Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Real Community Matters (1 Thessalonians 5)
Date: May 19, 2024
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you are probably aware that there have been some protests on college campuses as the school year has wound down. Relative to the total number of college students in the country, these protests have been attended by a tiny minority of students (as well as a handful of non-students of varying sorts). They have ostensibly been pro-Palestine, but they’ve seemed to cross the line into being anti-Israel or even pro-Hamas on some occasions. In spite of their measly size, though, these protests have been covered endlessly in the media, making their messages and actions entirely more widely known than their actual numbers should have allowed. Yet while they are being cheered in some corridors, the reaction from most of the rest of the country has seemed to range between a massive eye roll at the sheer ignorance and ingratitude of these students and a hearty call for them all to be arrested and expelled. Schools that have tolerated or even placated the mobs have seen their reputations in the broader culture take a significant hit.
Whatever your personal feelings about the protest movements and the people involved in them are, though, allow me to offer an interesting take on the whole situation. What so many of these college students are finding in these movements is not primarily a cause to support. Indeed, numerous interviews have revealed that a great many of them don’t actually have any idea what it is exactly they are protesting and why. Several have revealed themselves to be completely clueless on the geography of the area and what the implications of some of their favorite protest chants really are. This level of ignorance is really more of an indictment of the schools they are attending rather than of the students themselves. Instead, though, what is attracting these students to these movements is not an idea, but a community. The students there are a part of a community.
You may not agree with or like the community they are a part of, but if you or I were in their shoes and had lived their experiences including the pressing sense of loneliness so many of them face, the odds are perhaps better than we are comfortable admitting that we’d be right there among them. We were made for community, and we will find one in one way or another even if it is only online; even if it is not a positive community. Why do you think people join gangs? We need community. Well, in the church—when it is working properly—we have community. As a matter of fact, this idea of community gets right at the heart of what it means to be a church in the first place.
This morning we are wrapping up our series, Authentic Church. For the last several weeks, we have been talking about how we know whether a particular church is really a church, or if it is something less than that like a social club or community service organization. This is so important for us to understand because too many people have engaged with what they thought was a church, but it wasn’t really, and so when they expected certain things that it couldn’t deliver, they drew some conclusions about God and the Christian faith that weren’t true. I don’t want for anybody to have this kind of an experience so far as it depends on us, so we are making clear together some of the things that are strong indicators that a church is just that.
We started with the foundation: Jesus. Everything in the church centers on Jesus. From there we talked about two of our primary jobs in the church. We are to advance the message of Jesus both out in the world and in the hearts and minds of the people who are already here. Our job is to help people get and grow in a right relationship with God through Jesus. But that’s not all. Authentic churches grow people in Jesus. Both of these things as well as last week and this week all happen within the context of worship as a community. Real churches regularly and collectively acknowledge, celebrate, and participate in the character of God to His glory and our joy. Worshiping together lets us experience the joy of the Lord as a community. And, as we talked about last week, that participatory element really does matter. We are not only to advance the message of Jesus, but the mission of Jesus as well. This happens when we serve like He did. Serving in and serving out are an essential part of what makes a church, a church.
That all brings us to this morning and one last characteristic of a real church. Although this final thing really pervades the whole fabric of the church, it is significant enough to be considered its own thing. A church isn’t a church unless we get this right. When we don’t get it right it causes untold damage to the reputation of the church and of Jesus and His followers. This last thing we are going to talk about in our series is community. Real churches experience real community.
When it comes to what the Scriptures have to say about all of this, there are several different passages that address the importance of gathering as a community pretty directly. The author of Hebrews made this clear when he said that we should “not [neglect] to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” Really, though, the necessity of community pervades the whole conversation about pursuing the life of Christ in the New Testament. Not a single thing any of the New Testament authors have to say about pursuing the life of Christ as followers of Jesus can be understood apart from an active engagement with the community of faith. The whole idea of the church in the first place assumes a community. The word Jesus used when first introducing the idea to the disciples was ekklesia which describes a gathering of people called out for a purpose. People is plural. While individual persons follow Jesus, the work He gave us to do happens when those individual persons come together to form a people. Real churches experience real community.
With this community context in mind, I want to look with you for just a few minutes at something the apostle Paul wrote at the end of his first letter to the believers in Thessalonica. He’s not talking directly about the church community here, but what he says doesn’t make any sense without it. What’s more, what he says here helps us see just how important the community of faith is for followers of Jesus to get right together. If you have a copy of the Scriptures, find your way to 1 Thessalonians 5, and let’s take a look at what Paul has to say here.
Writing with his eyes fixed firmly on Christ’s return and its implications for His followers, Paul starts here: “About the times and the seasons: Brothers and sisters, you do not need anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. When they say, ‘Peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
There is a day coming when this world is going to end. We don’t know when that will be. The New Testament contributors left us with the agonizing tension between regular calls (especially from Jesus) to watch for the signs and passages like this one that emphasize its suddenness and unexpectedness. The purpose of the talk of signs is to remind us that we need to always be ready. Just when people are ready to let their guard down and declare with relief that God’s not coming and everything will be fine, then He will arrive to bring judgment. As a result and again, we need to be ready at all times.
“But you, brothers and sisters, are not in the dark, for this day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness.” Do you see his emphasis on being always ready? And Paul’s not talking to a bunch of individuals here, but to the church. He says “brothers and sisters” twice. All of the “yous” here are plural “ya’lls” and not singular “yous.” This is something we do together. Indeed we can’t do it alone. We need the support and encouragement of our fellow brothers and sisters in order to get this right.
That community context frames out the next part too. “So then, let us not sleep, like the rest, but let us stay awake and be self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night.” Pause there just a second. Paul is not trying to offer an invective against consuming alcohol here. He’s using getting drunk as a common illustration for a ceding of self-control. Someone who is intoxicated doesn’t have control of himself any longer. If we are going to be ready at all times for Christ’s return, we can’t give over control of ourselves to anything or anyone else. We need to keep ourselves constantly ready for His call to action.
Indeed, look at what comes next: “But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled and put on the armor of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.” Got that? God doesn’t want anyone separated from Him and subject to His just and righteous wrath because of their embrace of sin. He wants us to be in a right relationship with Him through Jesus. All of us. No exceptions.
So then, what are we to do? Look at v. 11: “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up as you are already doing.” In other words, you are getting being the church right in these matters. Keep doing that. And think about this for a second. Of all the things Paul could have said in light of the coming of Christ and the kind of lifestyle we should be living in light of that, he chose this. He could have talked about doubling down on devotion. He could have focused on the absolute necessity of prayer. He could have called them to even more active service in the community or evangelism or discipleship or a number of other things. But he didn’t. He called them to community. That’s what mattered most to Paul right here. Real churches experience real community.
With the importance of community in mind, Paul closes the letter with a kind of lightning round of instructions for how to get that community right. Let’s finish off the chapter starting in v. 12: “Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to give recognition to those who labor among you and lead you in the Lord and admonish you, and to regard them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we exhort you, brothers and sisters [if you are keeping track, that’s the fourth time Paul has used that phrase]: warn those who are idle, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Don’t stifle the Spirit. Don’t despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil.” Paul then closes the letter with a benediction and final greetings.
Now, we could walk through each part of that litany of instructions, but there’s something else I want you to be sure to see this morning before we get out of here to go keep celebrating these graduates. That is this: community really is essential to the church. Real churches experience real community. And this has to go beyond just a warm welcome. Some churches do that really well. We do that really well. We’re a friendly church. But community goes beyond that. Unless a particular church is a community together, sharing life and loving one another well, investing in one another’s life, it is missing something that cannot be replaced or replicated by other means in the lives of the people who are seeking it there. Real churches experience real community. And you need community.
Graduates, let me talk to you directly for just a second. You need community. Your generation has grown up with social media’s being absolutely ubiquitous. You probably can’t remember much about a time before iPhones and social media were an assumed part of everyone’s life. And yet this thing that was supposed to bring us all together has succeeded in driving us apart in more ways than we can count. How else do you explain the number of nations around the world right now as well as the World Health Organization’s declaring loneliness to be an epidemic in a day when everyone is on social media? We are discovering together that we need real people in our lives with whom we can share real community.
Now, most of you aren’t going that far away for college, but whether you are going far or near, you are entering a season of life when your connections to the community you’ve had up to now are going to be disconnected. Many of you have been a part of a church youth group and you’re not going to have that anymore. That’s part of this season of life. You can choose to voluntarily reconnect with those communities, but you’ll be a different person when you do. Or, you can choose to connect with a new community. Know this: the community with which you choose to align yourselves in this new season of life is going to have a profound impact on your growth and development as a person. If it is not a community that is encouraging you actively and intentionally in the direction of a richer, fuller, more robust commitment to Christ, your life will eventually show the fruit of that lack. Let me put that another way: as you move into this next season of life, you need to find a church community. Maybe it’s the one you’ve had for years, maybe it’ll be a totally new one, but you need that community. It doesn’t have to be your only community. In fact, it shouldn’t be your only community. But it should be your primary community. Your friends determine the direction and quality of your life. If your best friends are all from a community of people who are pursuing Jesus together, that’s going to have a pretty profound and positive impact on your life. Real churches experience real community. Wherever you go next, you need to make sure a real church is a part of your journey.
Let me talk to everybody now. The church community is a community unlike any other in this world. Now, that doesn’t mean all churches get that right. There’s a reason far more people than should have had bad church experiences. But at its best, nothing like the church community exists anywhere else in the world. This is because in the church, the thing that unites us as a community is stronger and truer than all the things that might otherwise divide us. This has always been the case. Consider the community of Jesus’ disciples. Two members of that group were Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector. The Zealots were a far right, radical Jewish political party who were committed to the belief that a violent revolution was the best way to throw off their Roman oppressors. Any Jew who voluntarily worked with the Romans or supported their aims was a blood traitor deserving of the fate of all traitors. Matthew, on the other hand, was a tax collector for Rome. These two men should have been the most bitter of enemies, and yet Jesus put them both in His closest group of followers and built the church with them. That’s what the church can do because advancing the kingdom of God is more important than our own issues and preferences and squabbles.
Can we be honest with each other for just a second? The church is a safe community not because we leave all our issues at the door, but because we bring them all inside with us and pursue paths of repentance and forgiveness with one another in spite of whatever they might be. Sometimes stuff happens out there that is frustrating and divisive. And sometimes folks from in here are involved in stuff going on out there and they fall on opposite sides of certain questions leaving them frustrated and hurt and divided. But real churches experience real community. If you are a part of this church, you are a brother or a sister to all the other people who are similarly a part of it. And even if you’re not a part of this church, if you follow Jesus, we’re all one big family. Sometimes families experience frustration and division. At the end of the day, though, healthy families are drawn back together because what unites them is stronger than what might divide them. This requires seeking repentance when we’ve spoken or acted in ways that don’t reflect the character of Christ. It requires extending forgiveness when we’ve been hurt because sitting in God’s seat doesn’t ever accomplish anything good in our lives. When those two things happen in concert with one another, we can walk a path of reconciliation with one another and experience the joy of a real, Gospel, church community. Real churches experience real community. And do you know what? When churches experience real community together, eventually word gets out. When we can show the world what a real, Gospel, church community looks like, that is a powerfully attractive thing.
Let me give you one more reason why all of this matters so much. This is the reason Paul gave us right here in this passage. Jesus is coming back one day, and we need to be ready for Him when He does. But we’re not all that good at being ready on our own. You know this as well as I do. If you are a follower of Jesus, your best times in your Christian walk are when you are pursuing Christ in community with a group of people who are doing the same thing. Why do you think camp is such a powerful experience for students each year? They’re surrounded by a whole bunch of people who are all pursuing Jesus together and doing not much of anything else for a week. Whatever you might have going on out there, when you’re in here, it’s like you’re protected from it just a little bit. It’s still there, calling you away from Jesus in terms of how you engage with whatever it is, but you can feel a little more strength when you’re here, surrounded by people who are committed to pursuing Jesus in community with you. Real churches experience real community.
That real community helps us stand firm when we are trying to stay ready for Jesus’ return. It helps us stand firm when the world comes after us for trying to stay ready for Jesus’ return. There was a picture from the college protests at Yale of a single student who was trying to keep the crowd from taking over Hamilton Hall. His courage is commendable, but he failed to do it. They eventually knocked him out of the way and barged in. Meanwhile, on the main UNC campus there was an even more famous picture taken of a bunch of frat boys—a community—protecting the American flag from some protestors who were trying to take it down and put up the Palestinian flag instead. They succeeded and the flag remained untouched.
As our culture continues to turn not merely away from faithful expressions of the Christian worldview, but actively against them, if we try to stand against that tide on our own, we’ll be swept away. When we stand together, encouraging one another and building one another up, we’ll hold. Jesus didn’t say the gates of Hell would fail to prevail against a bunch of His followers acting on their own. He said that they would fail to prevail against His church. The community of God’s kingdom is unbreakable, unassailable, unconquerable. This world can’t beat it in spite of its best efforts. When you stand firm in the midst of it, you won’t be moved. You can’t be. Real churches experience real community.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be a part of a real community. One that is at peace among itself. That holds its members accountable. That comforts those who are discouraged and weak. That is patient with one another as we all grow together. That seeks to always respond with kindness rather than merely in kind. That causes good to flourish in our broader community. That rejoices always, prays constantly, gives thanks in everything (which, by the way, Paul calls God’s will for you; so if you want to get God’s will right, be thankful in community). That discerns what’s true from what’s false and isn’t seduced by the latter over the former. That holds on to what is good and walks a path of righteousness with confidence and grace. I want to be in a real community. Together. In Christ, we can. Real churches experience real community. Let’s pursue that together.