Sermon Illustrations on Fellowship
Background
The Diversity of the Early Church
So if we want to get the church right, we have to learn to see it as a salad in a bowl, made the Right Way of course. For a good salad is a fellowship of different tastes, all mixed together with the olive oil accentuating the taste of each. The earliest Christian churches were made up of folks from all over the social map, but they formed a fellowship of “different tastes,” a mixed salad of the best kind.
A recent study by a British scholar has concluded that if the apostle Paul’s house churches were composed of about thirty people, this would have been their approximate make-up:
- a craftworker in whose home they meet, along with his wife, children, a couple of male slaves, a female domestic slave, and dependent relative
- some tenants, with families and slaves and dependents, also living in the same home in rented rooms
- some family members of a householder who himself does not participate in the house church couple of slaves whose owners do not attend
- some freed slaves who do not participate in the church
- a couple homeless people
- a few migrant workers renting small rooms in the home
Add to this mix some Jewish folks and a perhaps an enslaved prostitute and we see how many “different tastes” were in a typical house church in Rome: men and women, citizens and freed slaves and slaves (who had no legal rights), Jews and Gentiles, people from all moral walks of life, and perhaps, most notably, people from elite classes all the way down the social scale perhaps to homeless people.
Eating Together as a Family
We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly and discovered that the single most important element in raising kids who are drug-free, healthy, intelligent, kind human beings is frequent family dinners. The most important predictor of success for elementary-aged children is frequent family dinners. The primary factor in shaping vocabulary for younger children is frequent family dinners. The key variable most associated with a lower incidence of depressive and suicidal thoughts among eleven- to eighteen-year-olds is frequent family dinners. There is something quasi-sacramental about the table—any table where an environment of home is created. A sacrament is a physical thing in which God—or something of God—is seen and is present. Without question, some of the most sacred moments of my life have been experienced sitting at the dinner table with my wife and kids. Of lesser importance, but still extremely significant: I’ve had many experiences sitting at the table with members of my team when something of God and eternity has broken into our bread breaking. I’ve seen conference tables in hospitable environments become the Lord’s table. A means of grace. As N. T. Wright wrote, “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.”
Terry A. Smith, The Hospitable Leader: Create Environments Where People and Dreams Flourish (Bethany House, 2018)
Eating With Sinners
Why did it disturb the religious leaders that Jesus ate with “sinners”? To eat with someone is an important symbol of fellowship. And in those days, the Jews had a rule: one is not to have such fellowship with outsiders until they are changed. If and when outsiders came to repentance, and when they had proven they were sorry by acting like insiders, the Jews could join with them and eat with them—and not a moment before.
After all, God’s people had no business mixing with unbelievers, right? Jesus appears on the scene with a new approach. He introduces a brand-new idea. He connects with sinners before they repent, before they change, so that they will change. He goes to those who need him even before they know they need him! He seeks out the least, the last, and the lost so that, hearing his voice, they can experience new life. Rather than keeping them at arm’s length, he embraces them.
David Schuringa, Today: The Family Altar, May-June 2002, June 2, 2002.
The Fig Tree
My mom studied horticulture and could make a dead stick grow leaves. I do not have her genes. So what I am telling you know comes from sources who do know about fig trees. Here’s what they tell me. Fig trees have a pattern in how they produce fruit. First, they sprout baby figs that have a bad taste and are really inedible. After these baby figs sprout, then the tree grows leaves and as the leaves develop, the baby figs mature and become sweet and delicious…ready to be eaten by anyone, including a hungry Savior.
This botanical lesson is important because when Jesus sees the lush and leafy fig tree, what does he expect to be on it? Figs. The leaves would mean that the tree was fulfilling its purpose, but in effect, all it was doing was looking like it had fruit on it. It was pretending. It was acting like a fruitful fig tree when in fact it was barren and not a single hungry person would be fed by it.
Now here’s why this is important on this Fig Monday of Holy Week. Jesus knows that he is going to die and then be raised to new life. But he also knows that after his resurrection, he’s not going back to the way things were, continuing his ministry of walking around Israel teaching and healing. He’s going to hand this mission over to his followers and they need to know what the mission is and how to go about it.
The mission for followers of Jesus is to actually bear fruit. In Jesus’ words in the gospel of John, he tells us that if we abide in him…if we live in union with him, then his life will flow through us into the world as we speak his words and walk in his ways. One thing Jesus is trying to teach his disciples is that looking like you’re a follower of Jesus is just that – looking like, but not really being it. As the Texans say: All hat and no cattle.
Submitted by Eunice (“Junior”) McGarrahan
Koinonitus
The ancient Greek word for intimate fellowship is koinonia. In the church, we can suffer from what might be called koinonitus: fellowship turned in on itself; cliques and enclaves and tight-knit groups that become little cul-de-sacs of relationship. The difference between the life-giving Sea of Galilee and the salty-enough-to-float-on Dead Sea is that the Dead Sea has no outlet for the life flowing into it. Intimacy without outimacy (church is something you are, out there) leads to stagnation and death.
Love Self, Brethren, and Strangers
Scripture calls us to offer a radical welcome to strangers, but we are not able to give what we do not have. Before we can love our neighbor, we must love and care for ourselves so we can have something to offer our neighbor. We must be hospitable to brother, sister, wife, husband, children, parents—and brothers and sisters in Christ.… Hospitality begins in philadelphia. Then it gets better. I believe with all my heart that our lives are exponentially expanded, that we get bigger and everything we care about gets better when we move to philoxenia. We must be hospitable to strangers. This move is not optional for people of the Christian faith, so we must assume there is something beyond wonderful in this straightforward admonition to “entertain strangers” or to “show love unto strangers” or “keep an open house.” Now that we are home, we are commanded to share home with strangers. To be hospitable leaders, we must embrace every part of what it means to move to philoxenia. Philoxenia is the opposite of xenophobia. Xenophobia is an irrational fear of people who are not like us. It is the antithesis of what the Scriptures teach us in both Old and New Testament. Hospitality—literally loving strangers—was a requirement for leaders in the early Christian church. A church leader must be “hospitable” or “enjoy having guests in his home.” He or she must be a “lover of hospitality” or a “lover of loving strangers.”
Terry A. Smith, The Hospitable Leader: Create Environments Where People and Dreams Flourish (Bethany House, 2018)
A Relationship Among Fellows
Did you know that the history of the word “fellowship,” is, rather simply, a relationship among fellows? The idea of a fellowship being that two or more people have been bonded together in some significant way.
For obvious reasons, this idea of fellowship, or “koinonia” in the Greek, came to signify the life of the early church. Why? Because of the unique power of the bond of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This bond made through Christ enabled deep roots and ennobled the community of faith to the kind of rich, sacrificial life that Jesus himself modeled in the gospels.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic book on Christian community, Life Together, argues that Christian community is unlike any other community because of this unique bond, a bond that exists between each of us through Christ. When Jesus is at the center of our fellowship, the world is radically transformed. So, may the church be a relationship among fellows, a fellowship bound not by ethnicity, social class, or status, but by the redeeming power of Christ at work in us through the Holy Spirit.
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Welcomed Guests
For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests – that they have been welcomed and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the most simple thing that we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is still supremely worth saying. In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that he wants our company.
Rowan Williams. Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer, Eerdmans Publishing Co.
What is Fellowship?
What is meant by fellowship in this verse? Gossip? Cups of tea? Tours? No. What is being referred to is something of a quite different order and on a quite different level. “They met constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, and break bread and to pray. A sense of awe was everywhere. All whose faith had drawn them together held everything in common…and, breaking bread in private houses, shared their meals with unaffected joy as they praised God” (Acts 2:42-47, NEB)
…The Greek word for fellowship comes from a root meaning common or shared. So fellowship means common participation in something either by giving what you have to the other person or receiving what he or she has. Give and take is the essence of fellowship, and give and take must be the way of fellowship in the common life of the body of Christ.
Christian fellowship is two-dimensional, and it has to be vertical before it can be horizontal. We must know the reality of fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ before we can know the reality of fellowship with each other in our common relationship to God (1 John 1:3). The person who is not in fellowship with the Father and the Son is no Christian at all, and so cannot share with Christians the realities of their fellowship.
From James I. Packer, Your Father Loves You: Daily Insights for Knowing God, Harold Shaw Pub, 1986.
Stories
The Monster’s Friend
I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young Frankenstein out of your head, OK? In the movie, Frankenstein’s monster is played by Boris Karloff, and in one scene he is fleeing through the countryside and comes upon the cottage of a blind man. The monster bursts in the front door and the blind man who can’t see how horrible the monster looks says and tries to talk to him but the monster can’t talk and so the blind man says, “Oh, are you afflicted like me? Are you too an afflicted person? We have something in common – maybe we can have friends.” And he prays, “I thank you O Lord that you have heard my endless prayers and you have sent me a friend to heal my terrible loneliness.” And there’s a few scenes where they are eating together and doing chores together and the blind man is playing the violin for the monster – doing things like friends – and only time the monster played by Boris Karloff speaks in the movie is here – he learns to say “food” “good” “food good” – and he also learns to say, “friend.” But then some hunters come to the cottage and they see the monster and they attack him and the monster fights back and there’s a terrible fight and the cottage burns down and everyone but the monster is killed, and the last bit of the scene shows the monster groping into the forest saying, “Friend!” “Friend!”
Tim Keller, “Friends — What Are They Good For?” a sermon given April 27, 1997.
The Power of the Worldwide Church
It is a phone call no parent wants to receive. “Jerry,” Bethany said, “Catherine’s had a little accident.” “Accident! How bad?”
“She’s going to be okay. You want to talk to her? We’re in a kind of ambulance crossing the Andes, headed down to Quito. Here she is.”
My daughter Catherine and Bethany, one of her dear friends, spent the 2006-2007 school year in Central and South America, studying Spanish, traveling and serving in nonprofit organizations. They spent their last three months in Quito, Ecuador, working in a Catholic street ministry. During Mardi Gras weekend a number of volunteers and staff members, both Ecuadorians and Americans, rented a bus and traveled to the coast to spend a couple of days relaxing on the beach.
Not surprisingly, the beach was packed with people. Catherine decided to go for a swim to escape the crowds…Swimming in deep water far from shore, she noticed a speed boat fast approaching her. The driver did not appear to see her. She yelled and waved as best she could, but to no avail. The boat continued on course. She finally decided to dive head first to get out of the way. She waited a split second too long. The prop caught her on her lower back. She knew immediately that she had been cut badly and would probably drown. Two thoughts immediately came into her mind, both quintessentially Catherine. The first expressed a sense of surprise, as if the accident were an irritating interruption. I wasn’t planning on dying this young, she said to herself. The second was a pleasant thought, borne out of the experience of losing her mother. I get to see my mom!
As it turned out, here first thought was the more accurate. Two young Ecuadorians witnessed the accident from shore and frantically swam to her reaching her in just enough time. Once on shore, she was rushed to a medical tent where an EMT began to work on her. He stopped the bleeding, cleaned out the gaping wounds and stitched her up as best he could. However nauseated, Bethany stood by her through the entire ordeal, holding her hand, praying for her and singing hand, praying for her and singing hymns to her. Another friend secured transportation back to Quito, the trip took roughly seven hours, much of it over gravel roads. Once in Quito, they took her to a missionary hospital where a plastic surgeon removed the provisional stitches, cleaned out the wounds and then sewed her back up with over a hundred stitches.
Over the next week, Catherine discovered what it means to belong to the worldwide church. As word spread, people in the U.S. contacted Christian friends in Quito, who began to visit and help her. A retired missionary doctor, for example, stopped in to see her every day and took personal responsibility for her care. People sent letters, emails, flowers, and gifts. Though complete strangers, they treated her like a dear friend and showered her with attention and affection. She felt like a celebrity. Over the course of the next month she kept telling me about it, “I just can’t believe it Dad. Those people loved me for no other reason than that I needed to be loved.” “It’s the church,” I responded. I told her that when the church is functioning at its best, there is simply no community on earth that can rival it.
Gerald L. Sittser, Love One Another: Becoming The Church Jesus Longs For, InterVarsity Press.
Studies
The Diversity of the Early Church
So if we want to get the church right, we have to learn to see it as a salad in a bowl, made the Right Way of course. For a good salad is a fellowship of different tastes, all mixed together with the olive oil accentuating the taste of each. The earliest Christian churches were made up of folks from all over the social map, but they formed a fellowship of “different tastes,” a mixed salad of the best kind.
A recent study by a British scholar has concluded that if the apostle Paul’s house churches were composed of about thirty people, this would have been their approximate make-up:
- a craftworker in whose home they meet, along with his wife, children, a couple of male slaves, a female domestic slave, and dependent relative
- some tenants, with families and slaves and dependents, also living in the same home in rented rooms
- some family members of a householder who himself does not participate in the house church couple of slaves whose owners do not attend
- some freed slaves who do not participate in the church
- a couple homeless people
- a few migrant workers renting small rooms in the home
Add to this mix some Jewish folks and a perhaps an enslaved prostitute and we see how many “different tastes” were in a typical house church in Rome: men and women, citizens and freed slaves and slaves (who had no legal rights), Jews and Gentiles, people from all moral walks of life, and perhaps, most notably, people from elite classes all the way down the social scale perhaps to homeless people.
Analogies
Three Ways to Make a Salad
There are three ways to eat a salad: the American Way; the Weird Way, and the Right Way. The American Way of eating a salad is to fill your bowl with some iceberg lettuce or some spinach leaves, some tomato slices and olives, and maybe some carrots, then smother it with salad dressing — Ranch or Thousand Island or Italian or, for special occasions, Caesar. The Weird Way is to separate each item in your salad around on your plate, then eat them as separate items. People who do this often do not even use dressing. As I said, weird.
Now the Right Way to make and eat a salad is to gather all your ingredients—some spinach, kale, chard, arugula, iceberg lettuce (if you must)—and chop them into smaller bits. Then cut up some tomatoes, carrots, onions, red pepper, and purple cabbage. Add some nuts and dried berries, sprinkle some pecorino romano cheese, and finally drizzle over the salad some good olive oil, which somehow brings the taste of each item to its fullest. Surely this is what God intended when he created “mixed salad.”
Welcomed Guests
For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests – that they have been welcomed and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the most simple thing that we can say about Holy Communion, yet it is still supremely worth saying. In Holy Communion, Jesus Christ tells us that he wants our company.
Rowan Williams. Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer, Eerdmans Publishing Co.
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