Koinonia – Make Love Your Aim
Matthew 22:34-405
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
June 1, 2008
An expert in Jewish religious law cross examined Jesus. His intent was to trip up Jesus so as to discredit him. Hear the Word from God recorded in Matthew 22:34-40.
What does it mean to follow Jesus’ order to love people as much as we love ourselves?
For this sermon, I shall limit the definition of neighbor to the church family.
Did you see the title of this sermon? Koinonia. The New Testament was written in Greek. Koinonia is the Greek word in the New Testament for church fellowship. We might say church family or church community. In koinonia, people have the goal of loving each other. What does love look like in the koinonia, in the ideal church family?
The goal of love is not that we all feel all warm and fuzzy about
each other. He does not tell us to be “in love” with
each other. Our goal is not to become identical with
each other, nor are we to be homogenous. He teaches us to
practice love, an action. He speaks of being connected. Peter
Steinke amplifies on the theme in this way:
More than thirty times, the Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of “the
body of Christ,” with Christ as “the head” and
the people as “the body”, to illustrate their connectedness. Like
the numerous, specialized organs of the human body, the people
who compose the body of Christ are many and their functions are
different. Our bodies would not be fully functioning entities
if their parts were all “ears” or all “eyes’. They
require diversity. In fact, it is the magnificent diversity of
cells in our bodies that enables us to function at a high level. This
is as true for a body of people as it is for a body of an individual
person.
Gettysburg Presbyterian, your connected parts work remarkably well together. I commend you, and I commend your pastors and staff. This is a loving church, a fine particular body of Christ! I was impressed by how little griping I heard prior to coming aboard. I spent about 45 minutes in Fellowship Hall most Sunday mornings for eighteen months. If you were an assembly of individuals inclined to find fault and loaded to get each other, I would have heard it. Good relationships do not just happen. They are created by your staff and your leadership. Good relationships come from you, each of you, wanting to live and work together cooperatively. Your attitude and desire foster the warmth that I have experienced here. Thank you. It makes Charlotte and me feel welcome. I have served churches where there was open hostility or judgmental attitudes, where people seemed to look for faults, where disagreements of years past were retold daily. There I didn’t see the smiles and laughter and energy that I see here.
Let me illustrate. It was a small community made up of mostly locally born residents. I was frustrated. In my twenties, I wanted to make things happen! But, I could not get lay leaders. I felt shackled. During a session meeting, the 75-year old clerk dismissed a member by saying, “Ah, he was that way when he was 16!” Light bulb! Everyone in that community knew – it was in the water, so to speak – that if you took any leadership role, you would be criticized and unsupported. Taking a leadership role was like painting a big target on your chest. They delighted in finding fault! In frustration, I left in five years. As I was leaving, an elder with whom I had worked very closely said to me, “We were just getting to know you.” His comment also revealed the level of caution.
I moved 35 minutes away to another church. Totally different spirit! They delighted in good things happening. They affirmed each other. They played down or ignored most mistakes. The morale was outstanding! We were a family. I stayed with them for 19 years.
One of the personality traits of Gettysburg Presbyterian that I admire is your appreciation of each other and willingness to affirm each other.
Oh, always there are differences and little rifts. Actually that is a sign of life, healthy vitality. It means that you are alive and want to serve the Lord even better.
Regrettably, when two or more of us are together, what do we have? The potential for conflict. That does not surprise me; why, sometimes I cannot agree with myself – I argue back and forth in my head, do this, do that; so why would I expect perfect harmony among people? Any relationship has anxiety and some level of conflict. I anticipate conflict for at least a few of you as a result of the pastoral changes. I am not Dan Hans. The future senior pastor will be different, different in personality, different in style, different in interests. You will have to adjust, even more than you have to adjust to me. Some will be excited by the possibilities that a new person brings. Others will be disappointed and will voice their unhappiness, and you may discover yourselves in some conflict as people voice their unhappiness.
We hold up the New Testament church as ideal. Have you read the New Testament? Let’s be real; they spat. (I don’t have enough fingers to count the stressors.) Paul warned against grumblers, malcontents, loudmouthed boasters, questioners, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, godless chatter. Jude 16, I Corinthians 1:11-13, Galatians 5:20, I Timothy 6:20 At times those first church people got along like cats and dogs. Spats in churches are common, always have been, probably always will be.
The reality is that we do and will have disagreements. The goal of love is that we disagree in a respectful and constructive way, so that the loving builds koinonia.
How do we keep disagreements respectful and constructive? In other words, how can we love each other so that we have koinonia? What did Jesus say that might help us fulfill his command to practice love that builds koinonia?
Do you remember Stephen R. Covey bestseller, “The Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People”? He wrote:
…I have never seen lasting solutions to problems, lasting happiness
and success, that come from the outside in.
What I have seen result from the outside-in paradigm is unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, who focus on the weaknesses of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant situation. [I agree! Accurate observation!] I’ve seen unhappy marriages where each spouse wants the other to change, where each is confessing the other’s “sins,” where each is trying to shape up the other. I’ve seen labor and management disputes where people spend tremendous amounts of time and energy trying to create legislation that would force people to act as though the foundation of trust were really there.
Instead, Covey identified that effective people begin with themselves,
taking an “inside-out” road.
“Inside-out” means to start first with self; even more fundamentally,
to start with the most inside part of self – with your paradigms,
your character, and your motives.
It says if you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. [Remember the two churches whom I described. One empowered negative energy by perpetual criticism. The other generated positive energy by frequent affirmations.] If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.
Was Covey the first to note that loving the neighbor begins within? This
is what Jesus said in Matthew 7:
Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the
judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give
will be the measure your get [from God]. Why do you see the
speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in
your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let
me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your
own eye?
What does Christian love look like? Love means paying attention to our inner growth. Fix me, not thee.
Then Peter came and said to [Jesus], “Lord, if another member of the church [literally ‘brother’ in the Greek text, but may refer to another disciple rather than to a sibling] sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” NRSV, Matthew 18:21-22
What do we say in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our
sins as we forgive the sins of those who sin against us.” There
is no forgiveness for those who will not forgive! That is
a blunt statement, but this is how Jesus put it:
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father
will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither
will your Father forgive your trespasses. Mathew 6:12, 14-15
That is tough!
Do you see why I began with the approach of inside-out, instead of “You shape up!”? Jesus does not make us responsible for the attitudes and behaviors of others, only for our own. If we have difficulty with forgiving, then we have spiritual inside-out work to do, right?
Jesus instructed us: “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… . For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” Matthew 5:44-47 Everyone does those. If you are my disciple, I expect more of you. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Luke 6:27-28
How do we do this? How do I make myself feel all warm and fuzzy toward the people of this congregation? As I said, Jesus does not ask for warm and fuzzy. Anyway, I feel what I feel. I cannot tell myself to feel differently. Jesus wants us to practice love I the way that we treat each other. Jesus wants positive energy, up-building behavior that we do by act of will. We pray out of obedience. We act out of obedience. We pray for God to shower blessings, even on the person with whom we do not admire.
Make love your goal, and the koinonia, the family spirit, will happen. It works that way.
Peter L. Steinke, “How Your Church Family Works,” (Washington, D.C.: The Alban Institute, 1993), pp. 56-57.
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