January 30, 2022

Podcast

Facebook

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge Colossians 2:1-3

Intro: Occasionally Paul will share these rare gems

Brief statements, packed with profound concepts
– for instance, he has introduced the Colossians to a mystery (cf. Col. 1:25-29)
• everything about our transcendent God is mystery and hidden
◦ some things have been revealed
. . . the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints (Col. 1:26)
◦ the ultimate revelation of God is Jesus Christ – and that revelation keeps unfolding more truth
• the Colossians could reach the “riches” of God’s self-revelation
◦ they just needed encouragement to become fully familiar with him
– this was not an individual quest or project
• it was the journey of the entire community
• so one of the conditions was that their hearts were knitted together in love

For the past three weeks my talks have been about intimacy

If you find yourself interested in intimacy, it’s because intimacy is a human need
– without touch, we whither, without closeness we alienate
• it’s not a luxury – and it is also necessary for our spiritual development
• intimacy can occur naturally and spontaneously almost as side-effect of being together
◦ we do something together and a connection forms
◦ a relationship is established and if continued, it deepens
– we’ve looked at intimacy in the context of family and friendships
• today I want to talk about how it applies to the “church”

Now, from start, I admit we have to leap a couple of hurdles

First, “intimate” may not be the best word to describe our closeness in Christian community
– but how do you describe the relation of body parts to each other?
[Jesus] is the head of the body, the church (Col. 1:18)
• we could say that we enjoy unity with one another
• but that does not go as far as Jesus’ prayer that we be “one”
– if we spoke Greek, we could say we enjoy “koinonia”
• this word means to share something in common, a partnership, communion
• the bond that holds us all together in koinonia is agape (love)
◦ agape has elements of familial love, friendship, romance, of compassion, and devotion
◦ but agape still goes beyond all these elements
– we have considered emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, and experiential intimacy
• perhaps we could talk about our “spiritual intimacy”

I think the second hurdle to leap is obvious, and that is “credibility”
– it’s one thing to idealistic – a dreamer, but it’s another thing to be delusional
• if I say, “Church is a place of intimate friendships,”
◦ I feel like I have to cross my fingers
• many people have been burned by churches
◦ like a mother who divorced abusive husband, and for that she and her children were banned from their church
– the general impression of church people is that they are:
• obstinate, closed-minded, judgmental, unloving, controlling, argumentative, hypocritical, and irrelevant
• pastors and their people can be painfully manipulative
◦ a classic example is when a preacher uses your love for God against you
“If you really loved the Lord, you would be on the mission field in Indonesia”
◦ guilt exerts a powerful pressure
(and the long term effect of guilt manipulation is spiritually and psychologically damaging)
– in a book I read recently, I found the following exhortation
(I will not mention the book or its author, because he has much to say that is good)
“If you know the mind of God, and do not share this knowledge with those who do not know, then what answer will you give to your lost friends and neighbors on the day of judgment? Upon hearing the decree of their condemnation, they may turn to you with terror in their eyes and say, “You knew about this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
• who came up with this scenario? this ugly religion?
• the purpose of this paragraph is to motivate (manipulate) the reader to do specific works to avoid an unpleasant experience in the here after

For me, the hard truth is that I must love unpleasant church people too
(even those who abused me from childhood to the present)
– these Christians whom I feel are misrepresenting Jesus,
• whose attitudes and behavior turn people away from the faith
• if I don’t love them, if I just criticize, reject and avoid them,
◦ I become just another version of the wrong thing
– we have to learn and adopt Jesus’ love for every person
• the misguided, misleading, bad advertisements, even abusers
• if we stop loving them, we stop holding out hope for them
◦ and we don not want to cancel hope for anyone

Paul provides instructions for developing spiritual intimacy

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Chapter 3:11-17
– consider writing out this list as a reminder and reflect on it
• also notice how Jesus is central to the lifestyle of spiritual intimacy
he is “all” and “in all” – we forgive as he forgave us
we let the peace of Christ rule in us
we let the word of Christ dwell in us
we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus
– why does Paul keep coming back to Jesus?
• because we all need God!
• you’re not doing this on your own – you can’t! No one can
◦ this is the importance of our daily encounters with God
◦ our own experience of his love, goodness, beauty, strength
◦ so that through these moments with him, we receive his help for times of need

I want to turn now to two questions Henri Nouwen asks in Intimacy

Henri Nouwen, “Many are asking themselves if we are doomed to remain strangers to each other. Is there a spark of misunderstanding in every intimate encounter, a painful experience of separateness in every attempt to unite, a fearful resistance in every act of surrender? . . . We probably have wondered in our many lonesome moments if there is one corner in this competitive, demanding world where it is safe to be relaxed, to expose ourselves to someone else, and to give unconditionally. It might be very small and hidden. But if this corner exists, it calls for a search through the complexities of our human relationships in order to find it.”
– about the same time Nouwen published these questions,
• a Presbyterian pastor was answering them in a book entitled No Longer Strangers
◦ which he borrowed from Ephesians
So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19)
Bruce Larson, “To me, the gospel is good news right now because in Jesus Christ we find a God who deals with perhaps the most oppressive and pervasive problem of our time—the problem of estrangement and loneliness.”
For Larson, the church that practices a relational theology becomes the “safe corner” we desire and need
– I am going to offer my answers to Nouwen’s question
• first, if we study and practice what Paul teaches here, we’ll find that safe corner
◦ in fact, we will become a safe corner
◦ we are not doomed to remain strangers
◦ already, we are no longer strangers

Where can we experience and nurture our spiritual intimacy?
– in prayer – praying together
• here I run into the same hurdle as when talking about the church
• prayer meetings have been notorious for their epic failures
◦ the seeds of church divisions have been planted in prayer meetings
– some people use prayer to draw attention to themselves through:
• the eloquence of their prayers
• the dramatic intensity and seriousness of their prayers
(intensity and seriousness are important; drama is for the theater)
• the amount of scripture they quote in their prayers
• their pious emphasis on the importance of prayers
(prayer is certainly important, but emphasizing it for attention is a distraction)
– then there are those who gossip in prayer
• or shouted at the devil rather than talk to God
• a lot can go wrong in prayer meetings before we get it right

I’m convinced that an awareness of God is where prayer begins
– a Christian mystic of the 6th century wrote,
Dionysus, “If we were on a ship, and to rescue us ropes attached to a rock were thrown to us, obviously we would not draw the rock any nearer to ourselves, but we would pull ourselves and our ship nearer to the rock . . . And that is why . . . in prayer we need to begin, not by drawing [God nearer to us] but by putting ourselves in his hands and uniting ourselves to him.”
• our intimacy with each other begins with our intimacy with God
– intimacy grows in prayer, because:
• we open our hearts and pray our deepest concerns and feelings with each other
• we labor in prayer together over shared concerns
• we confess to God our shared weaknesses
• we express to God our love, devotion, and adoration
• we are before God Spirit to spirit – and with each other spirit to spirit
◦ this is where intimacy is formed, not mind to mind or body to body,
◦ but seeing, knowing, and communing with each other spirit to spirit

Conclusion: One of the wonderful things about Christian community,

Is discovering how every other person is wonderful
Every other person becomes another spiritual resource
Comfort through hardship and sorrow
A wealth of insight and understanding
An encouragement and example
You see, we meet specific human needs by being who Jesus calls us to be