Relationship

I have often thought that the relationships we have with each other is perhaps the main reason we come together as a church family. When I was in college, I wrote that Jesus came to teach twelve men what friendship could really be – and with that knowledge, they changed the world.

But I have suspected that people sometimes feel guilty or embarrassed to admit that a primary reason for coming to church is to be with friends – except when they may have been looking to meet someone – then our culture smiles on that (as being a much better place to meet someone significant than in a bar or other ‘social’ situation). But what I’m talking about is the reason to come together week after week throughout a lifetime. I say it’s for the friendship we share.

Other words are used: fellowship, community, prayerful support, holy ‘hugs and kisses’ and so on. Can it be that God’s essential truth and being – love – can be made known and shared in such a simple way? I believe it is true, because love is the essence of our faith – and scripture assures us that God is love, and that our love for each other is what sets us apart as disciples. Why do we experience such love at church and not elsewhere? I think commitment is part of it – we are truly a family of friends. And we share together all the most significant parts of our lives, from birth to death and all the life that lies between.

This is, of course, still a form of human love, but is patterned on a higher example that has been set for us by God – and shown to us in human form by Jesus. In the very first accounts of creation, remember that after God has made all the things that make up the world, there was something missing. Teacher, poet, and hymn-writer James Weldon Johnson has God saying, “I am lonely… I will make me a man” (God’s Trombones - “The Creation”). This suggests that the purpose of creation was to have relationship.

Many of you know we lost a friend of almost eighteen years on March 15. He became a devoted companion and loyal friend, and though he was of another species, he also was a creature that personified relationship, and that is, in whatever form or circumstance, holy. We’ve been reluctant to put away his food and water bowl that sat on our family room floor for so many years. Even with creation’s “very least” relationship doesn’t end or die.
From the least to the greatest, love and relationship are God’s way of being and are holy.

In a pattern that God originated in the very beginnings of the Universe, relationship is holy and eternal - the sharing of love and association between souls or sentient beings. We all know examples of people who have made lifetime commitments to each other and who may be said to have laid out their lives for one another. Jesus said this was a paragon of love and devotion. It goes beyond the boundaries of sex, race, and maybe even species in our understanding and experience of love. Relationship is by God, from God, and of God. What God has enabled in relationship, let no one seek to prevent or put asunder.