The invitation of Jesus.
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Big Idea: Jesus’ invitation to follow Him was a call to participate in a costly collective of faith.
Throughout today and days to follow, i’ll be using two words interchangeably and combined: collective and community.
it’s easy romanticize the idea of community and yet dumb down the term.
sometimes we say community and we mean church/body of christ. sometimes we say community and mean outsiders who need Jesus. sometimes we talk about the location and people who live in these zip codes.
love word community cuz it helps me think of communion…common-union around Jesus’ invitation to us. That’s biblical community. less about affinity in a social, hobby, stage of life or location, and more about love for Jesus.
we are a collective of people (we relate and belong to each other, act as group, cooperative enterprise) - collective that abides in the presence, apprentice to Jesus, and are ambassadors living out the essential mission.
The word community (or collective for that matter) is not biblical. Church, body, family, and Partnership are. The best word for community or collective is the greek word Koinania - which means Partnership & mutual support.
A Collective Partnership of Faith - a group of people who act together, belong and relate to each other, moving as a cooperative cultivating common union, attitudes, interests, and goals as a family.
A Collective Partnership of Faith - a group of people who act together, belong and relate to each other, moving as a cooperative cultivating common union, attitudes, interests, and goals as a family.
Matthew 4:18–22
18 As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter), and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 19 “Follow me,” he told them, “and I will make you fish for people.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee their father, preparing their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Matthew 4:18–22
18 As he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter), and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 19 “Follow me,” he told them, “and I will make you fish for people.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee their father, preparing their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
called multiples not singles; collective community invitation; a public collective not private isolation.
idiom meaning “learn to capture the heart and imagination of your listeners”…i want to model and teach you how to capture the heart and mind of those who lost sight of God…i want to help you live a compelling story that awakens the desire for God in people.
call to apprentice under Jesus the Rabbi.
illus: Formation Course
Matthew 8:18–22
Matthew 8:18–22
18 When Jesus saw a large crowd around him, he gave the order to go to the other side of the sea. 19 A scribe approached him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 21 “Lord,” another of his disciples said, “first let me go bury my father.” 22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
18 When Jesus saw a large crowd around him, he gave the order to go to the other side of the sea. 19 A scribe approached him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 21 “Lord,” another of his disciples said, “first let me go bury my father.” 22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Matthew 9 - jesus calls tax collector…
It seems, Jesus was looking to call the committed not the elite. He valued level of commitment more than level of spiritual experience.
You mishmash of all sorts of people apprenticing to Jesus. Good jews, traitorous tax collectors, and antifa-like zealots. They are very different, yet called to become a new type of collective.
How is this gonna work? Submission to Jesus as priority and Service to others through the Holy Spirit’s forming work.
How is this gonna work? Submission to Jesus as priority and Service to others through the Holy Spirit’s forming work.
Matthew 10:37–39 “37 The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; the one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.”
Mark 10:42–43 “42 Jesus called them over and said to them, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant,”
Observations from the Life and Teachings of Jesus on Community
1. Jesus lived in community and cultivated rich relationships.
1. Jesus lived in community and cultivated rich relationships.
Let that sink in for a moment. He was not a sage on a mountain with a white beard, all alone. He lived in a mobile co-housing community.
The call to follow him was simultaneously a call to join his community.
Apparently, we can’t follow Jesus alone…the essential command was to love one another, not love yourself and God. They all had a personal connection to jesus, but it wasn’t private.
2. Not everyone accepts Jesus’ invitation.
2. Not everyone accepts Jesus’ invitation.
Notice that many people turned down his invitation—with no guilt, shame, or judgment from Jesus. For many, the price was just too high.
But those who said yes, who gave up everything to follow Jesus, came from different stages of maturity and across the sociopolitical spectrum.
Naturally, there was regular conflict among them.
3. The goal of Jesus’ community was transformation.
3. The goal of Jesus’ community was transformation.
The goal was to grow and mature his apprentices into people who were like him—people pervaded by a heart of love and service.
Move us from unrelated selfish individuals into a collective family of love
Don’t settle for pseudo-community nor shallow familiarity.
Mistakes We Make About Community
Mistakes We Make About Community
Mistake 1: We mistake connectivity for community.
Mistake 1: We mistake connectivity for community.
We all know we’re more connected than ever before, thanks to technology like texting, FaceTime, WhatsApp, email, and social media—not to mention time it takes to travel is much less today.
And all of that is good. I’m grateful for it.
But loneliness is still on the rise—through the roof, in fact.
Study after study shows a direct correlation between social media use and loneliness. The more you use digital technology, the more likely you are to feel lonely.
Why?
Most researchers suggest it’s because we spend more time liking the photo of someone we barely know than having face-to-face conversations with close friends.
Sherry Turkle from MIT, in her 2015 book Reclaiming Conversation, draws a hard line between connection and conversation.
She writes:
“Face-to-face conversation is the most human and humanizing thing we do. Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy. It’s where we experience the joy of being heard and understood.”
Research consistently shows that 100–150 is the maximum number of people we can have meaningful relationships with.
Yet, most of us are digitally connected to far more people than that.
As a result, connectivity is way up, but community is actually way down.
Mistake 2: We mistake chemistry for community.
Mistake 2: We mistake chemistry for community.
Chemistry refers to that spark we feel when we connect instantly with someone who is like us.
C.S. Lewis famously said, The root of all friendship is “You too?”
The disciples didn’t have chemistry together..but they did cultivate biblical community.
We can have community with people we don’t have chemistry with.
And we can have chemistry with people we don’t have community with.
Ideally, we’d have both. But they are not the same thing.
Mistake #3: We mistake social extroversion for community.
Mistake #3: We mistake social extroversion for community.
In the way of Jesus, community is simple: it’s people you live near and follow Jesus with. It’s hard work but not complicated.
It’s been Silence or solitude and community are the containers that hold all other spiritual practices. Healing, freedom, and encounter with Jesus often happen in solitude—or in the context of community.
If you read the New Testament biographies, you’ll see that Jesus oscillated between silence and solitude and being fully engaged in community.
There was a rhythm, a dance, a back-and-forth of the two.
But for many of us, our rhythm looks a little more like this: we’re scared to go all the way into silence and solitude. What would happen if we were there with no cultural narcotic, no noise, no headphones with Local Natives in our ears?
Some of us are scared to actually go into the quiet. Where there’s nothing to distract us, nothing to make us feel better, just our soul laid bare before God. This past week I challenged us spend 3-minutes still before God contemplating His love for us. How’d that go?
And we’re often just as scared to go all the way into community.
Hanging out is great— We’re all for that. But to actually go to that place of vulnerability and openness, where you’re naked and unashamed...
That’s a metaphor, by the way. I need to clarify that, many of us have a low-context communication style and take everything more literal. Naked means emotional and psychological vulnerability, not literal nudity. Just to be clear.
We’re scared to go all the way into that. to Be vulnerable and share. We all sin, but we don’t need secrets. We all have short-comings and flaws, but we dont need to hide in shame.
So, many of us hover in this middle ground of what M. Scott Peck called pseudo-community. We come to church, we have Christian friends, maybe we’re even in a connect group. Maybe we even show up every single week, but we hold back a core part of who we really are.
Why don’t we cultivate that?? For lots of reason, i’d imagine.
We know how negative and critical we are about ourselves, we project that others think the same of us. we know how judgmental we are toward others, and assume they will be for us.
we don’t like the risk or the hard work required.
we never saw it modeled by others, we don’t know how.
We have yet to be fully transformed by God’s love
We don’t yet believe it’s essential.
John 13:34–35 “34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34–35 “34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
1 John 4:18–21 (CSB) 18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
1 John 4:18–21 (CSB) 18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
Jesus loved the disciples by inviting them into personal (not private) relationships. A close friendship, close like a new family, where they love one another in a personal way. The invitation is for us today.
Jesus loved the disciples by inviting them into personal (not private) relationships. A close friendship, close like a new family, where they love one another in a personal way. The invitation is for us today.
illus: I did not like the term family for church body for lots of years. I don’t naturally develop deep friendship..but i crave them.
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Talk it Over (being honest & open with friends, a spouse, or your Group)
The message was about Jesus’ invitation to close interpersonal relationships. What is one idea from Sunday’s message that impacted you?
Read Matthew 4:18-22 What does this passage reveal about God? What are some other things you observe in the text?
What are some words that the Bible uses to describe “community”? Which of the words resonate with you the most?
How does Jesus’ example of calling his disciples speak to the nature of community in the church?
In what ways can we actively cultivate deeper relationships within our church community?
What are some challenges you face in being vulnerable with others in your community?
Read 1 John 4:18-21. What do these verses tell us about relationships?
