The Way Of BlessingExemplo

Impossible Community

Jesus’ twelve disciples were both a small community themselves and a community that leaked into other communities. Peter took them all round to his house and they had a meal and simply spent time together.

But if truth be told, they are the impossible community. You’ve got the tax collector betraying his people by acting for the occupying army. How impossible is that? Imagine Jesus calling you to follow Him and you do, but a mile down the road you see His gaze fall on somebody else whom you are not fond of at all—and He invites them to come and live with you!

This impossible community is not going to work unless Jesus is at the center of it. It’s socially impossible and it’s unlike any other community on earth. Being part of a community of faith does involve us living with people who get on our nerves; who frustrate us; who irritate and annoy us, and even drive us to distraction. And that is exactly the kind of community that God is drawing us into.

Sometimes we think that the ideal Christian community will be wonderful; everybody loves us and gets on well with everybody else. But actually, God draws us into community to knock us about, to allow us to be hurt and struggle and to find our feet and to have lots of our rough edges knocked off us in the process.

This impossible community is there not simply to be observed; we are called to be part of it and to closely fellowship with those in it, even though it feels like a building site, covered with scaffolding and muddy puddles and awkward bends and turns and materials that don’t really stick together very well. That imperfect community is there to say to those outside, come on in. In its imperfection, it is very good news for people. They can come in their brokenness and join in the process of being healed.

God’s purpose is to produce community. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:20 that the Father wants to reconcile all things to himself through Jesus. That starts-in and spreads-from the communities of reconciliation we find ourselves in. Our impossible communities are the body of Christ; they are not necessarily homogenous in that they contain a whole mix of people, histories, views, and cultures that couldn’t possibly live together unless Jesus was really at the center.

When this redeemed community arises within a city, town, village, neighborhood, or network, something quite startling and different to what is already at work in that community will be taking place.

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