The Forgotten Habit
Fellowship as an irreplaceable means of grace in the Christian life offers us two priceless joys: receiving God’s grace through the helping words of others and giving his grace to others through our own. Jesus does not call us to “hold fast” alone, as if we didn’t need the fellows he gives. But we help each other hold fast and thrive.
We nixed the name “Fellowship Hall.”
Our church purchased the building three years ago. “Fellowship Hall” had been the name we inherited for the other big room. Recently, in the process of doing some renovations, we needed to formalize a name for each room. The sign now reads, “Chapel.”
The word fellowship has fallen on hard times in many churches, like the word encourage — emptied of its power by casual overuse. Trivialized, you might say.
We scrapped fellowship from the name not because the biblical reality of fellowship is waning in importance. Quite the contrary. We want our church to reclaim the electric reality of fellowship in the New Testament and not have the term die the slow death of Christian domestication.
Fellowship Bigger Than Us
Perhaps the word can seem hollow if we have lost the concept of fellowship as a means of grace, with the end of enjoying Jesus.
That we have means of grace in the Christian life implies some end, some goal, some target. In other words, “means” means means to some end. The means are not the end. And if we leave the great end undefined, lesser ends come to replace it. Lesser ends like growth. Nor is godliness or holiness the goal, vital and precious as they are.
Rather knowing and enjoying God himself, in the God-man, Jesus Christ, is the goal, the end, of Christian fellowship. The final joy in any truly Christian habit of grace is, as Paul writes, “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). “This is eternal life,” Jesus prayed — and this is the goal of the means of his grace — “that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). And as J.I. Packer writes, “The more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to it” (Honouring the People of God, 274).
Of those means, God’s word and prayer are often emphasized for their crucial place in the Christian life. Rightly so. But in the age of the individualist modern self, a third vital means — like a forgotten middle child — needs more attention: fellowship.
Something More Than Friendship
Christian fellowship — our holy commonality of sharing in one Savior, through one Spirit, as one body — goes far deeper than games and a potluck. In the New Testament, fellowship is less the Christian Super Bowl party, and more like the players themselves huddled on the field, calling the next play.
Perhaps few of us realized how vital fellowship was as a means of grace until COVID hit. Many languished unexpectedly, and some of our churches still feel the fallout. We tend to underestimate how much our souls are fed, and stay healthy, through the regular rhythms of in-person corporate worship and face-to-face fellowship. Especially in an age of enormous technological advances which keep us in touch with those who are remote, while quietly undermining ties with those most proximate. Our devices have increased our sheer count of “friends,” while stripping our lives of real, flesh-and-blood friendships.
New Testament fellowship is far deeper than common human friendships. Fellowship, at its best, is comprised of deeply committed relationships, that is, covenant allegiance through thick and thin, through pain and inconvenience and awkwardness and annoyance. This has long been a challenge for Americans who, when they rally together, have often done so in defense of individual rights, liberties, and our personal pursuits of happiness.
God Gave Us Each Other
Hebrews’ twin texts on fellowship as a means of grace speaks into the challenges of our generation. As we see in Hebrews 3 and 10, life and health and perseverance in Christian faith is a community project. Our hearts harden, and our faith fails, as we distance ourselves from the fellowship.
But when we stubbornly stay connected, and deepen those connections, we not our find our own hearts staying soft, and our faith enduring; we also taste the joy of being Christ’s means of grace to each other. It is marvelous and deeply satisfying to be human instruments of the Spirit’s keeping work in the church.
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Living on the Borders of Sodom
Written by J.R. Miller |
Thursday, August 26, 2021
“Remember Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17:32). We should not miss the “lesson’” which our Lord Himself teaches us from the tragic fate of this woman: we cannot have both worlds! Lot’s wife could have escaped with her husband and her daughters, but she could escape only by resolutely and determinedly leaving everything she had in Sodom. Her love for her possessions, cost her her life!Run for your lives! Do not stop anywhere in the plain. Do not look back! Escape to the mountain, or you will die! (Genesis 19:17). This is still the gospel message. We are in danger of God’s judgment and must escape from it if we would live. We must not stay anywhere in all the plain of sin, for there is no safe spot, no shelter anywhere, no place where the fires of judgment will not fall.
Some people would like to compromise; they are willing to flee from some sins but not from others. There are some professed Christians who like to stay on the borders of their old life. They are continually asking whether they can do this or that, go here or there and still be Christians. They want to keep just as near to Sodom as possible so as not to be burnt up in Sodom’s destruction! The answer to all such questions is, “Run for your lives! Do not stop anywhere in the plain. Do not look back! Escape to the mountain, or you will die!” Even the borders are unsafe! The only safe place is the mountain, the mountain where Christ’s Cross stands!
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His Presence Must be Our Pursuit
Seeking the presence of God encourages the filling of the Spirit that pushes out the deeds of the flesh. Don’t miss that, it’s key: What flows in, flows out. Arguments, complaining and gossip all happen when we’re filled with work more than we are filled with worship. You can once again refuel the fire of the Spirit by taking time today to repent of a cold and callous heart. Let His presence become your pursuit. The more you seek Him the more you’ll find Him.
Although God is everywhere, or what theologians call omnipresent, there is a marked difference between a believer who is dry spiritually and dead inside compared to one who is full of passion, desire and fire.
The corridors of church history are filled with stories of Christians being spiritually dead but then coming alive.
What changed? What happened? In short, they pursued God like never before. They abandoned their idols, repented of their lukewarmness and sought God — His presence was their pursuit. When you seek God, you will find Him. (Jer. 29:13)
Are You Thirsty?
The pursuit of God is what holds everything together — from finding peace and joy to overcoming the enemy and finishing strong. Sadly, many believers do not finish well because their pursuit of God gets pushed to the side.
Seeking the presence of God must be your all-consuming passion. Moses cried, “Show me Your glory!” Joshua lingered in the tent with the presence of God (Ex. 33:11); Isaiah said that he saw the King (Isa. 6:5); and the Disciples waited in the upper room for His presence. (Acts 1:13)
These were life-changing moments, and you can have one as well. Are you thirsty? It all begins here: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink.” (John 7:37)
The Cost of Intimacy
Mark 14:3 tells us that Jesus was at Bethany reclining at a table when a woman with an alabaster flask of very costly ointment broke the flask and poured it over His head. It is here, and in many other places in Scripture, that we realize that intimacy has a cost.
God must be a priority even when we don’t feel like pursuing Him. Pursuing His presence doesn’t always mean that we feel His presence. That’s why Hebrews 11:6 is so important: “He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Your perseverance will eventually be rewarded.
No Accident
We also read in Mark 14:4-5 that there were some present in Bethany who scolded her with these words, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.”
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Fools for Christ
Evangelicals need a Biblical theology of foolishness for our generation that will at once “shame the wise” and declare the truth and promise of the gospel. How should that look for Protestant believers in the twenty-first century? Whatever it looks like, it must embrace the foolishness of the cross to affirm that our faith does not “rest not on human wisdom,” as Paul put it to the Corinthians, “but on the power of God.”
The Power of the Cross to Shame the Wise
The Los Angeles Dodgers recently hosted at their ballpark the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an organization that claims to “raise drag awareness” and increase “understanding of gay spirituality.” This has caused controversy since the men in the organization are flamboyantly anti-Catholic, dress as nuns, and incorporate blasphemy into their “performances.” The Dodgers invited the group to participate in “Pride Night,” but before it took place they disinvited the Sisters in response to online anger on the part of Christian groups and others. The disinvitation prompted what was evidently an even bigger backlash on social media from defenders of the Sisters, which prompted the Dodgers to re-invite the group, and then publicly bestow upon them a “Community Hero Award.”
The Dodgers have reconfirmed it is possible to be craven and sanctimonious at the same time.
Drag Queens are not the only means of challenging moral and social norms in society, or, of problematizing heteronormative bourgeois values, as I would have said had I paid better attention during drag queen story hour. What the left has known and said for quite some time–at least since the 1960s—is that just about any kind of clownishness will do. The clown is a caricature, an exaggeration. His method is to distort some facet of reality to the point of absurdity. Big noses, red lips, oversized feet, effeminate men—does not really matter what is exaggerated. What matters is that you, the viewer, are entertained or captivated or distracted. Playing the fool means not fitting in, usually in a spectacular way.
But clowning is about more than mocking the clown. Foolishness can be a means of persuasion, too. In this case, the real joke is not on the fools, but on the people laughing at them. An effective clown prompts you to ponder the world in a different light, imagine another way, maybe even another world, and to come to see your own position as more strange or arbitrary or absurd than you previously thought. Court jesters, parodists, and drag queens have known this as long as they have been around. Embracing one’s own foolishness in the eyes of the majority is a powerful, and potentially revolutionary tool.
This is where Evangelical Christians have something to learn from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Foolishness delivers a message to the ones who laugh; it is a tool of persuasion wielded by outliers in society. After generations of occupying one kind of moral majority or another, Evangelicals have forgotten how to embrace and defend the “foolishness” of our own faith. We have spent the past few decades trying to appease the scoffers. The result is that our resolve to stand for truth is weakened in a world hostile to us. We need to recover the art of godly foolishness, an ancient and venerable means of speaking truth, and one that will inoculate us against the inevitable disdain of the world.
Revolutionary Potential of the Fool
In the 1960s, the radical left incorporated clownishness into its repertoire as a matter of course. Reading about it is quite refreshing, honestly, given how humorless and dour so much of the left can often be. Marx was never known for his knock-knock jokes. In recent years, the left’s resentment toward humor has been on full display. The banning of The Babylon Bee from Twitter for mocking left-wing pieties should have been a Babylon Bee gag, not an actual news story.
There was a period, however, during which this was not the case. In 1968, for instance, the left-wing radicals who called themselves Yippies nominated a 150-pound pig named “Pigasus the Immortal” to run for President against Richard Nixon. They were arrested at the campaign launch in Chicago, and charged with bringing livestock into the city. When asked why they nominated a pig for the presidency, one of them explained it was “because if we can’t have him in the White House, we can at least have him for breakfast.” This is fine political satire, suggesting that the potential bacon value of your candidate outweighs the policy value of your opponent. Surely there were a few Republicans that gave a chuckle at the time, even if they deplored the Yippies.
The 1960s and 70s superstar Marxist intellectual and father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse was completely onboard with this kind of clownishness. Marcuse explained in his jargony though wildly popular writing (every academic’s dream) how all the goofiness amounted to oppositional political action. For instance, he wrote in 1969 that “in some sectors of the opposition the radical protest tends to become antinomian, anarchistic, and even non-political. Here is another reason why the rebellion often takes on the weird and clownish forms which get on the nerves of the Establishment.” This comes from his Essay on Liberation, a title more ironic than “Pigasus the Immortal.”
Marcuse understood the revolutionary potential of the fool, who, by the way, does not have to be as offensive as the drag queen nuns of L.A. to be effective; I suspect that not all drag story hour readers are twerking in the library. They do not have to in order to achieve their goal, which is, according to the nonprofit “Drag Story Hour,” that kids “see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves.” This group started in 2015 in San Francisco to shepherd this “global phenomenon” into the next generation; it understands that the defiance of gender restrictions opens the door for imagining a new world. Deconstruct to reconstruct.
It is important here not to get tempted by the pablum of “authentic selves” into thinking this is innocuous. It sounds innocuous, but there is a difference between innocuous and vacuous. The first is unthreatening, by definition, whereas the second is empty and therefore fillable with whatever one wants to fill it with. Vacuous social justice cliches are the Trojan Horses of the movement. Inside the call to “imagine a world” is the moral sanction to deconstruct the world as it is. Inside the phrase “authentic selves” dwells the doctrine of human sovereignty over human nature. This is the logic of utopia: you deconstruct the “structures of power” as they exist, and in the vacuum install a new king. Or drag queen.
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