I Need You

I need you. 

Really.

And I think you might need me. I'll explain.

Julia and I had neighbors over for dinner a few weeks ago. They're new to Pittsburgh. They talked with us about how hard they had tried to connect to people where they lived before. They wanted to be in relationship with other people. To share their lives with other people and to have those people share their lives with them. It didn't happen and now they're hoping to find connections and relationships here in Pittsburgh. They're hoping to commit their lives to a community of people who will, in return, commit to them.

I had dinner with a friend a few days later. He had applied for a job at his church and his church selected another candidate. He spoke of feeling disappointed and rejected. But, he kept referring to his church as his "family." Even though he felt rejected, he still claimed his church as his "family." He told me about how his church is imperfect because the people are imperfect, and because the structures that define the practices of his church are imperfect. Through the application and interviewing process he got to see his church in a way that he never had before. I think he saw something that disillusioned him. Something that could be fixed. And yet, he didn't see himself as the one who could fix it. He told me, "The Christian story only has one Hero in it and it isn't me."

John 17 is known as the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus gives an account of His earthly mission to His Heavenly Father while praying for Himself (vv. 1-5), His disciples (vv. 6-19), and then every person who, after His death, would believe Him to be the Son of God and the promised Messiah (vv. 20-26).

In verses 20-23 (ESV) Jesus prays: "I do not ask for these [His disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word [every person who, after His death, will believe Him to be the Son of God and Messiah], that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." 

That we may be one with one another just as Jesus is one with God? That we might be one in the way that God is in Jesus and that Jesus is in God? That we might become perfectly one? That our oneness with one another would be a witness to the world?

Jesus is praying that His followers would become an interdependent, interconnected, interrelated community of people in the same way that Jesus, God, and the Spirit are interdependent, interconnected, and interrelated.

Christians speak and write the word "community" frequently. I know that I do. I wonder if we've unintentionally diminished the kind of community we're supposed to be seeking, creating, and experiencing. I wonder if we've unintentionally missed the depth of oneness that Jesus prayed for us to know and experience.

What if my community of people is a necessary component of my spiritual journey and formation? 

What if my community is integral to my knowing Jesus as fully and honestly as I'm supposed to?

What if my community is an essential component of my being able to live out my faith in love?

About two weeks ago a neighbor saw the police arresting a teenager in our neighborhood. She was riding her bike and stopped to watch the arrest. She was approached by a police officer. He yelled at her. He screamed at her. If you're unfamiliar with this story you can click this sentence to read a recent Post-Gazette article written by another neighbor about what happened. 

I read our neighbor's account of what happened. And it changed me. Her experience has made me more and made me different than I was before I read her words. 

When we gather at church we risk missing the blessing of community. We mistakenly believe that we come to church as independent, disconnected, and unrelated people. And maybe that's what we are today. But it isn't what we're supposed to be. It isn't what we have to be. 

I want to go to church and be surrounded by people who I'm committed to and who are committed to me. I want to go to church and be in relationship with people who are integral, necessary even, to my spiritual development and formation. I want to go to church and praise God with my brothers and sisters, my family. I want to go to church and stand and look around and see a connected collection of broken and battered spiritual brothers and sisters living under the banner of Jesus' love for each one of us.

Because without my family I'm not able to fully know myself or my God. 

Without my family I might forget who I am and who God really is.

Without my family I risk feeling alone, isolated, vulnerable, insecure, adrift.

When we seek to become an interdependent, interconnected, interrelated spiritual family we position ourselves to be a witness to a fractured community, city, and world. When we seek to become a spiritual family we begin to understand the value of being patient, long-suffering, bearing one another's burdens, clinging as tightly to one another as we can, and loving others the way we want to be loved. When we seek to become a spiritual family we connect to one another and to God in ways that are deep and real and we become more.

I need you. And maybe you need me. We all need to be connected to a specific people in a specific place. When we are we can become more.