Belonging Together in Community - 19 March 2009

Looking at areas of purpose in our lives, having considered:

Reach Out with the Good News – on Monday

Uplifting Worship to God – on Tuesday

            Growing in Mature Discipleship – on Wednesday, today we consider

            Belonging Together in Community

We are incomplete outside of community.

God is a community in himself – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and reflects the community he created us for.  Great store is set in our society on independence and yet we are learning more and more about our interdependence both individually and in our world at large.  Just as our complex financial institutions have been seen to be totally dependent upon one another right across the globe – so in truth are we.

There are still those who trot out the nonsense “I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian” – such “independent” thinking denies the truth of our interdependence and our relationship with one another through Jesus Christ.  We are sons and daughters of the King. (Romans 8:12ff)  Paul reminds us when one suffers we all suffer (Romans 12:15) and the writer of Hebrews urges us “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another”  Hebrews 10:25 [NIV]

The bottom line is that we all need each other and indeed we “belong to each other”  (Romans 12:5) as Paul puts it.

Tonight in St. Matthew’s church we will welcome new members of our family here: Tim, Vanessa, Samuel and Joshua as Tim is licensed as Associate Vicar of the parish of St. Matthew’s & St. Oswald’s Rugby.

Please pray from Tim and his family and for all that it will mean to us to know them belonging together in this community.