Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor
July 27, 2008
(more sermons)

The project

I have a project under way. On Friday morning Pastor Bill and Michael Stewart helped me move a couple of tons of bricks and rocks to the job site in my back yard. Several times as we worked I heard, "I can't wait to see how this shows up in sermons." Especially since my project includes dirt, electricity, and plumbing.

Every once in a while I need a project. I need to get my hands involved in something other than typing. As I got started digging for my project Friday afternoon, the roofer on top of my house yelled down, "That's an awful lot of work just for something to look at, isn't it?" I answered that if I did what he does all week, I probably wouldn't do this on my day off. But for me it's a healthy diversion.

My home improvement projects this summer have included pressure washing the house, painting the trim, and restaining the deck. Because our daughter Cara's dogs had significantly trampled much of my back yard during their year at home, it is now time to decide what to reseed and what to concede -- to the dogs, that is, for future visits -- and just mulch.

In addition, I had a 50-feet-long bench around a perennial garden in the back, placed there originally to keep the dog out. It never successfully served that purpose. Besides, no one sat on it, and the garden wasn't too prosperous. Since I was staining the deck, the bench either had to be stained or removed, and I chose removed, leaving another ugly eye sore in the back yard. This set the stage for the project.

Having seen some examples and looked at some books, I have been inspired to build a small waterfall and pool in my back yard. By pool I don't mean a swimming pool, like Jeni wants -- more like a hot tub-sized outdoor pool. And as for the waterfall, my back yard is rather flat -- so I'm building a small retaining wall from which artificially pumped water can cascade down the rocks and create natural water sounds in our back yard. We'll see.

Linda's been asking me what all this will look like. "Can you draw me a picture?"

"Not really." I'm not an artist, for one thing, and to be honest, I don't know. It will have some combination of rocks and dirt on either side of the descending stream. Nevertheless, the work has begun.

What we have so far are foundations and boundaries. We know where the pool will sit, and excavation has begun. We know where the retaining wall will be, and the footing is in place. In between the wall and the pool will be the waterfall, and so we know approximately the boundaries of the project. That is to say, it will not take up the whole yard. I have the corner marked off and set aside. That's all we know right now -- the foundations and boundaries.

Last week

Foundations and boundaries are critical for a community, our theme at Corinth for the weeks ahead. What does it look like to be Christ's community? Last week we said that community implies --

• Togetherness.
  Community cannot be formed in isolation. We need time together. That's true for a community of two, like a marriage, as well as for a church family. That's why one of our early steps toward community will be some "block parties" at the homes of our church members in August and September. If you would like to host such an informal gathering of your Corinth neighbors, write your name(s) and the words "block party" on a yellow card. What you do for food and fun is up to you.
• Authenticity.
  We have to work at being "real" with each other. Acts 2 gave us a good foundation because the early church met together with "glad and simple" hearts. They were vulnerable enough to admit to needs so that they could become interdependent.
• Commonality.
  Hear the similarity between "community" and "common." Community means having things in common. We will explore our commonality further today and throughout these sermons, but we began last week with the "Captain Obvious" statement that our commonality in the church is faith in Jesus Christ.

Today we turn our attention to St. Paul's profound description of community in chapter three of his letter to the church in the city of Colosse. Paul provides a description of foundations and boundaries for Christ's community.

Foundations (vv. 12-14)

I am not much of a builder. Several of you are, and you understand the importance of foundations. The reality came home to me a couple of weeks ago when the architect who is coordinating the construction of our new 28,000 square feet multi-purpose building sent over to Corinth a company called Froehling and Robertson to do some "soil borings." F&R is an international engineering company with headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Before we can begin excavations, we have to know what's under the proposed site.

A soil boring, as I understand it, is a 50-feet deep hole about six inches in diameter. The content of that boring is then analyzed. What kind of soil is down under the building? How far down does soil go until the boring hits bedrock? What sorts of drainage issues will be encountered? Can the ground hold a large building?

When we talk about building community here at Corinth, we must first remember that we don't create community in a vacuum, in thin air. We didn't invent community, and we never start from scratch when we build community. We have to understand the foundation.

That is what I see Paul doing in vv. 12-14. His chosen metaphor is a little different, but his point is the same. I'll come back to his metaphor in a moment.

But here's his summary description of what already is as you seek to build community. "As God's chosen people, holy (set apart) and dearly loved...." Think about that for a moment. Before you take one step toward community, before you make one small initiative, you are already chosen, set apart, and loved.

Yesterday the Carolina Panthers began training camp. In two weeks they will play their first preseason game. Eighty players are on the roster for training camp. Among them are Darren Toney and Jonathan Stewart. Have you heard of them? If you follow Panthers' football, you have likely heard of Stewart, their first round draft pick who signed a multi-million dollar contract Friday. Darren Toney? He wasn't drafted by Carolina or any of the other 31 NFL teams. But the Arkansas graduate wants to make the team.

One of the foundations for Christian community is that you need to see yourself as Jonathan Stewart, not Darren Toney. Odds are long that Toney will wear a Panthers uniform for opening day of the regular season September 7. He will have to excel beyond measure even to gain the notice of his coaches and peers.

Stewart? He has been chosen, set apart, and loved. He will practically have to exclude himself not to make the team.

You are "in" the community. It's not an option to be at training camp, to work your butt off (pardon the expression), to give it your all.

The team uniform in the Christian community starts there. The uniform is love. "Clothe yourselves," Paul says in verse 12, and that's his metaphor for "foundations." "Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other. Forgive."

The community you have been chosen for is an other-centered community. It's not about personal prosperity and pleasure. It's not about what the community can do for you. If you want to be part of this community, you don't come and go based on whether you like the sermons or the music or who's offended you or how good you feel after you've been at church. No, you wear the team uniform, which is love -- compassion, patience, humility, forgiveness. That's your identity. That's the starting point. That's the foundation.

Boundaries (vv. 15-17)

If you came to my back yard, I could show you where in my vision of what "the project" will look like, grass will stop and mulch will begin, where the pool will be dug, where the wall will hold back the dirt and rocks to form the cascading streams.

In Colossians 3, Paul speaks not only of our foundations (our identity), but of our boundaries (our standards). If we were to draw the boundaries of Christian community, we might label them peace, gratitude, learning, worship, and obedience. Those boundaries are spelled out by Paul in verses 15-17.

But for the purpose of this sermon, the specific names on the boundary lines are not the point. As we try to understand what community is, the point today is no more and no less than the fact that community implies boundaries.

In a world where diversity and tolerance are virtually universal givens, we need to understand the importance of boundaries to community. Every community has boundaries.

The Carolina Panthers have boundaries. I guess we could state the obvious -- no girls allowed. Really the boundaries have more to do with physical abilities, and there are probably at least some females who would have a better chance to make the team than I would.

A choir has boundaries. You do have to be able to sing, although it's a misconception for our choir, at least, that you have to be able to read music or sing with a trained voice. You might be surprised at how open our choral community is, and how willing to help those with little musical background.

I remember the academic cohort that gathered when I began my Doctor of Ministry program. It was a diverse group by gender and race. But halfway through the program was a filtering process called "candidacy." Some students who would have added to the diversity of the class by their ethnicity did not survive candidacy. I remember one student of Middle eastern origin. We became friends early in the program, and I wanted him to succeed. But his academic and leadership skills were not sufficient for the program. When he was told that his case study (a key component in the program) didn't measure up, he rewrote it using my case study as a template -- almost word-for-word, except for substituting the specifics of his case. Obviously that didn't pass the test either, and he didn't graduate. Earning a Doctor of Ministry requires meeting standards, regardless of how inclusive we want to be in the program.

The church of Jesus Christ as a community also wrestles with this tension between inclusiveness and exclusiveness. The gospel of Jesus is for "whoever believes" (John 3:16). That's inclusive and exclusive. "Whoever" means anyone, but "believes" is restrictive.

The community that is the church of Jesus Christ has boundaries. It has standards. So does every other kind of community, but sometimes people have a hard time with those standards when they're applied to church. Formal membership in this community requires a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

Jesus Christ as Savior means that we believe he is the Son of God by whose death and resurrection our sins are forgiven.

Jesus Christ as Lord means that we follow him, we obey him. As Paul says in Colossians 3, we "let the word of Christ dwell in us richly." And, a little later, "whatever (we) do, whether in word or deed, (we) do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus."

The Christian community is not an "anything goes" community. The Word of God provides our boundaries. Part of what we do in a Christian community is we gather in small groups to study what the Scriptures say. Otherwise we easily veer off into individualism and personal opinion. We help each other read and apply the Word correctly.

At times we disagree about what the Word of God says or requires. And it's dangerous to get into too many specifics. I've been part of Christian communities where the specifics were far more detailed than the Bible.

But the fact that this community has to have boundaries around what we believe and how we live is foundational to what community is. It's having things in common. Our commonality is a fervent profession of faith in Jesus Christ and a passionate commitment to obey his Word above our own self-affirming rationalizations.

The risk of community

One final thought. Keep in mind in these first two sermons we're just engaging in some initial study and reflection about community. We will get more practical as we go along.

There's a certain risk in community, isn't there? If I think of my backyard project as building a community of rocks and dirt, there's an X-factor in the project. As I said earlier, I don't know how it will turn out. Pastor Bill, who has prior experience building a community of water, rocks, plants, and (in his case), fish, says there's some trial and error involved. In fact, the pool I'm using for my back yard used to be in his. But he's moved on to bigger things.

Maybe I won't like my project. Maybe I'll have to revise it. Maybe I will tear it out and haul it away like the bench. If even stone and soil are unpredictable in their outcome based on the whims and preferences of one or two human beings, how much more so a community of people, even a Christian community?

There's a risk in committing to a community. Nobody knows how it's going to turn out. The most obvious example is marriage. You and I all have seen examples of marriages that started out amidst the fanfare of a wedding with great promise only to turn out very badly.

Multiply that by 1000 members (plus children and guests who have not joined), and you have the complexity of risk that is involved in being a part of this community. It is always changing. People come and go. They are born, they die. They step back and they step up. They grow spiritually and they backslide. The community of Corinth today is not what it was last week, much less what it was fifteen years ago when I joined it -- much longer for some of you. It is also not what it will be next week or next year.

So you don't exactly know what you're committing to when you become a part of a community. The boundaries might shift. Even foundations can sometimes change.

But the risk of community is so worth it. Why? Because the alternatives are so much more hazardous. There's the alternative of isolation -- choosing the perceived safety of no community at all -- with greatly reduced opportunities to give and receive love. There is the alternative of arrogance -- no community is good enough for me. There is the alternative of selectivity -- opting in and out of the community based on self-serving preferences.

The risk of being burned by community is real, but I'll choose it any day -- and have chosen it. I choose you -- to submit to, to grow with, to be shaped by, to keep learning what it means to build on the foundation of love and be protected by the boundary of obedience. Amen.

Copyright 2008 by Robert M. Thompson, Pastor. Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 1978 by New York International Bible Society.