We Are The City Harmonic Sample

"A Really, Really Big Table"

So here is a question: what do you do with people who drive you absolutely nuts? 

In our social media age it’s easy to isolate ourselves from people we disagree with. We can “like” and “follow” people who view the world in a way similar to ourselves, and can easily shut out the voices of those who are difficult for us to put up with. 

But there are plenty of settings that don’t allow us to avoid differences. Our workplaces, schools and even our churches are full of people we disagree with and don’t understand. Perhaps more than any other setting, its family dinners that can get awkward quickly.

In a family you are forced to spend time with people who are really different than you. 

Every family has a crazy Uncle who makes us eye roll, but he’s still a part of the family. Every family has a twenty-something who thinks they know everything. Every family faces the mess of health complications, divorce, addiction and abuse. 

But we stick together, learn to love and serve each other, and gather around a table in a meal that unites us. 

The early church was also a dysfunctional family, with their own judgments, prejudice, and preferences. Despite this, they gathered at a table where they remembered they were one Body.

The biggest challenge to this unity that the earliest church faced? Racism. Some Jewish Christians in the early church viewed non-Jews as inferior because they weren’t raised in the tribe Jesus came out of. 

It turns out racism has been in the church for a while. 

In Ephesians Paul is adamant that this can not be: the Body of Christ cannot be divided, because the hostility between groups has been put to death in Christ. 

Today there are plenty of hostile walls. We tend to pick a side and demonize the other:

Liberal vs. Conservative, Rich vs. Poor, Calvinist vs. Arminian, Affirming vs. Traditionalist, Complentarian vs. Egalitarian, _____ vs. _____. 

But the truest mark of maturity for the Christian isn’t their being correct: it’s their being loving. 

Do you defend those you disagree with? Do you spend a long time listening? Do you look for the best in what they’re representing? Do you treat them as family? 

- Kevin Makins, Pastor of Eucharist Church in Hamilton Ontario