. And as we do so, we've got some
carpets up here in the front. These carpets are sacred spaces
just for you to be with Jesus. You could you could be with
Jesus in your seat too. That's fine, but if something
sparked for you today. I would invite you to consider,
you know, it's not just an idea. We believe that when we when we
engage the text of scripture and listen with with ears towards
the Holy Spirit that he's speaking.
So I want to invite you as we move into this next phase of our
gathering to really consider like what does that look like?
Where are the ways that I am holding myself back, self
protecting in some way that's limiting the kind of community
that's possible in my life. What might it look like for me
to to say yes to others, to really belong to others, so that
we can be the one another kind of family that Jesus and Paul
pray?