We Are None Of Us Alone

There is a truth that is often overlooked and it is this, we are none of us alone. You and I are connected to one another in every aspect of our being. The air we breath is both the air that is inhaled by you and is exhaled by me. We are not an island or a rock, we are the human race, bound together and every action you and I take does not just affect you and I, but the whole community. Each decision we make affects those around us, even if we do not see the impact until later in life.

Our connectedness is not just in how we occupy the same space, it is in building our lives together, specifically as a Christian community. Everything we do, here in worship, we do together. We sing together in unison, we pray together in unison, we worship together in unison. Everything in the Christian community is about life together. We are none of us alone.

In our scripture passage this morning, we encounter a group of missionaries who are, for the lack of a better word, wandering. Paul, Timothy, and Silas seem to be at a loss as to where to go next. They've been blocked from going into Asia and Bithynia but the Spirit has blocked them. So they find themselves wandering down to Troas, all by God's strange and repeated “no.” During the night, Paul has a vision in which a man from Macedonia stood before him pleading, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

Being convinced that God had called them to proclaim the good news to Macedonia, they set sail for Macedonia. They remained in the city for some days and on the seventh day, they went outside the gate by the river, where they supposed there was a place of prayer; sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there.

A woman, named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to them. Lydia was from the city of Thyatira, in Asia, the very place the Spirit of the Lord barred them from entering. She listened and the Lord opened her heart and when her and her household were baptized, she urged the missionaries to stay with her, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon them.

Paul and his companions have been blocked by the Spirit, in every direction they tried to go and then they find themselves in Macedonia, a Roman colony, and it is by the river, they meet Lydia, dealer in purple cloth. For the first time in the Acts narrative, the narrator has moved from speaking in third person to speaking in first. Instead of saying, “They got up”, he writes, “We got up”. The narrative is no longer just about Paul or his companions, the narrator has decided to join the story, he has decided to become a participant and by doing so, invites each of us in to be participants as well.

Whether this passage is taken from a diary or if the writer slipped up, does not matter. The importance of the language in this story is two fold: 1) we are not in charge of the story. God is. God is the one who moving the pieces. 2) The story is not told alone. We are invited in to participate, to live, and to encounter God with these figures. We are none of us alone.

Lydia is connected to Paul and his companions through God and it is God who connects them to one another. She prevails on them to stay with her, something we only read once before in the New Testament, when the disciples on the road to Emmaus, prevail on Jesus to stay with them. Lydia understands, or at least displays, the overwhelming idea that in our Christ, we are connected. My home becomes your home. My life becomes your life. Your family becomes my family. Everything that was yours is now mine because we are none of us alone.

Paul, his companions, and Lydia (and her household) display for us the importance of being in Christian community with one another. Together, in their own story the show us what community means. It means this: Listening, helpfulness, and bearing one burdens. It means being attentive to those around us and their needs. Paul and his companions listened, not half listening but attentive listening to the call of God. They followed where they believe God called them to go and they sought people out. They listened to the women by the river and in turn the women, specifically Lydia, listened to them. Lydia listened actively to Paul's words and her desire to join them did not end after her baptism.

Lydia becomes an active participant by going and getting her entire household and together they are baptized. She felt empowered to help her household, her family, and her new friends. By urging Paul and his companions to stay with her, she embraces the call of Christian community by offering the smallest of help, her home and her hospitality. In doing so, she takes on their burdens: “Bear one another's burdens, in this way will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal. 6.2).

It may not seem like an awe-inspiring story but their willingness to travel to unknown places and her instance for them to stay with her is what bringing forth the kingdom of heaven is really like. It is done in the smallness of being in Christian community with one another. It is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls living life together. These three services are a part of living life together. It is an understanding that every member serves the whole body, in Christian community, contributing to either its health or its ruin, for we are members of one body no only when we want to be, but in our whole existence. This is not a theory but a spiritual reality that is often experienced in the Christian community, in the church, with shocking clarity, sometimes destructively and sometimes beneficially (Bonhoeffer, Life Together pg 92).

We have come to a point in our culture, specifically our Christian culture, where we have chosen isolation over community, specifically, isolation with those who look, talk, act, and think like us. We seek out individuals who share specific interests or have a specific theological viewpoint, inviting them in while exiling the other. A worldly understanding of community is one in which people who are different are removed, while we surround ourselves with like-minded others. Our politics are an example of such an understanding of community. Each party's purpose is to try and fill the vacant seats with as many from their political party as they can. Worldly community is about position of power and holding that power over the minority. The Christian community is the opposite. If one who voted on the Republican ticket cannot worship beside the one who voted on the Democratic ticket, then we are not a Christian community. We are, in harsh reality, a worldly community. Again, let us look at Lydia and Paul.

Paul is a Jewish Roman citizen while Lydia is from an area outside of Rome, a foreigner. Paul was a pharisee and is a Christian. Lydia is a merchant and a God worshiper (whatever that really means). He is breaking every Jewish custom by engaging in conversation with her and he breaks every custom by allowing him and his companions to stay with her. Together, they demonstrate to us what it means to be in this Christian community, that life is lived together, not absent, not in isolation or only with the like-minded. It is lived out with both the weak and the strong. It is lived out with both the natural born and the immigrant. It is a life that understands the importance of the life of their neighbor, because the air that pumps through their neighbor's lungs is the same air that pumps through the Christian's. The Christian life understands that the air her and her neighbor breath is the air given by God. The Christian life therefore sees within his neighbor the God who has given the Christian life. The Christian understands that life is not something lived alone. We are none of us alone.

Bonhoeffer writes, “You are called into the community of faith; the call was not meant for you alone. You carry your cross, you struggle, and you pray in the community of faith, the community of those who are called. You are not alone even when you die, and on the day of judgment you will be only one member of the great community of faith of Jesus Christ” (Bonhoeffer pg 82-83). The entire narrative of Acts is a narrative in which this new Christian community wrestles with what it means to live life together. The disciples and apostles struggle with one another as they work through the impact of the gospel on the lives of both Jew, Greek, Roman, barbarian, and the gentile. We are reminded as Paul and his companions stay with Lydia, of Peter's vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven. We are reminded of how he clings to his rigid law, “Nothing unclean has ever touched my lips.” And we are reminded of Christ's response, “Do not call unclean what I have made clean.” Life together means living in the cleanliness of our Sunday showers and in the dirtiness of our Monday mornings. We cannot live absent of one another thus we must live in the tension of our hypocrisy, no matter how frustrating it can be. We are bound to one another in Christ and to this world.

The call of the Christian life is a call to service. It is not just to serve the fellow Christian but the “un” as well. The Christian community is a “chain that is unbreakable only when even the smallest link holds tightly with others” (Bonhoeffer pg 96). This is why we must come to this universal truth, that we are none of us alone. Strong and weak, wise and foolish, talented or untalented, pious or less pious, the complete diversity of the individuals in the community is no longer a reason to talk and judge and condemn (Bonhoeffer pg 95). This diversity is worth rejoicing in one another's presence and serving one another. The chain that is the Christian community is unbreakable then because the smallest link has another to cling tightly onto. Here, we remind ourselves of the words of Jesus, “Let, the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt. 19:14).

The smallest link, our children of the faith, can only grow faithfully if there are others who are willing to grow with them. Our children, both in age and in faith, cannot grow if we are absent members. If are not willing to invest in their lives, become a part of their life and allow them to become a part of ours, then we are ignoring the commandment of Christ, “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me” (Matt. 18:5). If we do not welcome them and do not offer to serve them then we ignore another commandment of Christ in Matthew, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Matt. 20:26); and likewise in John, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:14-15).

The Christian community, the church that permits members within to do nothing, will be destroyed by them. We all need a task to do in this community. We need a task so that we know in times of doubt that we are not useless and incapable of doing anything. We must know that not only do the weak need the strong, but also the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the community (Bonhoeffer pg 96). Thus our call is to live faithfully with one another by being fully present with one another. To be fully present means to be fully here, not half way here or longing to leave; but running when the doors open, being the last to leave, and to show up every time there is someone here.

To be fully present means to be fully aware of those who worship beside us. It means to know that in our community of teenagers who believe life is worth nothing more than getting expelled from school. It means to know that in our community are teenagers and children who leave in homes with absent parents, and are in desperate need of mentors who will not be absent. It means to know that an empty ball-field lays waiting for its members to live fully into their potential. To be fully present is to know that this life together means that we are none of us alone.

It is to know that you, me, and the boy or girl with the cigarette and beer in their hand, are deeply connected by the God who gave us Christ Jesus. Let us begin to be fully present. We are none of us alone.