The Joy and Problem of Community

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.
                                                                                                -Luke 4:16
 
After Jesus’s slugfest with Satan in the wilderness, he hops on the speaking circuit and tours lots of smaller, local synagogues.  At each stop, the people love him and his name starts to spread. Eventually, Jesus returns here to home sweet home.
 
Old friends and familiar families would have been there. On the Sabbath he goes to the synagogue, the social and religious epicenter of the community. If this had happened in Chatham, it would have been a hug-fest Sabbath morning as Jesus chats it up with his old Sunday school teachers and friends from high school.
 
This warm-fuzzy reunion is going to go south. But let’s pause here to note the value that Jesus put on being a part of the community of faith. He went to the synagogue “as was his custom.”
 
No one was more certain that the synagogue was full of hypocrites and religious frauds than Jesus was.  Yet he was committed to engaging with the faith community, week in and week out.
 
Some of us struggle with this, and for good reason. We’ve gotten burned out or deeply hurt or disappointed or just bored with the community of faith. Why bother with a faith community when it’s so messy and there are so many other things that I could be doing that are frankly easier and more fun?
 
Throughout the letters of the New Testament, the word “joy” or “overjoyed” is most often used in the context of faith community and spiritual friendships. Want joy in 2019? Make finding spiritual community a priority.
 
But here’s the rub: all the letters of the New Testament are written to solve problems in the community. Relationships are both the source of joy and the source of many of our problems!
 
Jesus and the rest of the Scriptures are very realistic about the tensions of community and the messiness of relationships. There are problems. And yet there is joy. And there is a call from Jesus to make engaging in and with the community of faith a priority in order to live out a full and robust spirituality and to participate in the mission of redeeming a lost and broken world.
 
Have you experienced both the joys and the frustrations of engaging in a community of faith? What is your next step in discovering the joys of spiritual friendships and being a part of an imperfect, wonderful spiritual community?

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