Fellowship: You Were Formed For God's Family

Sunday, October10, 2004

PASTOR BURCHAM'S SERMON

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

If there's one thing I've learned about Iowans in the 18+ years that I've been in this great state, Iowans know family. I mean they know their family. They know their extended family. They know their family tree. Now where I grew up in Michigan, you talked about family. Family was Mom, Dad, your brothers and sisters, possibly grandparents. Those people who really had extended families had an aunt or an uncle. But no, not here in Iowa. No, you all know about extended family.

I can't tell you how many conversations I've been in and I'll mention a name and someone will say, “You know, they're related to me.” And I'll say, “Really?” Now my mind goes back, “Is it an aunt or an uncle? Is it a grandparent?” I don't know. They'll say, “Yeah, let me see now. That would be my grandfather's fifth cousin twice removed on his mother's side, I think, but it could have been Papa's side. I don't know, I'll have to check with the missus on that.” How do you know that? Talk about a family tree. You know every branch, every leaf that possibly could be connected to it. And actually, I think it's kind of cool. I think it's neat. Iowans know their families. They know their roots. They know whom they're connected to.

And that's why I think today's message should resonate really well with native Iowans or those of us who have been here long enough, we feel like native Iowans. Because we're talking about the family of God. God's second purpose for you is that He formed you to be part of His family. We call that the fellowship of believers. That's what scripture calls it. It's the fellowship of believers or God's family. You may have noticed in Acts 2, the early church had just formed and now the first congregation got together and what is it they concentrated on? The apostle's teaching, study of scripture, and fellowship, the family of God, the fellowship of believers.

Last week you may remember that Jesus said of all the commandments, what are the greatest? He says the first and foremost is love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And then he followed it right up and He said love your neighbor as yourself. Or today we read in John that Jesus says to us people will know you're my followers if you love one another. People are going to recognize as us Christians if we love each other as a family loves each other. What God has given to us and God has called us into is the family of believers or the fellowship of believers.

Now last week we talked about worship, and we sort of got our horizons expanded a little bit as far as what worship means. I think the same thing is probably true with the word fellowship. With the word fellowship, we have a rather narrow view, I'm guessing, of what fellowship is all about. You ask somebody. “Oh, fellowship? I know what that is. That's after church, we'll go out there. We'll have a cup of coffee. We'll grab something that's left over from the bake sale out there and we'll start talking about yesterday's game. Maybe we'll talk about what's going to happen this afternoon, possibly what's going to happen this coming week.” And we'll say we've just had fellowship. You've just been chewing the fat. You've just been small talking. That's good. I'm not saying anything negative about that. We need that. But that's like just scratching the surface of what scripture talks about when it talks about fellowship. It's much deeper than that. It's much broader than just a casual conversation when you come together at church.

The fellowship God has called us into is this family He's called us into. And the first thing we realize is God has called us into a very large extended family. Now I know you all know about extended families. You know about extended families that go beyond the grandparents. They go to cousins and second cousins and all the way around, because the family is pretty far reaching. I can't tell you how many conversations I've also had with people and they'll say, “Well, you know this week we're going to be traveling for a funeral. A family member died.” Naturally, I get concerned. I'm thinking, “Is it a parent, a grandparent that died? An aunt or uncle? How well did you know the person? Who is it?” “Oh, I've never met him. Never seen him in my life.” You've never seen him in your life, but they're family. You know, at first I used to kind of chuckle about that and I'd think, “What?” No, they're family. It doesn't matter whether you've met them face to face or you haven't met them face to face. They're family. And so you're going to take a day off work. You're going to travel 5 or 6 hours, and you're going to come together with the rest of the family and you're going to surround the family who's hurting with all kinds of love and comfort and concern and, just by the sheer mass of the people who are there, they're going to gain a lot of strength. That's extended family. That means anyone who could possibly be connected to you, whether you know them or not, they're family.

God says the same is true for us. We are part of an extended family. Every person who puts their faith and trust in Jesus as their Lord and Savior is our brother or sister. Every person who believes in Jesus Christ, everyone who puts their faith and trust in His death and resurrection, they're connected to us. They're part of our family. Whether we know them or whether we don't know them, there's still a connection between us.

An example would be two years ago, when I went to Japan for the mission trip, I was over there and let me tell you, it was a real stretch for me. I was way out of my comfort zone. Different country. Different culture. The biggest thing, way different food. I have to tell you, way different food. But here I am, everything is different around me. The only thing I can relate to is they have all kinds of electronic gizmos, that was cool. But the rest, I'm just lost. I'm feeling very out of place. I'm taller than most of the people around me. Everything is different. And yet, the moment I walked into one of the churches and a member came up to me, there was a connection. They didn't speak my language. I didn't speak their language. Two different worlds we grew up in and yet there was one Lord, one Savior, one baptism that united us. And I had and I still have a special bond with the believers that are half way across the world.

Maybe an example for us is if you happened to be here a couple of years ago when Pastor Cortez came to visit. Pastor Cortez is down in San Rafael, Mexico. Our youth have been going down there for 7 or 8 years working in San Rafael, working on his church, and so he found his way up here. Now he stood right in this spot right here. He spoke a different language. He was from a different country, different culture and yet the moment he started speaking, we had a connection with him. Because the moment he started speaking, his faith came out. And we knew he was a fellow believer in Jesus. And the work he was doing was trying to spread the same gospel message that you and I are trying to spread and he's doing the same work we're doing. Immediate connection.

God has an extended family, and he has formed you and called you into that family so no matter where you go, no matter where you are on this planet, if you find another Christian, there's a connection between you. That's being part of a family, and God wants you to be connected to that family. In fact, He wants you to be deeply connected to that family. You know, all of us have extended families. Some of us know them better than others. But every one of us has an immediate family. We have Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters, maybe aunts and uncles that we would consider immediate family. Those are the people we are the closest to. Those are the people we like to surround ourselves with. They meet a need for us, which is great, because all of us have a need and a desire to be close or in contact with our immediate family. We'll make long distance phone calls. We'll send e-mails back and forth. In fact, we'll even move across the country so we can be close to them. I won't ask you to raise your hand but I wonder, as I'm scanning the congregation, how many of you, after college, after high school, moved away from Iowa only to move back so you'd be close to family? How many of you make decisions on whether you'll take a transfer or not whether it will move you away from family or stay here close to family? It's important to us. It's important that we have our immediate family, that circle of family members that we can relate to, that we feel the closest to. It's a need we have, a desire.

God also knows that we as Christians have that need and desire to have an immediate family, and the immediate family God gives to us is the local congregation. The local congregation is the immediate family of Christians coming together. You come here together and you may not know the name of every person in the sanctuary, but you do have a connection with them. You have a rather close connection with them. For instance, you may not know the person who's sitting over here by name but, if you run into them in the narthex, you have a connection. If you see them at Hy-Vee or in the mall, then the conversation turns and you find out you're both a member of Gloria Dei, there's a connection that's there because you're part of the immediate family.

Now let me say this. If you're not part of a local congregation, whether it's this one or another one, you're not really truly understanding part of the purpose God has created you for. And you're not understanding what God has formed you to be part of His family. It's not just the extended family God has brought you into. God has brought you into the immediate family as well. I've heard people say, “I'm a Christian, I believe in Jesus, but you know what, I don't need church. I can worship God all by myself at home. I can pray to Him. I can read my bible. I don't need to be part of a church.” To me, that's like a person saying, “I'm a football player, but I don't want to be on a football team.” “I'm a tuba player, but I don't want to be part of an orchestra.” It just doesn't work that way. Certainly, you can praise God. You can worship God and believe in God, but you have cut yourself off from the family of God unless you're connected to that local family, unless you're connected to the immediate family that God brings together in the local congregation. This is the place where we huddle together, where we have a much closer relationship. We may not know the person across the globe, but we're connected to them. We may not know the person who's across the aisle, but we have a deeper connection to them because we know they're part of this congregation. They're part of this family.

An example of that would be, I think it was about three weeks ago in the Weekly Word , there were two articles in there which I thought were interesting. Both of them were addressed “To Our Gloria Dei Family.” The one said, “To Our Gloria Dei Family, thank you for your loving concern, your thoughts and your prayers for us at this time of sorrow.” Another one said, “To Our Gloria Dei Family, many thanks to everyone who expressed concern and sent flowers and cards when I was in the hospital. Your kindness was greatly appreciated.” That's what family members do. Every week, we lift up family members in prayer. You hear the name, you may not know who that person is, but you know they're part of this family and you're concerned about them. I can't tell you how many times we've taken a special offering because a family member has been hurting. You don't know that person, but you know a family member's hurting and you want to help them. That's what family does. That's what the immediate family is all about, and God has designed you and created you to be part and connected to the local congregation to be connected to immediate family members. And God also wants you to have a close relationship. He wants you to be a close-knit family. You think about, even of your immediate family members, are there not certain members of the family that you're closer to than others? It's probably especially true of a large family. There are certain siblings you feel you are just more in tune with or maybe it's an aunt or an uncle or maybe it's a cousin. It's someone you just sort of have a special relationship with them, you talk to them more than you talk to the others. It doesn't mean you love one family member more than the other. You're just closer to one than the other. A litmus test for this is who is the first family member you call when something happens, whether it's good, bad, or in between? So maybe it's a death or maybe it's a marriage. Maybe it's a job promotion. Maybe it's a transfer. Whatever it is, who are the first couple of people you call? Aren't those the people you're the closest to? Are there not members that you'll share certain things about your life with them that maybe you don't want shared with the whole family? It's because you have a special relationship with them.

God desires the same thing from us. God desires that, yes, we're part of a global family, yes, we're part of an immediate family, but God also wants to draw us together as a close-knit family. And the only way you can do that is when you gather together in small groups of 6-10 Christians. You see, you can say it's especially hard of a large congregation but, in reality, it doesn't matter what size your congregation is, unless it is extremely small, you cannot have those close relationships outside of gathering together with 6-10 people so you can share your heart with them, so you can share your concerns with them and share your joys with them. These are the people who are going to be there. They're your spiritual family who are going to lift you up when you need it, and they're going to celebrate when you celebrate, and they're going to cry with you when you cry.

One of the biggest needs that we have as human beings is to know somebody is listening to us, that somebody is going to hear us. We're not looking for people to solve things but to know that somebody is listening. When you have a hurt or you're struggling through an issue and it's tearing you up inside, you want to go to someone and be able to talk to them. You don't want their solutions. You just want their ear. That's what a fellowship of believers is all about. That's what scripture describes as the fellowship of lifting each other up and carrying each other's burdens.

You know, they say a joy that is shared is doubled, a hurt that is shared is cut in half because once you share that with someone else and know that somebody else is helping you carry that load, that's what the closeness of God's family is all about.

One of the reasons I am so excited we have over 60 groups, over 500 of you involved in small groups, is because you're getting a taste of what I'm trying to explain, a taste of that close fellowship God has designed you for. You see, I could talk for another 20 minutes and try to explain what that's all about, but it's useless. You have to experience it. And until you're part of a small group of Christians gathered around His Word, sharing with one another, you'll never really understand what I'm talking about.

And that's why my challenge to you this morning is if you're one of those 500 in the small groups, you would really consider staying in that small group, you'd continue on in that fellowship that God has blessed you with. And if you're not in a small group, get in one. Even if you haven't already, it's not too late. I promise you, I guarantee you we will find a place for you. Visit the booth out there, put your name down, talk to one of the staff people, we will find a small group for you to be in so you can experience what I'm trying to explain, that deepness, that closeness that comes when Christians gather around God's Word and they share that together, when they become that close-knit family member to you. Because that's how God's designed you. That's what God has created you for. He wants you to be part of His family. He wants you to be part of the extended family so no matter wherever you go in the globe, you run into a Christian and you have a connection. He wants you to be connected to a local congregation, your immediate family, so you have a place to come on a regular basis and be fed through His Word and Sacrament. He wants you to be part of that close-knit family, people who are going to walk along side of you through life, people you are going to develop close, lasting relationships with. That's the fellowship of believers God has called you into. Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church