I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. – John 15:15

A powerful statement from the living God to ones such as us. This is Emannual, God with us, the infinite speaking with the finite and calling them friends and trusted them with his inmost being. Can we really grasp the significance of what this means for us as the body of Christ, the ones called out to express in flesh the being of Christ to the world?

It has been said, and rightly so, that we must develop a personal relationship with Jesus if we are to understand the nature of salvation. I believe this to be accurate but I also understand why it chafes so many people the wrong way.

How are we to develop a personal relationship with an invisible deity who does not speak to us often in a very direct fashion? More importantly still how are we to develop a personal relationship with Jesus when we cannot even develop personal relationships with one-another?

How many of you have a personal relationship with your pastor? How many of you have a personal relationship with the person sitting in the pew in front of you in church on Sunday? How many people can you be safely, honestly, vulnerable with in this world?

If we cannot develop these relationships with one-another, if we cannot model these relationships to one-another – the ones we see, hear and touch – how can we in good conscience tell people to model a personal relationship with Christ?

If the church (that is you and I and every fellow believer) is the body of Christ and the body is a structure of faith than relationship is the mortar that holds it all together. The stronger the mortar, the stronger the integrity of the structure. Let’s carry the metaphor a bit further.

You can have the best bricks, the best plumbing, the best roofing supplies, you can have wood and electrical supplies, you can have doors, and you can have windows…but if you do not have mortar than it is all worthless. The structure will not stand; it has no integrity.

To put it another way you can have a great church building, fantastic sermons, wonderful teaching, the best worship music, the greatest programming for every demographic…but if you do not have genuine relationships (not acquaintanceships) you have nothing. You have a community centre. You have a club. But you do not have the world and life transforming body of Christ witnessing to every nation and working wonders in the midst of a dying planet.

You may protest and lay claim to many relationships…you may protest and say it is not possible to have a relationship with all 400 people in your congregation. However the kind of relationship we’re talking about is called koinonia and is testified to in scripture.

After Peter preached at Pentecost Acts 2:41 says “those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.” Immediately afterward we find the first instances of the word koinonia in Acts 2:42 where it says “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

It is the word fellowship here that is koinonia in the Greek and I appreciate the following definition – “communion by intimate participation“. Through the power of God’s Spirit Peter preaches and 3,000 people become believers and enter into “intimate participation” with one-another and with God. Real relational Christian community is intimate.

We would like to claim that we cannot have an intimate relationship with more than maybe four or five people but when we encounter 3,000 involved in it we have to stop and consider the possibilities. Our nature is to simply look for reasons that this interpretation is wrong. We might suggest that not all 3,000 had an intimate communion with one-another but groups of four or five throughout the whole did and therefore all did vicariously through these groups.

Perhaps instead of looking for reasons as to why it is not possible (afterall we are told all things are possible…) we should in fact ask what is required of us for this to actually work. As with most things related to Christ we need to do what is contrary to our nature. We need to empty ourselves of the burden of maintaining the relationship first and foremost because it is God’s Spirit that does this and not us. More importantly (and perhaps most frighteningly) we must trust the other.

You have heard it said that trust is earned but I believe Christ teaches us that trust is given, earned or not, and then we act out of that trust and model true and trans-formative relationship. It is a risky thing to trust those who do not earn or necessarily deserve it. It puts us in a position to be hurt…very significantly. After all it requires us to trust sinners…for each of us stands in open opposition to God every second of every day…it is woven into the fibre of our beings – that is the nature of sin.

Christ called the disciples his friends and he knew all but one of them would abandon him at the cross. He called Peter his friend even while he knew he would betray him three times. He called Peter to lead his church despite this. Peter never earned nor deserved such trust – but it was given nonetheless.

Trust is the doorway to relationship. Through trust people will walk into our lives. Some will hurt us again and again and again to test that trust and we are called to continue to give it nevertheless for the sake of Christ and his witness to the world and so ultimately for the sake of the world.

What does trust look like? It looks like many things…it looks like a painfully honest answer to the question of “how are you” even when it comes from someone you don’t know and who likely doesn’t really care. It looks like forgiveness and compassion given again and again and again until you bleed it because you have been hurt deeply by the one who requires it. It looks like a stranger confessing her sins to another because through that permission is given to others to seek forgiveness. Trust looks like perseverance…staying in the lion’s den or the furnace even when it looks like you will be consumed…even if you are consumed. Trust looks like Christ.

Christian relationship and therefore the church itself appear to be built upon contradiction and foolishness but only because we are looking at something of God through human eyes. We trust and enter into painful, broken, ridiculous relationships with others because God did so with us first. As we begin to believe that God trusts us and loves us we can then trust and love ourselves and others and it becomes a wonderful self-reinforcing spiral (stairway if you will) to Heaven…or better still it becomes the paving stones in the Kingdom of God growing right here and now in our midst.

Most difficult of all we must enter into this kind of relationship even when it appears no one else will…even when we are alone in doing so because someone needs to model it. From every corner of the church we are called to model this form of painful, honest, forgiving, compassionate, trans-formative  relationship…pastors, teachers, elders, deacons, janitors, pew warmers, PowerPoint operators, musicians, teenagers, seniors, men and women….if we truly desire what we know is possible in community because God said it was, than this must happen.

It starts with one person and can take generations…but it can also happen with 3,000 simultaneously because they’re just foolish enough to believe it can.

CAVEAT: One can take this logic too far and use it to validate or enable an abusive relationship. I have a rule in terms of relationships like one’s relationship to a church for instance and when one should know when to move on. People would ask me “how do I know if I should leave my church and try another one?” and I would respond “If you think your church has problems (and they all do), as part of the church you need to work to remove the problem…when your ability to help your church is less than the harm being done to you in staying…it is time to move on.”

Let me put it another way – you have a new friend who likes to take money from your wallet without your permission. This is abusive. It is incumbent upon you to point this out to new friend…should friend choose to ignore you and continue taking your money it is time for you to move on…you have done what you can in this relationship and should not be expected to continue to allow yourself to be abused.