There is a deep desire within each and every one of us to see authentic community–to see and live in a place where we have peace with one another without strife and conflict. You can see this longing throughout the history of humanity: in its songs; in its literature; in its artwork.
“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me!” goes the great folk song.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” says the golden rule which is a part of every major religion and philosophy.
When we see senseless violence and destruction, we ask, “What’s wrong with people?”
And we say the immortal words of Rodney King who spoke in the early 1990's concerning the riots which bear his name, “Why can’t we just all get along?”
Why can’t we, indeed?
And such peace and harmony ideally should be one of the greatest marks of the church. St. Paul lays it out for us this morning as the fourth mark found in Romans 15:1-6, “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus.” Paul earnestly prays and admonishes the church at the same time with these words. He prays and admonishes that we live together in harmony.
Yet...Paul had just finished chapter 14 in the book of Romans–and chapter 14 was all about a church that was not living in harmony. In fact, if you read through Paul’s letters to the churches, you will find that most of them are dealing with churches who are experiencing some sort of conflict. 1 and 2 Corinthians deal with a church that is divided because of different pastors who have served it. Galatians deals with a church that is divided because of misunderstandings of the Gospel. Romans shows division over misunderstanding how the Gospel is lived out. The Thessalonians are dealing with people who refuse to work. And so on and so forth.
If you read the book of Acts, you will also see the church divided at times, culminating in the first great council of the Church in Acts chapter 15 where a division regarding whether Gentiles should be added to the church is addressed. And this is just what is in the Bible. If you read church history, you will find all sorts of divisions and arguments. The church is just like the rest of the world when it comes to its divisions and sects and groups and denominations. There are tens of thousands of different denominations within Christianity, and there seems to be very little harmony.
Just about every congregation knows this. Just about every single congregation has experienced conflict in its lifetime. Why can’t we get along? Why can’t we concentrate on simply being the church; worshiping; reaching out with the Gospel?
Oh, we could spend a lot of time on this–a lot of time. There are many, many possibilities. But let me read to you, this morning a particularly insightful word from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who was extremely bright and who died because he dared stand against the Nazi party in Germany.
Bonhoeffer wrote several Christian classics including a little book titled, Life Together, and in that book he says this:
Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later, it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer was writing those words about me. Honestly, because I know that I have and had a dream about what a Christian community should be; should look like; should operate like. I had a dream about how a church should function and how people should act within that community.
But what Bonhoeffer points out is this: this is MY dream. It’s not God’s dream. And if we are to truly experience Christian harmony, we must give up our dreams and submit them to God’s dream and God’s will. If we pursue our dream, the results will not be pretty, but if we submit to God’s dream. If we submit to Jesus and His dream for the church, beauty will take place, and this is exactly what Paul tells us. Hear that verse one more time and pay particular attention to the last part of the verse. “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus.”
We must submit ourselves in accordance with Christ Jesus if we want to live in harmony. Let me show you how this works. Please remember, I am not a trained musician, and I don’t know music terminology. I just play my guitar and sing, but here is what I know. Each string needs to be in tune. And each string sounds pretty good by itself. Each makes a nice sound when it is picked. But if you strum all six strings together, the sound isn’t exactly good. It’s just some noise.
But, when different strings submit to the will of the musician, harmony appears. Chords appear. The sound comes together beautifully. And as the musician begins pressing down on different strings in different sequences, music begins to appear. The strings must submit to the will of the musician, or there is no music. There is no harmony. But when the Great Musician is working and His people are submitting, there is harmony; there is beautiful music that arises from His Church:
(Sing “Shout to the North)
Oh, my brothers and sisters, if we are going to make music that draws the world to Jesus, we are going to have to submit to Him. We are going to have to be in accordance with Him. We are going to have to be in harmony with Him!! I mean, I am no big fan of T.D. Jakes, the televangelist, but he was absolutely correct when he said, “You can’t learn to be in harmony with other people until you learn to be in harmony with God.”
But here is the good news, God has acted so that we can be in harmony with Him. God has acted through Jesus so that we may be brought into a right relationship with God. Jesus has taken our disharmony–our sin–upon himself and put it to death with Him on the cross. Jesus has taken our disharmony into Himself and tuned it to righteousness. Jesus has taken our disharmony and transformed it into His beauty, not by any work of our own–not because we deserved it–or anything about us. He did this through sheer grace; through sheer mercy; because of His great love for you and for me. You don’t have to worry about tuning yourself. You don’t have to worry about getting everything together. Simply put your trust in Jesus, and He will bring you to the place you need to be. Simply trust in Jesus and what He did on the cross and you will be led into a place of ultimate harmony; first with God, and then with your brothers and sisters in Christ.
As we submit to Jesus more and more in our lives; as we are captured by his grace and mercy; we begin to show this mark more and more as a church. We begin to live in harmony, and we make beautiful music that proclaims Jesus to the world. Amen.
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